Kucinich moves for Cheney Impeachment

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Well, he isn't me, if that's what you wrongly insist on believing: the fascists must vanish and libertarian democracy must prevail. This is doing something about fascism, which you for one are conspicuously unwilling to undertake -- how is this not fascist sympathizing? Too many Libertarians right here don't acknowledge that, trapping themselves in a specious logic -- specious because it's based in utter inaction. You can't have libertarianism if you don't get out there and make it happen, and libertarianism is good for human beings, so anyone caught denying human beings this good must be made to stop, and he doesn't have to survive the experience, does he? If you want libertarianism to happen anywhere on the planet, expect to intervene, or the Stygian less-than-libertarian undemocracy will only persist, because states and political do work towards their own perpetuation, do they not? How is this then to be remedied? Sooner or later, you remedy it by chaining or destroying the fascist elements. Why should libertarians not believe in this? I've never heard any substantive reasons, just excuses and feeble rationalization. That isn't active libertarianism, is it?

My preferred party is the Libertarian Party, and sure, a good second choice for me would be the GOP, because the Democratic Party is such a batch of socialistoid, foreign-policy-feeble idiots: look at their record of gross incompetence at foreign policy for the past two generations. You simply can't tell me I'm not a Libertarian -- you just have to remember I'm not your particular variety of Libertarian, but something much more active, with a longer and wider and greater view. I'm endeavoring to fix what's wrong with the LP that keeps libertarianism from actually occurring anywhere.

Who cares how many fascists die before conversion to true democrats? Those fascists are the dumb ones anyway, fixated upon retaining a license for oppression -- to perform aggressions of the exact nature libertarianism condemns, and ought therefor to justify the destruction of the perpetrators. No matter how democracy's pestiferous foes recruit, it's really solely a matter of bringing up enough bullets to deal with those we can't educate to the point of conversion -- it's bad for mankind if that unteachable lot are let to run about and practice their oppressions. It is helpful for conversions if there are substantial examples of what happens to the ones who couldn't convert because they preferred to be shitheads about it.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

To expand on it: Libertarianism isn't going to prevail anywhere on this mortal Earth unless and until it beats out the other competing ideologies. Ideologies that embrace force and violence to achieve their ends will take a lot of beating. Beating them includes lethal force -- and can you imagine a death less to be mourned than that of undemocratic autocracy? If you could, you'd hardly be a libertarian, now would you?

Those ideologies wedded to force and violence attempt to practice them efficiently. Our virtuous conduct as libertarians is not going to shield our persons or our prospects from those ideologies' attempts at neutralizing us. Instead, we must be efficient at force and violence ourselves, to render their force impotent, which of course was what we wanted all along. Not only that, we must fight more efficiently than they do, and we must diligently undermine their cause to fight against our way. We don't have to prefer force and violence, not at all. But of course we should not submit to murder and thuggery either, and dead thugs menace only the public health, and that but briefly -- until burial.

The reason I say these things is that I understand the nastier side of human nature -- and I desire that it not defeat our ideology. I think you do also.

I care not a fig for "who's the purer Libertarian" in either action or thought -- this timewasting hobby of purer-than-thou-ism is the besetting sin of small third parties. What I see is a want of action, and a want of the thought that embraces action to reify it. I'm not crippled by want of that kind of thought. What I care for is the action of defeating competing ideologies along all possible paths.

[Griff]

wow

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

CHOP
What I care for is the action of defeating competing ideologies along all possible paths.

All possible paths?

Is this intended literally?

[Griff]

There is a line of thought running all through UG's writings. There is this idea that the individual cannot take care of himself and his. He doesn't seem to understand that all of us are fully capable of violence. If we keep that capability for ourselves, it is governed by our ethical considerations. If we hand our capabilities over to others with their own set of goals, we have divorced morality and action. That is why soldiers fight for each other in government's wars rather than for government policy. They are putting their actions on a moral footing by fighting for someone they know.

Your fundemental contempt for the individual is what separates you from libertarian thought. This is not some high brow argument for wonks. This is about viewing the world as a place where each individuals choices matter and have impact rather than a world where ant armies battle for their queen. In psychological terms, I want a society where people have an internal locus of control not external. That is the thing that used to make Americans different. We really believed in our own abilities. Now we shift that belief to the State, that is not libertarian.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Griff

I'm considering the matter of using force to install a government not of a populations choosing and calling it democracy. There were more than enough rifles in Iraq to remove the nut Hussein, if the people there decided he was worse than mob rule. They chose otherwise yet you call your parties imposition democracy.

More than one group tried and were always infiltrated and executed. Clinton actively supported a attempt to overthrow him as well and had prepositioned active duty special forces in country as well as undercover agents on the weapons inspection teams. They pulled out at the last minute and the operation fell apart, those involved were identified and many were jailed, tortured, and executed. After OIF 1 we were suppose to back a shia uprising in the south of the country with military support, instead hundreds if not thousands were slaughtered. The military action to attack Iraq had nothing to do with attempting to exert democracy IMHO.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Griff

There is a line of thought running all through UG's writings. There is this idea that the individual cannot take care of himself and his.

I don't have that idea, and wonder where you ever got that notion. Prove it if you think you can.

He doesn't seem to understand that all of us are fully capable of violence.

Another notion unsupported by the evidence of my writing. I understand this fully.

If we keep that capability for ourselves, it is governed by our ethical considerations. If we hand our capabilities over to others with their own set of goals, we have divorced morality and action. That is why soldiers fight for each other in government's wars rather than for government policy. They are putting their actions on a moral footing by fighting for someone they know.

I think this part makes sense.

Your fundemental contempt for the individual is what separates you from libertarian thought.

As a libertarian, I do not have a fundamental contempt for the individual. That is why I'm a libertarian. I also am freethinking enough not to trust lockstepping philosophically with any political group -- which is what annoyed Radar so much, I think. He became angriest with me on that score. I do not treat political attachments as a form of religion -- I don't have to sign off on all thirty-nine Articles of Faith, and I will shred the man who insists I do.

This is not some high brow argument for wonks. This is about viewing the world as a place where each individual's choices matter and have impact rather than a world where ant armies battle for their queen. In psychological terms, I want a society where people have an internal locus of control not external. That is the thing that used to make Americans different. We really believed in our own abilities. Now we shift that belief to the State, that is not libertarian.

These points are well made. I pin my hope of a better world on my faith in our own ability to swing the pendulum of this trend back the other way. The individual's choice not to permit any queen's ant armies to kill him, by destroying that ant army and that queen, is to my view highly libertarian and ought therefore not to be disparaged by libertarians, small L or large.

For libertarianism to grow up sufficiently to take its place among the major players, it will need the ability to destroy its bitterest enemies. This isn't really even in dispute between us, being I think self-evident.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

So far, Griff, you're not doing a very good job of rebutting my essays this thread. Come to it, you're not doing any sort of job of it at all. You can't show I'm wrong.

You've been trying with notable absence of success to persuade me I'm something other than a libertarian. The reasons for your failure are manifold: first, I believe in libertarianism's value to the global body politic and in its goodness. I prefer libertarianism to any other variety of political opinion. While I never vote a straight ticket for any party whatsoever, I pick my other-party favorites by how nearly they approach libertarian-type thinking. Some parties have a more or less libertarian cast of thought and others do not -- any guesses which ones don't get my support? This is an active practice of libertarianism.

That there is a considerable strain of neoconservatism -- even unto PNAC -- in my thinking is not an impediment to my libertarianism, but is recruited in reinforcement of it. To the degree that neoconservatism is statist, I dislike it, but statism is not the only thing neocons are about, as doing some reading of neocons will soon show. To the degree that it supports individual liberty and intiative, I support neoconservatism. As I said elsewhere in this forum:

Humanity is better when it prospers. Less-than-democracy is invariably associated with less than prosperity. Any in doubt could look it up. Respect free expression and property rights. Stay armed enough to make genocide impracticable and you additionally benefit from making crime impracticable too. That government that governs least, or least needs to govern, is that government that governs best.

Do these things in governance and you've covered a lot of the essentials.

In view of this, I come to a second point: there's no argument you can make to show me I'm not a libertarian. The only something you can make from nothing is a fantasy. That I don't happen to be your exact sort of Libertarian I won't dispute, but libertarian I am nonetheless. Mere repeated insistence that I'm not a libertarian when the truth of the matter is I'm not a clone of you isn't going to carry the day in debate.

A party is created in considerable part to address questions and problems, by making or influencing policy for those problems that may be addressed by policymaking. Put more briefly, people congregate in parties to make a better world. However, success at making a better world through officeholding comes only when a party's adherents actually hold an office. So then, the vexed question remains before the Libertarian Party: are you going to have a debate club or are you going to have libertarianism abroad in the land and the law of the land? If the latter -- where the fuck are you?? If you want to win for your party in a representative democracy, you've got to win elections. The LP has been around since 1975. The LP should at least be campaigning for policymaking positions in the more economic corners of officialdom, like harbor commissioners, business/local government interfaces, and such -- anything to do with helping the people make livings, while keeping the balance that prevents abuse of any other portion of the electorate. Again, this is mostly in upholding the rights of a minority, and in respect for the importance of property rights, which is the single most important thing a government can do to promote the people's prosperity.

Turning to ZenGum while I'm scrolling this thread: yes, it is intended quite literally. Ascendancy over competing ideologies should be approached holistically, as it were: by all paths, in every way, eschewing no option whatsoever.

I'll close with this: Griff, I really don't think you have any direct understanding of neocon thinking. If you have any understanding of neocon philosophy from the neocons' pens themselves, I wish you would display it. Don't go by reputation; do your own reading.

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Turning to ZenGum while I'm scrolling this thread: yes, it is intended quite literally. Ascendancy over competing ideologies should be approached holistically, as it were: by all paths, in every way, eschewing no option whatsoever.

Genocide? Chemical, biological, nuclear weapons? acts that are unarguably torture? Suspension of all civil rights (both inside and outside the US?)
No doubt you see my drift: what is the point of defeating fascists if we become fascists to do so?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

I do indeed, but I'm not frightened of it. We've succeeded at it before, and with nuclear weapons at that. Bear in mind too just how enthusiastic the opposition is about nuclear weaponry...

While it's theoretically a righteous enough question, the action of fighting and defeating fascists does not, on the record, fascists make -- cf. WW2. I think somebody hopes to create a boogeyman with arguments of this kind. It may possibly indicate the subconsciously fascistic, undemocratic mindset so often found among the Left. Being not so far from undemocrats themselves at bottom, they don't understand that for conservatives it's a far longer step from where their heads are currently at to something totalitarian.

What the raving anti-Republicans never seem to think of is that all their arguments are rationalizations for one thing: their contention that you must leave dictatorships alone, fascists untroubled, and oppression and poverty in their fullest effect, to remain a virtuous person.

This is so ridiculous on its face all its adherents should die laughing. That they fail to do so is evidence of a vast mental disconnect. These poor leftist morons actually expect to be taken seriously by people of too much intelligence to be on the Left. Tsk.

Sooner or later I'm going to have to tell somebody around here right to his face that that's a pretty fair way to be a good Fascist, but it's not the way to be a good Human.

If the bad guys are violent, that is no reason for us good guys to be less efficient at violence. After all, what has "settled more issues in history than any other factor?" And what settlement of the issue do we want again?

Some edifying reading -- while this article errs on some points of detail readily spotted by Heinlein fans, it has some perspicacious remarks too about how Heinlein seems to make libertarians. Makes me go hmmm...

Add in John Stuart Mill while we're improving our minds and the shining hour by good reading:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

But back to topic: how much do you want democracy, rather than excess of government, to prevail? Humanity is rather good at rebuilding, regardless of the size, depth or extent of the ash heap. Even Troy was reconstructed at least seven times.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

I don't have that idea, and wonder where you ever got that notion. Prove it if you think you can.

This was going to be really easy until I realized it was HLJ who posted the nonsense article in the 11/11 thread not you.

(I didn't read your previous link yet so if this is the same ground bear with me.) I think our views on Heinlen probably illuminate our differences. In terms of philosophy, I think The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was his best work, but would expect you to be a Starship Troopers guy. My problem with Troopers is that we have this worst case scenario where one species is going to wipe out the other. This justifies a lot of government action.

Let's look at the two stupidest cases in US history. Was the Kaiser really going to destroy democracy? This seems unlikely. The war was a stalemate. What democratic movement that was afoot was in opposition to dying for the old order, while democracy developed. In the States, going on a war footing trained the people to respond to bugaboos with submission to government. This was an awful precedent which continues to be abused by left and right alike. The Kaiser did not pass the alien insect test.

The second bit of nonsense is Iraq now. The bugaboo is terrorism. Bin Laden is invading the US when? Our control seeking government's response to terror is a much bigger threat to the Republic than any backward looking Islamist. Bin Laden, while a belly crawler, does not pass the alien insect test.

The right continues to pretend that we came into this war with clean enough hands to assert some moral authority in the mid-East. Our historic opposition to democratic movements, due to their easy infiltration by totalitarians, in the region undermines our authority. Neutrality would have been a good idea before and is a good idea now. Iraq may yet choose democracy, as our ancestors did, but it won't be on our timetable and the results will not be pretty. The only sure thing is that our government will try to grow and attempt to control more aspects of our lives. The question is whether the development of ideas and technologies which enhance or preserve freedom will outpace the governments attempts to subvert them. Militarism has undermined the foundation of American conservatism by creating the illusion of necessary government action. The optimism of the American Right has been replaced by fear-mongering.

To answer Mill:War in defense of the Republic and its people is justified. Offensive war brought on by fear-mongering and corrosive of the Bill of Rights is not justified.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

But back to topic: how much do you want democracy, rather than excess of government, to prevail? Humanity is rather good at rebuilding, regardless of the size, depth or extent of the ash heap. Even Troy was reconstructed at least seven times.

I have not claimed to have any great love for democracy. Organizing the world such that the many have a claim on the one, not already in place through community, just doesn't appeal to me. I prefer change to be brought on in a more organic fashion as communities evolve towards increased openess. Individual rights should be defended with tenacity in the face of democracy. To me democracy is by definition an excess of government. As far as ash heaps go, they are wonderful places for all manner of rodentia to lurk.

[atrw93]

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Thought for the day:

Just remember, the only thing a non-conformist hates,
worst that a conformist is another non-conformist
who does not subscribe to her or his beliefs of
non-conformity.

[Griff]

Are you trying to pith in my corn flakes?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Yeah, that pith is only good if it's out of a sago palm or something.

This was going to be really easy until I realized it was HLJ who posted the nonsense article in the 11/11 thread not you.

Oh, er. I'm sure that was awkward! There's not much to disagree with in HLJ's exerpt, though. It's essentially a martial-artist's viewpoint, or a policeman's, not merely a soldier's, and it is often cited by gun-rights people discussing the philosophical and moral bases of civilians practicing concealed carry, inasmuch as there's hardly a gun-rights advocate who'd disapprove. I've had that sheepdog mindset internalized for more years than I care to count. I see a powerful pro-libertarian, pro-democracy (in a broader sense than I reckon you're using it) effect in encouraging the sheepdog's values throughout the entire populace.

Turning in charity from that towards literary tastes -- for me, Starship Troopers was unmistakeably seminal, but I think the best thing RAH ever wrote was Time Enough For Love. Libertarians love that crack about strong drink.

I can accept the many can have a claim on the one with the proviso that the one has a reciprocal claim on the many. The social contract, in a word. Otherwise you end up with a rationalization for the damnedest degree of selfishness you ever saw, and it's the sort of thing a half-bright sociopath would come up with.

Communism failed in giving the individual's reciprocal claim sufficient weight, and this imbalanced condition helps to wreck Communist social orders.

I'm not persuaded politics evolves, nor that sociopolitical orders simply evolve -- these being human constructs both fleshly and abstract, they are highly influenced by the actions, the exertions, of humans involved in them and in their making. People make these things happen and exist, and people's efforts are the one reason they do.