Did a conservatarian steal your lunch money and make out with your girlfriend?
By Thoreau
We’re getting a lot of grief from commenters who want to accuse us of being the sort of libertarians who give unflinching support to any lunatic who promises a small tax cut, even if torture is part of the package deal. And, worst of all, we supposedly want that torture chamber to be paid for with government money, just not money taken from our pockets. We want little old ladies and children working 12 hour factory shifts to be taxed to pay for that torture chamber.
Guys, I don’t know what conservatarians did to you in your past, but clearly it’s affected you. I suggest yoga or tai chi or something. If that doesn’t work, go find a self-described “libertarian” blog where torture and detention without trial is enthusiastically supported, and go vent at them. But this isn’t one of those blogs. So find another place to vent about conservatarians and troll their comments sections. Hell, send me a link if you troll their comments. I might just show up and cheer. (Cuz I do hates me some conservatarians. Oh yes, I do. We libertarians are a factional bunch, and God almighty do I hate people who think that limited government means strict limits on the voltage applied to the inmate’s private parts.)
And I know that you guys are upset with us because we bash your team. Well, you know, maybe that’s because your team’s elected leaders suck ass when it comes to doing the things they were elected for. So deal with it. But don’t think that my disdain for your team’s elected officials means I like the other team’s elected officials. I don’t. I don’t like either of them. Capisce?
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 26, 2007 @ 11:37 am
And then they come here and complain that we dare point this out, because that isn’t helping…Isn’t helping them do what isn’t exactly clear, beyond entrenching their team, but there you go.
Though I’ll take issue, Thoreau – isn’t “none, ever!” a reasonably strict limit?
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 26, 2007 @ 11:39 am
To be fair, this criticism doesn’t fall upon the modern liberal/mainstream moderate-left-wingers/progressives willing to distinguish themselves from the normal run of Team Blue fanboys.
But what are the relative sizes of these groups, after all?
Comment by Thoreau —
October 26, 2007 @ 11:48 am
I think they mean that we aren’t helping their team acquire and retain power.
Guys, a little heads up: Your team already has enough power to kill legislation if it really, really wants to. That’s about as much power as I want ANY team to have. I don’t want your team to get a lock on all 3 branches of government. If you can’t see any reason why that might be a bad idea, then you clearly don’t understand where libertarians are coming from.
Comment by radish —
October 26, 2007 @ 12:04 pm
<whisper>
Psst… Hey you! Hardcore Dem fan… C’mon over here. Let’s talk in the alley…
This “Offerings” place is rigged! Rigged I tell you! You can get a fair hearing and a friendly support network over IOZ’s place. Go over there and tell them that more and better Dems are the solution to all our problems! They’ll treat you with respect.
</whisper>
Comment by CharleyCarp —
October 26, 2007 @ 12:08 pm
I’ll bite.
There’s a certain la loi dans sa majestueuse égalité, interdit à tous, aux riches comme aux pauvres de dormir sous les ponts, de coucher dans la rue et de voler du pain character to the libertarian protests that ‘I criticize both sides.’ We’re in a death struggle with nascent Fascism here, and there are people who want to talk about the morality of levying taxes on cigarettes. Or of providing health care to children of the working near-poor.
I don’t have a grudge with any of the writers of this fine blog, really, but it’s fair to ask the faction what it was doing in 1998, and what is was doing in 2000, as an extraordinary fraud was perpetrated to put an incompetent and dangerous fool in charge of the Executive branch, rather than the best all-around qualified person to run for the office in my lifetime. One of the prongs of the fraud was an appeal to the libertarian sensibility. Libertarians who weren’t fooled can hold their heads high. Those who sold out not only competence and the promise of egilarian liberalism, but also their own values, in favor of a transparent delusion? Well, their whining about the evils of liberalism sounds a little tinny.
Comment by mds —
October 26, 2007 @ 12:22 pm
Guys, I understand “A pox on both their houses” right now. I really do. My skull is perpetually sore these days from all the desk beatings. But again: What’s your alternative? I want an improved Democratic Party because I think that’s a slightly less fanciful goal in the short term than an improved Republican Party. Sure, it’s still probably a pipe dream, not least because political speech is currently measured in dollar units (a viewpoint embraced by some commenters here, and not usually the liberal ones), and I don’t have enough suitcases full of money for guaranteed access to the levers of government. But I don’t know what else to do. Mr. Henley had no answers for me in the previous thread, Professor Thoreau; do you?
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 26, 2007 @ 12:31 pm
*takes a drink*
Actually, that’s the funny thing. Folks like Thoreau and Jim have been opposing this nascent fascism because they don’t like fascism since back before Blues cheerfully gave Bush authorization to attack Iraq (without bothering to declare war).
On the other hand, guys like you demand we support the people who have been and are going to continue to fight hard to add more taxes to cigarettes, create more health care entitlements, raise the minimum wage, etc. etc. etc, all against the wishes of the Reds…and yet somehow keep failing to stop the war, the detentions, or the torture.
Your whining? I think “tinny” works, yeah.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 26, 2007 @ 12:35 pm
I am curious what this was supposed to mean. Even years ago, when I very foolishly supported the war, I didn’t think there was a damn thing that was remotely libertarian about Bush.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 26, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
That’s all I got, myself – or at least, a Team Blue that gets prodded enough into grudgingly carrying out some of the common wishes of folks like you and me (and the majority of this country).
My hostility towards folks like CharleyCarp above is that I see their bristling defensiveness as resistance to that very prodding.
Comment by Mark —
October 26, 2007 @ 12:52 pm
Last I checked, “compassionate conservatism” was pretty much always viewed as code for “I’m not a libertarian.” Hence Lamar Alexander’s famous accusation that the phrase was just “weasel words.” Unfortunately, Gore sounded like even less of a libertarian. The one thing that Bush conned us on was his talk of putting an end to nation-building and a “more humble foreign policy.”
Comment by Thoreau —
October 26, 2007 @ 12:55 pm
Look, I don’t know what we need, but I know that giving a free pass to Team Blue when they go along with torture is NOT the answer.
And I reserve the right to comment on other issues as well. If I wanted to subsume all other concerns to The Struggle Against The Greatest Threat Ever then I could always join with the bedwetters and get the same effect.
Still, you should note that MOSTLY I beat up on Team Blue for not ending torture and stuff like that. So chill with the “Oh, you only care about rich folks” or whatever.
What was I doing in 1998? Voting for Democrats and opposing impeachment until he did a “Look! Over there!” move with bombs.
What was I doing in 2000? I was in a state of flux. First I campaigned for McCain. (I was young.) Then I voted for Harry Browne and campaigned for a GOP Senate candidate with a sane approach to drug policy. (You have to understand, he was running against Diane Feinstein. I mean, does anybody like her?)
What was I doing in 2002? Marching against the war in October, and in spring and November volunteering as a poll worker because 2000 taught me the importance of having well-run elections.
What the hell were you guys doing besides relentlessly cheering for your team?
Comment by Hesiod —
October 26, 2007 @ 1:15 pm
You are not being any harder on the Democrats in Congress than the Democratic rank and file and netroots.
Oh, wait, You don’t distinguish between the vestigial Democrats who nbow run Congress and the rest of the party base and netroots who are fighting like hell to get them to stand up for the rule of law, etc.
Perhaps that is why you are getting attacked?
Because you are using the failings of the Democratic “leadership” in Congress as a means to bash ALL Democrats and advcance your ideological agenda.
How does that make you any better than George Bush or John Beohner?
Comment by Hesiod —
October 26, 2007 @ 1:16 pm
Go check out the myriad of diaries and blg entries blasting Harry reid and Nancy Pelosi over at places like Daily Kos.
That should indicate to you why Democrats on the net are pissed off at your shameless cheap shots at “The Blue Team.”
Comment by Hesiod —
October 26, 2007 @ 1:19 pm
Actually, that’s the funny thing. Folks like Thoreau and Jim have been opposing this nascent fascism because they don’t like fascism since back before Blues cheerfully gave Bush authorization to attack Iraq (without bothering to declare war).
This is why you are never going to expand your ideological base. Because rather than acknowledge that a MAJORITY of Democrats opposed the Iraq war — even before the war began — you continue to make up bullshit like that.
I seem to recall Jim QUOTING ME [among other liberals and Democrats] on his blog arguing tthe reasons why the war was a bad idea.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 26, 2007 @ 1:26 pm
Hesiod, all I know is that whenever I say that the Congressional Dems are useless you guys come after me.
I know you’re anti-war. I know you voted for people who gave anti-war speeches. And I know that the people you voted for have failed, as an institution or coalition or whatever, to actually do anything.
When I observe this, you guys get angry with me. Yet you also criticize them.
Is this one of those “You have to be on the inside to criticize” sort of things?
Comment by Thoreau —
October 26, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
If I learn the secret handshake, can I bash Reid and Pelosi? Or do I have to go through an initiation ritual?
I feel very strongly about criticizing them, so I might be willing to go through the initiation, as long as the tattoos aren’t in places that would show when I’m wearing a t-shirt and shorts.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 26, 2007 @ 1:46 pm
Sure we do, and I’m happy to support those folks trying to kick the Blues into proper action, even if they do want (*gasp*) S-CHIP and whatnot.
However, we see a hell of a lot of Blue fanboys who will bitterly complain when libertarians don’t approve of the very Teams Blue actions they supposedly also oppose. I can’t get behind those folks.
You know what?
It’s 2007. 2007.
If Blue fanboys online are pissed about libertarians being unhappy with Team Blue, particularly about very the same things they supposedly are unhappy with the party about, then there is something deeply fucking wrong with those fanboys.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 26, 2007 @ 1:53 pm
A majority of Blue voters or even Blues doesn’t matter if they tolerate a party leadership that wants something they don’t.
Stop using that tolerance by that majority as a defense.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 26, 2007 @ 2:04 pm
Actually, let’s rewind a bit.
There’s something deeply weird when, with the current state of this country, Blue fans bother to have an emotional reaction to what libertarians think about Team Blue.
Libertarians keep getting lectured about how they have bigger fish to fry if they make a peep of disagreement with Blues. I submit Blues and their fans have a lot bigger fish to fry with their anger than libertarians disagreeing with them.
Comment by Watts —
October 26, 2007 @ 2:55 pm
There’s something deeply weird when, with the current state of this country, Blue fans bother to have an emotional reaction to what libertarians think about Team Blue.
It might be argued, psychologically, that Democrats who want to keep believing in their leaders have a comparable mental block to the libertarians who faithfully subscribe to the “Republicans are for small government and lower taxes and Democrats aren’t because dammit that’s what they’ve told us for thirty years” theory. Nobody wants to believe that “their side” is really bolloxed. And, of course, you get to do constructive criticism of your side, but the other guys saying the same thing are just ignorantly attacking you.
Having said that, though, I don’t see much in the way of the “Team Blue fanboys” that Eric talks about; one of the primary characteristics, both virtue and vice, of the Democratic Party has always been its inability to have a truly unified front on anything. I don’t deny there are “we support the Democrats right or wrong” types out there, I just don’t see much evidence of them being in great numbers or having great influence. The Republican Party has seemed, over the last three decades or so, to trade more on the Cult of Personality than the Democrats and particularly on the One Party Uber Alles mindset.
Comment by Hesiod —
October 26, 2007 @ 3:18 pm
I see eric has reported to distortion and lying rather than addressing my central points.
I have no problem with any of you criticizing the Congressional Democrats who are not willing to follow through on the rule of law or their promises. I’m doing it. The Democratic party base is doing it. The netroots is doing it.
What I have a prhblem with is assholes like Eric pretending that the Congressional Democrats who are doing this ARE the Democratic party.
Yes, we voted them into ofice to do things differently than they are doing. But we can’t chnage them until the next election. And many of us are actually encouraging primarty challenges to some of these folks.
The fact is, the Democrats are rather unsure of themselves at this point and are afraid of losing their majority. So, they are meek.
But, you are starting to see signs of that changing. The Democrats are saying, now, they will refuse to confirm Mukasey to be AG unless he publicly admits that waterborading is torture. You are styaring to see movement against granting telecom immunity in the FISA bill. Not to mention increased civil liberties protections inserted in to the latest version of the FISA bill.
Tnings are moving slowly. And there have been setbacks. But the Democrats in Conbgress are starting to figure it out.
Comment by Hesiod —
October 26, 2007 @ 3:21 pm
Libertarians keep getting lectured about how they have bigger fish to fry if they make a peep of disagreement with Blues. I submit Blues and their fans have a lot bigger fish to fry with their anger than libertarians disagreeing with them.
Why is Ron Paul running as a Republican? That pretty much tells you all you need to know about the libertarian street cred on being anti-partisan.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 26, 2007 @ 3:23 pm
It isn’t about unity, Watts. It’s about the conviction that Blues and their supporters are the good guys who will save the country from the evil half of its population.
Mmm, very possibly (though 99.9% of those guys turned out to be Reds who decided they didn’t need to call themselves “libertarians” anymore after 2001). Thoreau is probably onto something about initiation rites.
Unless that’s raising the minimum wage or killing a permanent ban on federal internet taxes or the sorts of petty things they’ve managed to actually do against Republican resistance.
Comment by dhex —
October 26, 2007 @ 3:24 pm
There’s something deeply weird when, with the current state of this country, Blue fans bother to have an emotional reaction to what libertarians think about Team Blue.
i think the answer is basically jim and thoreau are a little too nice – they’re willing to take shots from people and gently explain their position for the 30th or 40th time while YOU JUST WANT TO KILL BABIES FOR TAX MONEY plays on eternal loop in the background.
alternate explanation: the general “pox on both their houses” meme has been proven true through democratic inaction and it’s really ripping people up, so they find a semi-sympathetic third party to poop on.
2nd alternate explanation: people get tired of the team red v. team blue snowball fight so they want to find a different flavor but still get the vicarious thrill of yelling at strangers.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 26, 2007 @ 3:36 pm
Your idea of what’s central is not my idea, Hesiod.
Then stop having a problem.
Yes.
They.
Are.
The Congressional Blues and the other feckless officials and most importantly, the leadership of the party, run Team Blue. “The base” are the voters. People like you are the fanboys.
Netroots BS aside, people like you do not run Team Blue or determine its direction. The base doesn’t either, though unlike you, ithe party leadership has to pay attention to it. (And then there’s the moderates who turned to Team Blue last election, but we can lump them into the base for this discussion.)
The most you can hope for is that people like you can help encourage the base to actually demand that Team Blue do what you want.
If these things turn out to be real evidence of change, great. Literally, great, as it’s exactly what I want – a majority party that can at least act like a halfway useful opposition party on these critical matters.
However, I’ll hold off celebrating until and unless they hold him to it. Hopefully, you fanboys will take a break from complaining about the big, bad libertarians to help that along.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 26, 2007 @ 3:55 pm
Why is Ron Paul running as a Republican?
Oookay, you realize you don’t get to whine about people ignoring your central points when you throw out non sequitors like this?
The point is that libertarians are a tiny class of cranks on the edge of the political debate in this country. If you guys are heroically fighting the struggle against Red fascism ala CharleyCarp, you have far more important things to worry about than that libertarians don’t love your politicians and don’t buy your defenses of their slack-assed efforts.
As for our “anti-partisan street cred” in your eyes, who gives a fuck? People like you don’t know us, and you never have. You, and people like you, belly up and sneer about how fighting S-CHIP is more important to us than fighting the war and ending detentions and torture. (While, of course, your officials fight a lot harder for S-CHIP than fighting the ear, etc.)
But why is Ron Paul a Red (if you’re not listening to the Team Ted line that he’s Mr. Cindy Sheehan and lover of the ter’rists)? Because he could never be a Blue. Blues hate libertarians and have no place for them, while the Reds found some of them useful up until the war (and the last election).
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 26, 2007 @ 3:56 pm
Sorry, typo: “(While, of course, your officials fight a lot harder for S-CHIP than fighting the war, etc.)”
Comment by Thoreau —
October 26, 2007 @ 4:06 pm
When I say that the Dem leadership sucks, our Team Blue readers have at least two possible ways to respond:
1) “Yep, they do suck! Damn, we need to kick some asses next primary season!”
2) “Oh, they’re just doing this so they can get more power.”
The first one is a perfectly respectable position. Without digressing too much on my personal theory of politics, I would say that the best use of elections is to punish bad leaders. The second one scares the hell out of me because we heard it for so long from another party that claimed they’d be good libertarians once in power. But the second one is what I get more frequently from people here.
As to Ron Paul: Ron Paul is an outlier in his party. I support Ron Paul as a candidate, but my support for him does not in any way extend to the rest of his party.
For the record, I voted Dem last fall because I thought divided government might serve to check the administration. Well, that clearly didn’t happen. I gave them their shot, and now I’m seeing zilch from them. So I’m pissed. If you wanna kick some ass in the primaries, go for it! You have my endorsement for that. But if you want to lecture me on “Look, they need to go along to get more power”, I’m gonna tune you out.
Anyway, what does it take to get the street cred to talk smack about the leaders of your team? Can I go through an initian ritual? As long as there’s no blood involved, and I don’t have to give my social security number to a Nigerian spammer, I might be game for it. I really do want the right to criticize.
Comment by Keifus —
October 26, 2007 @ 4:23 pm
I sometimes find myself defending libertarians: no, really, they’re not all closet authoritarian douchebags or frontier fantasists. Not all of them are born on the proverbial third base. Go read Henley’s blog, I tell them, or IOZ’s. A lot of libertarians do worry most about the overarching power of the state. They’re not just spouters of property protection without taxes; they don’t just shout vaguely about market principles as if they will magically produce any desirable outcome anyone can name.
It stands to reason that there are likewise thinking liberals that refuse to identify with the outright loons that wave that flag. (I wouldn’t look for them on Kos, mind you.) And there may even be thinking conservatives, crazy as it sounds given where that movement has gone. I mean, if you don’t want to get identified with the nutters that adopt your name, you sort of have avoid the same sin vis a vis other names.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 26, 2007 @ 4:28 pm
Keifus-
I know there are thinking liberals, and even thinking conservatives. I don’t extrapolate from certain liberal commenters to liberals in general. I just wish they wouldn’t extrapolate from certain libertarians to me.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 26, 2007 @ 5:07 pm
The day I come across a libertarian “born on the proverbial third base” (or ever heard that particular proverb) hasn’t happened yet.
I’m also perfectly willing to go true-scottsman on you and say that if you’re willing to grant that “libertarian” means anything besides “overly long Blue curse word”, please understand that many pot-smoking, non-homophobic Reds who call themselves libertarians don’t actually qualify as such any more than they qualify as Blues.
Comment by Russell L. Carter —
October 26, 2007 @ 5:42 pm
I attempted to put together an argument that maybe progress was being made on the Dem side, but it all falls apart on account of that big fat elephant Hillary. Best I can tell on the matters of war and civil liberties she’s going to be Bush redux but with integrity and competence. So for the D’s out there, it’s not conservatarian to point this out, since a Max Sawicky type Leftist just did.
And I actually like her! I think she’s done a pretty damn good job of doing what appears to be required of a Democratic Senator, of showing courage and grace in the face of the hordes of shrieking monkeys who throw the clenis in her face, and in general being a sorta anti-Bill in the area of personal integrity.
She’s just not gonna fix this big problem we got, and might just cement it in place.
And can I ask the UO denizens a small favor? The idea that Democrats are “Blue” comes from a really banal quirk of the media coverage of the 2000 selection. D’s are (supposed to be) Left, which if you were historically inclined would be indicated by the color “Red”. Colorado. Comprendes? So it looks kind of like a nothink yahoo “red”state insult to call a D “Blue”. When E.t.5 says “Blue Team” I hear in my mind’s ear C+ Augustus saying in fake Texan: “The Democrat Party”. Tnks. I hold yall in high intellectual regard but this is a tic.
Comment by Keifus —
October 26, 2007 @ 5:55 pm
Thoreau: you’re doing just fine. This damn well isn’t one of those blogs. It’s why I read it.
Hell, I’ve lost whatever it was that I was all het up about.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 26, 2007 @ 6:04 pm
You didn’t actually ask for a favor, but I get what you mean, Russell.
Sorry, though – I personally won’t stop. This conversation has been, er, pointed enough that going into why I don’t like using “Democratic” or “Republican” to describe those parties (and am not big on “liberal” or “conservative” to describe their outlooks) would be gratuitous.
That may be for you, but it’s a lot more fun for me to refer to the GOP as “Reds”, especially directly to Team Red fans.
(As a bonus, I get to say that in “real Texan”!)
Comment by CharleyCarp —
October 26, 2007 @ 6:25 pm
I don’t think I have to listen to lectures about illegal detention or torture from anyone.
In my comment above, I explicitly distinguished between the writers of the blog, which I enjoy and whom I respect, and the general run of libertarians. The question was posed why liberals react so strongly to libertarians. I answered that we perceive them to have enabled the current regime. To get into office. I also said that I think their ‘pox on both your houses’ position fails to reflect the very substantial differences in the risk that each team presents to their position. I didn’t see much substantive response to this.
I find myself arguing with lefter Dems about this quite a bit, but the idea that the 2006 election has made no difference at all is complete and utter nonsense. Sure forward progress in most (all) of the various issues has been slow to non-existent. It’s nonetheless a big damn deal that forward progress in the wrong direction has been halted.
I’m not happy with how little has been accomplished, not by any means. But one has to acknowlegde that the majorities are slim, the Dem caucus is divided on some important issues, and the Reps have stuck together better than political prudence would dictate. (I think they’ll get thrashed for this in 2008 — but so long as they’re willing to take that risk, there’s not really much to be done about it.) It takes more than a single election cycle to get Congress, the Senate especially, aligned for the significant departure from, and cure of, the Bush years we desperately need. Fortunately, the electoral map for 2008 is very favorable for this.
But of course anyone who wants to stalk off in a snit because they’re not getting everything they think ought to be forthcoming is free to do so. Some ostensibly Team Blue folks learned a lesson about that in 2000, but I guess everyone has to learn this sort of thing for themselves.
Comment by Barry —
October 26, 2007 @ 6:41 pm
“Cuz I do hates me some conservatarians. Oh yes, I do. We libertarians are a factional bunch, and God almighty do I hate people who think that limited government means strict limits on the voltage applied to the inmate’s private parts.”
No, those guys mean that libertrianism => no activist judges can intervene to limit the voltage.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 26, 2007 @ 7:02 pm
You may think that, and that may be perfectly true. If so, there seem to be a lot of Blues in office who need that lecture, and they’re a hair more likely to listen to you than any of us.
Hint, hint.
Blue impressions of “the general run of libertarians” and who and what they exactly are – well, they’re generally amusing.
You hinted towards this, yes. Why not share the explanation of exactly how you think libertarians “enabled the current regime”, aside from my guess of “they voted for Browne or abstained instead of voting for Gore in 2000″?
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 26, 2007 @ 7:36 pm
Oops, almost forgot:
The problem is that I decreasingly see any evidence that there is a substantial difference in risk. We see what the Blues are willing to fight for as a party, and it’s not to make a real distinction between themselves and the Reds on these issues.
Then there’s, you know, history. Things like extraordinary rendition predating Bush, or how many Blues voted for the PATRIOT Act, or how much of it was cribbed from things the Clinton administration tried to pull during peacetime. Facts and patterns that suggest that the Blue PR about their institutional love for civil liberties and human rights goes roughly as far as the Reds’ official enthusiasm for small government and the Constitution.
Right now, the Blues trying to actually do something start and stop at Dodd. I hope to hell – sincerely – that you are right and just one more election will produce a Team Blue that works as advertised. The shocking militarism of the leading Blue candidates, particularly Clinton, and the disinterest in stopping the things you and I oppose by the Blues in Congress make me highly dubious, though.
I’ll re-iterate a question, though. Why do Blue fans care so much about a tiny fraction of the American public that they don’t want and want nothing to do with? It still strikes me as odd.
Comment by CharleyCarp —
October 26, 2007 @ 7:37 pm
Sorry to have to make this a drive by — I’m literally driving my car, typing between shifting. I’m bothered by my tone. My only defense, and it’s no defense, is that I didn’t start it.
Also having thought about it a little, I have a point to add. I don’t really care much about the opinions about Dems of libertarians qua libertarians, but the idea that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the parties concerns me quite a bit, having seen it come so destructively from a different place.
On 2000, what I meant was that the libertarian narrative of the motivation of liberals is similar to the conservative narrative. I’ll flesh this out sometime from a stationary place.
Comment by Russell L. Carter —
October 26, 2007 @ 8:54 pm
“I’ll re-iterate a question, though. Why do Blue fans care so much about a tiny fraction of the American public that they don’t want and want nothing to do with? It still strikes me as odd.”
Because of the liberal project, you nitwit (insert one of those smileys here, with meaning). Yall libertarians are at least engaged at the level of ideas, often display an impressive level of intelligence, often are deeply familiar with history, and even if stubborn, often demonstrate an innate tendency to engage your putative oppressors, so that to an optimistic sort the possibility of
indoctrinationpursuasion remains.Ahem.
If you don’t want the attention you shouldn’t go door to door like Henley does with this rag. (’nother smiley here). He could help find this blog more obscurity so that yall can ruminate in peace by having the good graces to be wrong quite a bit more. And that thoreau cat too. Doesn’t he got some pond to sit by? Quietly? Making too much sense on the interwebs is dangerous! It invites attention.
Finally, e.t.5, I fully appreciate the collossal irony of referring to the Republican Party as “Reds”. But has any one of them, ever, mentioned the fact that the slur in the old days ain’t got the same bite in the new days? For chrissakes: redstate.com! !!
So here’s the problem. You then wrote:
“Then there’s, you know, history.”
But you’re not paying attention to history. “Reds” are a bad word. Communists. Nasty progressive types with undeveloped caring sympathies for poor oppressed corporations. Some of us can’t (or won’t) just use a context free lexical transformer to implicitly map “rojo” -> “blanco” -> “azul” in everything we read here. Can’t we be smarter here than all those other dumb people, out there?
Comment by Russell L. Carter —
October 26, 2007 @ 9:09 pm
I suppose it’s not clear enough in what I said so I’ll (sniff) make it explicit. Didn’t Orwell bitch about arbitrary redefinitions for political purposes?
Comment by Wulf —
October 26, 2007 @ 10:57 pm
Is that Latin for “don’t take anything I say seriously”? I’m a little rusty, but I think I got it right.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 27, 2007 @ 12:46 am
CharleyCarp-
I’ll grant you that an argument could be made that Gore would have been better than Bush, and so the “not a dime’s worth of difference” crowd was wrong in 2000. Of course, a counter-argument could be made, and then the whole dead horse could be flogged yet again.
But let’s grant your assumption for the sake of argument. Let’s suppose that Gore was indeed better than Bush in 2000.
The question facing us in 2007 is whether the Congressional Democrats as they are today (not as Gore may or may not have been in 2000) are producing better results than the Congressional Republicans. So far, all I see is a Congressional party that’s bending over backwards to give Bush whatever he wants. So I wonder why on earth I should give this party more power.
Mind you, I’m not saying that I want the other party to get more power either. You could say that those are my choices, and I could reply that the game seems to be rigged so that the same things happen either way. And the evidence in 2007 is on my side.
Comment by Kevin Carson —
October 27, 2007 @ 2:39 am
“We’re in a death struggle with nascent fascism….”
I assume “we” doesn’t include Hillary, who voted to renew Bush’s warrantless wiretap authority. Or Dianne Feinstein, who never met a police state bill she didn’t like. Or Chuck Schumer, he of the 1996 “Counter-Terrorism” legislation (many of the worst parts of USA PATRIOT are stuff that wound up on the cutting room floor in 1996). I think there are about as many Democrats as Republicans voting to enable Bush’s national security state–and some folks like Bob Barr figthing it harder than most Democrats.
Comment by Karen —
October 27, 2007 @ 8:38 am
For what it’s worth, I completely agree with Dr. T on this one. The Dems have been next to worthless on anything that counts this year. I had some respect for Pelosi until she actually allowed the FISA bill to get to the floor. (I mean, wasn’t the Committee on Fisheries available to send that abomination to? So that the bill could end up scheduled for debate on December 24, 2009?)
Seriously, after they caved on the war funding bill in May, they gave up. I can’t see myself voting for any R’s anytime soon, mainly because I live in Texas and Texas R’s gave the world Chimpy. Still, I’d like to see some version of Democrat who doesn’t look at the Nielsens for 24 as some indication of public support for destroying the Bill of Rights. At the moment, however, I have a terrible head cold and bad insomnia, and late at night, I get really scared that the Coward D’s are right; the public really DOES want to know we waterboard guys with beards.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 27, 2007 @ 8:59 am
Kevin-
Let the record show that in 2000 I campaigned for Tom Campbell, a libertarian Republican who didn’t just use “libertarian” to mean “tax cuts, no gun control, and roll back only those regulations that threaten BIG business.” In doing so, I was campaigning against Diane Feinstein.
Comment by CharleyCarp —
October 27, 2007 @ 10:41 am
So far, all I see is a Congressional party that’s bending over backwards to give Bush whatever he wants. So I wonder why on earth I should give this party more power.
This makes sense only if one assumes away the current context — slim majority, no majority on some issues, on the one side; cult of personality on the other side.
Let’s think about a concrete example. As I understand it, habeas restoration is bottled up in HAS because two Dem congressmen — one from Alabama, one from Mississippi — won’t vote for it, and no Republican, from anywhere, will break ranks to replace their votes. These two men are said to be impervious to appeals from interest groups, or from the leadership. Now I would think they might listen to a groundswell from their constituents, but (a) I’m not seeing that in the cards and (b) I’m not sure that would work even if it took place (and it isn’t going to)– some representatives are comfortable taking positions contrary to the majority of their constituents, see Sen Lieberman. Now it’s entirely likely that in the next Congress, a greater majority would make the votes of these men irrelevant: either because there are 2 more Dems on the committee, or because with the Republican Executive out of office, Republicans no longer have the same incentive to hold the line on preventing Executive accountability. Indeed, with HRC in office, they’ll be looking for every avenue of Executive accountability imaginable.
On the Senate side, to a considerable extent, you’re punishing Dems for Lieberman/Nelson. As noted above, it takes two election cycles to get the Senate realigned. I’m not happy with how it’s gone, to be sure, but I understand the logic of playing defense while waiting for the next scoring opportunity (when one has no possibility of scoring now).
The Senate is much more annoying right now, and while it takes 2 election cycles to get a real re-alignment, there are some people with some serious explaining to do. I have no idea why Sen. Mikulski voted for K-L: she’s not a coward, wasn’t buffaloed in 2002, and didn’t need to do it politically. If she traded her vote for deletion of the really bad paragraphs, with knowledge that it would have passed by a close margin with those paragraphs in, I could understand (but not approve).
And yes, I agree that the leadership should’ve bottled this up, and that the electoral price to be paid for failing to consider such things is low enough that allowing it to get through isn’t excusable. My guess is that they’re betting that there won’t be a downside to the vote, come Nov 2008, and so it was worth getting it out of the way: avoid the peacenik label wrt Iran to allow a tougher line on the next Iraq supplemental. (And no, you can’t take the vote on the last Iraq supplemental as necessarily telling you what happens on this one: at the time of the last one, there were whispers of Rep defections to come in the fall. The Reps have decided to go down with the sinking ship on Iraq, though, which wasn’t as clear in the spring as it is now. Of course the leadership should be held accountable it it fails to take advantage of the new landscape).
Comment by Gregg —
October 27, 2007 @ 1:18 pm
what I find troubling about those that call themselves “libertarian”, is it seems that they define themselves by what they are not affiliated to and what they do not support, which often leaves them nowhere in an actionable debate.
It’s a much more courageous postion in today’s political climate to say what you do support – just look at Hillary and Obama’s inability to state a position until after someone else has tested the political waters.
Contrast this to the Green Party’s platform. Whether you like them or not, the GP is not a moving target, you know what there agenda is and get dialogue that resembles policy. At least I have an idea of whether or not to support them.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 27, 2007 @ 8:10 pm
…that you have no idea what they are.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 27, 2007 @ 8:16 pm
I’m sure he would have said something about posting drunk if he’d had an internet at the time.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 27, 2007 @ 8:18 pm
When I’ve actually had to explain to a startled and objecting 30-something Red why I was calling him that, using “red state”, I submit it still has sufficient bite.
Comment by Jean —
October 27, 2007 @ 11:42 pm
You know, when you call people calculated insults, they will get pissy.
`Red’ and `Blue’ are interchangeable terms, specifically used to be interchangeable and non-meaningful. You just called the Democrats Republicans — you just called every member of the Democratic Party a Republican, at the same time you call the Republicans Fascist –, and you wonder why they get annoyed?
Likewise with the `team’ thing. Teams are interchangeable. Here again you just called every member of the Democratic Party Republicans, even while you call Republicans Fascist.
As for the fanboy remark, that’s just purely offensive, and name calling.
I’d flesh this out with comparisons to the other Nazi Party’s rise, and the inability of the German Communist Party to support the SPD, leading directly to the Nazi terror, but eh, absurdity and atrocity.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 28, 2007 @ 2:06 am
Yup.
Don’t like it? Get your party to stop being interchangeable.
Not purely so. There are liberals who post here who support Team Blue to some degree, but who won’t make pathetic excuses for the party. I don’t tag them with the term.
On the other hand, there are people who wrap themselves up in the mantle of Blue and defend the party and go on about how they’re the source of all good and light in America. They don’t actually have any position or power within Team Blue (so they’re not actually the “Blues” themselves), but they care a lot about the party.
Hence, fanboys.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 28, 2007 @ 2:17 am
Yes, that would be absurd of you and an atrocity against sense.
I mean, if you want to pretend that the problem is the failure of a few political cranks to swear devotion to your Team and not the disinterest of your party leadership, feel free. If you want to come up with some little group of scapegoats your compatriots already despise and blame them for your failures…
Whoah, looks like you’ve taken us full circle, Jean.
Comment by Avedon —
October 28, 2007 @ 8:42 am
I just wish we could get the damn conservatives (both Red Team and Blue Team) out of government so we can go back to arguing over whether being subject to liberal government is worse than being oppressed by a state run by corporations.
Comment by Jean —
October 28, 2007 @ 11:05 pm
Eric: what you said had nothing to do with the truth of my response to Thoreau’s question.
The reason Democratic/liberal types get easily pissed off at a number of libertarians is that libertarians engage in rhetoric that implies Democrats/liberals are as bad as Republicans, and that Republicans are Fascist. This leads, through the law of identity, to the conclusion that Democrats are Fascist.
That’s an insult. It may be true, but is still an insult. And when you insult people, they get angry.
That nicely answers T’s question.
As to the attempted smear at the end of your 2nd post:
I’m not a Democrat. (Hell, I’m not even American.)
And the libertarians are not being oppressed any more than anyone else.
Comment by Jean —
October 28, 2007 @ 11:06 pm
Sorry, to expand on my last point. You are doing the `help I’m being oppressed’ thing. It is unbecoming.
Comment by Russell L. Carter —
October 28, 2007 @ 11:41 pm
Well I’ve been off doing real life things much cooler than yall urban types and I see e.t.5b knows and learns nothing. One more hint, if you want to talk history, you need some integrity with your sourcing, starting with now. I am mighty unimpressed with your reflecting your “red”state dalliances onto every other entitity.
I tried, I tried…
Thoreau, I’ve been in AZ for a long time now but while in SV both the SO and I voted for Tom Campbell every time he came up. And in no way did he ever campaign as you state. Or if he did, there were code words involved. I wasn’t very hip back then to the political lingo so maybe you’re right… but I doubt it. I have always been a far left libertarian. No, I can’t stand Feinstein.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 29, 2007 @ 12:08 am
Ahhhh, OK. That does explain the bizarre analogy.
Comment by lunchstealer —
October 29, 2007 @ 12:58 pm
This leads, through the law of identity, to the conclusion that Democrats are Fascist.
The law of identity doesn’t work here. “As bad as” does not mean “exactly alike”. If Ted Kennedy is as heavy as Newt Gingrich, that does not mean that Ted Kennedy is Newt Gingrich. The law of identity doesn’t work in that case. It doesn’t work in the ‘as bad as’ case either. In terms of deaths caused, the Cambodian ‘killing feilds’ were about as bad as the Armenian genocide in Turkey. But that doesn’t mean that the Turkish government were insane antiintellectual communists (or whatever the Khmer Rouge were).
So yeah, Blues aren’t Reds, but right now their leaders are teh suck.
Comment by lunchstealer —
October 29, 2007 @ 1:12 pm
And to Hesiod, if the Democratic base is so anti-war, and so opposed to the collaborationist congressional establishment, how do you explain the fact that Hillary is leading the primary race? She’s one of the primary Democratic hawks (although admittedly no Lieberman). If the Democratic base was so whole-heartedly opposed to the war, shouldn’t they be going for Richardson or Obama or Kusinich or something? Somebody who didn’t vote for the authorization of military force in Iraq?
It seems like the base doesn’t really care about Hillary’s war support. I’d buy the whole “We were screwed by our leaders” routine if the biggest congressional leader in the current primary contenders was tanking in the polls. But she’s running strong. As an anti-war libertarian looking at who to support in the ‘08 presidential race, I’ve got a real sinking feeling that the Democrats are going to run a pro-war candidate. That’s probably the biggest reason that Paul’s getting a lot of support in the GOP primary. People who would otherwise go to Team Blue see that Team Blue is well on its way to electing Bush-in-a-pantsuit. And to continuing the Bush-Clinton-Clinton-Bush-Bush progression.
It’s disheartening.
Comment by Jean —
October 29, 2007 @ 2:59 pm
Actually, if x is as green as y, which is as green as z, then x is as green as z.
You can’t argue with that one.
If Bush is as bad as the Stasi, and Democrats are as bad as Bush, then Democrats are as bad as the Stasi.
I’m not saying they are the same in every aspect, nor am I saying that that is what youse are saying.
Comment by lunchstealer —
October 29, 2007 @ 5:07 pm
Gotcha. I thought you were arguing that if someone’s as bad as someone who are fascists, that that ‘makes them fascists’ rather than ‘makes them as bad as fascists’.