[DerbyX]

Zipperfish wrote:

Lemmy wrote:

What you're not allowing for, Thanos, is the growing numbers of folks that are small government, pro-freedom but who also support social programs. We loathe to call ourselves either libertarians or liberals. It's not Utopia we seek, it's prioritization. We'ere into universal healthcare and public education. But we're still state minimalists. Blanket statements are rarely of value.

I'm in that group! That makes two of us. Now we need a name for our club. Oh--and are we going to let girls join?

Neo-libertine quasi liberal socialists with capitalist tendencies?

NLQLSCers for short?

Oh, and no girls allowed as per our brother club:

[bootlegga]

Zipperfish wrote:

I'm in that group! That makes two of us. Now we need a name for our club. Oh--and are we going to let girls join?

The No Homers club!

[andyt]

Zipperfish wrote:

Lemmy wrote:

What you're not allowing for, Thanos, is the growing numbers of folks that are small government, pro-freedom but who also support social programs. We loathe to call ourselves either libertarians or liberals. It's not Utopia we seek, it's prioritization. We'ere into universal healthcare and public education. But we're still state minimalists. Blanket statements are rarely of value.

I'm in that group! That makes two of us. Now we need a name for our club. Oh--and are we going to let girls join?

Everybody is in that group, except when it's their ox that's being gored. Health care and education account for a pretty big chunk of govt expenditures. Presumably military, roads, police/fire also would be included. I don't know how much savings there would really be. Obviously there's waste like subsidizing the tar sands say, while wanting to tax carbon. Lots of little pork barrels - but the people getting that particular pork are happy, and truth be told most of us probably get a little pork in our lives.

But it's true - the govt take the money and then gives it back - there's got to be a better way, but I haven't heard of one yet.

[BartSimpson]

sandorski wrote:

Governments don't grant Rights, Constitutions and other Documents of principle do.

The US Constitution grants no rights at all. It enumerates rights for the purpose of restricting the government's authority to infringe in those rights.

[Lemmy]

Thanos wrote:

Well, assuming that libertarians possessed of any form of social consciousness even exist, the libertarians of importance at the moment pretty much live up to any negative blanket statement that can be made about them.

And I'm telling you that that's completely untrue. The Randian nutjobs that you're pooling all liberals in with is a mistake on your part. It's the fallacy of composition and I wouldn't expect that from someone as typically open-minded as yourself.

Thanos wrote:

The long held suspicion that libertarians are just crypto-neoConfederates using an absolutist approach to property rights in order to justify white supremacy was more or less confirmed by Rand Paul himself with his demented prattle about the Civil Rights act of 1964. And I doubt, for example, it'd be all that difficult to find a lot of libertarians hiding in the Republican party and Tea Party right now who want the full clean-up costs for the Gulf oil spill socialized while the profit from drilling activity is to be completely privatized. 'All for us, none for them', is about the only consistent feature libertarians ever seem to display when discussing the basic welfare of their fellow citizens.

I agree 100%, as it applies to that MINORITY of libertarians you're describing. But you're falsely concluding that that picture represents the majority of libertarians, which it doesn't. Your generalization is the same as saying "all socialists share the personal morals of Joseph Stalin". It's an untrue blanket statement to lump the lot of us in with the lunatic fringe.

Thanos wrote:

I call it like I see it. Libertarianism is a vicious and anti-human philosophy that only those completely lacking in empathy and basic decency would ever follow.

Then you need to investigate enough to "see" more than you're currently seeing. You're repeating a fallacy of composition and no matter how many times you repeat it it's still incorrect.

[Zipperfish]

I tend to side with Thanos on this, though not as vehemently. Most libertarians I met are strong idealogues, somewhat divorced from reality. It's a jejeune philosophy, in my opinion. In the most basic terms, it doesn't work because it is absolutists in its position that the application of property rights/free enterprise to any problem will solve it.

My favourite question to Libertarians/Objectivists is asking them how they would assign property rights to air.

This guy Rand Paul is no more a libertarian than Mao was. His strong social conservative viewpoints have been actively disavowed by the Libertarian Party in the US.

I gather there is a continuum of beliefs in the Libertarian school of thought, but this economic extremism is common to them all, I think.

[Lemmy]

Zipperfish wrote:

I tend to side with Thanos on this, though not as vehemently. Most libertarians I met are strong idealogues, somewhat divorced from reality. It's a jejeune philosophy, in my opinion. In the most basic terms, it doesn't work because it is absolutists in its position that the application of property rights/free enterprise to any problem will solve it.

That's a pretty 1970s view of liberalism.

Zipperfish wrote:

My favourite question to Libertarians/Objectivists is asking them how they would assign property rights to air.

Don't lump the Objectivists in there too! All we need after a dose of Rand Paul is a dose of Ayn Rand to make us all ill.

Zipperfish wrote:

This guy Rand Paul is no more a libertarian than Mao was. His strong social conservative viewpoints have been actively disavowed by the Libertarian Party in the US.

I gather there is a continuum of beliefs in the Libertarian school of thought, but this economic extremism is common to them all, I think.

I don't think that there needs to be ANY extremism in liberal thought.

[BartSimpson]

Lemmy wrote:

I don't think that there needs to be ANY extremism in liberal thought.

Yet there is.

[Lemmy]

BartSimpson wrote:

Lemmy wrote:

I don't think that there needs to be ANY extremism in liberal thought.

Yet there is.

Just as there is extremism in conservative thought and socialist thought, etc. But really, when you think about it, that's not a failing of any of those philosophies, per se, but of the troglodytes that misinterpret those philosophies. It's not really any different than the idiot Christians that think their philosophy justifies killing abortion doctors or idiot Muslims that think their philosophy justifies flying passenger jets into skyscrapers.

Why should I have to apologize for Rand Paul any more than you should have to apologize for the Westborough Baptists? It's neither of our faults that the lunatic fringers don't understand the philosophies they claim.