[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Beans,
Liberty is most certainly a political philosophy inasmuch as you (collective you) are trying to get people to vote for other people to get elected an enact an agenda that promotes policies you think are pro-liberty. And since politics matter a great deal to this enterprise - after all, liberty is constrained by and interacts with the public law - libertarians would do well to stop acting like street evangelicals with strapped on sandwich boards and more like people interested in actually winning elections.[/quote]
This will never happen on a large scale, not in America, and certainly not even remotely close to anytime soon.
I’m telling you, Jesus himself could rise tomorrow, prove God with empirical evidence, and declare that “taxation is theft” and the Libertarian party would not win a majority within a decade.
The whole notion of a political party, a platform most certainly, is anti-libertarian in nature. The idea of government is. Whether little l’s or capital L’s are willing to admit it, and you’ve said so as much yourself, they will never be a large scale political force. Their entire ideology (our I suppose) will prevent it, and eat itself alive long before a national debate.
Look at abortion. Listen to pro-abort Libertarians twist, contort and FUBAR logic in all sorts of ways to justify it, but you take a piss on their property, and all hell is about to break loose.
This isn’t to say I have low expectation for libertarian philosophy, in fact the opposite is true. I just see it’s actual potential, it’s power, and that power is in the culture war. It’s there today, it plays into both major parties platforms at times, and it’s ever present. That’s the value in “street preaching”.
You strike me as a seasoned, well read man of at least 40 if not older. (And if younger, lived and read enough to make up for the wisdom of age.) Have you ever tried to reason with an AnCap? (Outside of Nick on here.) Or a true “anti-statist”?
Right. This is what I’ve been trying to say lol.
Compare to the “shall not be infringed” members of the 2nd community. We’re largely done “compromise” and “trade-offs”, because we’ve only had taken from us, nothing, ever in return.
Bullshit man, and you know it.
“Hope and Change”
“Forward”
“Millionaires and Billionaires”
“Level playing field”
“Fair Share”
“You didn’t build that”
All the other populous baloney Liz Warren, Bam and Bernie have come up with…
It is those very abstractions that win the culture war, and the culture war wins elections (well, when the dipshits come out and actually vote which is every national.)
[quote] People are wise - they understand liberty is not always a good thing, and that Liberty as an End is not a philosophy any society has successfully enjoyed. And never will. Ever.
The SLFC crowd is out there, generally for the taking electorally. Ron Paul only hurt the chances of turning that group into a viable coalition.[/quote]
That group hurts its chance at being a coalition.
Everyone is a SLFC until Social Security needs fixing, or gay people can get married.
I’m on a gun board FULL of big and little L libertairians who will shout “free market” and “liberty” and “shall not be infringed” from the roof tops. Straight up Braveheart “they may take my live but not my freedom” everywhere. Gays get married? 600 posts of lamenting and arguing, a lot less liberty to go around. Taxation comes up? More fleece the rich and rely on non-facts and emotion.
Just like “independents” the SLFC seems a lot more like disgruntled partisans who have found shame in their majority identified party.
