Gov. Perry Wants to Eliminate Medicaid and CHIPs (Child Health Program) in Texas

I suppose that it's easier to just lump everybody into vilified groups than to actually debate the merit of their ideas. A libertarian believes that it is immoral for anybody to use force against others when it hasn't been used against them. How is that so disagreeable?

 

yeah, i meant to point out his wrongness on that comment too but with all the other stuff i forgot.

and ill point out again that ron paul and barney frank proposed to cut the pentagons budget by 1 trillion over 10 years - where is the support, especially from all these supposedly anti-war/anti-military democrats?

rand is a little too socially conservative for my tastes, but id still rather have him than 90% of the rest of our elected officials. its possible he is more like his dad than he was letting on and just went a little tea-party on everyone to get elected. we shall see...

 

That's the definition of a Libertarian? Really? How does that distinguish Libertarians from most people on the planet?

Ah, the distinction must be in the definition of force. For instance, is it force when duly elected representatives pass legislation that says you can't hire kids to work in mines and if you do, you will be arrested? The mine owner didn't use physical force against anyone... he's just trying to live his life and yet the mean old state is forcing him to do something against his wishes and besides, the kids are free to not work in the mines. Is that about it? Can force be coercive? Can force be applied psychologically?

Is there an exception to the rule? Is there any instance where force is moral? Consumer rights, civil rights, labor, sexual discrimination, food inspection, sanitation, medical protocols, engineering standards, automobile safety... anything?

Libertarianism seems to me to be a bunch of hooey that's not grounded in the real world but which does allow the proponent to pass judgment on people without having to seriously work on society's problems. It seems to me to lead to a detachment from humanity... a love of a system and an ideal while being apart from their fellow man.

That way be monsters.

 

American libertarianism is fallacious inasmuch as it relies and depends on capitalism. The two are antithetical.

Must...resist...posting....Chomsky...

EDIT: I should be careful that rimmy's post is accurate as it pertains to the american variant of libertarianism. Social libertarianism is a different thing entirely, in my opinion.

 

Amen.

Boom.

 

And where do you think all of this "FEDERAL FUNDING" comes from?

All this bleeding heart liberal nonsense is just a mask for socialism / communism. Why should my hard earned money go to pay for somebody else who probably is illegal, made a stupid decision to have a kid and could not afford it, probably doesn't want to work an extra job to make ends meet., etc. This is where local charities, churches and shelters used to take care of this and over the past several decades the liberals have morphed this into government handouts for votes; i.e. redistrubution of working peoples money.

 

The Chinese

 

Your fantasies about who the poor are, doesn't leave much to really debate.

Most welfare goes to the elderly. Most welfare pays for medical expenses. Those are facts. If you want to hold on to your myths of cadillac welfare moms, and odd the new illegal immigrant twist, you go right ahead.

But there isn't much to discuss about your myth filled fantasy land, when the rest of us are dealing with actual facts.

 

is capitalism inherently bad?

we certainly dont have pure capitalism right now - what we have is crony capitalism (fascism) and a corporate-welfare state, which both major parties engage in (that would include rick perry).

(i love derailing glynch threads! )

 

A very complex question. I think I would answer yes, but there is room for a lot of justifiable debate.

Totally agree. No form of true capitalism exists (which I think is probably a mercy). America was never truly capitalist, but it actively dissociated itself from it after/during the depression.

 

OddsOn, I simply don't understand why you work so hard to make yourself irrelevant to a discussion like this.

"All this bleeding heart liberal nonsense is just a mask for socialism / communism."

Even a lot of conservatives would read that and then look for someone else actually attempting a reasonable discussion. You ain't it, with all due respect.

 

I think you've got it about right. Of course, you're making the assumption that the societal problems you've brought up have to be solved by the use of force. Like I said in another thread, these standards can be followed on a voluntary basis and people would probably adhere to them most of the time. It just provides room for improvement on the system, whereas establishing hard rules to be carried out by force tends to make improving the system much more difficult. I'm supportive of local government and voluntary associations to address the societal issues you mentioned.

 

You must have never heard of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Again, it's always easier to vilify people based on poor assumptions about who they are. Instead of joining the debate, you just blast 'American libertarianism' as being fallacious because, "it relies and depends on capitalism," a point which has nothing to do with our discussion.

 

I have not read him extensively (I prefer Bakunin) but I know that he is a key figure in anarchist political philosophy.

Give me a break. I'm not making assumptions. As rimrocker has succintly stated, the vast majority of so-called libertarians in America have no clue what that word even means and just associate it with the bald-faced lie of "small government republicanism". I doubt they have any familiarity with Rothbard, nevermind Proudhon. Is this an insult to those who have taken the time to study the concepts? Certainly not - it's an indictment of those who prefer to use the term as a weapon for misguided and nonsensical policies without having the slightest interest in understanding the actual tenets. Libertarian philosophy in the US is a bastardized amalgamation of anarchist and capitalist ideals that results in a bizarrely perverse set of ethics that tends towards hateful and antisocial Randian constructs (hello Rothbard). Is this an insult to libertarianism as a whole? No - it's a simple statement that the commonly accepted libertarian ideologies in the USA are fundamentally flawed.

I have debated this many times here, JohnDoe. I note you don't disagree with the point, but rather criticize my timing in making it. I was responding to your claim about force: capitalism provides a massively persuasive force. Capitalism provides for extreme authority (force, as you put it) and accordingly tends to run opposite libertarian ideologies unless severely regulated or just principally limited. Even then I doubt the two can co-exist, personally.

EDIT: Here is a good recent debate I had with jo mama (haha). Starts post 86. If you're interested.

 

So, you want a world in which standards are adhered to most of the time, probably. Sorry, but that world is flawed, not to mention the real actions of real people would never allow it. I'm just amazed at people who think like you do. Consider our Constitution. If it was written based on this type of thinking instead of the grounding in human nature and history the Founders brought, it would look much different... no checks and balances here because people could be expected to probably follow a standard most of the time.

Nonsense. There's a reason we had a Progressive Era in this country. There's a reason some people still know the names of Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair, Frank Norris, Jacob Riis. There were many charitable organizations and there were many local governments and they continually lost effectiveness as society and particularly the economy became more complex.

Here's Riis talking about dangerous houses in NYCity from How the Other half Lives, published in 1890:

You know, I don't think I want to go back to that world. I prefer to breathe clean air and eat inspected foods and live in a house that will not fall down on my children's heads and drive a car that won't explode when it gets tapped in the rear.

The thing is, so do you. What's incredible is that you can't admit to anything good that government has ever done because if you do, that invalidates your whole construct. Republicans and Democrats, Liberals and Conservatives aren't quite as doctrinaire and thus can work in the world on real problems, which gives you the freedom to sit on the sidelines and build your libertarian fantasy land in your mind.

This will probably be the only time I ever quote Ayn Rand, and I'm going to do it twice:

Nothing I've seen has shown Rand to be wrong in this instance. Libertarianism is indeed amoral.

 

Wow! I'm stunned. You found two quotes from Rand that I actually agree with.

 

Yikes. I actually sound like Rand in post 74 per the quote from rimrocker regarding anarcho-capitalists. Now I feel dirty.

Amazing find, Rim; it really drives the point home.

Now if we could just get a libertarian socialist movement going in the USA...

 

At least that would be highly entertaining!

 

A cousin of one of my friends started a "libertarian commune" up by Hempstead. Let me know if you're intested, because I could introduce you.

 

since you brought it up, im reposting something i said in that thread that i think is relevant to your above comment.

and for the record i have no idea who Rothbard or Proudhon are (are they associates of the koch brothers?). and the only time ive ever read ann rand is when people post her quotes up here in clutchfans.