I know…but it still seemed a good point to expand on. Sarcasm alone isn’t enough.
In practical terms, implementing libertarian policy would ultimately result in a more powerful global military force. I have not seen any evidence of a plan to roll out their system in a way that would not undermine the basics of libertarian ideology.
The reason that we have such a big military is that our Congresscritters vote for a big military. Almost all of them, in both parties, routinely vote for massively expensive weapon systems, enormous military research budgets, and bases in places where they’ve served no purpose for 70 years. (Okinawa?) It’s not that corporations want to wage war in foreign countries. It’s just that corporations want to sell stuff to the military. They don’t care whether that stuff is used in war or not.
As long as Congress is run by Democrats or Republicans who are okay with gigantic government, we’re going to have an enormous military. If we had a principled libertarian government, we’d have a smaller military.
Minor highjack, but the base in Okinawa is a forward reserve, in case North Korea goes crazy, and is also useful to remind China that we’re serious about being a regional power.
It’s wrong to say the base “serves no purpose.”
Nitpick: Of course DoD suppliers want their ammunition spent; unspent ammo doesn’t need to be replaced until it’s obsolete.
At the height of the Iraq War, U.S. forces were using up 2 billion bullets per year, so much that it needed to buy some from foreign companies. If I understand CBS News correctly, up to $1 Billion worth of cruise missiles were launched against Iraq just during the first 48 hours of 2003 Operation Iraqi “Freedom.”
I repeat, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
By DEFINITION, a neoconservative is an intellectual who WAS a leftist (sometimes even a communist) but became a pro-American, hawkish conservative in response to the excesses of the New Left in the Sixties. The definition has expanded enough to accommodate pretty much all intellectual Jewish hawks, whether they were ever leftists or not.
But if you’re NOT a hawk, and you’re NOT an intellectual, and if you were NEVER a leftist, and if you’re NOT pro-Israel, you cannot possibly be called a neoconservative. Period.
Ron Paul hates Israel and thinks its creation was a mistake. He was never a leftist, he’s not Jewish, he’s not an intellectual and he’s not a hawk. He LOATHES neoconservatives, and vice versa.
You don’t get that, so you don’t get to throw around the term “neoconservative.” It does NOT mean “any conservative I don’t like.”
Paul is much more popular among “paleoconservatives.” I’m pretty sure you don’t know what that means either, so please Google it.
Dick Cheney was a leftist? Who knew?
Dick Cheney was not and is not a neoconservative. He’s a standard Ripon Society, business-wing country, club Republican.
Again, don’t use big words like “neoconservative” if you don’t know what they mean.
In reality, there were almost no neoconservatives in the Bush administration. Almost all of them WERE fervently in favor of the Iraq War, but most of them were cheerleaders for the war from the Weekly Standard. Paul Wolfowitz got more attention than he deserved because he was about the ONLY true neocon who held an important position in the Bush administration.
Why? Because as a candidate, Dubya showed no interest in foreign policy and talked like an isolationist. John McCain was the hawkish candidate, and almost all the neocons supported McCain. Hence, they were almost all shut out of the Bush administration.
Neocons supported the war, but moderate Rockefeller Republicans like Cheney and Colin Powell ran it.
Not that Wikipedia is authoritative, but:
So exactly who or what makes your definition authoritative and put you in position of judging who is entitled to use big words?
I still don’t feel like I understand the term.
But I really like using big words I don’t understand.
From Merriem-Webster
Personally, I think definition 2 is more widely understood and includes such men as W and Cheney.
Someone said that the Libertarian party is becoming a haven for neoconservatives. You said, no, Rand Paul is not a neoconservative, therefore the proposition is false. I said that one counterexample does not serve to disprove a claim about “many” people (although it would serve to disprove a claim about “all” people.)
Your logic is deficient.
NAME me some “neoconservatives” who are prominent in the Libertarian movement and we’ll have something to talk about.
I’m not giving one measly exception to a rule. I’m telling you the rule, and you’re trying to pretend it doesn’t exist.
A neocon, by definition, is either a former leftist or an idealistic, intellectual Jewish hawk who wants to use US military power to impose our values around the globe. Read some back issues of Commenatry or the Weekly Standard if you want to know who the leading neocons are and what they espouse.
Ron Paul sure doesn’t meet any definition of neoconservative. If you can NAME a libertarian who does, I’m all ears.
Brief “Who’s a Neocon” Rundown
Norman Podhoretz - YES
His son John Podhoretz and his wife Midge Decter- YES
Pat Buchanan - HELL NO!
Irving Kristol and his son Bill - YES
Dick Cheney - NAH, HE"S A TYPICAL FORD ADMINISTRATION MODERATE RETREAD
Donald Rumsfeld - DITTO
Charles Krauthammer - YES
Ron Paul - HAVE YOU BEEN PAYING ATTENTION???
Joshua Muravchik- YES
Colin Powell- NOT A BIT
John McCain - NOT BY BIRTH OR IDEOLOGY OR TEMPERAMENT, BUT SHARES MOST OF THE NEOCON FOREIGN POLICY GOALS
Lest anyone think I’ve been too hard on Trinopus, he’s not NEARLY as uninformed as Mick Jagger, who wrote these lyrics:
It starts off stupid and gets worst. First line is, “You call yourself a Christian!” HA! Almost ALL the leading neocons are JEWISH, and fairly secular Jews at that. If you don’t know that, don’t write songs (or web posts) about neoconservatives!
I am not a fan of Ron Paul, but that goes against just about everything I have ever read or heard about or by him or his general fans over the past 40 or so years.
If anything they are constantly bashed by others for how much they “hate” the military.
Yeah, Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell and all those guys are really known for their beliefs in military adventurism.
You just added a new term to the debate, which I never voiced. “Prominent.”
I agreed that the Libertarian Party is a haven for neoconservatives. I never said one word about their prominence.
Please tell me I have equal opportunity to add a single word to any of your posts and then demand that you defend the statement as modified. I could have a lot of fun with that.
Guys- no one cares about your debate about neocons & libertarians.
In other words, you’re wrong but don’t want to admit it, and figure mincing words is more fun than trying to refute me.
There aren’t any neoconservative libertarians, any more than there are any Catholic atheists, obese anorexics, pacifist snipers, or chaste prostitutes. The very terms are contradictions.
Do you or do you not understand that there are multiple factions in both the Republican Party and the conservative movement in general? And do you not understand that many of these factions hate each other?
If I sound like a Ron Paul defender, rest assured I am NOT. As I have stated here on the SDMB many times, there is much to be said for the principles of libertarianism, but real, live, flesh-and-blood libertarians tend to be nut jobs. Ron Paul has been absolutely right about some very important issues… but he’s STILL a nut job, and his followers tend to be far nuttier. Ron Paul hates neoconservatives, not least because they’re overwhelmingly Jewish.
That is a debatable point. Libertarians by definition are almost always staunch capitalists. They pay lip service to small business as opposed to behemoth corporations, but in the end, their policies will end up lending support to the plutocracy. The military is so deeply woven into the general US economy that it cannot be routinely extricated without a lot of pain, I seriously doubt that a “principled libertarian government” would be up to the task, given that everything they spew is so vague and, typically, socially impractical. Cutting the military at this point is an enormously difficult challenge that must be done in measured stages that not even the far left progressives are equipped to handle, as least in the context of the ideologies they espouse. You can blame the entrenched parties for the problem, and it would be a fair enough accusation, but that does not help us in terms of finding workable solutions.
Libertarianism: You’re entitled to all the freedom you can afford to buy on the open market.
IOW, plenty for the likes of the Koch’s, little or none for schlubs like us.