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Journal Captain Splendid's Journal: A challenge to libertarians 46

Journal by Captain Splendid
I recently became acquainted with Lynne Cheney's group, Keep America Safe, who, among other things, are specifically targeting any lawyers who are or who have represented any terrorists apprehended in the GWOT.

And it's liberals who supposedly hate the constitution.

Anyway, this really tripped my shit for some reason. In and of itself, it's a meaningless, if hateful gesture, the kind of fringe shit that's existed alongside politics since forever.

But, taken together with the last couple of decades' worth of intelligence-bashing, it's fucking scary and maddening.

I don't really give too much of a shit when it comes to your particular ideology, but this whole "eggheads are evil" and "still waters run deep" bullshit that's going strong is one of the most insidious tricks that's ever been perpetrated on a population.

It elevates and inflates morons, costing time money and lives and makes everything irrelevant. Don't like any facts? Smear 'em with the elitist tag and watch those poor suckers squirm. Don't like a particular candidate? Call him a "wonk" and watch him scramble to suck the nearest convenient talk show host's cock in order to make him more palatable to "the guy on the street".

And it made me realize something. Randians like to go on about how socialists are "looters", people who take and never give or create. This kind of description is almost perfect for your average right-wing nut like Cheney and her supporters. The kind of preening, overfed dumbasses who take more federal money than they contribute, whose instinctive fear of the other is in large part responsible for all that wasted money and lives overseas.

The kind of idiots who happily sold their economic futures for cheaper TVs and cheaper gas. The kind of morons who cost a TV network half a million dollars because of a fucking exposed nipple. hoopleheads willing to give away huge sums of money for shiny hucksters to spend it on hookers, blow and fancy jets.

The kind of zealots who would happily twist the constitution in order to satisfy their theological needs, or in the case above, satisfy god knows what. Misplaced anger? Daddy issues? Either way, it's sick, it's depraved and it's been fucking things up for a good long while.

So here's my challenge to any libertarian: Let's talk about "looters". Let's do the math and see who' really done the damage here. I don't think it will be as clear-cut as you think.
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A challenge to libertarians More

A challenge to libertarians

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  • At last count we've got them flying planes into US government buildings in Texas, attacking the Pentagon with assault weapons, and how many other terrorist attacks go uncounted as such by the right-wing media by other Tea Bagger comrades of al-Qaeda?

    My guess is Lynne (who I voted against on a number of corporate boards that I held direct shares in) is helping provide "defense" money for those terrorists.

  • ...but I might have taken offense. I count myself as a libertarian. Heck, I even count myself as Christian. What in hell makes you think I like Lynn Cheney? Or the Hear-no-evil/see-no-evil head-in-the-sand-because-seeing-is-immoral crowd?

    What scares me about increased government power isn't that it removes from my possessions, but that that power is very unlikely to be (or continue to be) benevolent and live-and-let-live. So I opt to move in the other direction, and let grass-roots benevolence do the good h

    • Here are the three problems I find with libertarian philosophy in general- but I'll start out admitting you only exhibited two of them in the above:

      1. "small government" is usually described as a bunch of things libertarians don't want to finance with their taxes- which is good. The problem is, though, when you dig down into it, they end up objecting to *any* taxes, which is bad. It's pretty hard to claim that you want the government to prevent fraud on one hand, then refuse to pay the salary of the judg

      • Regarding your first point, that's what seeds local governments and tribal arrangements; strength in numbers helps prevent pillaging by the other guy.

        Regarding your second point, imagine what Caligula might have been like with Nukes. Or watch seasons three and four of Babylon 5. (I think it was those two seasons, but I'm not sure.)

        I don't have any reason to disagree with your third point; I haven't read Rand. I'll grant that infrastructure is important; without infrastructure, everyone must be a polymath,

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Perhaps I'm reading CS's comments incorrectly, but I don't think he is. What he's asking is "Why does the average libertarian, at least the high profile ones, spend most of their time attacking "socialism"* and spend very little time, if any, attacking the Right whose views are, if anything, considerably more extreme than those of "liberals" or "the left" who are usually lumped in the "socialism" camp."

        Thank god. I was despairing that all the replies suffered from reading comprehension fail. Cheers f

  • The episode where the geniuses use an obscure part of the city charter to take control and a mob forms near the end.

    Carl: Yeah! Lets make litter out of this literati!
    Lenny: That's too smart! You're one of them! (Hits Carl with beer bottle)

  • I think you've challenged the wrong group. Randians can actually read. I may not think much of their "natural resources and government infrastructure are free and can/should be taken advantage of with no remittance from the person taking advantage of them" philosophy, but the fact is they do think and can read.

    Lynne Chenny's group and other typical right-wing bullshit we've been subjected to as of late, on the other hand, doesn't think and can't read. Even their theology is suspect- you'll hear them clai

  • She is Libertarian?? The Libertarians and the official party are pushing that stuff? Isn't she way more a neocon, whom the Libertarians despise? Those folks are against any outright takings that aren't constitutionally based, whether it is going to some welfare queen in the 'hood', or the wall street welfare queens. How the numbers all add up can't say, but I would imagine it is in the buhzillions on both sides there. And I am pretty sure the big Ls want everyone to have honest fair trials and no just kidna

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_reserve [wikipedia.org]
    Data:
    Year Amount it took to equal $1 in 1913
    1913 1.00
    1920 2.02
    1925 1.77
    1930 1.69
    1935 1.38
    1940 1.41
    1945 $1.82
    1950 2.43
    1955 2.71
    1960 2.99
    1965 3.18
    1970 3.92
    1975 5.43
    1980 8.32
    1985 10.87
    1990 13.20
    1995 15.39
    2000 17.39
    2001 17.89
    2002 18.17
    2003 18.59
    2004 19.08
    2005 19.73
    2006 20.18
    2007 20.94
    2008 21.57
    Source:
    http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001519.html [infoplease.com]
    The real pros leave the property right where it is and demolish the value of the currency in
    • You've been rooked.

      Never have, and you seem to have problems grasping this point. Mind you, unlike most, I've been a lifelong outsider, so my third eye is scrubbed clean.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gmhowell ( 26755 )

        my third eye is scrubbed clean.

        Why don't you pay a little more attention to scrubbing your brown eye? (I got nothing to add, I just couldn't pass up that opportunity. Oh, except to say that I'm surprised at the serial misunderstandings in the replies. I thought the question you asked was pretty obvious. Said that squiggleslash had to go through such a long and tortured path to explain it.)

      • Your third eye has a graspable point?
  • I do not find it meaningless. Like you, I take it as a sign. When someone as smart as a Cheney gives their name to something as bad as this, the hackles go up on the back of my neck. The acorn does not fall far from the oak, I always say.

    But then again, I find subtlety in places others can not.

    And, some would call me (CJP) a libertarian, but I get what you are saying- I see looters, and they are not the SOCIALISTs. I see Luddites, and I see the masses are pretty scary, and I see who really has chang

  • And I agree with you on this issue 126% or so. And I agree with you on many other things you've posted, and on things we disagree on, I still respect you because it's obvious you've thought about what you're saying quite a bit.

    Now that I'm done forum-fellating you, please don't mistake objectivists for libertarians and vice versa. I found Rand's novels mildly entertaining but greatly lacking in characterization. And I find even the name Objectivism insulting for a philosophy that I personally find fairly re

    • Rand

      Yeah, I know. But you've got a lot of newbies running around out there winging it on a Cliffs Notes' worth of that bitch and a steady diet of Glenn Beck who actually need to internalize some of this as well. Anyway, mostly disregard as pejorative bait.

      The simple problem with libertarianism is that it requires exactly the same kind of Utopian technological base that Socialism does for it to work anywhere near like a perfect ideality.

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