phonon
Posts: 396
Joined: Nov. 2006
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| Quote (dhogaza @ May 02 2007,16:57) | | Quote |
Can you explain how a libertarian is an enemy of civil rights?
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They don't believe that government should be in the business of legislating civil rights.
That was easy. |
and wrong. A libertarian believes that the government's primary responsibility is to protect individual rights, civil and all.
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Wow, and all these exaggerated characterizations of libertarians are amazing.
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Having debated many of them over the years, I don't find the characterizations exaggerated at all. |
Maybe we're getting into a 'true scotsman' situation here, but like I said before, libertarian can have a very broad definition and there are a lot of people who call themselves libertarian but are plainly not. In fact, from what I've heard there has been sort of an influx of people to the Libertarian Party from the Republican Party, so now a lot of their platform is just conservative and not libertarian. At least that's what I've heard. And like I said, a good example is that Bill Maher even calls himself a libertarian and he's just not at all.
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I guess I'm trying to defend libertarians because I respect so many libertarian people and agree with a lot of their positions, especially with respect to war.
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I've never noticed a consistent position among libertarians regarding war. I'll note that defense is one area of government spending and control they believe is warranted. |
Yes, as far as the Libertarian Party is concerned, due to the exodus from the Repubs, their stance on the war is confused. Basically the "real" libertarian position on war is that it should only be defensive and that no country should never be the world's police or go around "liberating" countries through military adventurism.
| Quote | | My major problem with Libertarians is that they tend to be totally inflexible - government is ALWAYS bad, the market is ALWAYS better, regardless of whatever empirical data exists that refutes that belief. |
Yeah, I don't agree with them on that either. I think maybe they are inflexible because they have the team attitude mentioned earlier.
| Quote | | Ayn Rand was a utopian whose right-wing fantasies were as impractical as the utopian notions of the far left. |
You know, I don't know a lot about Rand. I've never read anything by her, seems boring as ####. The more sane people that I've spoken to (that call themselves libertarian) don't really talk about her, so maybe there's the "Ayn Rand Libertarian" and the "Non Rand" type.
| Quote | | A lot of software engineers are libertarian ... too much Robert Heinlein is my guess, an inability to see that entertaining utopian yarns like "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" paint a very unrealistic picture of humankind. |
Hey now! I like Robert Heinlein. I never gave a crap about whatever social statement he was trying to make. His stories were cool.
| Quote | | Interestingly, when outsourcing and H1Bs and the dotbomb combined to make it no longer possible to make $125K/yr as an HTML "programmer", a lot of anti-government libertarian dotcom young 'uns suddenly began screaming for government protectionism to help them maintain something like a reasonable salary ... |
He he, these are just opportunists with selective morals.
| Quote | Regarding comments like "Democrats have never been on the left ..." harumph.
Franklin Roosevelt was moderately socialist. His ag secretary was an avowed socialist. People tend to forget this because they forget (or never learned) that something like 2/3 of the New Deal was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
And to declare that the two parties are nearly identical today. Pfft. I've been involved in forest and desert conservation issues since the 1970s, and there's no comparision between (say) Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush and, in contrast, Bill Clinton or Al Gore. |
I think some brit in some forum somewhere said "America wouldn't know the left if it came around and nicked all its guns." and I read another brit's column titled "There is no American left." Hey, maybe they were full of shiat. I'd say there are individuals who are very left, like say Dennis Kucinich. And the two parties, on the fundamental issues are virtually identical. They have different styles and appeal to different segments of the population, but when it comes down to it, they act in the party interest first, which usually translates into some corporate interest. And keep in mind, I'm talking about the National parties here. Of course, local stuff will be different.
| Quote ("Rev Dr" Lenny Flank @ May 02 2007,18:24) | | Quote (dhogaza @ May 02 2007,16:57) | | Franklin Roosevelt was moderately socialist. |
Well, certainly the rightwing nutters thought so. They always hated him (and still do), even though he saved their asses -- with them kicking and screaming and fighting him all the way. |
Interesting. How exactly did FDR "save their asses?" I'm just curious as to what you're talking about.
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With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another. - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation. - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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