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Pepper Spray and Ayn Rand Deployed Against Occupy Seattle Protesters

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NY TIMES: http://thelede.blogs...tle-protesters/ (FULL ARTICLE)

Publicola reported that a short time after the pepper spray was fired, the protesters were lectured by a man in a suit who described himself as a “professional investor.” He told a group of protesters, including a young woman who said she has a job at Safeway but is underemployed, “I’m in the 1 percent; I’m not like you.”

The man also asked the woman, “Who is John Galt?” That question is the first line of Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged,” and the phrase is commonly usedby devotees of the book to signal their allegiance to its free-market ideology.

The comments are particularly disturbing. Do you think these people intentionally distort Objectivism or, still after all these years, even the basics of it are not understood?

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How specifically do you feel its being misrepresented? That an Objectivist would show up at an Occupy protest so selflessly (He has nothing- no values, to gain at an Occupy Protest) just to get off on saying "Who is John Galt?"

That was just my assumption, which is why I'm asking.

Edited by NateTheGreat
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In the comments section, I was not referencing the article itself. (Maybe the man was Peter Schiff again!)

and I just found this "controversy"... http://www.lululemon...ohn-galt/?sli=1 hat tip to google. (The comments there offer a plethora of Rand hate, but none appear to represent it objectively in their critiques.)

Edited by freestyle
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Oh yeah I completely understand what you mean. Yesterday I was watching liberalviewer, and he supposedly had read "most of Ayn Rand's work", though later he claimed that he had read AS and the Virtue of Selfishness.

I thought the critique would be unbiased and completely reasonable, given he'd had some experience with the philosophy, but I was wrong. He essentially took John Galt's quote way out of context and said it would result in the use of force, etc. etc.

How interesting that they claim they oppose selfishness mostly because it would harm other people. Yet they reject that ethics parallels politics, and that capitalism is based upon selfishness and the non-aggression principle, while socialism is based on force and altruism.

It seems like most critiques use the "connotation" definition of selfishness, as opposed to the actual one.

EDIT: This is my favorite reply:

"I would argue that the majority of the world’s 7 billion inhabitants actually have very little control over their careers, where they live, and how much money they make. That statement is laughable. If all it took was an attitude adjustment to rise from poverty, escape conflict, and recover from widespread illness, then we would have 7 billion wealthy, happy, and healthy humans headed to their next yoga class.

I’ll take my workout gear without naive freshman-year analysis next time."

Question: Why do they actually have very little control over their careers, where they live, and how much money they make? As Ayn Rand would say, "Blank out"

Edited by NateTheGreat
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