[quote]smh23 wrote:
To call anarchism quixotic is criminally unfair to señor Quixote.[/quote]
This is true, but conservatives call libertarians quixotic and then turn around and demand the impossible.
In terms of steely eyed realism, us libertarians actually win.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Here we go again.[/quote]
I wasn’t responding to you, so I’m not sure what this means, but here goes.
False, for a number of reasons (and mistakes). First, the Founders didn’t think the federal government was neither good nor evil. They thought a national government was a good - that’s why they “framed” it, after all. They were not morally ambivalent about the existence of a national government. Read the Federalist Papers, for starters.
Second, the Framers participated in and had opinions on all levels of government. You fixate on the federal government - but my point was not limited to the federal government; it was about the concept of government generally. And they didn’t think state government was neither good nor evil either. Thomas Jefferson, after all, did not invest his time and effort into the public education system in Virginia because he was “meh” about the value of the government’s role in education. To the contrary, he thought it was unquestionably good, which is why his role in it made it on to his tombstone.
The Framers understood government to be a good, and worthy of public respect. It was an exaltation and privilege to serve in government. That doesn’t mean that they thought overreaching or unlimited government to be a good thing, but they weren’t morally ambivalent about government.
Except for Thomas Paine, but he isn’t representative of the Framer’s thought.
Libertarianism is predicated on the notion that there should be no authorative constraint on the bahevior of individuals. Hedonism operates under the same rubric, because people should be allowed to pursue pleasure - however they define it - without anyone getting in their way.
There is little practical difference when it is stripped down to its core - the rise of the welfare state, for example, has marched in near lockstep with the embrace of social libertarianism over time away from traditional virtue. Private decisions become public problems because society is left to pick up the pieces from all these “libertarian” choices.
That’s what I mean by quoting “license is what they mean when they cry liberty”. Libertarians’ “license” is what has delivered us much of the “big government” we all complain of.
Precisely as the Founders warned. As virtue declines, the government grows. Libertarians - the ones who emphasize moral relativism and personal hedonism, primarily, and who regard virtue as stuffy old norms interfering with “freedom” - have yet to learn that, but it was written long ago.
You’re awfully thin-skinned - I was replying to Lifticus and wasn’t considering you or anything you had typed in this thread in my response.
I happen to have supported the Iraq invasion and still do. I think I understand many of the things in play in that time period. I’ve defended the war many times on other threads. Whether or not we mucked up the occupation is a different sub-story.
You’re a victimn of your own vanity - I wasn’t talking about or to you.
There’s no obsession at work - merely an opinion as to the follies of what we call libertarianism, and especially the follies of trying to connect modern libertarianism to the Founders.
[quote]kamui wrote:
I’m not sure that “property” (the way you understand it) predates the advent of governement.
Historically, it seems that property was “your part of the loot” well before it became “the product of your work”.
[/quote]
If we understand the idea of theft why don’t we understand the idea of property?
Without property there can be no theft.
[quote]orion wrote:
In terms of steely eyed realism, us libertarians actually win. [/quote]
In threads like these, the amount of time it takes libertarians to descend into self-parody could be clocked with an egg-timer. Too funny.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
The disease of immoral values cannot be eradicated by government. They are the source of immoral values.
[/quote]
[quote]smh23 wrote:
Nonsense. Murderers and rapists and slavers and conquerors don’t give a damn whether the White House is empty or occupied.[/quote]
People did murder and steal but the consequences were much harsher, too. There was far less of private crime than what government has done with its wars and draconian edicts.
And somehow slavery stopped all around the globe without the white house starting wars there…or did they…?
[quote]
Actually, they do–they’re all hoping like hell that people like you win out in the end.[/quote]
There is no way anyone is going to go to the US and take people’s property by force without a good fight.
THat seems like some prehistoric drama that never really existed to me. How do you know that “man has always been a wolf to man”?
Government has always been a wolf to man, for sure but not man to each other. Civilization would have never gotten off the ground if that were true.
The mere idea of retaliation should be enough prevention for sane individuals. The most dangerous are those who have nothing left to lose - which the US government creates daily.
Hence the reason for this thread.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
In terms of steely eyed realism, us libertarians actually win. [/quote]
In threads like these, the amount of time it takes libertarians to descend into self-parody could be clocked with an egg-timer. Too funny.[/quote]
Vacuous posts like yours need something far more sophisticated than egg timers to measure the amount of pomposity.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Well, it was the federal government that invaded Iraq. No war strategy sessions happened in Montpelier.[/quote]
Lifticus was (as usual) making his attack on government generally, so I was responsing about government generally, not just the federal government. This is what happens when you don’t read what was posted very clearly.
[quote]Not safe to cite Jefferson. He was very much a limited government guy, more than most.
Very frugal with the federal dollar. If he were alive today he’d bitch slap the Elephants and the Donkeys up one end and down the other. He’d most likely identify with those you seek to denigrate incessantly here.[/quote]
Yes, it is. As I said in the line you responded to, I was responding about the government generally, which includes state government, of which Jefferson was of the opinion that its institutions were good. Hence, his support for and fondness for public education.
As in, for the second time, Jefferson was not ambivalent to government, and that was an example. Read better.
That’s because they didn’t believe they were getting proper representation and that power was falsely vested in a monarchy anointed by divine right. They created a republic on the presumption that, in fact, good people would serve in what was presumptively a good institution.
[quote]I see. So in your dimly lit world of understanding libertarianism you think libertarians believe child sacrifice should be legal? Or bank robbery? How about assassinating the city dog catcher?
You must take the time to re-construct your statement to reflect the facts.[/quote]
This is what is called a straw man - no, that isn’t my position, I didn’t say that or represent that it was, so it is a waste of time for you to attack that position.
[quote]Incorrect. The pursuit of pleasure can’t be paved by trampling over the rights, and/or pleasures of others.
In that sense, hedonists and libertarians would be of the same feather.[/quote]
Precisely my point. They want to be able to do whatever they want (I am assuming consent, like a normal person would with common sense) without an authority to constrain them. That ethic is exactly the problem I am referring to, the ethic the Founders warned about eroding civic and private virtue, and the ethic that is contributing to the metastasis of government.
The “rise” of “big government” in the 1930s was a function of the shift from agrarian society to the industrial one and the attempt to address the radical changes that shift visited on the American population. After that, post-war expansion of the welfare state - primarily its explosion in the 1960s and since - had at its core the problem of personal license. The welfare state of the 1930s is a fraction of the modern version. The Great Society was not the New Deal.
The cause? Look around you. The “if it feels good do it” ethic is at the heart. Instead of selflessness and putting their children first, adults decided that they needed to scratch every terrestrial itch they had in the name of “themselves”. Shame disappeared, the institution of marriage was labeled an antiquated restraint on individual impulses; so were other civic instutitions. The exact same impulse occurred in economics: consumption was the new End, above all else.
What happened? Something has to take the place of all the other discredited institutions to pick up the pieces of so many adults “doing stuff that feels good” and the consequences. Government steps in where families and churches and communities used to be to clean up the mess from the party last night.
Government grew because people abandoned virtue and acting responsibility.
[quote]I’ve told you this before and will do so again. You need to get out more. You don’t understand this topic.
There certainly are moral relativists and hedonists in the libertarian camp but you will find them in every camp. Get out more.[/quote]
This continues to be a hilarious theme for you. You don’t know me, where I’m from, where I’ve been, who I’ve met - but you keep insisting on the tired, droning “I’m Push, and I been around the world a time or two, sonny, you need to get out more and learn how stuff works”
I get the act (everyone does) and an act it is. But maybe you shouldn’t keep at it, since you actually don’t know “where I’ve been”?
I’m always happy to do that - you know of anyone who can help out? Because you aren’t.
Well, it’s true - you think in the same terms as a radical left-winger. I didn’t say you wanted the same policy results as a radical left-winger, I said you think like one and act like one. And you do. It’s not even close.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
For you, TB.
http://www.amazon.com/Conscience-Libertarian-Empowering-Citizen-Revolution/dp/0470918187[/quote]
Translation: “I’ve butchered history, law, and logic, so with nothing else left, I am going to use my tired fallback, even though for all I know, TB23 has circled the globe five times over compared to my travels.”
[quote]pushharder wrote:
I need to amend this statement, “I don’t like the libertarian folly that America has no business projecting its power and influence – for good – in the global sphere”
to
“I don’t like the libertarian folly that America has no business projecting its power and influence – for good – in the global sphere when it affects Americans.” [/quote]
It’s the same neo-isolationist trite born from fundamental misunderstandings or outright ignorance of the realities of International Relations. (not that this necessarily applies to you Push)
A solid primer
[quote]Legionary wrote:
It’s the same neo-isolationist trite born from fundamental misunderstandings or outright ignorance of the realities of International Relations. [/quote]
I don’t think you know what isolationism means.
Isolation is when nobody like you.
When you are a bully you are an isolationist.
The USSA is a bully.