This is another thing that needs a mention. You want to legalize cannabis, fine. It is already happening anyway. But what about coke, opiates, meth, ecstasy, acid and so on? Do you wish to continue the wasteful and destructive “war on drugs” with respect to the “harder stuff”? If so, what exactly have you fixed?
Do you have the plan for addressing the broader plan? Should we continue to prosecute the drug war or just glibertarianistically let people destroy themselves? Because, legalizing cannabis is a start, but it is not enough.
You seem to be ignoring the insurrections and brushfire wars fought throughout the world over the past 75 years- the “Troubles”, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan(both US and Soviet), etc…
In all of these, we had large, well-equipped, well-trained military forces trying to pacify what amounted to armed civilians with small arms. Did Britain succeed? Did the US? Did the Soviets?
Of course, if there was some sort of tyrannical government, it would be idiotic for whatever resistance there was to form up in battalions and brigades and try and fight the US Army in a traditional way using civilian small arms. Of course they’d be crushed.
But as tools for resistance and insurrection, they’re perfectly fine, and still serve that original purpose as a bulwark against tyranny, albeit in a different way than the Founding Fathers originally conceived (which was state/local militias fighting a central standing army).
Agreed. It is a pet peeve of mine. It seems to be a technique to take credit for the Nordic setups results by a totally different political system. Bernie Sanders, I am looking at you.
Because the plutarchs pretty much running the country are no more free-market capitalists than the Soviets were socialists. “Too big to fail” ring any bells?
Democracy has nothing to do with caring about others or anything else save who gets to decide what gets done. Athens was a democracy – if you were male – and I would not have wanted to live there, even as a male.
Members of this board tend to look on libertarians as Republican-lite (at best). If your idea of libertarians is “they’re all Rand-bots,” that would be true. When I finally got around to reading Ayn Rand I found her tedious and disjointed.
But I was libertarian long before I even heard of her, arriving by the route of Thoreau and Goldman, and cooperation does not frighten me, coercion does. You see, that bland phrase, “using the government to ensure…” means sooner or later the guns come out. Back in my activist days I would say, “Both liberals and conservatives dream of the utopia that would come if only their friends would get elected, and grant govermment power accordingly. Libertarians fear the nightmare if their worst enemy got elected and grant government power accordingly.”
Liberals are finding this out with the current administration.
First, your ideas about how liberals think of libertarians are as removed from the real world as the notion that charity works.
But the important point on which you lose touch with reality is the notion that anything would improve if libertarians had their way. Name me one thing that libertarians ever got together to do. They’re happy to stand on the sides and tell others not to do anything, though.
Fortunately, the fact that libertarians can’t form groups is a huge advantage for the rest of us. They remain utterly useless barnacles on society that we can ignore. What are they gonna do about it?
What are the chances that they’d actually use those sorts of weaponry vs. an insurrection? We hardly used tanks in Vietnam or Afghanistan, and tank use in Iraq was much diminished after the initial invasion & fight vs the Iraqi Army. Insurrections are fundamentally infantry battles, and more about winning “hearts and minds” of the populace, not about defeating an identified enemy on the battlefield.
Plus, tanks are terribly vulnerable on their own in urban areas. And I suspect that even a tyrannical US government would be reticent to bomb their own citizens, especially if they were armed and angry.
The OP was so long I had trouble finding the point. I think OP’s definition of “fiscally conservative” is not the same as mine. I tend to think of conservatism as not over-spending, rather than a defense of the free market exactly as is. The ultimate expression of a free market is probably large-scale criminal gangs. And they don’t care about optimal quality of life for anyone but themselves.
** “Anything else and you’re an idiot.”** so- you are saying if we dont agree with your screed, we are all idiots? :dubious::rolleyes:
Look, I support the 2nd, but it was never meant to "protect themselves against a potentially tyrannical government". It was meant primarily as a defense against having to have a large standing army (and that did work for quite a while, until WW2) and *for home defense. *
Now, the reason is mostly for self/home defense.
I agree that making the gun issue a central issue for Democrats is a mistake. But more that half of America is in favor of some sorts of mild gun control. Even most gun owners are Ok with stuff like better identification of gun buyers. Mind you some of the more radical proposals, like the door to door confiscation proposed by a couple candidates- is a huge mistake.
No response? No “fiscal conservatives” ready to explain what the term even means? Given this silence, I think I’ll stick with my present model:
A “fiscal conservative” is anyone who is bitterly angry about paying taxes.
A “libertarian” is a fiscal conservative who likes to smoke dope.
(I realize this definition doesn’t include intellectual hyperlibertarians like Mr. Farnaby, who was never quite sure whether polices should be abolished altogether, or allowed to torture confessions out of suspects.)
Members of this very board have espoused that idea time and again. Oh, wait; this board isn’t liberal is it. And you got me good. I can’t think of a single charity that works.
And you conveniently ignored my quip about how if you want a powerful government, how do you ensure it won’t be used on you some day, even in a democracy.
“The greatest libertarian crusade in history was the effort to abolish chattel slavery, culminating in the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement and the heroic Underground Railroad …”
Wow, that is some weak fucking sauce. Libertarianism has never been fundamentally opposed to slavery: if people want to keep and trade slaves and people are willing to be slaves, they should be free to do that, because, freedom. There is no space to claim the moral high ground or ideological connection here. This is 100% pure ret-conning.
The OP wrote " Private organizations and charities can do a more efficient job of helping people in need anyway than the government can." This is what I was refuting. If you aren’t even going to pretend you’re reading the thread, I won’t pretend to take you seriously.
Besides, nothing can be said about the rest of your post outside the pit.
Not to mention that the abolitionists were probably not all that supportive of free sex and the elimination of things like Blue Laws. Many were preachers.
Your peeve seems to be based on a misconception; the bait-and-switch that happens in US politics:
Basically policies like universal health care are labelled as “socialist”, and then the rhetoric is about how socialism leads to economies like Venezuela or North Korea.
When someone points to examples like the Nordic countries, the retort is that they are not socialist countries.
But do you see the issue here? Sanders’ healthcare proposals are much like those of the nordic countries, and he doesn’t call himself a socialist anyway. So pointing to the many examples of where such healthcare systems have flourished, while being much cheaper than the US model, is absolutely valid and appropriate.
Yes, the first abolitionists were King Charles I of Spain, aka Emperor Charles V,Louis X of France, Pope Gregory XVI , a bunch of Quakers, James Oglethorpe, and the Clapham Sect of the Church of England. Mostly on religious grounds. Calling Charles V a “libertarian” is ludicrous. Mind you, there is such a thing as “Quaker Libertarians”.