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MisterSwig

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been appearing on TV claiming that we should not dismiss her political ideas on practical, economic grounds, because her goals are moral. Objectivists easily see through this garbage, but for our non-Objectivist friends, I offer some thoughts on how to counter socialists like Ocasio-Cortez.

First of all, avoid doing what Matt Christiansen just did.

He is trying to push Ocasio-Cortez off the moral high ground. He makes the same attacks as most anti-socialists (historically socialism doesn't produce positive results, and it's analogous to theft, etc.), but he also attempts to describe his own view of morality.

Quote

If you want morality, here are some basic tenets. Nobody owns your labor but you. Nobody owns your property but you. Nobody owns your association but you. And anybody trying to coerce you otherwise is committing a fundamentally immoral act, because that person is trying to co-opt property and personal rights to which they have no claim.

Ah, but Ocasio-Cortez is indeed making a claim on other people's property and rights. She makes this claim in the name of the social good over the personal good. And it's going to be impossible for Christiansen to take the moral high ground while completely ignoring the moral high ground.

All that bluster about "nobody owns your stuff but you", that's not an attack on the enemy's moral high ground. It's not even a skirmish along the baseline, which is the principle of altruism.

If you really want to stop socialists like Ocasio-Cortez, stop wasting effort and time on the moral high ground, and join the egoists' battle against the baseline! For nobody keeps the high ground without first gaining and maintaining the baseline.

Edited by MisterSwig
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2 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

If you really want to stop socialists like Ocasio-Cortez, stop wasting effort and time on the moral high ground, and join the egoists' battle against the baseline! For nobody keeps the high ground without first gaining and maintaining the baseline.

I didn't watch the video, but it's likely that he accepts (like 99.999% of the worlds population) that some form of altruism is what's moral and probably considers pure egoism as immoral to some degree. The majority of people if you even bring it up just laugh at somebody promoting capitalism or egoism in public, and attempt to snidely treat you like a child who doesn't understand simple things like corporations are dangerous entities that must be controlled.

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