Debate day! Who will be watching? Can Rand make any inroads?? How many times will Trump be misinformed??? Why is that New Jersey fat bastard still here???? Is Fiorina really a woman????? How pissed will LLPOH be with the multiple questions?????? Libertarian QOTD, what the hell does Gator think I’ve been doing for the last 6 months???????
I don’t think Trump is “misinformed” on immigration, Muslims, TPTB, Banksters, Liberals, the MSM, the economy, Zionist, Affirmative Action, diversity, the FED, Obama, etc etc.
-Not me
-Not likely
-Eleventy gazillion
-He is so fucking fat he isnt involved in the debate anymore but part of him will be visible on the screen so he’ll wrongly be included
-She “identifies” as an elite and that is all that matters
-If not multiple questions it would be something that would piss in his wheaties…
-Something worth copying
will try to watch, will live blog if I can remain awake
I’ll say one thing for Trump. He knows just the right buttons to push to feed red meat to the masses while causing the press to have an aneurysm. He plays them well.
Libertarianism is a summer philosophy and winter is coming.
Why I’m No Longer a Libertarian
I often introduce myself as a recovering libertarian. It is not an entirely serious introduction, but it is not entirely frivolous either.
Why “recovering”? Sad experience teaches that any ideology, even a sound one, like libertarianism, is intoxicating. The appeal of ideology is the appeal of elegance. Just as Newton reduced all motions from the orbits to apples falling to three expressions, every intellectual craves a simple formula to explain the human condition. Libertarianism is based on a single principle that limits the state’s use of force to retaliation against fraud and trespass.
Nearly all the natural moral rules all men carry in their hearts are satisfied by the simple rule that you may do as you like provided you leave your neighbor free to do as he likes. No neighbor may rob, defraud nor attack another.
The intoxication comes with each case that fits neatly to the theory. Natural morality agrees that wars to defend the innocent are permissible, as is killing in self defense. Natural morality agrees that a man should keep his contracts, and so on.
The theory says the state must remain carefully neutral in all cultural and moral questions: the use of intoxicating drugs for recreational use, suicide assisted or no, polygamy, prostitution, gambling, pornography, duels to the death (provided only all participants fully agree!) or, for that matter, copulating with a corpse on the roof of your house in plain view of the neighbors’ children playing in their backyards, and then eating the corpse, all must be legal.
For me, the intoxicating spell ended in three sharp realizations, each one as forceful as a thunderbolt.
Raising children
The first was when I had sons, and I realized that I could not maintain libertarian neutrality on how to raise my children. I had to teach them right from wrong, virtue from vice, and teach them prudence, justice, courage, and fortitude. Most of all I had to teach that morality is an objective truth. But teaching virtue is not like teaching geometry. Such things can only be taught by example. It has to be part of the mental environment. The culture always teaches the fundamental values of the culture, parents or no, because virtue is a habit.
Every moral lesson I wished to inculcate into my children was contradicted by a thousand examples in modern media. They tried their damnedest to teach my children error, to make their filth seem normal and cool. They were trying to addict them to vice, greed and lust most of all, but also to moral apathy disguised as tolerance, and envy disguised as equality. In states where marijuana has been made legal, it’s being offered in candy and soda pop, in order to lure the young and make customers for life.
I realized that the culture surrounding me was my enemy. Imagine being an antebellum Southern abolitionist trying to raise children to believe that all men were created equal, but with the entire slave-holding society, by a thousand silent examples, teaching the opposite. Even with the best will in the world, it is not possible for a mortal man to shield his children from everything in the culture. Should I live in a cave?
Libertarianism says my neighbors do me no wrong by exposing my children to child pornography, provided only force or fraud is not used. There is no public and objective standard of decency, honesty, prudence, and justice present in the libertarian theory: but a libertarian commonwealth could not stand were its children not trained from infancy to be decent, honest, prudent and just. It is, in short, a self-eliminating theory. It is a theory for bachelors.
Turning to Catholicism
The second thunderbolt fell when I became Catholic. Libertarianism says the state must remain neutral in all questions of morals. It must be amoral. But in practice, an amoral society will not remain neutral. A libertarian Catholic should be willing to leave homosexuals alone to form private civil unions in their own way, as long as we are left alone to practice our faith in our own way – but everyone from wedding photographers to wedding cake bakers who do not wish to participate in desecrating our sacraments will be harassed or forced into compliance.
In other words, the state cannot remain neutral between the Church and the Left because the Left will not allow it. As a practical matter, libertarianism is unilateral disarmament in the culture war.
Going to war
The final thunderbolt fell when the Twin Towers fell. Libertarianism simply cannot be used to decide what is prudent and just to do in war.
Example: A village of farmers are about to be attacked by 40 bandits. The villagers, at the command of the old man leading the village, have hired seven samurai. The terrain says the only defensible spot is the canal. There are three houses on the far side of the canal. Military prudence says those three houses be burned, lest they give concealment and cover to the enemy.
The three houseowners, hearing this, break ranks, throw down their spears, and declare that they will go defend their houses themselves, separately, without helping or being helped by the village. Kambei, leader of the samurai, draws his sword against those three and chases them back into ranks.
Libertarians must call Kambei’s action indefensible. But by any stretch of common sense, his action is laudable, and is not only excused, it is demanded by his mission to save the villagers. Hence, libertarian logic in this wartime case leads to a false conclusion, nay, an utterly false conclusion: not merely untrue, but the exact opposite of truth.
As a father, as a Catholic, as a patriot, I realized that the self-interest crowing libertarian theory by its very nature applies only on sunny days, among adults, in peacetime. It is a peacetime philosophy only, and only among men who adhere to certain basic ideals springing from the Western cultural tradition, that is, men who adhere to Christian cultural norms even if not themselves Christian men.
John C. Wright is a retired attorney and newspaperman who was only once hunted by the police. He is a graduate of St. John College (home of Mortimer Adler’s “Great Books Program“). In 2004 he foreswore his lifelong atheism and joined the Roman Catholic Church. He has published over 10 SF novels, including one nominated for a Nebula award, and was described by Publisher’s Weekly as “this fledgling century’s most important new SF talent.” He currently lives in fairytale-like happiness with his wife, the authoress L. Jagi Lamplighter, and their four children.
Read more: http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/05/07/politics/why-im-no-longer-libertarian/#ixzz3uQTdVtdX
If the dude in Flash’s article actually believes that 19 ragheads armed only with boxcutters managed to bring down the WTC, while evading the FBI, the CIA, the DIA, and the 20-some-odd other Federal agencies who supposedly exist to prevent terrorism, then he probably wasn’t smart enough to be a libertarian anyway.
Where did the article mention 19 ragheads armed with boxcuttters bringing down the twin towers Dickhead?
[img
[/img]
Won’t be watching, because I won’t be voting. I give two shits at this point.
I don’t think rand will be making any inroads. The neocons hate him, so does the establishment, and he has basically abandoned most of the libertarian positions he once held in a failed attempt to broaden his appeal to the republican base. Im relatively certain fiorina is a woman, and trump will say whatever he wants since most of his supporters don’t care if he is wrong, and don’t think about it much beyond his sound bites. Ya, Ill probably watch, even though I to am not voting for any of these people.
And I didn’t mean to jack your thing, mike. I just had a couple things I wanted to ask the readers on here and I didn’t want to thread jack an existing post.
And flash, much of those things in your post have nothing to do with libertarianism.
No harm done, Gator. The more the merrier. Just didn’t like the implication that my questions aren’t libertarian, in fact, I’ve asked several of yours already on here.
Gator, that’s the best analysis of rand I’ve ever read. Has almost nothing to do with him personally, but his game got shredded. A couple of my friends are doctors, and they’re very smart, and very talented, and very ethical. And outside their field, very lost. Rand and carson both just got eaten by the machine.
Star, don’t compare Rand to Carson. Big difference there.
Mike, I check this site most days Im able, but I must have missed them. I actually didn’t put the “libertarian” part on there in the original question, admin put it on there. I was really just curious about the trump thing. I don’t think the republican party will ever win another national election without the ron paul supporters, and I was curious how many of them were now trump supporters. I can kinda sympathize with those who now support him from a “burn it down” standpoint, as thats pretty much how I feel about it, but Im still not willing to support trump because I think he is a dangerous authoritarian
@Flash: Dick didn’t bring up the twin towers, you did. And you know that’s dangerous shit-fest territory here on TBP.
@westcoaster – yes, anytime that is brought up, you can kiss the topic at hand good by.
I keep wondering why there are so many still in this race, is it to dilute Trump’s overall share, so the RNC can pick Cruz or Rubio?
I’ll wait for Hope’s live blog, if she can stay awake. Heh. She’s a genius at live blogging commentary.
I’ll be watching for the entertainment value. Curious to see if Trump attacks Cruz, which hasn’t happened much until recently.
Trump scares the hell out of the GOP establishment, so anything that gets their panties in a wad is OK by me. His supporters are pissed off at the Repukes, too!
1) who gives a shit? All bullshit anyway
2) no
3) 57
4) because if he was not invited he was going to eat the moderators
5) I am not brave enough to check
6) not at all. The headline suits the text
7) pulling your pud
Mike, don’t mean it in any negative way. Some dudes are just born to be doctors. And that’s a fine thing, but quite a different job than being a leader. There isn’t any denying the machine ate rand alive. While his dad was active in politics, he never lost his core. Rand set out to expand, and that core slipped away. He forgot how he got there.
What’s the point of watching, we already know the outcome, as the media is intent on creating an anti-Trump narrative by any means necessary. If he slips up they will pounce upon it with creative editing. If not, they will revert to their 2012 playbook. Lest I remind you, when each candidate was given their “two weeks of fame” in order to keep ratings and interest high amongst the peasants while knowing Romney was the anointed nominee from the get go. They even had the hubris to pump up fossilized specimens such as Newt Gingrich and RICK SANTORUM and claim they were “surging.” We’ve seen the same in this campaign, first by Carly Fiorina (who?,) followed closely by Ben Carson, Kasich, and now the two fake Lat-een-os Cruz and Rubio.
The reason back then was also to hide the fact that the bumbling Ron Paul was squeaking some truth into the debates. But Trump is more of a threat than Paul ever was, so the stakes are much higher. They are attempting to bring his age and health into the narrative — a desperate grasp at the last straw, as if most senior politicians aren’t ugly, decrepit individuals with one foot in the grave already. Pathetic.
But no, I will not be watching the debates, as I do not have cable. I can get the entire chosen media narrative from about 30 seconds of internet browsing later or 30 seconds of a top of the house newscast on the radio.
you win with #7 llpoh. Im watching this shitshow right now, and it is downright bizarre. I cannot believe anyone considers these people serious policy makers. These people are either completely retard or certifiably insane, maybe a little bit of both. They keep talking about the same shit over and over, doing more of literally the exact same thing we have been doing for the last 15 years. I usually don’t drink any alcohol at all if I have to work the next day, but I need another beer.
Flash,
That douchenozzle was never really a libertarian anyone, he is just a general follower who easily loses focus and discipline. The worst part is realizing he procreated, sigh…
Mike asks:
Who will be watching?
Pas moi.
I was thinking about tattooing my scrotum tonight. It’ll probably be less painful.
I tried watching for a few minutes but what they were saying about how ISIS came about was misleading to me. This guy pretty much lines it out.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/naming-our-middle-east-enemy/
Flash , excellent post …. Prudence , justice , courage , fortitude …. objective morality comes from objective truth which comes from Christ.
Seeing culture as our enemy……
I think this guy just had what is called biblical repentance.
Tim ,you’re a Meathead ( now you have a reason to vote ) Harry, you’re an idiot but I still like you because of your second amendment firmness .
Flash,
That was an intellectually honest post. Probably one of the better ones I have read recently – well written and concise – expanded slightly it would make an excellent column – certainly worthy of discussion – the rash of down arrows IMHO more a sign of intellectual dwarfism than anything. Some folks are simply offended by having their ideas challenged by other ideas. Leftists are particularly guilty of this. Libertarians, of which I would likely be considered a member – are often equally as dogmatic. It is disappointing.
“To the rational being only the irrational is unendurable, but the rational is endurable.”
Epictetus – Discourses
Is it not rational to seek the truth before ideology? Should ideology not be held to the same scrutiny that a science experiment would? Is it not rational to admit that virtue is preferable to vice? Does the evidence not bare this as truth?
You write:
“The first was when I had sons, and I realized that I could not maintain libertarian neutrality on how to raise my children. I had to teach them right from wrong, virtue from vice, and teach them prudence, justice, courage, and fortitude.”
Like music to my ears.
I had an interesting discussion with my 14 year old son the other evening about courage and risk. The world we live in is much more insulated against such things than when I was a kid. There are stupid risks and there are risks that are calculated – ones that through either failure or success make you better. I had to teach him that if you do not risk you do not grow or get better. It was in regards to sports in this instance. He speed skates and he is stagnating. He has become afraid of his own speed and is holding himself back. In the mean time his peers are surpassing him. I explained to him that if he was afraid of crashing and breaking something all the time he may as well call it quits. That it would in fact be better to fall and hurt himself than to stagnate. Courage must be exercised, risk taken and the consequences honoured. That is part of the great gift of simply being alive. These are not lessons that a political ideology can really teach. They are the realm of parenting.
“Most of all I had to teach that morality is an objective truth. But teaching virtue is not like teaching geometry. Such things can only be taught by example.”
Also true. It is a shame that too few parents these days to not recognize this profound and important fact. It would be a different world if it were otherwise.
Have a good evening.
Francis
First off I didn’t write the piece John C. Wright did, http://www.scifiwright.com/
and as a long time libertarian and FWIW one of the first to come out on the staunch Puglican Raging Debate and champion the cause, I think I know from whence I speak. And , I’m sure John Wright has put a lot of thought in this and just isn’t barking at the moon either.
Like I said winter is here. The free market and open borders non-aggression abstract has been hi-jacked by global corporatism and used to exploit both labor and capital
.A massive foreign invasion is currently in progress that will demographically transform this nation , spiritually , morally and politically into something that is so far removed from the English common lay upon which ii was founded that our fathers would no longer recognize it.
Keep pining for your abstract non-aggression bullshit , while the globalists use that same ideology to dump millions of skilled third world workers into the US market place willing to do jobs that once provided for a comfortable middle class lifestyle for a fraction of the cost.
You’ll get all the labor market competition that’s been the source of your libertarian wet dreams you can stand ,and even more.
And, you’ll finally get the equality you so richly deserve , but it will be the equality of universal poverty, because that exactly where this free market one world , corporate controlled government is pushing as free market trade deals.
Any job that Mexicans,a third world immigrant can do just as well , and much , much cheaper.And this is what TPP is all about. If you allow this to happen you have not only betrayed the work of those Americans who sacrificed so much blood and treasure to build this great nation, but you will have betrayed the heirs of those brave heroes as well.
So yeah, I now stand with John Wright and other like him. Libertarianism is the little abstract that never could and unless we tribe up and stand together as one nation against the cult of global corporatism , we will soon be a nation no more.
For further reading on the subject, get the book: Buy it on Amazon via TBP.
Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America Kindle Edition
by Vox Day (Author), John Red Eagle (Author), Mike Cernovich (Foreword)
[img
[/img]
Listen to VD talking about the book here:http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/12/greg-johnson-interviews-vox-day-3/
ANYONE who watches these debates are still comfy in the matrix. Politicians who address ISIS as a legit terror group should not be elected dog catcher. Any politician in these debates who do not call for Oreo’s arrest is part of the company.
this is the government that write the rules of free market trade…no aggression, just layers of impenetrable bureaucracy that most certainly denies access to the individual entrepreneur.
[/img]
[img
VD on the corporatist bullshit that is free trade. American are being replaced via the non-aggression principle that so many champion.
http://www.voxday.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
The benefits of foreign labor are a lie
In Cuckservative, John Red Eagle and I conclusively demonstrated, using official government statistics, that immigrant labor is a net negative to Americans and American workers. Others who are looking into the subject are reliably finding that the importation of foreign labor is harmful:
Last year, thousands of American companies won permission to bring a total of more than 150,000 people into the country as legal guest workers for unskilled jobs, under a federal program that grants them temporary work permits known as H-2 visas. Officially, the guest workers were invited here to fill positions no Americans want: The program is not supposed to deprive any American of a job, and before a company wins approval for a single H-2 visa, it must attest that it has already made every effort to hire domestically. Many companies abide by the law and make good-faith efforts to employ Americans.
Yet a BuzzFeed News investigation, based on Labor Department records, court filings, more than 100 interviews, inspector general reports, and analyses of state and federal data, has found that many businesses go to extraordinary lengths to skirt the law, deliberately denying jobs to American workers so they can hire foreign workers on H-2 visas instead….
At the same time, companies across the country in a variety of industries have made it all but impossible for U.S. workers to learn about job openings that they are supposed to be given first crack at. When workers do find out, they are discouraged from applying. And if, against all odds, Americans actually get hired, they often are treated worse and paid less than foreign workers doing the same job, in order to drive the Americans to quit.
What’s more, companies often do this with the complicity of government officials, records show. State and federal authorities have allowed companies to violate the spirit — and often the letter — of the law with bogus recruitment efforts that are clearly designed to keep Americans off the payroll. And when regulators are alerted to potential problems, the response is often ineffectual.
I know it’s painful for the devotees of free trade, who love nothing better than to compare 21st century analyses to 18th century dogma, to admit, but the increasingly undeniable empirical reality is that free trade, and the free movement of labor, are about as Marxist, globalist, socially destructive, and economically harmful as Communism.
I’ve read every single defense of free trade that I can find. None of them, not a single one of them, holds up. And as for those who babble childishly about a protectionist government picking winners, as if that suffices to make a rational case, what on Earth do they think is happening in the USA and in the EU now?
All that free trade accomplishes is that it allows governments to pick winners from around the world rather than from inside their own borders. And the winners are those who are willing to pay the most for the privilege, which is why the dominant figures in the U.S. media are a) an Australian and b) a Lebanese based in Mexico.
Flash,
I have come to call it corporate communism.
It is a blight on our society. That most libertarians seem unable to process what is actually going on is baffling to me and speaks of the dogmatism I mentioned earlier.
FM, you are correct .Free trade is a communist tool to futher corporate Maxism. Diane West sums it up here: http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3202/What-Is-a-Conservative-What-Defines-the-GOP.aspx
Then there’s free trade — surely, the ultimate in free market economics, and, thus, an essence of what we think of as “conservatism,” right?
Think again. I have long believed that bottom-line free trade which, for example, turned Americans into enablers of slave or quasi-slave labor in such dictatorships as Communist China, and bankrupters of our own manufacturing base in the USA, was a disaster. Not until I recently picked up Toward Soviet America, the 1932 book by Communist Pary USA Chairman William Z. Foster, did I realize global free trade was also in sync with Communism’s assault on our nation’s character as well.
In his predictions for Soviet America, many of which have come true as Marxist ideology has subverted our institutions, Foster writes:
A Communist world will be a unified, organized world.
Remember Soviet agent Alger Hiss acted as the first UN secretary general in 1945.
The economic system will be one great organization, based upon the principle of planning now dawning in the U.S.S.R.
Remember that Soviet agent Harry Dexter White was the first executive director of the IMF in 1946.
The American Soviet government will be an important section in this world organization. In such a society there will be no tariffs or the many other barriers erected by capitalism against a free world interchange of goods. The raw material supplies of the world will be at the disposition of the peoples of the world.
Of course! Free trade is just another weapon to break down the nation-state — the ultimate globalist/Communist/progressive/Marxist/Democrat — and, in our time, apparently, GOP — goal.
As Continetti writes, “A Republican Party under Donald Trump would broadly reject this attitude.”
Amen to that.
What is free trade, what is free trade under the present condition of society? It is freedom of capital. When you have overthrown the few national barriers which still restrict the progress of capital, you will merely have given it complete freedom of action. …
But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.
Marx & Engels, On Free Trade (1848)