Libertarianism: Live Free...OR DIE!!!

Anyone familiar with me knows I have a low opinion of libertarianism. Like its leftwing twin, anarchism, it is a utoppian idea which falls apart quickly. The big difference between the two is that libertarianism wants to get rid of regulation and let the oligarch foxes run the chicken coop.

That said, this shows how the utopian ideal doesn't work.

The best part is that they defunded the police with the obvious consequences.

 

Stop the rise of Oligarchy if you want a truly free society.

 Nothing like George Monbiot to sum up some of the thoughts I have been having. True this video is a bit long, but he makes a lot of good points.

And Cécilia Jourdan on how France has so many more political parties than the one US Party that is in power.

Yes, just one US political party which tries to hide the fact that there is no real difference between the two parties, as the man says.

Please comment if you know, or can provide the exact quote, by the African politician (I think it's Nyerere) who said something alone these lines in response to Western Politicians pushing "democracy" on their one party systems: "Does having having two parties make you twice as democratic as we are? Three, three times as democratic?"

🚨BREAKING: HUGE problem for Dems!

I always thought she sounded stoned, but this is a real scary thought if this is true.

If there ever was a time for people to vote third party, it's now.

Kamala Harris Says She Was a Progressive Prosecutor...

There's a reason why she dropped out in 2020, yet the Democratic party is trying to ram her down our throats without her having to go through the primary process. She doesn't withstand scrutiny, yet she is getting a pass from the media.

Kamala Harris: "She's completely incompetent!"

I thought about posting Tulsi Gabbard ripping Kamala Harris on her record for those people who talk shit about 'Orrible 'Arris being "a real lefty". You can look those up since I disagree with Gabbard's direction these days. And there were questions about whether Tulsi was a lefty back in the day.

But as I like to say, most of "the Democrats are the party of the left" wouldn't spot a lefty if they walked up and smashed them over the head with a "smash the state" sign.

That said, Here is Norman Finkelstein who is a true lefty and the subject of "American Radical: the Trials of Norman Finkelstein"

Kamala Harris is in no way a lefty.

It's too bad the Green Party isn't allowed any publicity because we wouldn't hear nonsense about the Democrats being a "party of the left".

More 'Orrible 'Arris, and she's even more 'Orrible...

The scary thing is that I'm not sure what her position is on cannabis use. That's OK, I don't think she does either. For that matter, I think she's totally out of it.


We won't need ads telling people cannibis use is bad. We will just say--"look at our president..."

It's 'Orrible 'Arris

Every wonder why she is being pushed as the "democratic" nominee despite not having campaigned or won a vote?

Because she's 'Orribe 'Arris. She had such a poor showing in 2020 that she had to drop out early on.

And for those on the right who believe she is somehow a radical leftist.

Give me a break. You wouldn't know a radical leftist if they smacked you over the head with a smash the state sign.

There's no real difference between her and Trump.

Amazon REMOVES Books Critical Of Kamala Harris

No surprise here. Well, other than that her father is a true radical leftist. But Kamala is estranged from him and has been for a while. So much for Rita Panahi who is someone I think wouldn't know a real lefty if they smacked her on the head with a "smash the state" sign.

Don't try and raise our hopes with someone who is in no way progressive, Rita.

Rita should stick to Oz politics since she has no idea about US politics.

But that pretty much goes for most of the Sky News Oz crowd.

Alas, this is a clip of a much longer show, but Caleb Maupin is on a few others as well. Rita needs to swot up (do Aussies understand that term?) on US politics before she says ANYONE in the "Democratic" party is in anyway "lefty".  Start with Real News Network's piece on Undoing the New Deal: the 1944 Coup against Henry Wallace. Bernie Sanders wasn't the first "lefty" to be torpedoed by the duopoly establishment.

Next, Rita, look up "La France Insoumise", they do have translations of the material on the party. You will encounter something closer to the left that wants to nationalise industries and do things that real leftys like.

But steer clear of AI since it is horrible with languages if you need a translator. Mais je me porterais volontiers volontaire pour ce poste.

And while we're at it, this book has been censored by Amazon, which is a LOT OF POSTS relating to how they are something any freedom loving person should despise. Fortunately, you can buy the book at Lulu (https://www.lulu.com/shop/caleb-maupin/kamala-harris-the-future-of-america-an-essay-in-three-parts/paperback/product-zmkjegd.html?q=Caleb+Maupin&page=1&pageSize=4), buying from something other than the monopoly called Amazon is a strike for freedom.

Do your research, Libertarians, Amazon is everything you claim to despise. 

Actually, Lulu is having problems processing the orders for this book. 

Dissent editor Michael Walzer on "the crisis of liberalism"

It's interesting what he is saying.  It's not exactly what my last two posts have been about, but very similar.

Liberalism in Europe, today, is something like “libertarianism”—it is a right-wing ideology. There used to be a left libertarianism, which is probably better called anarchism, and that persists in various sectarian versions, but it isn’t much in the public eye. And then in the United States, liberalism generally means “New Deal liberalism.” It’s our very modest version of social democracy, and it isn’t a very strong doctrine, since many of its practitioners became neoliberals much too easily. So, the -ism is not a strong or coherent doctrine. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t liberals. But liberals are people who are best defined morally or psychologically; they’re what Lauren Bacall, my favorite actress, called “people who don’t have small minds.” A liberal is someone who’s tolerant of ambiguity, who can join arguments that he doesn’t have to win, who can live with people who disagree, who have different religions or different ideologies. That’s a liberal. But those liberal qualities don’t imply any social or economic doctrine. So, there are liberals in the world, and I can recognize them, but liberalism does not describe their actual political commitment. The word is better used to qualify the kinds of commitments that I write about: democracy, socialism, nationalism, et cetera.

He's making a good point since "liberal arts" is a field of study "based on rational thinking, and it includes the areas of humanities, social and physical sciences, and mathematics. A liberal arts education emphasizes the development of critical thinking and analytical skills, the ability to solve complex problems, and an understanding of ethics and morality, as well as a desire to continue to learn." That means the division is between closed mindedness and open mindedness: not whether one is on the left or the right.

The problem with US politics is that it is based upon fallacious thinking. "The Democrats are progressives/socialists/liberals/etcetera" and "The Republican Trump supporters, etc." Is the divide that clear cut? Fox news calls the democratic party "socialist", yet that party has a long track record of destroying the moderate "socialist" policies of the new deal. What Sanders was proposing wasn't too far out from where FDR was going, and what is pretty much expected in the rest of the world as far as social policy goes.

As I said, not exactly what I have been saying in the past few posts, but definitely something I agree with:

Liberal Commitments An interview with Michael Walzer on The Struggle for a Decent Politics. in Dissent Magazine

How a USM professor became an Internet meme

Maybe you've seen this already, but  this is a very interesting quotation and one that should indeed be an internet meme. From the University of Southern Maine Free Press:

Reddit

This photo and quote of philosophy professor Jason Read became widely viewed after it was posted on the news aggregator Reddit, and the blog of "Star Trek" actor Wil Wheaton

Posted on January 22, 2012 in News
By Dylan Martin

Two weeks ago, a familiar face from the University of Southern Maine Philosophy Department became something of an Internet star, appearing on the popular news aggregation site Reddit and the blog of Wil Wheaton, an actor best known for his roles on “The Big Bang Theory” and as Wesley Crusher in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

“The whole thing caught me off guard,” professor Jason Read said. “It’s interesting to see how quickly something can take off.”
What brought Read to Internet fame was a photo of him with a quote in which he challenged the description of poor people as parasites, instead criticizing the economic “one percent,” the target of many in the Occupy Wall Street slogan.

“People who dismiss the unemployed and dependent as ‘parasites’ fail to understand economics and parasitism. A successful parasite is one that is not recognized by its host, one that can make its host work for it without appearing as a burden. Such is the ruling class in a capitalist society.”

Although Read has delivered lectures and written an essay about Occupy Wall Street, the source of this particular quote may come as a surprise: from a Facebook status update.
Read said he posted the status update on Dec. 29 as something he found “mildly amusing” and that he wouldn’t typically use that kind of discourse for his lectures. By Jan. 8, a friend of Read lifted the quote and superimposed it onto a photo of him, posting it to his own profile and the Occupy Maine Facebook page.
The image was soon posted to Reddit on Jan. 9 and received 5,430 “upvotes” by the website’s members. The image’s hosting site, imgur, has since recorded 152,272 views as of Jan. 21.  Shortly after the image’s appearance on Reddit, Wil Wheaton posted it to his blog on Tumblr, leading thousands of people to share it on their own blog. As a result of his newfound popularity on the Web, Read said he has since received multiple friend requests from strangers.
The proper term for this phenomenon is an “Internet meme,” a term used to describe a concept that sweeps through the World Wide Web with popularity and swiftness. Popular examples of Internet memes include singer Rebecca Black’s music video for “Friday” and the dramatic chipmunk video, which originated from a Japanese game show.
Hundreds of impassioned Reddit users have since left comments on the image’s submission page. And while some members cheered the sentiment, others debated the issues of economic inequality and the exact nature of a “successful parasite.”
“Mr. Read clearly needs a few lessons in biology,” said one member. “For a parasite (or any other organism for that matter) to be deemed successful, it simply has to do only one thing: survive.”
To clarify, Read said the main point of his statement was that “if people are concerned about those making money without work, then they should look at the top 1 percent.”
On the USM Philosophy Department’s Facebook page, one person was inspired by Read’s words and made a plea to the professor:
“Please come to Ireland, sweet Jebus, we need you, Jason.”

I would also add George Monbiot's post Libertarians are the True Social Parasites, October 23, 2007:

Wherever modern humans, living outside the narrow social mores of the clan, are allowed to pursue their genetic interests without constraint, they will hurt other people. They will grab other people’s resources, they will dump their waste in other people’s habitats, they will cheat, lie, steal and kill. And if they have power and weapons, no one will be able to stop them except those with more power and better weapons. Our genetic inheritance makes us smart enough to see that when the old society breaks down, we should appease those who are more powerful than ourselves, and exploit those who are less powerful. The survival strategies which once ensured cooperation among equals now ensure subservience to those who have broken the social contract.

The democratic challenge, which becomes ever more complex as the scale of human interactions increases, is to mimic the governance system of the small hominid troop. We need a state that rewards us for cooperating and punishes us for cheating and stealing. At the same time we must ensure that the state is also treated like a member of the hominid clan and punished when it acts against the common good. Human welfare, just as it was a million years ago, is guaranteed only by mutual scrutiny and regulation.

I doubt that Dr Ridley would be able to sustain his beliefs in a place where the state has broken down. Unless tax-payers’ money and public services are available to repair the destruction it causes, libertarianism destroys people’s savings, wrecks their lives and trashes their environment. It is the belief system of the free-rider, who is perpetually subsidised by responsible citizens. As biologists we both know what this means. Self-serving as governments might be, the true social parasites are those who demand their dissolution.

 In other words, those who live upon the fruits of other's labout without proper compensation are the true parasites.