Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Some comments in the ongoing debate regarding the candidacy of Elizabeth Warren got me to thinking about our political system and people’s reactions to it. Warren is criticized by the Right for obvious reasons, given her strong stances on managing the economy and controlling the excesses of the Corporate Culture. In a sense she offends their sense of political purity, but then that is but a given because she is a Democrat. We have seen though on the Right that such conservative stalwarts as Richard Lugar have gone down to primary defeat because he failed the Tea Parties test of what a “true” conservative should be. Richard Lugar failed the “purity” test even though his conservative history is impeccable. In my conception political purity conforms to “party line” thinking, punishing those that fail to adhere in all respects to the standards of a given faction’s concept of standards their candidates must adhere to in order to retain enthusiastic support. I use “faction”, rather than “party”, because our two party political system actually represents an amalgam of various factions imperfectly coalescing under the rubric of a “Political Party”.
From a Left, or even Centrist perspective, there has been both amusement and trepidation about how the “Tea Party” faction has exerted control over the Republican Party. Then too, there is the same reaction to the power exerted by Fundamentalist Christians, a group that at some points overlaps with the “Tea Party”. A human trait is to see the foibles of groups we define as “other”, while being oblivious to the idiosyncrasies of the groups we are aligned with. Liberals, Progressives, Radicals and even Leftist Centrists like to believe that they are immune from the turmoil that they see in their Right Wing opposites, yet the “Left” and even the “Center” also routinely define people in terms of litmus tests of political purity. This was highlighted by certain comments on the Warren thread where people who were seemingly in tune with her domestic policy views, disliked her positions on the Middle East and appeared to hold them against her. This has definitely been true with many progressives and/or civil libertarians in viewing this current Administration. My purpose here is not one of castigation for anyone’s perspective; rather I’m interested in exploring the phenomenon of the belief that political figures need to meet all of our expectations in their positions, or be unworthy of our support. My own perspective is that tests of political purity are self defeating because it is impossible for any particular political figure to be in perfect agreement with all that any of us individually believe and politics becomes oppression without the ability to negotiate. The process of real negotiation requires compromise. What follows is why I believe that is true. Before my discussion though, I think a definition of perspectives would be helpful. There are some of us, including myself to a certain degree, who believe that we are living under a corporate oligarchy and as such the common pretense that our national fate is in the hands of the majority’s vote, is but pleasant mythology. I wrote about this in my guest blog Published 1, March 17, 2012: http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/17/a-real-history-of-the-last-sixty-two-years/ .One logical conclusion that can be drawn from believing that democracy is an illusion, is that voting is a wasted effort, since whatever person we choose will either be a corporate stooge, or unelectable. I can respect those who draw that conclusion since the evidence of its truth is quite convincing. My own conclusion is not quite there yet, even though I do believe that we are under the rule of a coalition of the Military Industrial Complex and of the Corporate Elite. The redeeming feature to me is that I don’t believe in the homogeneity of the “ruling classes”. I think that they are made up of various factions and roiled by clashing egos. In my estimation voting for politicians thus has value because the vote affects the competition among our oligarchs. There is a qualitative difference for instance between Buffett/Gates and the Koch Brothers, in the sense that the former believe in more humane social policies and the latter have a draconian social view.
If one believes that Democracy is completely illusory, then why bother voting, since voting is a futile exercise? The logical conclusion of such a belief is to disdain all of American politics and politicians as being tools of the Oligarchy. From that perspective it isn’t a question of particular policy, since almost every player in normative politics is not to be trusted. So the question becomes how do the people change things when the political process is believed to be non-existent? Obviously, if it is ones view that America politics is a total sham, then a massive uprising of the people would be needed to make change. How does that uprising occur? Will its’ nature be peaceful, or violent? While I know there are “militias” out in the hills of places like Idaho, are they capable of banding together to overthrow our current government, I think not. Violent revolutions always seem to breed unforeseen and unpleasant excesses, which make their original aims moot. So the question becomes how do we effect a peaceful revolution? The answer is simple, but the process itself is immensely complex. A peaceful revolution can come about when you are able to convince an overwhelming majority of the people that the current system needs change and that they need to refuse to cooperate with it. Think of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. When the media is in the hands of corporations though, the issue is one of how does the message of change come across to reach the populace? It’s a question I’ve pondered for years.
Back in the 60’s there was the idea of “dropping out” of a corrupt system. Its problem was that it was espoused by many and practiced by few. The truth was that for those “dropping out” the system didn’t miss their participation, nor would it now. A current conservative stratagem is to make voting harder, thereby limiting turnout of voters negative to their cause. We solve nothing by not voting. We could vote, but cast our votes for nascent opposition parties. This is not a bad premise in my estimation, even though in our loaded political system, minority party effectiveness is more limited than under parliamentary government. Let us think though about a minority party legislator’s ability to be effective once elected, since I assume that the process of gaining political power through organizing a minority party opposition would be slow and could be violently opposed. Think of the police reactions to Occupy Wall Street. However, OWS does show that the elite can feel threatened by a mass movement.
When we discuss the election of someone whose political views are outside of what the “mainstream allows”, we need to take into account how much positive influence they can have on the political process, if they are unwilling to compromise their “political purity”. Let us take the real instance of Senator Bernie Sanders, a socialist, as he does his job in the Senate. I believe that Bernie is the most ethical and perceptive Senator we have had in the Senate in a long time. He is also an effective Senator in terms of being able to not only put forth a progressive point of view, but to actually influence Senate activity. In order to be effective in the Senate, Bernie has had to compromise on certain issues and thus would certainly be seen from the orthodox socialist perspective to have sold out. In contrast let us take another man whose career I’ve admired, Dennis Kucinich. Dennis has been an aggressive/effective spokesman on a national level for unpopular, yet valid causes. Within the house though he has not been able to effectuate change simply because Dennis does not do compromise well
In today’s world a political change process is mainly effectuated in four ways:
1. Violent revolution, which is highly problematic at best.
2. Massive non cooperation with the system, ala Gandhi and King, which can be very successful based
upon the right circumstances.
3. Organizing and creating an opposition political movement, a possibly fruitful, yet hard process to carry
out with success..
4. Working within the system, imperfect as it may be, to effect slow change.
All of the above can be work to effect change in a given context, but one factor is a given no matter which method is chosen. To build a mass movement in a diverse population the need to compromise is paramount. This need to compromise is called “coalition building”. The Right has been effective at this for years when you think of the coalition between religious fundamentalists, lukewarm objectivists and outright corporatists. What would Jesus, Ayn Rand and even Adam Smith think of the ways their teachings have been presumably melded? In the past the Left also coalesced around certain issues, bringing together groups that were hardly homogeneous. However, from the 60’s onward building of coalitions on the Left has broken down. “Centrists” and “Liberals” became anathema to “progressives” and “radicals”. After all that he had accomplished Martin Luther King became an “Uncle Tom” in the minds of “Black Power” advocates for his refusal to entertain the concept of violence as a tool.
The Left coalition also began to break down in the 60’s over the issue of Viet Nam. Working class union members generally supported the war that was drafting and killing their children. The leadership of the AFL-CIO, who had striven to disassociate themselves from Marxism during the McCarthy era, had become part of the country’s establishment. As George Meany, the AFL-CIO President, began to play golf with Eisenhower and major industrialists, the Union movement swung away from its Left Wing roots. The fact that the labor movement was overwhelmingly “white working class” in an era where Blacks were demanding equal status also took its toll on the coalition between Big Labor and the Democratic Party. The AFL-CIO and Teamsters supported Richard Nixon in 1968..
The labor movement’s departure from coalition with the Democratic Party was to have devastating consequences for its strength. Their workers, doing well financially aspired to a scaled down version of the American Dream. The threat that competition with Blacks for jobs and with the Left’s critique of muscular foreign policy, helped drive white workers into the Republican Party. The fact that their leadership had become cozy with Management and Republicans led the way. The power of the labor movement waned until today it is a shadow of what it once was. The Left coalition forged under FDR and informed experientially by the “Great Depression”, began to fight amongst themselves. The battles increasingly became issues of “purity of political belief”. When a person’s political value is weighed on only specific issues that are politically “black and white”, coalition becomes almost impossible. Without the ability to coalesce “Movements” face severe limitations in their ability to grow.
I believe that in the desire for reforming our governance to work for the interests of all the people, all viable methods must be used. Of the four methods I list above I believe that only the latter three are really viable. A violent revolution in this country will only hasten the totality of oppression, since violent revolutions never seem to work out the way people have planned and that the people once having risen find themselves ruled harshly by those they so hopefully followed. Refute this premise if you will, but please don’t cite the American Revolution. While it certainly had violence it was a rebellion of colonies against an overseas colonial state. By revolution I mean the rebellion of a people in a certain geographical area against their own government.
Methodologically, none of the three methods can work without bringing together people of differing standards via a coalition that accepts deviation from a “party line”. This seems obvious to me since rarely do those who wish change agree on all issues. Are there “deal breakers” that cannot brook compromise? That depends upon the individual, the perceived threat and the current circumstance. I have my own deal breakers, certainly, but I invoke them in context of my reading of the perceived threat.
What do you the reader think of the argument I’ve made? If you disagree please let me know, since I understand that on any given subject I can be wrong and I am really willing to learn. If you agree with me then what are your “deal breakers”? Perhaps if you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Tony C, for a long time I gave some people a lot of help without asking anything in return, and I did it for a very personal reason. It was something I could do (short of actual murder!) that would make me FEEL BETTER about a situation that I regarded as intolerable. I felt like my contributions of effort and time (I had no money) and simple human belief were keeping me human at a time when I wanted to leave my moral structure behind and strike out as someone with no more conscience to tend to. And it worked.
98% of the people I tried to help did not benefit from my help. Six out of 257 did benefit, and I would say, probably GREATLY benefitted. Very small rate of return. But to me, it was worth everything. It was a way to stay alive and continue to be a non-criminal for more than 10 years.
Was it selfish? No. Was there what the shrinks call “secondary gain”? Hell yes! Would I trade it for anything else now? Who cares, I can’t.
When I think back on it, or really any part of it, I have a tendency to wonder, if I had spent all that energy and time on “myself” would it have been better? It is a fallacious question! I did spend the time and energy on “myself,” on making myself what I am now, for good or ill.
Your two-comment exposition on this has made that clear to me in a very comfortable way, and I thank you for that. Now, when some of my friends ask why I didn’t put all that time and effort into myself, I am going to answer: I DID.
@Bron: Not withstanding inherited wealth but even then some one expended energy to create that wealth.
Notwithstanding? Bullshit, people with inherited wealth do not have to expend any energy to save their life, which disproves your entire premise. They are free riders.
Some one earned the money which allowed the multiplication , some one’s productive effort caused that to happen, it didnt just spontaneously occur.
More bullshit. Quite often, someone oppressed and enslaved others to make the money; look at the royal family of England. Look at the wealth remaining still from the slave owners of the South. Look at the Vatican and the Catholic Church, was that wealth created by honest labor, or brutal oppression?
Look at the Mafia millionaires, drug lords, and the Industrial Military complex in this country; look at the banks foreclosing on homes with fraudulent loan documents.
Your claims are pathetically stupid.
@Bron: tell us again people give to charity out of purely selfless considerations.
I never told you that in the first place, you liar. This is a second problem with you Aynish, you cannot think on a spectrum, everything is either zero percent or 100 percent.
If you bothered to read my post, you would have seen I defined selfishness on a spectrum, and I refuted the idea that how you FEEL about it is immaterial to how selfish it was, what matters is the effect. A donation for any reason has an effect, it has consequences. The consequences it has are not affected by how the donor feels about the donation. That I feel good for having done it does not make the donation SELFISH. What makes an act selfish or charitable is NOT how one feels about it, but whether it has increased fairness, reduced misery, prevented catastrophe, extended life, reduced despair, relieved pain either psychic or physical.
Any prescription to do those things WITHOUT feeling good about it is to demand an inhuman, psychopathic response. It is typical human nature to feel empathy, sympathy, and to feel good for sacrificing to help others. That is not selfishness. Selfishness is doing something that benefits you while doing the opposite: Decreasing fairness, increasing misery, creating catastrophe, endangering life, increasing despair, causing pain either psychic or physical.
Bron,
That you refute the tenets of Objectivism and dare to call yourself and Objectivist because you feel some need for people to not think you’re just another selfish bastard like other Objectivists is your hilariously self-contradictory Libertarian failing.
Wrongly accusing others of totalitarianism because they see through your bullshit is just as funny as your propensity to label anyone who disagrees with laissez-faire capitalism as socialists (a word you’ve demonstrated time and again you have no clue as to what it means) or Communists (which is just plain funny, Sen. McCarthy).
As to Jefferson, you can go cherry pick some quotes if you think it’ll help, but the bottom line is he was the most democratic of the Founders. You, like most of your Libertarian brethren, have also demonstrated time and again that you may like some of the individual quotes of Jefferson but that in context of the totality of his writing, you actually have very little understanding of the ideals for which he stood. That you think “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” are “done by individual humans” apparently without the aid of government in protecting their life and liberty is a reflection of the anarchist bent that underpins Libertarianism and the macho ideal that you and you alone are sufficient power to defend your rights against bad actors. As I’ve said before, good luck with that, Charles Bronson. Jefferson believed in checks on governmental power to protect the rights of individuals, but he also properly understood the necessity of government and the value of the rule of law in a society.
You set up all the straw men you like. Your principles of Objectivism and Libertarianism are built on foundations of sand. That is why you fail to sell them here time and again. There there is no such thing as a humanitarian Objectivist. They are mutually exclusive by the nature of their defining characteristics. Libertarianism is for a selective reading of the Constitution to get what they want – which is in line with the selfishness of Objectivism – but as soon as there is something in there contradictory to their other selfish ideals – like promoting the general welfare – then they go in to any number of gyrations to rationalize why that’s wrong. That Libertarianism tries to sell this load of contradiction is one of the reasons so few people buy it.
Protect society from me and Tony? That’s pretty funny coming from a guy who would do away with one of the functions of government as defined by the Constitution because he feels it doesn’t benefit him directly. If anything, you have that backwards – like you have most things – the Constitution was designed to protect citizens from the kind of economic tyranny, oligarchical and non-egalitarian legal system you clowns would have if left up to your own devices. There is a reason Libertarianism is the perpetual motion machine of political science; it is internally inconsistent and talks out of both sides of its mouth in a way that would even impress the Roman god Janus.
Jefferson did not think democracy a viable government and he even was opposed to the Constitution as it was passed. As Anti-Federalist,Jefferson and Paine were the most libertarian of all the founders. Obviously not anarcho capitalist but surly very limited govenment.
Tony C:
When you give to charity, it is to help other people. I dont know about you but when I give money to CF or MDA, I am thinking about the good my money will do for others and maybe for myself.
You give to causes you believe in, a truly selfless act would be you giving money to the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. Now that would be altruistic. So put your money where your mind isnt and tell us again people give to charity out of purely selfless considerations.
If they are honest they will admit they have a dog in that fight or it makes them feel good.
Tony C:
“On the contrary, reality offers many a free lunch. Sunlight grows food, animals, fishes, the land offers valuable minerals for the taking at essentially zero effort. It is only man that sets a price on things they got for free.”
The context is man and man must expend effort to sustain his life. Not withstanding inherited wealth but even then some one expended energy to create that wealth.
Yes it is called economics, its been around for thousands of years. Men had to figure out some way to put a value on their productive energy.
I must say your response was so cute, did you think that up all by yourself? It sounds like something Paul Krugman or Elizabeth Warren would say.
Some one earned the money which allowed the multiplication , some one’s productive effort caused that to happen, it didnt just spontaneously occur.
It all goes back to a man’s labor. That some men are better at creating and maintaining wealth is a fact of reality.
Gene H:
“There is no such thing as a humanitarian Objectivist. They are contrary and incompatible positions. One value system places prime value on all of humanity and the other value system places prime value on the self.”
So you dont think individual rights are a good thing for humanity? And you dont believe in “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”? All of which I might add are done by individual humans.
So according to your way of thinking, Jefferson got it wrong and should have said the collective should pursue anything that infringes on the rights of the individual as long as society [which is a collection of individuals and has no rights as such] is benefited even if it means individual humans are hurt. It is your only option left open. Freedom is an absolute, you either are or you’re not. The degree doesnt matter.
Tsk, Tsk, you havent learned anything; still the totalitarian dreamer.
The Constitution was written to protect society from people like you and Tony C.
skiprob,
I’m unwilling to accept your manifestly irrational and ill-informed opinions about subjects you’ve demonstrated a through lack of understanding of the basics of yet alone the complex issues they entail?
Imagine that.
You’ve offered nothing but opinion as rebuttal, skippy. Again.
And as to the “system I advocate”, you’ve shown no understanding of what I advocate as evidenced by your constant and tiresome misrepresentation of my positions. So pardon me if I laugh my ass off at the idea you trying to communicate the “system I advocate” when you admit you cannot readily even summarize the system you would advocate in its stead (as evidenced by several of your exchanges with Mike). If you can’t tell us what you want in any cogent manner, you certainly can’t tell us what I want in any cogent manner. Unless you simply want to build straw men to attack. Which is what you do. Ad nauseum. Seriously, a trained monkey could do a better job of making their case than you do, skippy. Mike suggested earlier that you function as a propagandist. I submit that you aren’t persuasive enough to be a propagandist. I think you’re a Norwegian Blue and pinning for the fjords.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npjOSLCR2hE
And much like the Norwegian Blue, your “arguments” to this point are stone dead.
@Bron: Reality doesnt allow for free lunches
On the contrary, reality offers many a free lunch. Sunlight grows food, animals, fishes, the land offers valuable minerals for the taking at essentially zero effort. It is only man that sets a price on things they got for free.
Money is only earned by effort.
No it isn’t. Money can be earned by rent that requires zero effort, money can be earned by simple ownership. Money can be earned by money; I have invested money into a business, done absolutely nothing, and gotten more money out of it. That is not “effort.” Many of the rich, for example, earn truckloads of money without ever lifting a finger. Paris Hilton, for one, the Waltons of Walmart, for another, Mitt Romney for a third. They have so much money they can afford to turn the entire operation over to employees and not expend a single second on it, and still earn millions of dollars. The idea that money is only earned by effort is ludicrous.
Locke says a man has right to his labor because it is his life which produces the fruit of that labor.
Locke is wrong because he uses absolutes. Did you think the man was infallible?
The reason Locke is wrong is because no labor is executed in a vacuum, labor is executed in an environment of laws, courts, justice, police, contracts, national defense and infrastructure that all cost money and are absolutely and inextricably necessary to the labor having any monetary value whatsoever. Thus, although a man is entitled to most of the fruits of his labor, man is also obligated to pay a fair share for the cost of maintenance of the machine that lets him labor in the first place.
If you rent retail space in the mall, they will charge you a fee (and often a percentage of your earnings) for common maintenance. The parking lot, the hallways, the bathrooms, the A/C and security are provided by the mall, and if you want to BE in the mall, you have no choice but to pay.
The country is the same. We provide certain services, if you want to use our real estate as your base of operations for labor, you will pay a fair share of the maintenance. Like the Mall, WE will decide what we will provide, and what we will charge, and you will pay it or you won’t labor here.
@skip: , libertarians must sign an oath that they will not commit force or fraud against another human being or their property.
Who shall punish them if they break that oath? Why would they bother, since there is nothing in it for them? If you hire somebody to do it, what is your self-interested reason in punishing a murderer that did not murder anybody you know? What is your self-interested reason in punishing the killer of a homeless hermit that nobody knew?
A solemn oath is nothing but bullshit to a sociopath, that is why contracts are written, and why laws are written, and why laws are punished by publicly funded sources that CAN be neutral and fair.
When you give to your favorite charity, doesn’t that make you feel good?
This is an example of Aynish bullshit reasoning, that if anything makes you feel remotely good you are acting entirely in your own selfish interest.
The reason it is bullshit is because it ignores definition: Whether I do something that is in the interest of somebody else is to be judged by others, including the beneficiary, and how I feel about it is truly immaterial. If they believe I have helped them, and other citizens would judge that I have helped them, then I have executed a charitable act, period. Not a selfish act.
Me feeling good about doing somebody else a good turn does NOT make the good turn a selfish act in any way, and does not diminish the good turn in any way, because it does not diminish the effect of the good turn in any way. It makes me an emotional being with empathy that enjoys the reflected relief or happiness I have created.
As with all Aynish, Rand has confused you by misdirection into thinking that all acts are selfish, and therefore robbed the word “selfish” of all meaning, which was her intent, to rob the word “selfish” of its sting.
A selfish act is one that benefits only you, and selfishness exists in degrees: The more it benefits you at somebody else’s expense, the more selfish it is, the less it benefits you to somebody else’s gain, the less selfish it is. It is not an all-or-nothing thing, and feeling good about giving money away to a charity, which is sacrificing one’s own selfish enjoyment for somebody else’s benefit, remains about as un-selfish an act as one can make.
Next, you will be telling me that a soldier diving on a grenade to save his friends is acting in his own self-interest, because he feels pride in his successful defense of them at the moment of his death.
This is the problem with the Aynish redefinitions of language, when sacrifice is transformed into self-interest, then the words no longer convey any real meaning whatsoever, and can therefore be used to argue any point whatsoever.
Whether an act is charitable or selfish has nothing to do with how the actor feels about it, it has to do with the effect of the act and who benefits from it.
There is no such thing as a humanitarian Objectivist. They are contrary and incompatible positions. One value system places prime value on all of humanity and the other value system places prime value on the self.
tONY C:
“The difference in me is that in my view not everything has a price, and in your view absolutely everything has a price, you Aynish have no principles that ever put anything above money.”
Everything has a price, everything. Maybe not a monetary price but everything has a price. There are no free lunches.
Reality doesnt allow for free lunches, some one has to pay some where in the chain of events which lead to the free lunch, in either effort or money but then money is only earned by effort [assuming it isnt stolen].
But money isnt the value Objectivists seek. Money isnt the value Objectivists place on anything. Money has no value, nothing has any value unless human beings place the value. Values begin and end with individual human beings. That is what we value, individual human beings. We value there freedom, we value individual rights. Money is a value only in regard to the time we spend of our lives to produce it, now this is very Lockean and Rand expanded on Locke.
Locke says a man has right to his labor because it is his life which produces the fruit of that labor. Whether it be a check at the end of the week or a 500 acre apple orchard. A man uses his life to produce that value. It is what Thomas Jefferson was talking about in the Declaration. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness mean a man has right to his own life, to live it as he sees fit [and that doesnt mean he has a right to impose on others].
I am flattered you think I speak “Aynish”, it has a long history of human liberty, of valuing human beings for no other reason than they are human, because they have the capacity for rational thought. Because we ought to treat people as we would like to be treated.
So thank you for recognizing I value human life and individual rights more than anything else. Guilty as charged.
skip,
“You are unwilling to consider the negative ramifications on society of the various communists enactments, ie. income tax, central bank, public education. You believe somehow, dispite continuous failure that govenment will regulate their own actions as well as the controls over the marketplace.”
You are unwilling to accept that taxation is a fundamental component of any form of government, that central banks are necessary in a modern economy and that public education is not only a valid part of the mission of the U.S. government as defined by the Constitution in promoting the general welfare, but it was considered of paramount importance by the misappropriated Libertarian hero Thomas Jefferson. In short, you argue from ignorance because your definitions and understanding of the fundamentals of American civics and political theory are simply wrong. That’s logical fallacy #1.
“You want to blame coporatism for the failure of govenment when it is the other way around. You fail to udnerstand that in reality, government is a power brokerage cartel.”
Straw man. I blame the corrupting influence of corporate money on government for the majority of the government’s dysfunction. See, Bron has already tried that line of reasoning before and it fails for a very simple reason: by definition, graft is a crime that requires a minimum of two participants acting in collusions – a graftor (corporations) and a graftee (politicians). That’s also arguing from ignorance. That’s logical fallacies #2 and 3.
“You can keep spitting out what you think government is suuposted be that doesn’t make it a reality.
I disgree with you on almost everything. You’re inability to provide the negative ramifications throughout your posts indicate that you are just ignoring them so that you don’t have to logically deal with them.”
I don’t care if you disagree or not. If you think there are negative ramifications to those items you point to? There is a saying in Latin that every attorney knows (or should know). Onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat. You’re the one claiming there are negative ramifications? The burden of proof is on the person who makes the claim, not on the person who denies or challenges the claim. The burden of proof rests on you to prove it, skipster. Often people who argue from ignorance try to shift the burden of proof. So congratulations! You committed a double logical fallacy. At the half, that’s logical fallacies 4 and 5, actual valid arguments by the skip-o-matic, 0.
“Good luck with that strategy.”
Right back at ya.
“You have to evaluate the good and the bad if you are to gain reality.”
Too bad for you, I’m simply better at making realistic evaluations of government and society than you are because of my background. That you disagree is your choice, that you fail to understand the folly of your positions is your failing.
“Just blaming the failures of a central bank on the lack of government oversite, and not consider either how poorly government regulation actually ends up working or how insedious a central bank is, is not going to give you a realistic analysis of it’s true need and usefulness in a modern society.”
Fallacy of simple causation and mischaracterization (6,7). I don’t just blame the problems – and they are operational problems not an inability to perform functions as designed (which would be a failure) – of the central bank solely on lack of regulation and/or oversite. I also blame the dysfunction of the Fed on the private components of the institution. Letting industry have a role in the central bank makes as much sense as putting the fox in charge of the hen house. There is also the generally exacerbating factor of the culture of greed in this country. So your fallacy of simple cause and your mischaracterization compound to make yet another straw man where you have misrepresented my position by over simplification and omission.
So the final score for those playing the home game is Logical Fallacies 8, Skippy the Wonder Libertarian 0.
Better luck next time, Skipster.
Gene, you are unwilling to except that the system you advocate is a dismal failure, that has and is corrupting our world, Public education is a failure. The drop our rate in So. Florida is 33% and the majority of our college students are dropping out. The central banking system is run by a bunch of thieves ifd you don’t realize.There is only about 50 videos on the web that should you waht and how they do it. Read the Confessions of an Economic Hitman and see how great and necessary a central bank is. Since when has central planning and controls ever worked. The redistribution of wealth through political means has given us centuries of oppression and murder by government and it doesn’t matter whose running the govenrment. How many wars and how many people have died fighting for so-called democracy. We have freedom because we kill a bunch of people? How many of our our soldiers have died or maimed in the last 30 years and for what real reasons? Domino theory- a fraud, Weapoms of mass distruction, a fraud. Promoting democracy in Afganistan a fraud. Stopping al Qaeda – a fraud.
At least my system promotes an ethical foundation which is at least a start to changing our world. You think that I’m impressed by the level of violence, crime, ignorance, warfare, poverty, and desease that your so-called humanitary system of fascist governments provides to the world. Open your eyes.
Are you really happy at how the current system is functioning and more importantly, can you honestly tell me that you have a way to fix all the social problems we face using the system you advocate when it is the system that is obvioulsy causing the problems. You would be luckly to have two people follow you on any political project.
The system you advocate is the greatest producer of military weapons the world has every experienced yet we have 17% unemployment rate and even higher in other countries. 40% among blacks in many communities. Hihest incareceration rate inthe world. 25% unemploment for people under 25 years old. More bankrupcies and foreclosures then ever in recorded history, 44 milion on food stamps and public debt so large that it can never be paid off. We have a fiat currency that teh rest of the world no longer want to use that has devaluted by over 98% over it’s history. We are $7.5 trillion in debt in just the last 5.5 years, the same amount that it took our country 220 years to achieve. $16 trillion which is devaluating every day. Just remember that fiat currency eventually reaches it’s intrinsic value. Ask the Germans, ask the Russians and ask the Zembaweians (sp) whats it like to experience, so that you know what coming, hyper inflation like with had in the late 1970s but even worst because it’s comming again and for the same reasons. I don’t want to scare people, but you can not print $7.5 trillion and expect there to be no negative ramifications.
It appears that the system you advocate does the exact opposite of what it’s designed to do and the failure to recognize this is unconscionable. You should at least be lashed 50 times with a cat of nine tails. You’d probably like it though.
You can keep denying and criticizing, denying and criticizing but more and more people no longer believe your opinions. And that’s all they are, your opinions. You and your social compacts are bullshit, if force is necessary for their economic foundation.
Think Gene and Tony, If people are not voluntarily willing to give you money for what you believe is politically necessary, it’s probably not a good idea.
hski….your avatar link is askew…
Skip,
I’d sign that oath without a second’s hesitation, but then that’s how I’ve lived my life. However, life and history has taught us over and again that many do not feel bound by the oaths they made. Your oath in truth is a worthless nostrum designed to let you all feel that there is viability in your ill thought out system.
I would also point out the utter hypocrisy of the Libertarian Free Marketeers: They think the market should determine winners and losers, and yet continue to demand a political system that everybody has had plenty of time to consider, and the vast majority of people have rejected.
Which just goes to show, they are not interested in liberty at all, what they are interested in is not getting punished by society for their oppressive acts; they want to run roughshod over anybody in the name of selfishness, and have the rest of us submit to their brutality in the name of “freedom.”
Tony, libertarians must sign an oath that they will not commit force or fraud against another human being or their property.
Would you sign the oath??? Is this a good rule/law/agreement for people in a society to live by; one that we should enforce?.
You obviously have no idea what a libertarian believes in or what Rand believes. You miss understand her title of her book because you never read it. Before you go trying to think your own thought, you might want to try reading others that have become famous because of the number of books she sold. Only a jackass would criticize a persons book and philopophy that is the best selling American author in U.S. history, without reading her books. You’re friggin brilliant Tony.
People do act in the own self interest and that is not necessaily a bad thing. Matter of fact if you don’t take care of yourself, we must then have a welfare system for those that can’t. 44 million people on foodstamps ring a bell, or make a light go off. This is some of the things she talks about in her book, paraphrasing of course since it’s been many years since I read it.
When you give to your favorite charity, doesn’t that make you feel good? Do I do it for my own self interest, yes. When you understand what I just said Tony, I will post again on one of your poorly thoughout ideas.
“No Mikey, Mikey, Mikely I said nothing of the U.S. and in each subsiquenct post I mentioned other countries. You’re the one that mentioned the U.S. in your question to me. South American is the best place to study the nationalization of companies.”
Skiprob 1st comment on thread 6/2/12 at 1:08 pm.
“Today we [you have to mean the US] have over 115 different taxes, and an almost continual expanding level of the redistribution of that money to the various special interests. It’s not, once again, that any one tax is horrible, it’s that collectedly, many businesses, have had a very difficult time in maintaining their companies,”
Skiprob 2nd comment on thread 6/2/12 at 4:59 pm.
“Governments do not work, or at least no one has yet to invent one that works. Read Harry Brown’s book, Why Government Doesn’t Work. We’ve had 50 years of modern communications and yet, the very same social problems exist today that we had then and the same rhetoric still comes from our politicians lying mouths. The only thing that has changed Mike are the problems are even worse now. If you think things are bad now, they are going to get much worse before they get better. The U.S. economy is crashing as all governments eventual do. It is only a matter of time, because people will always vote for what is in their own best interests, which defeats the very essence of democracy”
Skiprob third comment 6/2/12 at 5:41 pm:
“Each year since the delaration of independence, except for literally a couple of years, the ruling elites have continuously usurped the rights of the Citizens. Surely it was better at any point in histroy, than it is now, but to say that the 1% had plunderd nothing is not quite accurate.”
Skiprob fourth comment 6/2/12 at 5:54 pm:
“Think of it in terms of math. It took 230+/- years to drum up a $7.5 trillion deficit and only 5 years to match it. From 1999 to 2009 gold and silver when up at least 300%. What do you thing it will go up in the next 10 years?”
Skiprob fifth comment 6/3/12 at 9:56 am:
“It just goes to show you that once strong central power is achieved, it almost always get stronger with time and why Jefferson was in favor of maintaining the Federation over the Constitution.He argued against the Federalists on this issue continuously.He obvioulsy did not get his way and why the U.S. has slowed usurped the very property rights that the various inalienable rights, in the Consitution were supposed to protect”.
Skiprob sixth comment 6/3/12 at 10:23 am:
“If you think that government can do this after having viewed the last 50 years of our great experiement, then we will never be on the same page and why party purity cannot be achieved or democracy doesn’t work.”
Skiprob seventh comment 6/3/12 at 10:49 am:
“Let’s see: 535 in Congress, another, 200 +/- central bankers, 1500 member bankers, the Federal Judiciary is probably another 1,200+/-, 500 in the administration and bureacracy and than say 1,000 in the private secter and media. That’s a lot less than 1% and if you think about it, the bankers have the greatest monetary power and control within this group.”
Following those first seven comments 75 of your 95 subsequent comments directly referenced the US as the basis of their arguments. Of those 20 that didn’t 11 were replies to personal attacks or questions. Thus, our of 102 comments you’ve made on this thread 81 out of 91 referenced the US and its economy. My habit, perhaps an obsessive one is to read every comment made on a specific thread I comment on. The fact that 89% of your comments used the US to exemplify your position makes my questioning of your statement regarding nationalization pertinent.
Commonly, country club pontificate’s such as yourself seem successful among their cronies because no one examines their logic. I ca see that being doubly true in your “discussion group”. Unfortunately, you don’t get the same leeway here Skippy. I could go through much of what you have presented here as “fact” and do the same deconstruction.
You’ve finally gave a description of your viewpoint Anarcho-Capitalism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism. The silliness of the Anarcho Capitalist is that it inevitably leads to those that have the most weaponry and
funding taking control, with a repressive society to follow. Those following this model though, usually on a sub-conscious see themselves as part of the power elite to follow. How many AK47’s do you have in your gun-safe Skip? You’ll need them comes the revolution.
@hskiprob: Tony, libertarians have been debating these same issues using the same arguments for decades.
I see, and where has that gotten them? Nowhere.
One half of the libertarian argument resonates strongly with citizens almost everywhere (except for states run by strong religious authority), and that is the civil libertarian side of the equation, the ideas of rights like ours, and personal freedom and choices in life, to the extent that nobody else is intentionally harmed or defrauded.
That part is, to a large extent, built into our own Constitution.
The second half of the Libertarian argument is for small government. That sounds attractive at first, especially fiscally, but eventually loses the vast majority because the implications of small government are, obviously, directly contrary to that qualifier above: The vast majority wants freedom for themselves and others to the extent that nobody else is intentionally harmed or defrauded.
Small government necessarily means very little law enforcement, and that is definitely NOT what the vast majority wants, they want harmful behavior to be against the law, and punished.
That is human nature, and that is why your Libertarian message simply has no traction now and never will, because once people realize what you are saying, that they can be exploited, oppressed, defrauded, and nobody is obligated to help them, they will vote for any amount of profit taxation it takes to prevent that.
This is the human nature you refuse to acknowledge or compute with: People (the vast majority) want an armed and strong government to protect them, they want laws that prevent exploitation and harmful acts and endangerment of customers, employees, investors, suppliers, the public and the environment, and they want all of those things to be somebody’s full time job with the authority to use any force necessary to put an end to those harmful acts.
Libertarians get nowhere because the vast majority wants both laws and law enforcement, and the Libertarian replacement for that is either nothing at all, or the ludicrous suggestion that people should just arm themselves and protect what they have on their own. Of course, the vast majority of people are not trapped in some male high-school student’s delusion of invulnerability and invincibility, and they understand that anything they are responsible for keeping by force can also be taken from them by force and they couldn’t do a damn thing about it, so they reject that solution.
People want freedom, but they want protection even more, even if it limits their freedom, and even if it costs them money. They want a balance between freedom and protection. As long as Libertarians are absolutist, they will never get anywhere, because they will always be out-voted by the vast majority that wants a government to protect them.
Characterize that however you want, as cowardice or ignorance, that is human nature and I do not think it will change.
I do not think you are looking for a constructive argument; I have already provided one. You are using the Aynish definition of “constructive,” which is “Anything that agrees with me, nothing that does not.”
@hskiprob: Under your logic, the current unemployed of the world should not be considered.
You are full of shit.
This is the same stuff we debate at meetings.
What you discuss in your echo chamber of like-minded fools is of no concern to me. You are a self-selected group already committed to the selfish pursuit of wealth, and already committed to ignoring the pain, suffering and injustice you cause to others, on the grounds that somehow that will be “good” for them or “good” for society. You are already committed to the dictatorship of refusing to let society decide for itself what is good for it, and deciding for it that your selfish agenda of rule by force of arms is the only government they will ever be allowed.
Why would I be surprised by anything such a despicable group comes up with?
@skip: Oh, I see, now the revolutionary war was won WITHOUT a government! Man, that Aynish language is awesome, it lets you just make shit up.
I don’t think a littler biker gang is going to take out militia groups especially when you add in the armed citizens of the communities …
You admit my point, with the word littler, that the largest gang wins. Not the law, not rights, just the largest force of arms. In your infantile system people have no rights unless they can personally defend them with arms, not even the right to life, because if a person is murdered and nobody cares enough about them to risk their life trying to bring the killer to justice, the murder goes unpunished. The poor, in particular, with no resources to pay and too much responsibility to labor for their family to warrant risking their lives for a stranger, are simply oppressed and ruled by force.
Thus you misunderstood the point entirely, as the Aynish always do when they start imagining their glorious battles. The point is that to be fair, and provide anything remotely resembling equal protection of rights, requires a society of people with mutual obligations to each other to enforce those rights, regardless of any ability to pay.
Rights are not free, any right you think you have that is not granted TO you by society is not a right at all, it is just your private mental justification for something. A Right is not a gift from God, it is not inherent in your being, it is a license by society to all members of that society, and in return for that license all members have the proportional obligation to defend the rights of others. Thus if somebody tries to violate your right, you have the resources of the entire society on your side, even if you are penniless.
That is the only system that can deliver rights; your system is, as I said, just armed anarchy, a mercenary state of affairs without real laws or rights at all.
Within the libertarian community there are two basic groups, there are the mini-archist which beleive that we need some form of limited government and then there’s the anarcho-capitalists that think government cannot provide the basic functions of law, defence etc. in a sufficient manner.
Interesting enough, many libertarians begin as mini-archists and as they become more knowleagble and after they lose every debate, go on to become anarcho-capitalism.
This is the same stuff we debate at meetings.