WashU protest and James O'Keefe interview

Wash U students celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall by building a gulag on the quad to remeber those who died under socialism. James O'Keefe was there. I interviewed him about citizen journalism.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• James O'Keefe
• journalism

[firstatheist]

I love how O'keefe looks like a Morman missionary.

[travismays]

Some young idealists want to make a positive impact on the world, this asshole likes to distort the truth for a political agenda.

[00maharum00ma]

@Naufragus420

This is a beautiful country.

[Naufragus420]

The reason why neither works is because they don't respect individual rights. This is the same problem with Socialism.

4. Just because your exact fantasy of what you would like to see hasn't been tried yet doesn't mean there isn't plenty of existing evidence showing that it won't work. The perfect government does not exist and you can always find an excuse why it hasn't worked.

[00maharum00ma]

@Naufragus420

1. It's the closest we can get. Life isn't perfect.

2. Oh, that's convenient. So if I name a country with property rights you don't like, it doesn't count.

3. First, socialism is democratic control of the means of production. That could come in any form, not necessarily through the government. Marxism, as I said, isn't a real thing. And Communism is a synonym for Fascism at this point, which isn't socialist.

4. I don't know. I'd like to try.

[Naufragus420]

to use their assets such as their home to get loans and whatnot.

3. Socialism, Marxism, and Communism, while different, share in common the fact that they utilize government force to steal resources and redistribute them. It's a pretty critical flaw.

4. So do you agree that starting a Socialist or Communist society at a developing stage of an economy doesn't work? I would also argue that a rich country converted to socialism will eventually fail.

[Naufragus420]

@00maharum00ma

1. Something is not necessarily voluntary just because the majority votes for it. We have to protect peoples' rights even from a majority who wants to violate their rights.

2. In order for private property rights to function, one needs a judicial system capable of enforcing contracts between individuals and the means by which to enforce said contracts. Hence the part about law and order. Africa lacks the system to protect the rights of property owners and to allow them to

cont

[00maharum00ma]

@Naufragus420

1. You only have to violate their rights if the action is involuntary, which I don't believe in.

2. What about Niger, Ethiopia, Malawi, and Kenya? There's a lot of private ownership of property there, and famines are going on all the time.

3. I haven't defended Communism because I'm not a Communist. I see it as Fascism under a different name

4. I know why Marx said that, it's because he believed in dialectal materialism. He only wrote a stack of books on it.

[Naufragus420]

Have you ever wondered why Karl Marx said that, in order for his ideal society to be achieved (I'm paraphrasing here, bear with me) you would first have to allow capitalism to build up the industrial sector and technology in general? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that not a single society has been been brought out of poverty by the policies you are advocating.

[Naufragus420]

As I have explained before, you cannot consider a good or service to be a right because you have to literally violate someone else's rights in order to obtain them. Also, I came across an interesting fact today: Never in the history of the world has a society which enjoys private property rights and the rule of law experienced a famine. You, meanwhile have still not made any attempt to defend the fact that 100,000,000 people died as a result of Communism.

Continued...