Drums, Puppets, & Dissing Libertarians: What We Saw at the Occupy Anniversary Protest in NYC

Anthony Fisher | 9.18.2012 1:59 PM

:15 :15

Drums, Puppets, & Dissing Libertarians: What We Saw at the Occupy Anniversary Protest in NYC

What has the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement accomplished?

On Monday, September 17, 2012 - the one-year anniversary of the original encampment in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park - Occupiers staged a day of civil disobedience and attempted to block access to the New York Stock Exchange. They were met by pre-emptive barricades from the New York Police Department, who wouldn't allow anyone into the immediate vicinity of the exchange without photo ID and proof of employment.

Reason TV's Kennedy was on the scene to ask the demonstrators what they've accomplished so far, whether President Obama supports them, their opinion of libertarians, and much more.

About 3.20 minutes.

Produced by Anthony L. Fisher, with help from Jim Epstein.

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Warty 13 years ago

That was an awfully punchable boy at the end.
1. o3 13 years ago
  
  inartful intellectually inconsistent inarchist!
  1. sloopyinca 13 years ago
    
    They call me Orrin
    My nose smells like Obama
    I suck Team Blue cock
    1. o3 13 years ago
      
      ur meter sucks
      1. Beefkins 13 years ago
        
        It's a haiku, genius.
        
        Vapourwear 13 years ago
        
        I think o3's criticism stands.
        
        dinkster 13 years ago
        
        "metre"
2. SKR 13 years ago
  
  No intellectually inconsistent anarchists in that group. C.c
3. Joe R. 13 years ago
  
  "Me no like laws of economics. Obama change laws!"
4. Anomalous 13 years ago
  
  $130 grand for a Ph.D. and can't find a job? How's that anyone's fault but his?
  1. alphadelt 13 years ago
    
    What kind of idiot would spend $130,000 on a phd?
    
    Makes mine seem like a bargain at $20,000!
    1. dinkster 13 years ago
      
      It's funny, an engineering PhD is... free. Tuition covered, and a 36k/year stipend included. Wonder why.
Paleo-ConAvenger 13 years ago

Occutards

That is all
sarcasmic 13 years ago

"You're just intellectually inconsistent anarchists."

If you feel that the only choices are government control and anarchy, because in absence of rules backed by government violence there are no rules, then I suppose libertarians could be viewed that way.

It's inconsistent to stand on principle and say there are some things that government should do, and some things that it should not do. Because the government is the people. It is us. It is society. The rich are parasites sucking from a finite amount of wealth, getting richer as the rest of us get poorer. Zero sum economics. There is no such thing as wealth creation. Wealth can be taken or accumulated, but not generated.

All or nothing. Anything in between is intellectually inconsistent, and anyone who doesn't want government backed rules is an anarchist.

Yep. Makes total sense.

If you're a fucking idiot!
1. ThatSkepticGuy 13 years ago
  
  ""You're just intellectually inconsistent anarchists.""
  
  Consdering these jackasses are the types of pseudo-anarchist who think "Anarchy" means "Everybody will just do what I want them to, and if they don't, well, that's why we have Mob Rule", someone should have thrown this right back in the stupid motherfucker's face along with a Moe Howard-style eyepoke.
2. MJGreen 13 years ago
  
  As a libertarian, I like to say I'm the intellectually consistent anarchist.
  1. sarcasmic 13 years ago
    
    Since a gang of people with guns who kill anyone who tries to compete with their monopoly on organized violence is inevitable, might as well attempt to constrain it as much as possible.
    1. Brian 13 years ago
      
      That's known as a SWAT team.
    2. Zeb 13 years ago
      
      That's why, while I will sometimes identify as an anarchist, I always grudgingly accept that some sort of government is inevitable. Once you have a gang with enough guns to more or less control things, you magically have government again.
      1. Sam Grove 13 years ago
        
        What if EVERYBODY is armed?
        
        darius404 13 years ago
        
        Alright, Sam. If you guys have 9-mm pistols, and I have machine guns, tanks, and missile launchers, we'll see how well the rest of you do.
      2. Brian 13 years ago
        
        Well, that's debatable, since the government claims to "control things," yet demonstrates over and over again its inability to do so.
        
        But, how do we know it is inevitable? Do we argue from ignorance and assume it must be inevitable until someone proves it isn't?
        
        Let's say a group has enough guns to more or less "control things" (whatever that means), and let's assume the exercise no control at all, other than preventing another group from controlling everything and violating the NAP. What do you have then? A government? Doesn't sound like any government I'm aware of.
o3 13 years ago

what's this got to do w killing the movie trailer dude or romney's new war on the elderly?
sarcasmic 13 years ago

You know, if it wasn't for those fucked up glasses, the annoying voice, the stupid facial expressions, and the one-name name, Kennedy might almost be fuckable.
1. AlmightyJB 13 years ago
  
  I'd hit it if she promised not to talk.
  1. sarcasmic 13 years ago
    
    Like that's a promise she could keep.
    1. AlmightyJB 13 years ago
      
      They never do:)
2. Andrew S. 13 years ago
  
  You go to hell. You go to hell and die. I've had a crush on Kennedy since I was a teenager and she was on MTV. I'm 35 years old now and it's still true.
  
  Plus she gets points for not punching that kid in the face at the end. He deserved it. He had a more punchable face than Wayne Rooney.
  1. AlmightyJB 13 years ago
    
    You're a sick man Andrew, although I guess she's better than Downtown Julie Brown. But not better than Martha Quinn. The 80's, the wasted decade.
    1. SugarFree 13 years ago
      
      Tabitha Soren. Oh, Tabitha...
      1. Joe R. 13 years ago
        
        Yes! Also, I'm the same age as China Kantner, and wanted to hit that in a big (haired) way.
      2. Hneckone 13 years ago
        
        She was so cute when she interviewed Bill Clinton about his sax playing - he mentioned Thelonious Monk as an inspiration and she said something like "oh great, now he's talking about the lonliest monk"
        Does anyone else remember that?
    2. sarcasmic 13 years ago
      
      I was so in lust with Quinn back in the day (I fucking HATE IT when people say "back in the day").
      1. Episiarch 13 years ago
        
        Soren? Quinn? I know you guys are tasteless buffoons, but come on, you can do better than that for 80s chicks.
        
        Scruffy Nerfherder 13 years ago
        
        I miss Zapped
        
        Episiarch 13 years ago
        
        Agreed.
        
        Episiarch 13 years ago
        
        So do I, dude.
        
        sarcasmic 13 years ago
        
        Heather Thomas was a vj?
        
        LTC(ret) John 13 years ago
        
        Hey, watch what you say about Heather Thomas's veejay....what?
        
        John 13 years ago
        
        Heather Thomas was the proper Heather in the Heath Thomas Heather Locklear debate.
        
        Episiarch 13 years ago
        
        Anyone who thinks otherwise is either dazzled by her proximity to Shatner or has to be legally blind.
        
        AlmightyJB 13 years ago
        
        They're both pretty hot.
        
        sarcasmic 13 years ago
        
        Flip a coin.
        
        sarcasmic 13 years ago
        
        Heath Thomas
        
        Don't you mean Heath Ledger? NTTAWWT
    3. Francisco d Anconia 13 years ago
      
      The 80's, the wasted decade.
      
      Thems fightin' wordz. (Fuck the NAP)
      1. AlmightyJB 13 years ago
        
        I was wasted most of the decade.
        
        GILMORE 13 years ago
        
        I like to stop people on the street sometimes with a confused look on my face and ask, "What's the date..?"
        
        After they tell me, I look far more concerned, and go, "No, dammit! WHAT YEAR??!!"
        
        It helps when you stare at things around you like its the first time you've ever seen such a strange and wondrous future society.
  2. Zeb 13 years ago
    
    Meh. I'm about the same age and I never thought Kennedy was anything remarkable. Just seemed annoying and weird looking to me.
    1. AlmightyJB 13 years ago
      
      It was all downhill after "I Dream of Jeannie"
3. Shmurphy 13 years ago
  
  Man, you guys sure don't seem to appreciate the luxury of having a nerdy, milfy, libertarian chick around.
sarcasmic 13 years ago
1. Randian 13 years ago
  
  Wisest thing you ever wrote.
  1. SugarFree 13 years ago
    
    Non-existence is the soul of wit.
    1. GILMORE 13 years ago
      
      I think Sartre said it first
2. o3 13 years ago
  
  now that's intellectually consistent
Tim 13 years ago

Where are the libertarian puppets?
1. Scruffy Nerfherder 13 years ago
  
  Damn straight, I want to see Team America: Monocled Oppressors!
  1. alphadelt 13 years ago
    
    Amazing ^^
Randian 13 years ago

"And now the great seer, soothsayer, sage and former financial adviser to the Greek government, Carnac the Magnificent."

"Three Things that are a Sure Sign of Unemployment"

Drums, Puppets, Dissing Libertarians
Paul. 13 years ago

So another gathering of the pro-government pep rally known as The Occupy Movement is under way. Oh Goody. I haven't watched the video yet but based on the initial frame, looks like they're far more concerned with Romney than they are with the current tyrant.
Tim 13 years ago

Student loans are fast becoming the Medicare of the under 30 crowd.
1. Scruffy Nerfherder 13 years ago
  
  A truly sad statement. I find it absolutely pathetic that they chose student loans as the ground upon which to pitch their tent. What a incredible group of morons.
  1. sarcasmic 13 years ago
    
    Didn't you know that education is a basic right?
    
    There's no good reason why a wealthy nation such as ours should force people to pay for their own education and health care.
    
    If libertarians are against coercion, why do they support forcing people to pay for things that are basic rights?
    
    What kind of fucking monsters are you?!?
    1. John 13 years ago
      
      Education in an completely unmarketable and worthless degree obtained on borrowed money from an extremely high priced university is a fundamental human right right up there with the right not to be subjected to torture. You expect these kids to go to community college? Join the military? Major in some strange field that can actually get you a job? What would mumsie and puppsie say to their friends?
    2. Johnimo 13 years ago
      
      We want to make certain that the college graduates with no hope of finding gainful employment will feel like the victims they truly are. Some of them, the ones who are selfish and greedy, may actually study something of use and get a job and make money -- this cannot be avoided. However, most of them will come wailing and begging for help. Perhaps they can get jobs as summer help in Yellowstone Park.
  2. John 13 years ago
    
    What is going to suck is they are eventually going to get what they want and get to walk away from that debt. And the suckers like me who actually paid their student loans will as usual be told to go fuck themselves and pay for these assholes' stupidity.
    1. The Renegade 13 years ago
      
      As someone currently paying back his student loans, screw these assclowns.
  3. C. S. P. Schofield 13 years ago
    
    What gets me is, when did a university degree become a prerequisite for everything under the sun? If these witless children were protesting against THAT I might sympathize.
    
    Remember the idiot with the PhD. in Puppetry? It never occurred to him to hitch-hike to LA and get a job fetching coffee for Jim Henson Studios. No, he had to get a degree in Puppetry. He's a moron, but the people who SOLD him that degree are scoundrels.
    1. John 13 years ago
      
      ^^THIS^^
    2. sarcasmic 13 years ago
      
      when did a university degree become a prerequisite for everything under the sun?
      
      Was it around the time janitors became sanitation engineers?
    3. GILMORE 13 years ago
      
      It never occurred to him to hitch-hike to LA and get a job fetching coffee for Jim Henson Studios
      
      That would have been awesome if he had.
      
      Because Jim Henson Studios is in NYC.
2. Paleo-ConAvenger 13 years ago
  
  I refuse to take any federal loans or pell grants. But of course in this country, not many think the same way. Whenever an ounce is given, the populace definitely takes.
  1. dinkster 13 years ago
    
    I refuse to take any federal loans or pell grants.
    
    Like that is a reality. The inflationary cycle of subsidy makes it nigh on impossible to refuse the handout.
3. ant1sthenes 13 years ago
  
  This is one case where there is some evidence that Democrats deliberately tried to breed dependency in exchange for votes, possibly to the point of violating the law. I imagine if Mitt Romney ever brought it up, it would just be proof of what a callous asshole he is.
4. Red Rocks Rockin 13 years ago
  
  Student loans are fast becoming the Medicare of the under 30 crowd.
  
  Considering many of them already treat the loans as a form of welfare, you're not far off.
  1. Paleo-ConAvenger 13 years ago
    
    ITZ A BIRTH RIGHTZ
  2. Vapourwear 13 years ago
    
    I know more than one that is "just staying in college forever so I never have to pay it back."
    
    The stupid burns, so often.
GILMORE 13 years ago

I say we round them all up and offer them to Egypt as a compromise

I mean, the Egyptians only want (as usual) to have some outside interlopers to blame for their utter failure as a society... israel has been getting boring lately.... so's give them some Liberal American Infidels who desperately want to *commiserate* with them... and let them be torn to bits by fanatical mobs of zealots.

Oh, and send Noam Chomsky too. Tell them he was the director of that movie.
1. Johnimo 13 years ago
  
  Do we get to watch on TV?
  1. GILMORE 13 years ago
    
    PAY PER VIEW
    1. jacob the barbarian 13 years ago
      
      That would be a spendiferous encounter to see. I would think watching the episode in a coliseum would be the correct venue. I would pay well to see it. very well.
      
      The event could be advertised as "trolls v. tards death match!!" Which celeb do we throw into the mix?
Eduard van Haalen 13 years ago

They have a very clear agenda. They're against Citizens United, the Mario Brothers (or whatever those rich non-Democratic billionaire philanthropists are called), and the guy on the Monopoly box - and in favor of fairness, kindness, furry animals, and love.
1. Eric L 13 years ago
  
  Oh no, I liked furry animals until the weasels ripped my flesh.
SweatingGin 13 years ago

I've been looking all over for an update on the puppeteer guild. Really want to find out what e puppeteer has been up to.
1. John 13 years ago
  
  That guy needs his own reality show.
Lisa 13 years ago

Do we get to look forward to this EVERY year? Is it like 9/11 for hippies?
1. Sam Grove 13 years ago
  
  It's libertarian mirth day.
  1. Johnimo 13 years ago
    
    Let's call it "Dependence Day" and we can have really cheap fireworks displays and wave red flags. Parades can include the wounded from the various occupy run-ins with the cops, and unemployed grads with posters that read: "My Dreams Died for Your Sins" and other truly sad, but funny things that will make us laugh and cry for the wasted youth of what once was a great country.
2. GILMORE 13 years ago
  
  It is important for the youth of this generation to remember the moment at which they seized the national zeitgeist and began a movement of social transformation which fundamentally changed the nature of relations between citizens, government, and corporations.
  
  I'm sorry, I meant "imagine", not "remember".
  
  I think there's also a bit of "if we just keep yelling and banging drums, sooner or later someone might say something that makes sense"
  1. Silver Fox 13 years ago
    
    It'll be like waiting for a troop of monkeys to produce a Shakespearean sonnet on their typewriters.
    
    Don't think we have time for that either.
GILMORE 13 years ago

Is it like 9/11 for hippies?

...the idea of Al Qaeda attacking a Phish concert and producing massive casualties... is actually sorta appealing in a weird way.
1. alphadelt 13 years ago
  
  ^^ THIS
GILMORE 13 years ago

Having finally watched the video.... it surpassed my imagination of how boringly awful it was likely to be.

The most coherent person was the pink-haired queen.... and he was also the only one that seemed to acknowledge that the 'movement' has no direction, no traction, no message, and is - to paraphrase the PhD of Douche = "intellectually incoherent, vapid, feckless, and self-satisfied"

I mean between the girl who thought 'election by consensus...outside the electoral system' made any sense whatsoever... and PhD of Economics-Fail who bemoaned the 'debt system', yet seemed to think 'single-payer education' would somehow be 'cheap!'.... the only thing which disappoints me is their utter lack of awareness of their own profound, blinding ignorance of how the world operates.

Rates of tuition increases are clearly only surpassed by the declining quality or usefulness of whatever 'education' these people received.

The only way in which the word 'revolution' even remotely relates to OWS is the fact that they repeatedly go in circles.
David Emami 13 years ago

What exactly does the NDAA have to do with Wall Street?
dinkster 13 years ago

Here's to hoping there is a video update on what he actually means by "intellectually inconsistent."
Kennon 13 years ago

Thanks for the article. Libertarian supporters are however active in the Occupy Movement in many places.

For info on people using voluntary Libertarian tools on similar and other issues, please see the non-partisan Libertarian International Organization @ http://www.Libertarian-International.org ....
Anomalous 13 years ago

The singing chick in the red dress at the beginning would be hot if she had a brain transplant.
Warren 13 years ago

Seeing Kennedy with that Reason microphone in her hand always makes me want to vote for the incumbents.
ronald_jeremy 13 years ago

That last guy is a total clown. "Intellectually inconsistent"? How so?

He probably cant find a job because he clearly lacks critical thinking skills. Also because he spends his time at ows rallies.

Who pays tuition for a phd? Every phd i know was on fellowship. Did he get his phd in tourism from university of Phoenix? That would explain his debt and inability to make logical statements.
Beetle Bailey 13 years ago

Ok, what did she say at the end? The WHAT is awesome?!

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Drums, Puppets, & Dissing Libertarians: What We Saw at the Occupy Anniversary Protest in NYC

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