I try not to get in political arguments on Facebook, unless I’m going in to support a Baen buddy (and because of my erratic hours, I rarely see those in time) or someone starts it with me first.
I assume what people post on their walls is their own d*mn business and they’re allowed to be stupid as they wanna be on their home page. After all, people can have posters of Che in their living room, and when I find a neighbor or acquaintance has one of those, I simply make plans to ignore them in the future, I don’t say “So, you like mass murderers who delighted in killing kids, personally, uh?” Also, to be bluntly honest, I’m away too busy to teach history to people who seem unable to reason from fact to fact.
Yesterday something got in under my defenses. Call it Sarah being too sleepy and still very angry at the Colorado legislature. Or perhaps it was the irreducible stupidity of the post or its sheer lack of contact with reality, or its hatred of life in a free society. Indeed, there was so much to choose from, that it’s useless to wonder what first set me off.
To begin with, the note the poster put with the post (which was one of those “images” that people repost, this one just black background with letters on it.) She said “This is their secret agenda, believe it.” Since the post was about the GOP I presume she meant the GOP’s secret agenda.
Given the general disorganization of the Republicans, I wish someone would tell them that they have a secret agenda and that the only people who seem to know about it are the opposition. Also, for the love of heaven, someone tell them that the agenda is so stupid that even I am shocked, though I’ve come to expect mentally-damaged decisions from them. In fact, their agenda will achieve exactly the opposite of what it purports to want. And FYI a two year old with experience in pre-school would realize this.
So, what was the charming post? It said “The GOP wants to abolish government, so the corporation (sic) can rule us.” At the bottom of it was an elephant in a “not” sign.
Let’s start from the bottom, shall we? What in heck do they think they’re saying? In a two-party system they want to abolish one because…. Massive responsiveness to the people will ensue?
Look, I have a lot of right wing friends, socons, libertarians, insane, sane, erudite and not. They sometimes post pretty hateful stuff about “liberals” (they’re not using this in the “classical liberal sense”) “progressives” or “Marxists.” The most common is “Liberalism is a mental illness” – and taking in account what they mean is “Marxism” they’re right. Or rather, it’s a dogmatic religion, which induces mental illness to the extent it doesn’t agree with reality. However, I have yet to see anything that says “Abolish the democratic party” or the symbol of the Democrats in a forbidden symbol. Now, one or two of them might have done it and I might have missed it, but this doesn’t match the countless pervasiveness of it on the left.
I am baffled by their bizarre idea that removing one of a two-party axis would lead to anything good. I recommend they study the history of single party systems, as well as the history of absolute monarchy. When the state doesn’t have opposition – loyal, disloyal or completely lost in its own pants as the GOP is most of the time – it becomes by definition tyranny. I mean, why should they care what you say when they know they’re going to be elected/reelected anyway? Why should they care if the people get upset?
That stupid little “no GOP” symbol at the bottom is a sign of mental illness. It’s a sign of people who have become so upset that someone disagrees with their position on how to do things that they want to silence the opposition. It is a sign of people who think that anyone who disagrees with them has to be EVIL – there’s no other option, since, they are so blindingly brilliant and obviously right.
Do I need to point out that first they are so far from obviously brilliant that that short post has a huge logic error (forget the factual errors, etc.) Or that at some level they know they’re not brilliant or their answer would not be “because, shut up.” Or that this by itself justifies anyone who wishes to post “Marxism is a mental illness”?
But this “the other side is wrong and must be silenced” is what leads to panicky conspiracy theory inventing, because they can’t figure out why everyone doesn’t see the dazzling brilliance of their position, and they, themselves, don’t want to look at it too closely.
To begin with – I was tempted into an answer that was in itself not quite factual. It went something like this “First, you’re wrong. The GOP merely wants to reduce the government. It is us libertarians who want to abolish it. Second, it is a centralized government with all its rich opportunities for graft that causes corporations to have undue power. See China or Hitler’s Germany. This is a fantasy of washed-out drug-addled rejects who buy into the fantasy that the democrats are protecting us from corporations, and are allowing the so called progressives to drive us back to the thirties.”
I was tempted into a post not quite factual? Well, yes. While we libertarians could – you know, if we weren’t all about as social as feral cats – hold our hands and sing, kumbaya style, our own version of Imagine “Imagine there’s no government; it’s hard and we can’t try” – we’d like, in the end, you know, come the millennium and a higher state of man or something, to be able to have a society without government.
Most of us however are aware that it will never be possible, not for communities larger than about to dozen people all committed to doing what’s best for each other and, at that level, whether you have perfect libertarianism or perfect communism is a debate we’ll save for another time.
I simply didn’t feel up to explaining clear political lines, to people who were so blinkered as to think that the GOP had a “secret plan” (really, all of the GOP? Including your local level? And the press who are so fond of bugging political meetings where – shocking – Republicans debate who to defeat the opposition has never got a memo or a letter or an email? Remarkable. I guess Republicans aren’t humans at all, but pod people from alpha centauri. Because the best way to keep a conspiracy with three people secret is to kill two of them. And the best way to keep a conspiracy involving millions of people (or if you believe it’s only the top levels, hundreds of thousands of people) secret is not to have one.)
In the political continuum, you have anarchists – I used to be one when I was 14/15, mostly because anarchists had all the hot guys in black leather jackets and work boots and one of them had long, curly black hair. Deal. I have never understood why in the states anarchists want “A strong central government.” Don’t try to explain it to me. The last I heard was something like “We need a strong central government so people can live government free.” Wait, what? I think the anarchists, who at least at their start had a strong anti-royalist and anti-society strain (as in, destroy society — ???? – Paradise) have long since gotten taken over by the Marxists, who can, after all, organize. Anyway, other than getting out their cool bandanas and flags in the service of daddy government you can safely ignore them. They’re so far lost in their own underwear they can’t see the light of day.
Then you have the Libertarians. I think by now what most libertarians – there are exceptions – want is a government small and hampered enough to adhere to the founders plan. I subscribe to that. I don’t subscribe to their own magic belief that if we don’t seek “foreign adventurism” other nations will leave us alone. It’s a peculiar American illusion. It has led to blood in the past and will again. Between that and the obsession with legalization of drugs (yes, I am against the war on drugs. Yes, I am pro-legalization. It is simply NOT my only criteria for choosing candidates, and I’m willing to grit my teeth and wait 8 or 12 years while we fix other more urgent stuff – as annoying and civil-liberty-violating as the war on drugs is, yes, there’s more important stuff. Besides, in Portugal I saw the result of legalization in a stagnant economy. Let’s say there’s a reason the ganja coast is prone to mysticism and tyrannical governments. Drugs are a great way to keep the restless and unemployed young quiet while you do whatever the heck you want.) Because of that, post 9/11 I dropped out of the Libertarian party, where I’d been active and vocal, and started defining myself as a small-l libertarian. (Or a Rational Anarchist.)
So, you have Anarchists, Libertarians, libertarians, some undefined but not short length of division, in which I would put my “social libertarian/economic mercantilist” friends, and then, at arms length, the outer fringes of the GOP which have people who are at least partially small L libertarian. These people are considered insurgents and dangerous by the main GOP establishment which are, let’s be honest, statists.
Part of this is the same effect that ended up turning all the “conservative” parties in Europe into Social Democrats (or Christian Democrats, forever trying to get Caesar to fulfill THEIR obligation of charity. They are so many levels of wrong…)
It is hard for those of you born in the seventies or later to fully get this, but even people like me, who hated the idea expected the communists to win the cold war, eventually. It made perfect sense. They were more organized, everyone knew central government was more efficient, the press was full of the glories of the Sov Union, and those of us who thought it was morally atrocious and a horrible thing for the individual had to shut up or be thought crazy.
For my generation – born in the sixties – enough had come out, and we passed Gulag Archipelago around like Samizdat (No, we wouldn’t be arrested, but the school would be very upset we were reading it, and we could kiss college admission goodbye), so that our reaction mostly was “I don’t care if it’s inevitable they’ll win. They’re evil, and I will go down fighting.” At least that was my reaction and those of my friends, and I submit those of the martyrs of Tiananmen square.
It wasn’t the stand of the people older than us. They really thought that communism (or its soft sister, socialism) would bring better social outcomes for the most people. As conservatives they might hate it for peripheral reasons, but they still felt communists “cared about the people” and “held the moral high ground.” This sort of mental concession is visible in the older ranks of the GOP who are, of course, the ones in positions of power. I don’t know if they were too old when the wall came down, or if they simply know too many people on the other side whom they judge to be good people. I know that it’s implicit in their attitude the idea that the Marxists are nice guys with the wrong idea. The other side, meanwhile, is playing by the rule book that says anyone who doesn’t believe in Marx MUST be eliminated so paradise can happen.
This is sort of like a street fighter going up against the Marquess de Queensbury.
What it means is that with one side apologizing and bowing and the other calling them evil or worse, while the press is definitely to the left of most politicians the “consensus” of each party has moved left ever since I first set foot in the US in 1980 (before I moved here. Four years before I moved here.) (The other mechanism for this, of course, is that a government will grow unless it meets opposition. It’s the iron law of bureaucracies.) Back then I judged the Democrats to be socialists (Carter’s speeches were almost word per word those of socialist leaders in Portugal. So much so I still wonder if they were faxed/translated from a central location. I know it’s unlikely, but…) and the Republicans to be Social Democrats. (Yes, even Reagan – though at least he hated communism as much as I did.)
Now… Now I’d guess the center of gravity of the GOP hovers somewhere between Social Democrats and socialists. They’re no more willing to REALLY cut down government than the Democrats are. (And no, the sequester was neither a Republican idea, nor is it a CUT. Reducing the rate at which spending EXPANDS is not a cut in any sane vocabulary.)
As for the democrats… Heinlein said they were taken over by hard core Marxists starting in the thirties. I see no reason whatsoever to doubt him. There is a startling disconnect between the crowd in the streets (I want to shout at all these people supporting Democrats because the Democrats TALK about being for the little man AND talk about sexual freedom, that the end result of any Marxian regime is like something out of 1984. There is no space for the little people except as chattel. And as for sexual freedom, both the USSR and China (still) strenuously denied the existence of homosexuals or adultery or… and made contraception either mandatory or impossible to find – in the USSR largely impossible to find since about the seventies when the state had realized it needed more kids.) and the people in power.
And part of this is that though the Democrats haven’t been “in power” very long, they’ve been in power in a lot of places: most entrenched bureaucracies, teaching, entertainment, the media, and some of the larger blue cities. Which means they’re already running to “end stage Marxism” in which the society is, in all but name, Fascist. Or if you prefer, the softer word, crony capitalist (which of course is not capitalism at all.)
One has only to look at everything this administration has done, from taking over the auto industry to the billions squandered on Solyndra and its sisters, to the massive unwieldy regulations that make it impossible for small businesses to hire, survive, expand, to know that whatever the rhetoric, what they really are building is a society with MASSIVE government which in turn picks and chooses the winners from MASSIVE Corporations (bureaucracies like other bureaucracies) who are in turn inured from competition by the government’s aiding and abetting (Almost every monopoly – and the almost is only there because though I know a lot of economic history there MIGHT be a freak occurrence somewhere in history that I don’t know about – REAL monopoly was brought about by government either openly or through regulation.)
The end result of a strong central government with near unlimited power is to attract the greedy and power hungry, both to work for it, and to lobby it on behalf of other organizations.
The end result of growing government is a country in which there is no room for the little guy – and which, incidentally, slowly starves to death because – I know you’ll be shocked, shocked – turns out centralized government or economy or ANYTHING really isn’t the most efficient. Because when you don’t have to be responsive to the consumer, it’s the same as not being responsive to the voter – you can meet your shoe production goals by making only baby shoes and only for the left foot.
Making government small and getting its regulatory claws as much as possible out of business, OTOH, leaves precious little room for a corporation to take over (Much less “the corporation” whatever that is) because there will always be competitors who can do it smaller and faster and more targeted. (Corporations that get large enough become STUPID. See IBM.)
But Sarah, you say, you wrote about corporate take over in a world with no government! Yes, the same way I wrote about an anarcho-capitalist society in a world without government. It’s possible if it’s small and if people have no written law (or ignore it, as we’re doing!) Even then, for a corporation to take over without governmental aid, I had to make it a situation where they had a natural monopoly over the energy source. Break that (as my characters do) and their strength is gone.
Which leads us to “if we abolish government the Corporation will take over” – unless the left now has their version of the illuminati conspiracy, really… what in heck are they talking about? What is “The Corporation”. I have to sort of assume that these people posting this once took a look at a job where ties were required and ever since have been afraid of “the Corporation” coming after them and forcing them to tie on neckwear. Nothing else makes sense.
I don’t want to abolish government, I want to restrict FEDERAL government to its enumerated powers. Which would leave me free to say hire an assistant and pay him/her a negotiated package that includes stuff like eating with us a couple of times a week, and perhaps going to cons with us. This would allow me to grow my business, and perhaps hire more assistants at above the now federally mandated minimum wage (supposing I could hire the first below it) And eventually the Hoyt-writing empire might rival what the ever charming Sabrina Chase calls the Media-industrial complex. (Well, you never know till you try, and there are, after all, four of us.)
A strong central government OTOH is considering an internet tax which would make it impossible for people like me to sell anywhere but Amazon or other equally large corporations. (Which is why they’re all quiet as little mice.) Because the keeping track of paperwork would make it impossible for a small vendor to maintain its own store.
This in turn removes what I always tell people who tell me Amazon if evil and will turn on indie publishers “If that’s true, someone else will come along, offer us a better deal, and Amazon will be history.” With the government regulations giving it overwhelming advantage, Amazon WILL (guaranteed) turn evil and turn on the indie publishers.
Because large entities prefer negotiating with large entities, a large government favors large corporations who in turn favor other large corporations.
I’m fairly sure this is not the Democrats “secret” plan. Most of them seem to think government power makes people angels. And those who are trying to get more power like this story and lie to themselves.
However, I guarantee to you that the Democrats want to grow a central, Federal government and remove all restraints on it. And that at the end of it is a very poor country populated by massive and massively inefficient corporations.
The other is a fantasy for people who haven’t yet recovered from the sixties.
UPDATE: To whom it may concern. Stuff now up in subscriber space!
According To Hoyt 
Sadly, I think it is more like a street fighter going up against the Marquessa de Queensbury.
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More like a modern boxer, Queensbury rules were much more liberal allowing such throws as hiplocks. Also they didn’t require both fighters to take a break every couple minutes.
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Marquesa in Spain, marchioness in England.
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As you no doubt surmised, my interest in patents of nobility is limited. I had thought it was Marquise if Queensbury but that initiated reveries about Archy and Mehitabel.
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I knew it was wrong, because I read Georgette Heyer, BUT I thought you were making a joke.
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Tried to. Feebly and incorrectly, as it turns out.
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If the “big-governmenters” inadvertent support of crony capitalism wasn’t so threatening, it would be amusing.
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I have never understood the Big Corporations/Big Government binary thinking–that it’s either one or the other and anyone who is against Big Government must be in the pay of Big Corporations.
All the evidence is that they are one and the same. Big Corporations get to be Big because the regulations that Big Government enacts serve to create monopolies and stifle competition. When you get government backing off from regulation and letting the free market regulate itself you get a lot of little businesses competing for market share and the customers win.
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Mostly it devolves into the question of who’s the dog and who’s the tail.
Back in the ’20s and ’30s the so called Robber Barons were building huge monopolies in their chosen fields and several had accumulated so much wealth and power that they were able to influence if not outright control elections even at the Federal level.
The government responded with a concerted trust busting initiative. This was never “for the good of the people,” or out of concern for other businesses, or even that our government was against monopolies. No, it was simply that all governments are against monopolies that they don’t control.
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A minor correction to your dates, if I may, Uncle Lar. The Robber Barons (Gould, C. Vanderbilt, Carnegie and Frick, Rockefeller) were most active and aggressive in the 1880s-1900s. Yes, the railroad people got started in the 1860s and inspired the great strikes of 1873 – someone had to go first. The trust busting, which was attempted first in the 1890s and shot down by the Supreme Court, kicked in after 1901 with the Progressives (T.R. is the best known), surged after 1912, stopped during WWI, faded in the 1920s and got moving again in the 1930s, except that some trusts became legal and federally sanctioned cartels (as they had during WWI) under the New Deal.
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Serves me right for blogging off the top of my hat. Good thing no one else here at Hoyt manor would do such a thing.
I do thank you for the corrections and added information.
Based my comments on a half remembered series of History Channel shows on the industrial robber barons. Obviously some aspects got fuzzed up in my overloaded brain.
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There’s new scholarship on the subject that indicates they were actually aided and abetted by government and not nearly as bad as has been painted.
Unfortunately I succumbed to anti-histamines, so I have no idea where I read it, but it was last week. I think.
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Sarah, I remember reading it as well, but I thought it was a couple of weeks ago. But since I’m taking twice the normal amount of antihistamines to control my allergies (Texas Hill Country is really bad this year) I couldn’t tell you where I read it.
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I recall reading an essay on the Robber Baron myth, I thought at Liberty Law Blog — but I can’t find where I stored the bookmark and I can’t find it on the site. A worthwhile site for lengthy essays.
A short video debunking the myth by Milton Friedman is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmzZ8lCLhlk
A longer video of a presentation by historian (and Hillsdale College professor) Burton W. Folsom (author of The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America) is available at CSPAN and other sites — use your search engine for more.
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Tell me about it (Hill Country allergies). I’ve been here for seven years or so, and I’ve never even had allergies before this year kicked off.
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You mean it’s possible that “What everyone knows” is wrong? Color me shocked.
On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 2:56 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:
> ** > accordingtohoyt commented: “There’s new scholarship on the subject that > indicates they were actually aided and abetted by government and not nearly > as bad as has been painted. Unfortunately I succumbed to anti-histamines, > so I have no idea where I read it, but it was last week. I ” >
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Many of the so-called monopolies were those where the entrepreneur developed something new that no one else had. The best example is John Rockefeller’s discovery that crude oil could be modified and used as lamp fuel (replacing whale oil) and heating fuel (replacing coal and wood). That monopoly didn’t last long, and it didn’t require trust-busters to end it.
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I thought of this while reading the post and was going to point it out, then got sidetracked reading comments and forgot. Basically anybody who comes up with a new technology/product will have a monopoly for a short time, until someone else manages to figure out how to either copy it, or market competing product.
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Prior to Rockefeller, weren’t they simply burning off such “useless” byproducts, contributing to AGW?
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I remember being told gasoline was originally used for cleaning windows. That would be a cleaner with 100% VOC.
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You’re welcome. I just happen to have the bad luck of slogging through a review of that period for a class at the moment.
I do not enjoy teaching the late 19th century in US history for some reason. Maybe because I can’t sympathize with most of the groups that were making the news at that time? Maybe because so much was happening that it’s hard to keep things straight for the students? Either way it is hard to keep the students interested when I’m standing there thinking, “blah, blah, economics, blah, blah, Populists, blah, blah, SQUIRREL!”
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Well it might be interesting to see how many students were still paying attention halfway through class, when you added squirrel to the lesson.
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Probably about as many as the number of my college students who reacted when I switched to German in the middle of the lecture. I really liked the two guys who kept pretending to take notes.
More reacted when I started the lecture in German and put the notes on the board in German (topic: the New Immigration post-1875).
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And yet, in the so called Gilded Age, with all the economic power that the Robber Barons had accrued (the actual robber barons were actual robbers and barons in medieval Germany who detested capitalists and preyed on merchants attempting to cross the country.) – JD Rockefeller still had to alter his office building in New York because he couldn’t buy out two bakeries on the street corner.
In some respects there was a great deal more respect for property rights back then – it didn’t matter who you were, you had to deal with people on their terms, not have the government go drive them from their homes and businesses whenever they became inconvenient.
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Rational Anarchist is the term I avoid, it truly describes my political view, but justly scares the timid. The sad truth is that most people these days NEED some sort of caretaker. It may be harsh… but the world I want to live in can only exist ten years AFTER the warning lables are taken off of consumer products.
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No. Truly, they don’t need a caretaker. Look up “learned helplessness.”
I only use “Rational Anarchist” near SF people who know where it comes from.
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I definitely agree with that. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen somebody who seems like they’d be utterly incompetent at being self-sufficient experience some sort of adverse event, often tragic, and then they get their act together because they have to, and become productive and self-sufficient. Sure, they might need support during a transition period, but that’s usually better provided by family and friends or even a church than by a government social worker.
In my experience, supposedly helpless people are generally only helpless because they can be.
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Being on your own is scary and taking responsibility HURTS. I remember that from when I first got married. I remember being terrified we’d forget to pay a bill or something. Had someone carried me, I’d never have learned.
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In my experience, supposedly helpless people are generally only helpless because they can be.
Just had a little lightbulb– I think people are built that way in part to avoid the “too many chiefs” phenomena; you can’t have all leaders, and you can’t have only “leaders” and “don’t bother me” (see Sarah’s earlier posts with the reoccurring example of trying to hunt mastodon and most folks being…contrary, and the effect it’d have on survival)
I really, REALLY hate accepting help, but when I was rear-ended a couple of years ago I fluttered. I never flutter. Sure, I was pregnant, and my little girl was in the back, but the impact was NOT that big. However, it resulted in the guy who hit me (a truck next to us was being an idiot, and there are red light cameras, so I stopped faster than he was expecting/watching and we went bump) stepping up and being responsible, instead of being an angry ass bumping heads with the headstrong bitch who stopped too fast and screwed up his NICE pickup.
If he’d been a jerk anyways, I know I would’ve snapped out of it– but I didn’t even think about that until a day or so later.
The way things are now is highly, highly defective, but there IS a possible purpose besides “people are lazy.”
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I have been resigned to the fact that I am actually helpless. It has a lot to with a loss of physical strength due to illness. It took me many years to realize I cannot be the tough independent chick I was up to 40. I have learned to get around that of course (by writing and bringing in some revenue– but it was never as good as when I was able to work).
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One wishes that all the helpful people would realize that for people who can’t control themselves and present a danger to themselves or others — well, we have a nice, secure institutions for such people.
I suspect we’d be astounding at how many could control themselves.
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Actually we DON’T have institutions. Trust me. I walk downtown at least once a week.
Now the brain-dead Governor of CO (Hickylopper) wants to re-open institutions, but expects the mentally incompetent to “voluntarily commit” …. Strange ice and wondrous hot snow.
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You guys have hot snow? That must be where the pictures I seen the other day of women skiing in bikinis were taken.
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Anybody who would voluntarily commit himself to a state-run institution would have to be crazy.
Contrarily, anybody capable of recognizing their lack of competence has demonstrated their competence and should not be committed to such an institution.
Arguably, anybody willing to invest the time and energy required to win political office, especially when you consider how little such positions (officially) pay is probably mentally incompetent and needs to be committed to a state institution.
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There was a murder case where the defense brought up as a mitigating factor that the defendant had tried to have himself committed, saying he thought he was going crazy and was afraid he might kill someone.
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I still maintain that a true Marxist is simply a fool who believes in all his heart that a system that cannot possibly work given inherent human nature can somehow be made to succeed with enough shouting, bullying, and ultimately violence. It’s my belief that most self proclaimed Marxists are rather statists who have simply donned the cloak of marxism out of convenience. What they’re after is control, ultimately control of everything, and would take it in one fell swoop if they could. Having failed repeatedly at every such effort, they now employ the often successful tactic of nibbling away at our freedoms incrementally. Do 2.1 steps forward and 2 steps back often enough and eventually you will cross whatever line you originally targeted as your goal.
Appears to me that the main difference in political parties is in how hard it is to push them back those two steps, and how long before they again attempt a move forward.
I grew up reading Heinlein back when he was still producing one or two books a year. That cured my liberal progressive urges early on. Since then I have been a confirmed Rational Anarchist which I define as: All government is evil as it imposes rules on people which they would not choose on their own. When people live in proximity to one another some government is necessary if only to protect against greater evil. And people left to their own devices will always come up with a greater evil.
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No. There are a lot of true-believer Marxists and a lot of people who don’t realize what they think they know about the economy is not reality but Marxism. Our school system has been teaching Marxism as dogma for years.
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Frankly, I’ve always considered the most efficient form of government would be a dictatorship. With a small tamper-proof bomb in the dictators head. And the triggering device either secretly provided to an unknown but politically observant private citizen, or with a delimiter switch so that if, say, 500,000 people are really annoyed at the dictators activities, they can push their buttons. And poor dictator get a headache Excedrin cannot help.
He’d certainly have to rule by consensus.
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Consensus? As if that would be much better. . .throw the majority some bread and circuses and fob off the bill on the children, who won’t get a vote.
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But its a great SF story.
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There are precisely two types of Democrats today: The stupid and the evil. By far the vast majority of them cannot understand reality and the ultimate end-state the policies they advocate will bring about, but I have a sneaking suspicion (mostly because I can’t believe that an organization as effective as the Democratic party is entirely staffed by idiots, it could just be a personal failure of imagination) that there are those who do understand and want it to happen.
That’s the reason I would like to see every registered Democrat declared mentally incompetent. Of course, there are other things I would like to see that probably shouldn’t happen. There are myriad good reasons to keep me away from levers of power.
I must say I find a bit of a contradiction between your reluctance to engage in Facebook idiocy and your calls to engage in the culture wars. I understand you have far better things to do, but we’re so far behind the power curve that we cannot afford to slack off. You don’t have to change any minds (I don’t think that’s possible, see above about their mental aptitude) but I think it’s important to send the message that not everybody agrees with them, and some people think their “cleverness” is nothing more than witty idiocy. I think saying “So, you like mass murderers who delighted in killing kids, personally, uh?” to someone sporting Che anything is the perfect response. You don’t have to say anything else, just tell them to get back to you when they’ve actually learned something about the history of Latin America in the ’60’s.
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we have had two fools at work who wore Che shirts in. Tell them what he like to do and they are unfazed … they either feel it is a lie, or the kids had it coming somehow.
Yeah, his fans are that bad.
They rank with Anarchists for what my personal treatment would be if allowed.
Shoot them in the head on sight. Alas this is frowned upon so I cannot relieve our burden. Yeah, I’m not nice.
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But it shouldn’t be frowned upon by Anarchists, it is after all following their own doctrine.
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I always thought it was funny, how many kids at my college wore Che shirts. I tried ti explain to them how Che wanted to kill all the ‘intelligentsia’ but they just couldn’t seem to get that with a college education…. they *were* the intelligentsia.
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Well that would require them to be intelligent, after all.
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No, no it wouldn’t.
Not if history is any guide.
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I know there is a contradiction. It’s mostly a personality thing. Personality wise I don’t want to go about getting in fights. I will if I have to, but I prefer to do other things. And consider my flist is 90% writers/fans and only about 10% Baen. It’s easy to get people to shut you down/ignore you.
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And thus we see how we got into this mess. We’ve always had better things to do than muck about in politics, while they’ve felt a religious calling to poo in the nest. Every step they’ve taken has made it that much harder to push them back. Not it takes a concentrated effort of will simply to keep them from advancing.
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I know. And you have no idea how much effort even the little I do costs me.
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Is it drinking time yet?
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The sun is always over the yard arm somewhere.
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Eliminating the grog ration has to list as one of the largest crimes against sailors ever. Yet another reason to hate Prohibition.
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Arguing with stubborn idiots (almost all members or supporters of the left-wing) will not make them reconsider their political beliefs, and it will not slow down their relentless progress toward an uncontested sociofascist government. Our decision not to argue with idiots is not delaying a return to 1789.
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It’s not about making them reconsider their beliefs. It’s about exposing the lie that “everybody thinks this way.” The true believers are a significant minority. They can only exercise political power by deceiving the uninterested middle. Not fighting them in the ’70’s and ’80’s is exactly how we got into our current mess. Keep ignoring them and the results will be…unpleasant.
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This is why Human Wave writing (fiction and nonfiction) is necessary to demonstrate that there are alternative ways to view the world, organize the world, run the world. Such works are far more likely to be influential that any amount of internet arguments. Contemplate the parable of the bet between the North Wind and the Sun.
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contemplate where the argument would be if Robert A. Heinlein had never written. I mean — we’re not WELL OFF, but imagine how much worse we could be…
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The problem with writing is that it relies on the consumer to buy and read it. It’s only an effective vector for cultural shifts if the entire industry is aligned and the reader has no choice but to consume the message. Putting a negative comment on a stupid Facebook post at least sends the message that the position of the post isn’t universal. And there is a chance that minds can be changed.
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Actually — my kid was doing a paper for his business class on the success of an indie-published guy. He has outsold George RR Martin and NO ONE at a sci fi con knew who he was.
SO…. there is a huge audience that the mainstream has ALIENATED. And those need to know they’re not alone. (And I’m writing on that tomorrow. Today my brain was only up to lizards being cool and stuff.)
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I agree that there’s a huge alienated audience that is amenable to Human Wave, but the question remains how to get to those who are already in orbit around Vile Progresivism but haven’t yet reached the Chandrasekhar limit.
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We might not reach them, but we can make their belief system as embarrassing to publicly endorse as eugenics or phrenology.
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Heck, I went to college at a very non-liberal place, studying psychology – which tends left, and was very close to just running with pure stimulus/response – Skinnerian theories, and what pulled me out was a piece of art.
I’m only a little embarrassed that it was Braveheart. But it made a point – there’s NO WAY stimulus/response leads to William Wallace screaming “Freedom” while he’s being executed. Art has impact.
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The first type of Democrat you list is more commonly known by the label “useful idiot.” Because many of these people apparently object to being called “useful” this leads to them unfiending you on Facebook (a condition known as “raising shields.”) Being behind raised shields effectively restores the echo chamber such bunnymen prefer and renders your effort to give them actual information impotent.
Being rendered impotent increases your frustration without ameliorating their ignorance, a net loss for your side of the debate.
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It’s important to not become frustrated, and refrain from insults as much as possible (in my case I must admit that’s not very much at all). Again, the target isn’t the poster, but the onlookers. And forcing someone into censorship to preserve their political opinions does damage their self-perception as open-minded and rational beings.
What far too few on our side realize is that this is going to be a VERY long slog, and that we’re not going to see any measurable progress for several years. That doesn’t mean we give up, we just have to be realistic in our expectations. ::Glares meaningfully at the Libertarian Party::
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Joins Jeff in glaring.
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How do we do this with humor? Because nothing is better at demonstrating what soulless cranks the statists are than puncturing their arguments with a laugh. Yes, it’s an Alinsky-like tactic but I think we can be funny and truthful.
And that will just freak them out.
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Barry Parham– one of my friends– does this every week– he is a humor writer and makes me laugh.
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Scott “Scrappleface” Ott and Iowahawk are effective employers of humour to devastating political effect.
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you might look for something called the people’s cube. They sell bumperstickers too.
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As Mary has quoted before– many a truth is spoken in jest.
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I don’t know. All I know is that my sense of humor, like I suspect most Odds’, is quite skewed and divergent from normal.
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Jeff, I’m convinced that to be a Democrat one has to be fundamentally dishonest. The only question is whether you include yourself in the list of people you routinely lie to.
The problem is that you cannot include people that fundamentally dishonest in any sort of trust-based society. They will break it. This is one reason why I think a second Civil War is inevitable and on some level necessary. Not desirable….just necessary.
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As you know this has long been my fear.
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Not all Democrats are dishonest, just all of their elected public officials. But then, very few of their elected public officials are democrats.
Most Democrats, however, are capable of holding two or more entirely contradictory thoughts while serving them High Tea and inviting them to stay the evening.
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Let’s go for hope. There are already discoveries about brain imaging that show that people use different part of their brains to tell the truth and to tell lies. Imagine a serious lie-detector.
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There is a difference between being dishonest and being incorrect. Based on my experience saying the vast majority of Democrats are dishonest is on par with saying Bush lied about Iraq. They think they’re being rational because everyone from their teachers to the media to the general culture tells them that they are being rational. Ours are the only voices pointing out they’re simply emoting and rationalizing. The can be salvaged, but it’s going to take time. Whether or not we have enough time until the unsalvageable complete their designs is an open question.
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Yeah. The real problem is that when reality finally does come in and smack people in the head HARD enough to get them to question the dogma they’ve been fed for so long, that’s going to get EVERYONE to some extent. (one reason I’ve paid really close attention to some of the things Sarah’s said about building a tradable hobby, or at least collecting trade goods – which is why my DVD collection has grown a lot recently).
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They are intellectually dishonest because they can’t face stuff like the fact that redistribution IS theft, etc. Most of them are dishonest with THEMSELVES though. It’s simply what they can’t face. So you show them the problem — say reverse discrimination — and they simply shut down and go back to believing the way they did.
In that sense they’re “dishonest” and I don’t know if we have the time…
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But this “the other side is wrong and must be silenced” …
… as the saying goes: The Left wants anyone who disagrees with them silenced, whereas the those who disagree with them want the Left to keep talking.
The more they have to talk, the better the chance you might get people to see what they really are.
Sadly too many people are too slow to realize just what they are pushing.
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Keep talking and for folks to hear what they say in various outlets.
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They have ears and hear not. The signs are all there. Statists are saying more and more out in the open. It’s just that their adherents are unwilling to carry those things out to their logical conclusion. And when you mention the incrementalism, they laugh and say you’re using a slippery slope argument and they’re going to ignore all of those kinds of argument.
Nothing frustrates me more than seeing someone with perfectly serviceable gray matter that just refuses to actually use it.
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I have had pretty good luck with video of folks saying stuff, and full quotes.
It won’t convert loyalists, but it can sway the “but they’re good people, they can’t be doing that” folks.
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Just on a tangent, I’ve discovered from my time playing MMO, corporate structures will evolve any time two people can make more together than they can individually.
Likewise, governmental structures will form any time it is possible for one player to directly harm another.
Anyone who’s been in a MMO guild can tell you they range from the Mom&Pop store, where everyone is laid back, times are relaxed, and everyone’s welcome, so long as they aren’t making trouble, all the way to the dress code required, be on time or you’re fired, aggressicorp.
And the governmental entities range across everything from personal charismatic despots, to direct democracy, to the city council meetings where you spend half the time wishing you could gouge your eyes out.
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where I work has recently gone from one guy who started the biz and running it to a buy out by a major international conglomerate. Yeah we dealt with a certain amount of B.S. with the one owner, but lately the Corporate B.S. is threatening to go from “Same Level, Just Different B.S.” to “Unworkable And I won’t Put Up With It.”
I’d really prefer to not start looking for work again.
It isn’t helping that 99% of my coworkers act like spoiled 8 yr olds and are now upset they are not being treated like adults.
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The same thing with writers’ groups.
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My aspie son has learned a lot about “real life” from his mmo games in just this way. Also about economics.
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I cracked up the other day, discussing economics and finance with my mother (in her fifties). She and my father are stock and real estate investors; I’m… well, some of you all have a sense of how many things I dabble in. She gave examples from their recent investments, and I gave examples from the various MMOs that I’ve sampled over the years (mostly WoW and EVE in this case). And we both learned something. Simulated/limited economies are still economies.
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Time is money. If people spend their time and attention doing something, and transact the result, whatever currency they use has the same fundamental basis (the value of their time).
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Exactly! We were actually discussing turnover rates and profit margins. The idea of pricing a product to sell, so that you can then put that money into something else that will turn additional profit. A possible greater profit is worth less to both of us than a modest profit in hand and funding a new project.
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1. If I may gild the lily (italics mine):
Every corporation will be run like a utility company.
2. Republican conspiracy? Keep repeating that Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande. The idea, if it can be called that, is to trick your SoCon base to accept incursions by people who will lower their wages or take their jobs, thereby further enriching the GOP’s corporatist backers.
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Well, that didn’t work.
In #1, I inserted “unionized” and “with high-paid sinecures for politicians and senior bureaucrats who are between government gigs”.
Sorry. Serves me right for not trying the post out with another site’s preview capability. hint…
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Oh, another thing, offered in the spirit of cold comfort being better than no comfort: In fairly short order I would expect software to become available that will make it possible for small businesses to handle the labyrinth of state taxes.
The Internet tax, if it passes, will make things like indie publishing harder. It remains to be seen if it makes it much harder or impossible. (A sensible government which had the overall national welfare as its first priority would investigate that point before considering an Internet tax in its proposed form, but…no need to continue…)
I’m not trying to be either callous or pollyannish. Your situation has my sympathy.
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The issue isn’t so much the implementation aspect. That’s a massive, though tractable, problem. It’s the fact that a small indepedent business would become subject to audits and regulations by every single political entity in the country. Want to sell guns? A Chicago bureaucrat will make it their life’s work to shut you down. Big businesses will have even more incentive to capture governments, and more opportunities, so the price will go down (THAT is why Amazon et al. are silent on this issue). Why bother out-competing or even spending the money to buy a US Congressman or 10, when you could simply buy any one of thousands of county clerks and have them sic their tax enforcement apparatus on anyone who poses a threat to your position.
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I did a little clicking around and it looks like you’re correct. It would not surprise me if the Left already has game plans to exploit the bill.
This is the sort of thing that the Stupid Party gets outmaneuvered on. When “campaign finance reform” passed under Bush, I remember the GOP congratulating itself on outfoxing those dumb Democrats and breaking their financial power. The Democrats, of course, had put language in the bill that permitted PACs and had them ready to go.
I fear that the GOP will seize the opportunity to pander to big business and wind up shooting itself in the foot.
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I don’t know. I’m not seeing any great enthusiasm for this over in the House. The way things are going now, just the fact that a bill passes the Senate makes it suspicious to a great many TEA party types.
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1. You may well be correct, but Republican politicians have been betraying me since Read My Lips Bush and I’ve gotten pavlovian about them. Bad economics, bad politics, bad social policy all in one package—how can they resist?
It’s a hopeful sign that Paul Ryan is expressing skepticism:
I’m seeing indications that it’s intended to pave the way for a financial transactions tax.
2. Amazon’s behavior in all this angers me. They grew to where they are under favorable tax conditions, and now they’re trying to change the law to stifle potential upstarts. Their stock price presumes high and sustained growth and should be very vulnerable to any threat to that growth. I buy a lot of stuff from them but would seriously consider joining a boycott. A moratorium would be better.
However, they’ve co-opted a lot of bloggers…
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Boycotts don’t work. And yes, their position pisses me off too, but to a certain extent they’d be crazy not to do what they’re doing.
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Well, I clicked around a bit and would agree that boycotts are difficult, but IMHO it goes too far to declare categorically that they don’t work.
My mention of boycotts was based on the Amazon stock price, which is in Internet bubble territory. Very vulnerable to a pinprick of reality. I compared to the price/earnings of the S&P500.
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Yeah, the incentives are all wrong. This is why the regulatory state must be eliminated, or at least massively reduced. Government regulation produces ridiculously perverse incentives. Hmm… massive perversity in a control structure… Finagle, is that you? Sancte Vidicon, ora pro nobis!
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Sarah, before you say that boycotts don’t work, I recommend you look at what just happened to Dick’s Sporting Goods (there’s a link on Bob Owens, but I won’t include it because links = eaten comments here) after they decided to stop selling Evile Black Rifles and the gun rights people stopped shopping there for everything else:
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Amazon’s behavior isn’t surprising. Their obligation is to their shareholders, not to future competitors. In fact, in a previous discussion I postulated that the reason the GOP has a reputation for being favorable to Big Business is that the last time there was a economic revolution in this country the revolutionaries co-opted one of the parties to ensure they weren’t victims of another revolution. That time it was the GOP. We’re seeing a similar dynamic today with the tech revolution, except this time it looks like the Democratic party is the one co-opted.
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1. Amazon will not meet its obligation to shareholders by ticking off customers. This customer, for one, is ticked off.
2. There’s a Milton Friedman video clip to the effect that the businessman favors a free market—for everyone but himself. For himself, it turns out that fairness/national security/economic stability/blahblahblah demand that an exception be made…
3. Fifteen years ago or so a lot of creative-class techies were libertarians. Unfortunately it’s my impression that much of that population has gone liberal with little or no effort to keep them in the conservative coalition. I’m trying not to get started…
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I’ve seen a significant number of authors pursuing self-publication successfully who have warned that Amazon is not necessarily your friend. I’ve always been somewhat resistant to that warning, simply because I’ve gotten used to demonization of any successful business (I used to live in California) and push back on instinct, but they’re right. Amazon is a useful tool, to be abandoned as soon as it stops being helpful. This nonsense would make it impossible to leave. Do not want!
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I’m often just astonished at the bizarre things that Democrats believe about Republicans. Republicans have their own bumper sticker ideological slogans, but they simply don’t have such an immense gap between their perception of what Democrats believe/advocate and what Democrats actually believe/advocate. Democrats just have no ability to even roughly describe their opponents’ agenda correctly, and evidently are quite proud of that failure.
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Democrats don’t want to describe Republican agendas _correctly_. They want to describe them in as bad a light as they can get away with.
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Indeed. But they literally can’t, if they wanted to. They truly don’t know what the other side’s arguments are, in even outline form. Its really not healthy to not understand one’s political opponents – its why there is so much personal demonization, a substitute for having to construct and defend arguments.
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It’s because the media, the schools, etc never present credible opposing points. (Let’s face it, they can’t because “give everyone everything they want” is not a credible position. Or “grow government so we we’ll be freer.”) So… the poor sobs never hear it.
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A very few actually do which is why here in the South there has been a spate of Democrat office holders jumping ship and declaring as either Republican or Independent. Some of that is out of real conviction, and as much if not more is simply chasing the change in voter loyalties.
As for the majority of beliefs, wasn’t it one of Alinsky’s tactics to create a strawman, declare it to be your opposition’s primary position, then attack it. Since you created it in the first place you’ve already built in targets that are easy to snipe at.
Just a few that come to mind:
– The war on women
– Republicans are all old white men (in spite of photos and videos of rallies and conventions that prove the opposite)
– Republicans want dirty air and water
– The entire grandma over the cliff business
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It’s classic propaganda, actually.
Want to make people hate libertarians? Make a story where everyone who calls themselves a libertarian is a slave holder who abuses children, and stuffs people they don’t like through wood chippers.
Most reasonable people hate slavery, child abuse, and stuffing people through wood chippers, so if those stories are the majority of their contact with libertarians, they will hate libertarians too.
And to make very sure of it, have the climactic triumph be the hero feeding the evil libertarian through their own wood chipper to the roars of the cheering crowd, and you’ll make very sure that the real libertarians will be a mite concerned that they’ll get their own heads fed through the chipper if they dare to speak up.
The sad thing about it is, sometimes there is actually moving and compelling story burred underneath all of the propaganda.
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They can and they could construct and defend arguments except you’re just a big poopyhead.
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Interesting. I just wandered over to Ars Technica (they had a meme that was called “internet argument” of a very young girl and a donkey yelling at each other –massively cute)
The stub of an article was about how incomplete knowledge of a complex subject tends to make the arguer more extreme in position.
They hypothesized that they figured people with extreme positions know less about subjects than the think, so they asked people with extreme positions to explain the issue. This put an end to the subjects’ belief that they understood the argument deeply and they tended to moderate their positions. Alternately, just asking subjects to explain why the like their position kept the illusion that they understood the subject fully intact. Conclusion was that mistakenly believing that they understand the underlying policies contributes to polarization.
Now, since my hidden identity is one of the True Secret Masters of the Obvious, I am glad that has been proved. But it does suggest a technique for discussing things.
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As a counter to the claim that extremists do not understand the subject, I give you Michael Z Williamson. Very knowledgeable of both the legal and cultural aspects of the gun rights argument, and both self-declaredly (is so a word) and objectively an extremist on the issue. There are other counter-examples, of course, but he’s the first that comes to mind for me.
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Is it extremist to expect the Constitution to mean what it says?
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I don’t think so, but I am also an extremist.
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I’m not saying that you can’t be passionate and well informed. What the article was saying was that when an individual is asked to explain his extreme position and they can’t, he tends to moderate his positions in a way he does not when just had to defend it. I’m sure MZW can defend his position right down to case law.
This is also a tactic for getting people to back down in the face of “show me the fact” arguments that progs seem to win by concentrated stupidity and twisting away from actual rebuttals.
I have concluded that it is important to know what I believe and why I believe it, and the facts in the belief – That way I won’t mumble away from an answer the next time I get asked, “don’t you agree that it was a brilliant tactic in painting Romney as a bloated, racist plutocrat who wears funny underpants to win an election?” (which was pretty much the gist of a discussion I got to participate in at a party. I went and talked to the geologists after that since punching people I went to grade school with was not optimal)
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It depends on the meaning of is, doesn’t it?
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Democrats just have no ability to even roughly describe their opponents’ agenda correctly, and evidently are quite proud of that failure.
The phrase I bolded is completely consistent with Zombie’s PJM review of leftist braintruster George Lakoff’s The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic, in particular with the section headed “Communication Breakdown”.
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I simply didn’t feel up to explaining clear political lines, to people who were so blinkered as to think that the GOP had a “secret plan” (really, all of the GOP? Including your local level?
I have a little red book (…not like that) that’s supposed to be a guide to the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Haven’t gotten around to reading it yet, bought it years ago because it made me laugh.
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Stop calling me vast! I’ve been losing weight!
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Its really the Half Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
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Thank you! (My son says there is a vast right wing conspiracy. He calls her “mom” :-P )
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Unfortunately they lose the “She Who Must Be Obeyed” at or before puberty. Or is that at the point when you can still pick them up and physically restrain they happy little butts? I forget, it’s been so long ago. Was nice for a while. I could just sic their mom on them when they got too rambunctious.
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That’s the point where the parentals IQ drops by half each year past 12. It doesn’t get restored until they’re out on their own dealing with their own bills.
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Brainstorming, Sarah.
Maybe we all need to abandon the GOP. Then the “Fiscal conservative-social liberals” who used to be Republican, can co-opt the “Social liberal-fiscal responsibility” types from the Democrats into a intra-party faction. The Religious Right can join forces with the Catholic Hispanics to form another. The Greens are going to eat their leaders if the anti-warming trend continues. With luck, the factional in-fighting could result in a split into three parties.
I just wonder how much central control there is, and how ruthless they are prepared to be.
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There is a lot and again a lot. And is there a fiscal responsibility wing in the dems? I don’t think so.
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Not for quite a long time.
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Sure there is.
They’re called “Socially Liberal Republicans,” and they spend a lot of time complaining about how the Dem party left them, and trying to pull the Republicans further left on social issues.
It’s kind of like the red state/blue state effect where folks leave as soon as their policies start to have nasty effects, and infest another red state.
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They used to be called Reaganites, now the Dems think they are ultraconservative.
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That’s because the dems have gone ultra Stalinist. (And I’m not going to apologize. I’m giving you the word with no bark on it.)
BTW highjacking this comment to say: I have put up stuff in subscriber space. Stuff! Strange stuff…
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Appreciated. Besides can you highjack something you already own?
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Or Nazis, as rhetoric requires.
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Again, there is no way you will return to the Constitutional America the owner and readers of this website claim you want unless the so-called “social conservative” values are brought back as the societal / cultural norm. Sex out of wedlock leads by about three steps to our current welfare system. The “Protestant work ethic” was very much a Calvinist worldview.
That means that you are going to have to maybe not criminalize adultery / homosexuality, drug use, etc. but certainly remove any and all laws and regulations that prevent those “behaviors” from being stigmatized. For example, drug use and alcoholism will no longer be classified as “disabilities” that require addicts to be hired under ADA.
I could continue providing examples of what I mean but I’ve got to go to work.
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Libertarianism also needs a strong family structure to form any sort of society.
But I see a lot of fictional societies, and worse, proposed political solutions, that were obviously written by people who don’t know where babies come from.
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The problem Mary is that babies no longer come from where they once did. You can’t put that genie back in the bottle. Won’t happen. It’s not how life works. Not unless you reduce us to North Korean poverty level.
I’m not saying the church is wrong in its stand on contraception — there are several reasons it might be right. Both the woman’s health and the fact that it changes women’s taste in men are causes for concern. But that’s neither here nor there. I’m saying that even Catholics ignore it, even in Catholic countries like Portugal. People go on the pill as a matter of course at puberty.
If you don’t think that changes the entire game, you’re wrong.
First, what is the distinction between homosexuality and heterosexuality if both are engaged in mostly for pleasure? Second what is the distinction between homosexuality and heterosexuality when babies have to be made in laboratories (and given to rising maternal age more and more babies do.)
Third — what is to stop people from thinking of babies as something you buy, which does undermine the dignity of the human life?
Those are things that need to be addressed and can’t just be swept away by stomping your foot and saying “take it back.”
You can’t uninvent the pill. You can’t undissiminate it. Yes, a society of devout Catholics might decide not to make use of it, but let’s not take bets, okay? Portugal was as close to a society of devout Catholics as you can get when I was growing up, and people still used it. (Though mostly they used abortion in the village, because it was less likely to be talked about.)
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Then a libertarian society is impossible.
But evolution is putting the genie back in the bottle. It is selecting as hard and as fast against using contraception as it has ever selected for anything
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Actually a libertarian society is not impossible as long as we don’t subsidize failure and don’t subsidize the killing of the unborn either (yes, we do.) If people are taught they will take the consequences of their mistakes, a libertarian society is INEVITABLE.
I will remind you those great religious moralists who first landed in America created not libertarianism but communism and starvation.
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IF
That’s what the strong family structure is needed for. If they are allowed to grow up without it, hitting reality in adulthood may produce riots and crime rather than a libertarian society.
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No. First, you are dealing with completely different types of society: Rural versus urban. It does make a huge difference in the size and cohesion of families, women working, the necessity for prolonged education, etc.
Second, you’re forgetting tech. The pill is a game changer. You can’t change it back. It won’t happen. A society in which sex can be engaged in without consequences (most of the time) is not the same as a society that didn’t have that tech. And the pill is used even in Catholic countries like Portugal. Look, you know too much about the past to fool yourself. Pre marital and extra marital sex always happened. It might have always happened in about this level. You can’t wish it away. Humans are humans, not angels. Given rising age at marriage — part of that need for education, women working, etc — pre marital sex would be rampant even if we didn’t have the pill. It would be strongly disapproved of, though, because without the pill we’d be filling orphanages, kind of like Russia did. (Proof that when you remove the contraceptives, you don’t remove the sin.)
As for homosexuality — they were highly disruptive (particularly male homosexuals) in a rural society that had no contraception. A lot of men will accept consequence-free sex from another man over potentially getting a girl pregnant. That is a thing of the past. Most heterosexual and sane men aren’t tempted. And in a society where birth is postponed till mostly babies come from a laboratory, the difference between hetero and homosexual couples is becoming vanishingly small. It will get more so, because biology is now hitting the slope that mechanics hit next century. It’s about to explode. Reproductive biology is part of that.
Third — you’re putting the cart in front of the horse. Yes, I know Calvinists are very fond of claiming the work ethic. BS. The work ethic is bourgeois and a lot of the people who had it were not even strong believers (and were mostly French to begin with.)
The work ethic, paying your own way, cleaning up your own messes, looking after your own were the way the bourgeoisie set itself apart from the decayed and decadent nobility. I.e. they’d seen what didn’t work, they did the opposite. (My generation did this with the generation before us.)
That work ethic is being undermined not by the lack of a religion — much less a UNIFIED and law-coded religion, which would be needed to make those universal values — but by the state itself.
Women would NATURALLY prefer to live with the father of their children, but the state pays them to throw him out. Men would naturally prefer to marry but the idea, of having everything stripped from them in case of divorce makes them “players.”
Most out of wedlock babies aren’t accidents. They’re PLANNED because the state pays for them.
Remove the welfare state. Allow people to suffer the consequences of their actions. Put TANSTAAFL in the school books. Teach why not.
The rest will fall into place. Possibly including eventually the restriction of pre-marital sex. There are ways it would become unprofitable and early marriage more profitable — relating to apprenticeships and families as economic units — but that is an outside chance.
As things stand right now, the chances of all of those changing because you change the laws are ZERO. You just criminalize conduct that will happen anyway. Same for disapproval. If you want people to double-think, fine, but that’s the best you’ll get.
To continue insisting on it FIRST having “morals” back before dismantling the structures causing the pathology is as bad as the libertarians who don’t vote for anyone because they want “no government”.
And btw, even a 100% conversion of everyone to the most demanding religion you can find won’t change this. Even if it were possible. You know that better than I do, since you know what happened when Europe was converted by fiat, and how little it changed the reality on the ground.
Short of a tyrannical religion like Islam, which also destroys things like women’s ability to work outside the home and our ability to hold tech… it won’t happen.
Meanwhile, I tell you what — You give me gay marriage, and I give you the removal of no-fault-divorce. Across the board. That alone will do more to fix the mess than a million laws on “thou shalt not” which will get ignored.
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Removing the welfare state is a reversion to social conservative norms.
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No. It’s a reversal to putting the responsibility on the individual and allowing society to FIND norms that will work with that now.
Again, I don’t care if some things would have been better never discovered (and you don’t know that either, not having an alternate time stream to examine) the genii won’t go back in the bottle. Not unless you favor draconian dictatorship to bring it about.
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As it happens, I di favor draconian dictatorship to bring it about. But I don’t want the job and don’t trust anybody who would, so there you go.
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Sigh. do, not di. Stoopid fleeboard is malfluctioning again.
Beloved Spouse said butter wouldn’t suit the works!
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To quote Alice in Wonderland, “But it was the *best* butter.”
On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 5:06 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:
> ** > RES commented: “Sigh. do, not di. Stoopid fleeboard is malfluctioning > again. Beloved Spouse said butter wouldn’t suit the works!” >
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You. ARE. A. BAD WOMAN! (Now there’s tea on MY keyboard.)
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Yes, butter she had left that one alone. (runs)
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Sarah, read my second paragraph. I agree that we probably can’t make those things illegal, but right now we’re seeing “anti-bullying” and “hate speech” laws used to prevent even arguing that these behaviors are undesirable. That we’ve got to remove; likewise the laws you mention that incentivize undesirable behavior.
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Oh, yes. But I’ve said that. Actually what I’d like to do to the public school system can’t be said, and most of it starts there.
Hate speech laws are stupid as well as all the rest. The bullies quickly learn to use them to bully. No, I’m quite serious.
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Of course they do; what bullies don’t figure out how to use all power around to leverage for their purpose?
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Done and Done.
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The other is a fantasy for people who haven’t yet recovered from the sixties.
For the last several years, I’ve been slowly noticing that MOST of the really dumb stuff in school was a result of the teachers–or whoever set it up– being from the 60s. Even TV shows act like there’s been a strong social baseline in the last two generations or so, and reading that book of old stories Mercedes Lackey wrote in the 80s… well, lets just say that I’m glad my crazy uncle talks a lot, so I have some kind of idea….
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I’ve always been of a mind that far too many baby boomers hit senior year at some liberal arts college and faced that oh shit moment: how am I going to support myself after I graduate, looked at their credits and realized that all they were qualified for was flipping burgers or teaching.
So what we got was the first generation of teachers who didn’t really have a calling. Not all certainly, but sufficient to infect the population with a great deal of discontent and resentment. And inevitably the worst failures at teaching often managed to move into school administration.
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My dad was a registered Democrat (in Louisiana, in the ’40s through about the ’80s, being anything else working for a railroad was BAD, trust me). He hated FDR with a passion. He taught me to ‘register any way you want. When you get in the ballot box, nobody knows how you vote.’ I know the Democrats are working hard to change that, with electronic voting. I hope they fail.
If anyone wants to understand what one-party rule does to a community, look no farther than Detroit. It’s now in receivership, and being run by the state because the graft and corruption is so endemic in the city there’s no one that can be trusted to do ANYTHING. Detroit in the ’50s was a bustling, growing, vibrant town. Today it’s a disaster. It’s been “governed” by Democrats since the ’50s.
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Detroit. Chicago. California.
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Memphis and New Orleans.
I lived in Memphis, and it is working hard to overthrow Chicago as the most corrupt city in the USA.
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Palm Beach, Florida is coming up hard on the outside rail.
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2013/05/05/#006935
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About the Internet sales tax. (And at the risk of doing a very good impression of a broken record.) (Is that a metaphor that resonates any more?) It bears repeating that Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution forbids any taxes on interstate commerce.
Doesn’t specify state or federal, just says “no tax shall be laid”. Doesn’t say a thing about whether the seller has a “nexus” in a state. It follows the goods.
Statists will argue that this denies government revenue it badly needs. The responses may range from “And your point is…?” through “Feature, not a bug.” to “Do without. It’ll be good for you.”
This bears repeating and bears being borne time and again to the attention of our congresscritters. Perhaps the trope can even rise above the background noise and gain some traction.
The Heritage Foundation has done some spadework on this, but it hasn’t gotten a lot of attention. Make some noise, people!
M
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I think they’re attempting to stop what remains of economic activity.
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I don’t know. It says “No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.” It doesn’t say anything about articles imported from any state. Thankfully I’m not enough of a lawyer to know if there is a difference in my distinction. I am enough of a sea-lawyer to argue either direction.
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A tax on the import is what states have now (at least in CA, I presume other are similar). The importer is required to pay the sales tax as a ‘use tax’ for out of state purchases. A tax on the exporter is what they want, ’cause it’s easier to harass a business than to harass it’s 500 customers. Besides, the customers might vote.
In any case, this might be a distinction without a difference. If there is a limitation on restricting interstate trade by imposing taxes, it should not matter which end of the transfer you attack.
Myself, I’m looking at what I can do to become a mail-order business with an internet presence, and sidestep this whole corrupt mess. Might be as easy as no paypal and use ‘card not present’ transactions, instead of immediate transactions at checkout.
Would be a hoot to offer the other transaction method with the extra tax kicker & an extra handling charge, let the customer see what their state wants to cost them, and let them pick which way they want to pay.
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The Supreme Court ruled multiple times that states and localities could not assess sales taxes on items purchased (by mail order, in those times) by an out-of-state buyer. These rulings were made based on the “commerce clause” in the Constitution.
What Congress proposes is to directly negate the commerce clause, but without amending the Constitution. Given the current composition of the Supreme Court, an unconstitutional law such as this could be upheld.
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Actually, the Supreme Court rulings regard the ability of the states to compel a business with no nexus to that state to collect taxes. It did not prevent the state from assessing a tax, nor does it prevent Congress from assessing a tax, or from requiring out of state businesses from paying state taxes.
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I have two words for anyone citing precedent: Dredd Scott.
Because the Supreme Court says something is so doesn’t make it so — not by ten decimal places.
Case law cannot, by definition, trump the statute and the statute cannot, by definition, trump the Constitution. This is what is meant by the objection to “legislating from the bench.”
The issue, then is to make the correct position stick. Me, I’m not sufficient genius to figure that out. But I do know one thing: if enough people make enough noise about it, ignoring the question becomes less tenable politically, and eventually, things will have to change.
That’s how you make things happen in a small-d democratic society. Slowly. By moving majority opinion one voter at a time until you have a critical mass of public opinion on the subject.
We can all get impatient and stamp our feet. God knows I do it often enough myself. But the gradual way is the only way, absent violent revolution.
Which is one reason why I say,”Every bad political idea ever was born of impatience.”
M
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“I have to sort of assume that these people posting this once took a look at a job where ties were required and ever since have been afraid of “the Corporation” coming after them and forcing them to tie on neckwear. Nothing else makes sense.”
You forgot to mention that they tied the tie too tight, and cut off circulation to their brains for too long.
OBTW, thanks for the shout out to Rational Anarchists.
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As to the secret Republican agenda – obviously if they were behaving as if they had a clue what they were doing, it would reveal their secret agenda! We can’t have that. As someone I know once said about the Army – “If we have no idea what we’re doing, then the enemy won’t either.”
I wonder if we’ll even have big eeevil corporations in 20 years. It seems like full time employment will become de-facto illegal. One way around this might be everyone becoming an independent contractor and consulting each other. Nope – no permanent workplace association to see here – just a random network of contractors contracting each other, with a semi-shared pool of equipment. Instead of uppity mid-sized companies, the IRS can chase around real secret conspiracies to get stuff done.
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As someone I know once said about the Army – “If we have no idea what we’re doing, then the enemy won’t either.”
I’ve been assured that the quote from some Russian expert where he rants about how knowing what our SOP and tactical books say is flipping useless, because there’s a good chance we haven’t read them, is true and probably happened several times.
It was by the same guy who assured me that the “On Full Force” radar error was true.
I kinda laughed it off, until someone submitted the error at my first duty station, and tried to get the guy who called him a moron kicked out of the Navy….
(“Radar does not function in O. F. F. position.” Commander Chubbs– yes, really, and he was– basically said that you couldn’t write someone up for stating the obvious.)
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“basically said that you couldn’t write someone up for stating the obvious.”
ROFL
Would the obvious be that the radar doesn’t work in the OFF position, or that the person filing the report about that is a moron?
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The second one, thankfully.
You may be horrified how often that happens, though….
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I’ve been assured that the quote from some Russian expert where he rants about how knowing what our SOP and tactical books say is flipping useless, because there’s a good chance we haven’t read them, is true and probably happened several times.
Doesn’t surprise me. Other than as an insomnia cure, who can read most of that stuff anyway? It’s our super-secret weapon against the Russians – we’ll bore them to death with vital doctrine information! :-P
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“One of the serious problems in planning against American doctrine that the Americans do not read their manuals nor do they feel any obligations to follow their doctrine.”
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yep. THAT’s where I think we’re headed.
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I’ve never understood why the person trying to sell me something (most corporations that I deal with) is a mortal threat to my life and liberty, but the unhinged fascist calling people who think like me secret terrorists and advocating shipping me off to camp using armed agents of the state was supposed to be on ‘my side’.
I also never understood why a democratic process where a majority imposes it’s will on everyone by force of arms was supposed to be morally superior to the average supermarket/mall/Walmart where everyone can go and buy what they want without interfering with the wishes of anyone else, and people generally associate with the intent to provide each other with things they want.
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Me neither.
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Even odder, the entity insisting you have to buy something, want it or not, need it or not, able to use it or not, is supposedly expanding your “liberty”.
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So you are talking about a confederate apologist complaining about Lincoln’s ties to the Railroads?
(Yes, yes, I know, I know, the modern flavor of Democrat often doesn’t identify that way.)
I’m actually deeply and fundamentally opposed to the existence of the American Democratic Party, in all of its federal, state and local branches. I’m an Anti-Democrat who registers and votes Republican*, because it is an expedient way to strive against the Democratic Party in word and deed, which is the best I can do, as I am unwilling to go further.
There is no way to end the Demcoratic Party that is both feasible and plausible. Legal options, those that would not destroy the very things that make opposing the Democratic Party worthwhile, are as above, seeking to thwart it by what I do and say, and blindly wishing. I may do the latter, but perhaps consider it a little obscene, and might rather not do it in public.
Disregarding the practical issues in implementation, we should not do it for the same reason we should not proscribe the American Nazi Party when it isn’t breaking the law. Laws must also protect the evil and the crazy to do any good. Once you start picking and choosing based on personalities, you get the rule of men, not rule of law.
Lastly are the system issues**. Touching on what Sarah said, if the whole Democratic Party were to disappear, like a Rapture, and the GOP didn’t immediately split, the GOP would become the Democratic Party. Much of what shaped the character of the Democratic Party seems to have been those times and places where it was able to arrange for a lack of competition. Other political parties without competition, like Ba’ath, various communist parties, a certain german worker’s party, often end up traveling the same paths.
As it is, the GOP has been contaminated by the Democratic Party anyway. It isn’t clear that is has avoided the same rot. Even if the Democratic Party dissolved, and a new party was formed, able to counterbalance the GOP, it is likely that the new party would pick up enough transfers from the Democratic Party in the form of adherents and political technicians to develop some of the same problems.
Note that I also consider myself an enemy of the Greens and the Libertarians.
As for corporations, turning them into governments entirely defeats the point. A corporation is created, under a legal structure and court system run by a government or society, in order to be a more efficient business structure. Megacorps, as per the most outlandish descriptions, are bullshit on the order of unicorns. Governments (or societies) have overheads that just cannot be cost effective for a business, and governments often make very terrible business entities.
From another end, much of the upper and middle management of large businesses is excessively leftist or pro-Democrat. Furthermore, the standard structure of many large businesses is poorly suited for government. Yes, there are some people out of private enterprise who perform very well in government, but they do not bring the whole matrix with them.
As for the Right, or the GOP having a secret consensus, not to my knowledge. Now, some of it may look secret, if one just won’t /see/ certain things. If one wouldn’t hear my own claims as to white supremacist tendencies in the Democratic Party, then much of my own political decisions and motivations must seem quite opaque. If there were a coherent, cohesive inner group for either conservatives or the GOP, it would have to be very closely held, and I’ve little to indicate any chance of a significant membership overlap with any group of any significance.
The Democrats pulled off what they did, during segregation and the others, not because they had one centrally organized conspiracy, with a secret inner circle, but because there was a consensus of little conspiracies. People on the inside of those generally could be implicated in what was being carried out, and they couldn’t, necessarily finger those outside their own group. A group outta Fort Smith might not have had real close ties to Little Rock factions. Frankly, they weren’t really good at controlling information flow past the point of plausible deniability, and avoiding indictments and convictions. It was more or less an open secret.
Note that I use conspiracy in the case of the Democratic Party, and do not for the GOP. I understand conspiracy as being a criminal act. Strictly speaking, I do not know that having a secret inner group in a political party is necessarily illegal. A conspiracy would require secret collusion to commit actual criminal acts. In the case of Democratic involvement in Segregation, the Night Rides with multiple riders, and the lynchings in well traveled public areas during business hours where many people ‘did not see anything’ both speak to conspiracy.
As for current events, I think one would have to be lazy, naive, or politically interested not be able to find evidence of dubious political collusions/conspiracies screwing up and showing what really happened. That said, I also think that the Democratic Party, effectively, has the terrorist and large criminal conspiracy portfolios. If only for temperament and inheritance of past decisions.
My sense of charity is suggesting that she may just have made some extremely unfortunate choices in summarizing her position, as far as anything other than preaching to the choir is concerned. The crueler formulation, from my perspective, is that she would rather her (perhaps) innumerate and scientifically innumerate self, by way of government intervention, be involved in questions of industrial energy management, to having it being a matter of a privately salaried engineer presenting the case to management, with numbers.
Still not writing or keeping track of things real work. Tied up with things and least past Tuesday.
*Actually, in recent years, events and policies have influenced me to identify more strongly with the GOP. However, if it weren’t for my enduring enmity against the Democratic Party for its failure to truely apologize for Segregation, the Civil War, Slavery, et al., I still might consider voting for a sound Democrat running against an unsound Republican. It does appear that most Democrats wind up being objectively pro nutjob Democrat, but that may just be me.
**I actually favor a two party system, and only a two party system. There was an argument I read, based on signal to noise ratio issues, IIRC, that suggested a system of two major parties allowed for more freedom of political speech.
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The problem with “voting for a sound Democrat running against an unsound Republican” is that, ultimately, you can only be confident of one vote from your elected representative: the vote to organize the chamber.
You can elect a Democrat who is ideologically Ronald Reagan’s (or Barry Goldwater’s or Bob Taft’s) soul-mate, but that first day of the newly elected body that Democrat will vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker — or, if in the Senate, for Harry Reid as Majority Leader. Their vote will also go to choose the heads of the various committees, such as Maxine Waters to chair the House banking committee.
As the Bart Stupak and Blue Dogs learned in the 110th Congress, you can run as pro-life and fiscally responsible until the cows come home — but when they do come home you will be Nancy P’s and Barry O’s b-tch.
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Liberals fear private power more than they do the government. Libertarians fear the government more than they do private power. Conservatives span the spectrum. I don’t think there is any one issue that unites conservatives except a distaste for liberals. It is tribal politics. To toot my own horn, my name links to an article I wrote about tribal politics, and why libertarians always fail politically.
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No, it’s not tribal. I want less government, but I’m willing to do business with people who don’t want to reduce government as much as I want it, provided they do it.
It is NOT social positioning. It is what I believe.
What libertarians are you talking about? Small l or large? If large, yeah — it’s the purity thing. Small l …. time, time, time (and tech) is on our side, yes it is.
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My argument is that the actions of Democrat and Republican politicians can’t be predicted based on any particular ideal, except to club the other side. Carter liberated trucking, Nixon imposed wage controls. Libertarians are the odd man out.
As for time being on our side, I hope so. Certainly some things are flowing our way. Technology continues to offer greater freedom. But…political trends this last decade have been seriously negative. Both Bushes were big-government conservatives, so no relief there.
There are too many big-government Republicans in Washington for much to occur that any libertarian would view positively.
Data collection, for example. If the government can identify you, and link you to particular actions, it can target you. Or, the internet sales tax. This is nothing more than an attempt to bring a dangerous freedom under control.
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Confusing Democrat for Liberal (and vice versa) and Republican for Conservative can be an error even in short time frames. For discussion of political ideology over generations it is an egregious error.
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I don’t think there is any one issue that unites conservatives except a distaste for liberals.
That’s an odd way to look at it– a “conservative” is someone that objects to something being “fixed.”
Conservatives are united in that they’ve been targeted and resisted.
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‘Conservatives are united in that they’ve been targeted and resisted.’
Exactly my point.
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That isn’t “distaste for liberals” or “tribalism.”
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Okay, call it a response to tribal behavior on the left. But what unites social conservatives, Chamber of Commerce conservatives, Cold War conservatives, and all the other divisions, if it isn’t opposition to the Democrats? And what unites feminists and Hispanics and Blacks and college professors? Nothing, really. They share very few values in common.
Maybe I am just being dense and not following your argument.
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In our case? We ALL want smaller government. In their case? They all bought into the myth that if you destroy society perfect communism will arise. There. Solved it for you.
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Easy-peasy!
Okay, so I already knew why I am libertarian.
But I have always wondered what made the average, man-on-the-street vote for people who (pretty obviously to me anyway,) wanted to hurt them.
Most of these people have no ideological commitment to communism. As near as I can tell, they vote left because they think ‘the man’ is out to get them. Or, many vote left because that fills their pocketbooks. Not just the very poor, also college professors, scientists and the like. These people are NOT communists. Just opportunists, and it makes them feel better about themselves if they can identify an evil enemy to blame their problems on.
There are plenty of communists out there, but the communists are too small in numbers to win any kind of major election.
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Actually a lot of them ARE communists and don’t know it. Every feminist who bought into the myth of the perfect communitarian female-led past. Every person who believes the way businessmen succeed is through lying and that government is “public service”. These things have seeped into public education in the last few decades and tons of people believe it without realizing they’re communism.
By creating classes and divisions and offering to protect one “minority” from the others (at the ultimate analysis, we’re all minorities) and by convincing them that everyone is out to get them except government, they get MOST people who feel powerless.
BTW part of the reason the man on the street votes for people who wish to hurt them is that the journalists, who think themselves “enlightened” and who are “working for social justice” LIE to them about what causes their troubles. For instance, did you know the economy was SO bad that Obama just can’t seem to fix it? Yeah…
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“the communists are too small in numbers to win any kind of major election.”
Look up Bernie Sanders. Look up the House socialist caucus.
Do not mistake the number of communist voters for the number of communist votes.
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But what unites social conservatives, Chamber of Commerce conservatives, Cold War conservatives, and all the other divisions, if it isn’t opposition to the Democrats?
Basic principles. For starters, none of those groups you list are mutually exclusive.
Liberals are united by wanting to change something, generally– a “shared enemy.”
They share very few values in common.
Maybe I am just being dense and not following your argument.
I’m not so much making an argument as showing where your claims don’t fit.
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I believe he is confusing cause and effect, or rather confusing the two effects of a cause as a cause and effect. (and if that sentence isn’t confusing I don’t know what is)
cause=being targeted by liberals
effect #1=uniting and resisting
effect#2=distaste for liberals
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I think we are talking about two different things. Humans are tribal, and will do illogical things if the tribe asks it of us. Like, feminists supporting a rapist president. They gave up what they claimed was their core value, in order to remain inside their tribe. The ‘distaste for …’ is part of the tribal feeling. It is part of what unites a group.
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Circular reasoning– the action is tribal because people are tribal so these groups are tribal.
It makes sense from a tactical perspective– it also makes sense if you’ve paid attention to what feminists actually do, vs what they claim.
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:-) Yep, nicely circular, put that way.
Sure, it is a tactical advantage, for feminists to back-scratch a rapist president whom they know will sign their preferred bills once they come along. Sort of makes my point, a Democrat will put up with ANYTHING his Democrat allies do, and fight against very nearly anything a Republican suggests. No logic need be involved beyond partisan, read tribal, politics.
This is fun, but I have to stop now. Bedtime, and work tomorrow. Thanks everyone!
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…If making yourself look silly is “fun,” good for you; just look like someone trying to get folks to dance around after them, and leaving when it doesn’t get the desired result.
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I am sorry if it seemed that way. It was midnight, and I did have to get to sleep, up early and to work. In my article I am trying to explain why libertarians have not made headway politically in the US. I am not trying to expalin all possible political behavior. It is just as silly to try to explain everything the left does by crying ‘communism!’ Both left and right do plenty of things for reasons other than ideology. Cronyism, payoffs, friendship, pleasing particular voting blocks. None of this can be called communism, unles you are using a definition of communism so wide as to be useless. My term, tribalism, explains some political behavior, but not all. Communist ideology explains a lot, but not everything by far. When you say you are showing where my claims don’t fit…well fine. There is a lot of complexity in the politics of a country as large as the US. No one theory can explain everything.
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Libertarians haven’t made headway because, while the theory is elegant, it gets screwed up by contact with people— especially people who object to their “allies” jumping ship on the supposed big issue we’re all working together on.
You really did sound like one of those college kids that thinks they sound smarter by trying to drag folks in circles.
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IMO Libertarians “fail” for at least three reasons.
One, too many times their “theories” fail to match reality. One of the reasons I don’t “mind” Sarah’s version of libertarianism is that her version is more based in reality. She has some positions that I don’t agree with but that’s “par for the course” in the real world.
Two, too many libertarians “demand” their “dream world” to happen now. So when they “ally” with non-libertarians and don’t get what they want *right now*, they go away in a huff.
Three, too many libertarians have “kook ball” ideas and expect “allies” to bow to their ideas as a condition of libertarians helping their would be allies.
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Your model bugs me a couple of ways. One is that you seem to assume that the flavor of the political faction is enough to create the faction. The liberal/leftist faction did not create the Democratic Party, nor did it make it successful. It might actually be the reverse. That the Democratic Party created the current leftist demographic by replacing the white supremacists with leftists. (So, some of these 25% liberals would be those who don’t really have political convictions, but do have loyalties to a political party.)
Secondly, we might not have entirely run out of those who grew up on stories from those for whom the Civil War was a living memory. We do have those who grew up on stories from those for whom the post Civil War segregation murders were a living memory.
Both the Democratic Party and the Republican party have things to say about such things as Reconstruction and Segregation. They have, by way of calling on interpretations of history, narratives to tell about how they may react to future such events.
How can I even believe that the Libertarian Party could be effective enough political force to have anything to offer me in such cases? Will they fight with me against my enemies? Will they do anything to keep me from being murdered?
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Yep, I agree, the 25% includes those without political ideals beyond loyalty to the tribe.
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“Drugs are a great way to keep the restless and unemployed young quiet while you do whatever the heck you want.”
See CoDominium and borloi.
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