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Latest Articles: politics and politicians
Libertarians’ reality problem: How an estrangement from history yields abject failure
Post Date: 2018-07-17 03:52:33 by Gatlin
2 Comments
It has long been customary to divide the Republican Party into three “camps”: big business or “Wall Street” Republicans, the religious right and neoconservatives or “national security” Republicans. The third group, it must be admitted, somewhat unsteadily combines neoconservatives proper (such as William Kristol) with old- fashioned defense hawks (such as Donald Rumsfeld), but perhaps this is the Republican “big tent” we keep hearing about. In any case, this neat three-part logic was roiled by two events in 2008: the “Great Recession” and the election of Barack Obama as president. The latter’s decision to respond to the crisis with a ...
The fundamental contradiction of libertarianism
Post Date: 2018-07-16 03:02:26 by Gatlin
1 Comments
I just read an extremely thoughtful essay by Chris Bertram, Corey Robin and Alex Gourevitch over at crookedtimber.org. It is a must for anyone seriously interested in discussing libertarianism and its logic. While Bertram and colleagues largely take on a new group that — apparently without trace of irony — calls itself “Bleeding Heart Libertarians,” many of the points they make can be applied to a broader analysis of libertarianism. As is well known, the core idea of libertarian philosophy is the preservation of the maximum amount of freedom possible. Though the concept seems, in practice, to be limited to the freedom of employers, we will give the libertarian the ...
Adam Smith to Richard Spencer: Why Libertarians turn to the Alt-Right
Post Date: 2018-07-15 12:24:24 by Gatlin
1 Comments
If you’ve paid attention to politics on the internet as long as I have, you might have noticed a worrying and confusing trend: traditionally libertarian figures transitioning into alt-right supporters. I’ve followed the ‘classical liberal’ faction of the internet since about 2014, the year I started becoming interested in politics. I was watching Christopher Cantwell before he became known as the ‘crying Nazi’, when his chant was ‘taxation is theft’, not ‘Jews will not replace us’. I remember Stefan Molyneux when he was debating whether we should have a government, not whether government should be used to promote eugenics.This fascinating ...
Libertarians’ reality problem: How an estrangement from history yields abject failure
Post Date: 2018-07-15 12:04:42 by Gatlin
0 Comments
It has long been customary to divide the Republican Party into three “camps”: big business or “Wall Street” Republicans, the religious right and neoconservatives or “national security” Republicans. The third group, it must be admitted, somewhat unsteadily combines neoconservatives proper (such as William Kristol) with old- fashioned defense hawks (such as Donald Rumsfeld), but perhaps this is the Republican “big tent” we keep hearing about. In any case, this neat three-part logic was roiled by two events in 2008: the “Great Recession” and the election of Barack Obama as president. The latter’s decision to respond to the crisis with a ...
Why Internet Libertarians are becoming Fascists
Post Date: 2018-07-15 04:32:29 by Gatlin
6 Comments
If you grew up in middle-class white America in the 21st century, chances are you know some “Internet Libertarians”. The type, usually a somewhat socially maladjusted young man, who spends a lot of time playing video games and on youtube. For most of their life they’re apolitical, or maybe have a vague sympathy for Ron Paul. Or maybe they have a cynical view of politics from watching South Park. One day they stumble onto a Sargon of Assad or Stephen Molyneux video, and it speaks to them. Hell, maybe you are one, or were one. But over the past few years, you’ve probably noticed that these people drifted in another direction, away from atheism and libertarianism and ...
Libertarians Are Insane
Post Date: 2018-07-14 20:50:27 by Gatlin
21 Comments
I’ve been calling myself a Libertarian since 2008. I’m beginning to think I’ve made a mistake. For me, voting for Hillary is clearly out of the questions since she’s socialist in everything but name and voting for Trump is also off the table since he’s a habitual liar and vindictive bully whose positions vary from strong conservative to left of Hillary depending on his mood and the time of day. Since I generally want the government to get out of my business, you might think the Libertarians would be a perfect fit for me, and I though so too for a time, and yet… On paper, the Libertarians are great. Looking over the Libertarian platform, I object strong to ...
Open Question: What is a Christian Libertarian?
Post Date: 2018-07-14 15:45:51 by Gatlin
12 Comments
The Short, Unhappy Life of a Libertarian Paradise
Post Date: 2018-07-14 08:31:29 by Gatlin
10 Comments
Colorado Springs has always leaned hard on its reputation for natural beauty. An hour’s drive south of Denver, it sits at the base of the Rocky Mountains’ southern range and features two of the state’s top tourist destinations: the ancient sandstone rock formations known as Garden of the Gods, and Pikes Peak, the 14,000-foot summit visible from nearly every street corner. It’s also a staunchly Republican city— headquarters of the politically active Christian group Focus on the Family (Colorado Springs is nicknamed “the Evangelical Vatican”) and the fourth most conservative city in America, according to a recent study. It’s a right-wing counterweight ...
Libertarianism Is A Fundamentally Flawed Ideology
Post Date: 2018-07-13 05:28:47 by Gatlin
14 Comments
Two recent studies in evolutionary biology (discussed in Scientific American) concern the problem of why not all individuals cheat: "A key problem when trying to understand the evolution of cooperation has been the issue of cheaters." In other words: cheating helps the cheater, so why doesn't everyone cheat? One finding ("Generalized Reciprocity") has been that to the extent that individuals in a culture trust and help strangers, the culture itself thrives, but that to the opposite extent, in which it's common to take from strangers without giving proportionally in return, the culture suffers and declines. This means that cultures in which cheating is ...
Nice: House Republicans to force vote on abolishing ICE
Post Date: 2018-07-13 01:49:54 by Tooconservative
16 Comments
Basic good midterm politics. I think?House GOP leaders plan to bring a Democratic measure calling for the abolishment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the House floor, hoping to force Democrats into a difficult vote… “Democrats have been trying to make July 4th about abolishing ICE, which is a radical, extreme position that would lead to open borders and undermine America’s national security,” House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) told The Hill. “I think it’s the wrong approach. I think everyone ought to be on record about where they stand on that issue.” The Democratic bill is the Establishing a Humane Immigration Enforcement ...
The problems with Libertarianism
Post Date: 2018-07-12 05:08:27 by Gatlin
0 Comments
Some of my best friends are libertarian, but I don’t hold it (too much) against them. Libertarianism appears to be very popular these days, especially among Republicans who wish to pretend to be anti-big government and yet are ashamed of eight years of huge government deficit and interference in personal life under W. Unfortunately, there are several problems with being a libertarian, perhaps the major one being that it is hard to say what exactly a libertarian is. I actually spent quite some time wading through the bewildering taxonomy of libertarian-like positions, and finally came up with a complicated tree-like “concept map” that summarizes the basics. First off, you ...
What is Wrong with Libertarianism?
Post Date: 2018-07-11 18:12:40 by Gatlin
5 Comments
For some time now, I’ve been wanting to write a post about what is wrong with Libertarianism from a Biblical worldview. First of all, it would be helpful for you to see visually, a basic graph revealing the current political spectrum. The Political Sprectrum – Left to Right (Source: http://woody.typepad.com)Most Christians who call themselves “Christian Libertarians” don’t really know much about the roots or true ideology of the Libertarian political philosophy. They like the idea of small government, reduced taxes, gun rights, property rights and a free-market economy. So far, so good. I’m right there with them. The problem is in the inherent presuppositions ...
The Inauthentic Flip-Flopping of Bernie Sanders
Post Date: 2018-07-10 09:27:43 by Tooconservative
8 Comments
Bernie traded his beliefs for a seat in the 1 percent. "Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal," Bernie Sanders snapped. "You're doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don't think there's any country in the world that believes in that." "What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy,” he continued. "You know what youth unemployment is in the United States of America today? If you're a white high school graduate, it's 33 percent, Hispanic 36 percent, African American 51 percent. You think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers, or do you think maybe ...
Why Radical Libertarians Are the New Communists
Post Date: 2018-07-10 03:51:55 by Gatlin
36 Comments
A toxic strand of a political ideology. Most people would consider radical libertarianism and communism polar opposites: The first glorifies personal freedom. The second would obliterate it. Yet the ideologies are simply mirror images. Both attempt to answer the same questions, and fail to do so in similar ways. Where communism was adopted, the result was misery, poverty and tyranny. If extremist libertarians ever translated their beliefs into policy, it would lead to the same kinds of catastrophe. Let’s start with some definitions. By radical libertarianism, we mean the ideology that holds that individual liberty trumps all other values. By communism, we mean the ideology of ...
Why I am Not a Libertarian
Post Date: 2018-07-09 12:29:23 by Gatlin
3 Comments
I used to call myself a libertarian. I still believe that market forces are the best way to allocate non-essential resources. And I still believe that government should stay out of people’s personal business. But I now realize that libertarianism is based on a number of conceptual confusions. Libertarianism holds out a laudable and seemingly reasonable ideal: a democratic meritocracy of free, rational, self-reliant individuals who take responsibility for their own problems, who cooperate with others based on mutual self-interest, and who expect nothing more than what they have earned. Grounding this ideal is one uncompromising principle: personal liberty. The government’s only ...
Are you ready for...Hillary 2020?
Post Date: 2018-07-09 10:23:22 by Tooconservative
8 Comments
Could 2020 be a rerun of 2016? Michael Goodwin sees the portents for a rematch between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, thanks to her renewed interest in running her super-PAC. She’s sending out more missives attacking Trump, arranging payments to allied groups, and has even helped launch a campaign against whomever Trump nominates for the Supreme Court — run by longtime aide Brian Fallon.See Also: The first post-Janus lawsuit against the SEIU has arrived “Hillary is up to something,” Goodwin wrote yesterday, and he thinks it might just be a comeback, in large part because of a lack of competition: First, because there’s no clear front-runner for the nomination 18 ...
Why Objectivist Libertarianism is Anti-Biblical, Oppressive and Evil
Post Date: 2018-07-09 08:40:35 by Gatlin
14 Comments
Few terms are more appealing to the human ear than the word, liberty. With liberty, we are free to do whatever we like. All of us prefer to do what we like over being forced to do what we do not like. So how can anyone not love liberty? Of course, if everyone has absolute liberty simultaneously, it doesn’t take long to realize that liberty to do whatever we like is liberty for others to do whatever they like to us. If I like punching people, and the government lets me do so in the name of liberty, the people I punch will probably dislike my punching them. Suddenly, not everyone is so happy with liberty. It’s this conundrum that leads libertarians to redefine liberty as it ...
Problems With Christian Libertarianism
Post Date: 2018-07-09 03:26:54 by Gatlin
1 Comments
I have said it before and will say it again: if you want to be a hard-core libertarian, fine; but then don’t claim to be a biblical Christian at the same time. The more radical the libertarians of the right get, the more indistinguishable they are from the anarchists of the left. Both have almost a pathological hatred of the state, and want no government, or at least hardly any at all. Now, I happen to be a conservative, so I too am no fan of big government. Limited government and a constrained state are certainly what I do promote. But as a biblical Christian, I have to be true to the biblical text ahead of any political ideology. And of course the Bible makes it perfectly clear ...
I Was a Libertarian Internet Troll — How I Turned My Mind Around
Post Date: 2018-07-08 14:30:28 by Gatlin
29 Comments
For a growing boy, there are more dangerous things on the Internet than spyware-addled porn sites. One of them is white dude-bro culture — you know, the kind rife with men who threaten to murder women for wanting representation in video games and compare themselves to the KKK. For years, I tiptoed too close to this dark side of the Web. My Internet life began innocently. My father had two main Web-surfing rules: No downloading (I still don’t think he actually knows what that means) and no talking to strangers. Also, seven people lived in my house. We shared one computer. Seven people sharing one bathroom would’ve been preferable to that. So I played games. I looked up cheat ...
instead of socialized medicine
Post Date: 2018-07-08 11:03:33 by Justified
1 Comments
Instead of socialized medicine why not socialized judicial system? I have been thinking(I know bad idea) that instead of socialised medical system why not socialised judicial system? Lets have lawyers all be paid by the state. This way the pay can be regulated by the state. This way everyone can enjoy coverage by a lawyer at their need. There would be no need for the ACLU and other groups because lawyers would be provided to anyone that feels the need to sue someone. Really if we are going to ruin a system lets ruin the lawyer business instead of the medical business that was the best in the world. If there is one group that is overpaid and needs regulation are lawyers. They do not ...
Court upholds convictions of 2012 Ron Paul campaign staffers
Post Date: 2018-07-08 04:20:34 by Gatlin
38 Comments
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the convictions of three top staffers on Ron Paul's 2012 presidential campaign who were found guilty of arranging for money to be funneled through a vendor to an influential Iowa state senator who dropped his support for another Republican candidate in favor of Paul. Campaign chairman Jesse Benton, campaign manager John Tate and deputy campaign manager Dimitri Kesari were convicted in 2016 of causing false records to be filed, causing false campaign expenditure reports, engaging in a false statements scheme and conspiring to commit the offenses. Kesari was sentenced to three months in prison while the other two got ...
Libertarianism and white nationalism actually aren’t that different
Post Date: 2018-07-08 04:11:35 by Gatlin
35 Comments
One of the occupational hazards of being a college opinion columnist is that, during your undergraduate years, many of your thoughts are liable to be stupid. And while tweets can be deleted and pseudo-intellectual dining hall conversations forgotten, opinion columns persist in the not-too-generous world of the internet. Because I'm not immune from this malady, my name is attached to some very dumb takes. In The Diamondback's pages, I've suggested that Barack Obama should've escalated the American military presence in Syria and compared excessive road salt in Washington, D.C., to 9/11. But there's one column that stands out as particularly embarrassing. In this piece ...
Controversialist Arvin Vohra Announces 2020 Libertarian Presidential Run
Post Date: 2018-07-08 03:46:49 by Gatlin
1 Comments
After being resoundingly voted out of the party's vice-chairmanship over his comments about veterans, school shootings, and age-of-consent laws, the activist/entrepreneur throws his hat in the ring against Adam Kokesh and a presumed Bill Weld. There will be no shortage of radical anti-statists challenging Bill Weld* or any other former or current major-party elected official thinking about chasing the Libertarian Party's presidential nomination and likely 50- state ballot access in 2020. Arvin Vohra, a 39- year-old educational entrepreneur notorious for questioning age-of-consent laws for 14-year-olds, for arguing that joining the military to pay for college is "morally ...
Report: Self-described pedophile who advocates white supremacy is running for Congress
Post Date: 2018-07-07 16:02:40 by Gatlin
13 Comments
Among the candidates running against incumbent Rep. Barbara Comstock in Virginia's Tenth Congressional District is a self-described pedophile who has allegedly admitted he raped his late spouse and advocates what he calls "benevolent white supremacy." Thirty-seven-year-old Nathan Larson, an accountant, confirmed to the Huffington Post Thursday that he had created the websites "suiped.org" and "incelocalypse.today" -- which were chat rooms for pedophiles and misogynists. The sites were taken down earlier this week by their domain host. HuffPost reports that Larson used "Leucosticte" and "Lysander" as user names to post in the chat rooms, ...
The Libertarian Party: Bringing good ideas to America since 1971
Post Date: 2018-07-07 08:07:36 by Gatlin
2 Comments
“‘Abolish ICE!’ is the new rallying cry for progressive Democrats,” reports NBC News’s Alex Seitz-Wald. It’s “a radical idea and one that was confined to the fringes just months ago,” but one that “left-wing insurgents can use to differentiate themselves from more established rivals in Democratic primaries.” Good idea. So good, in fact, that I wrote a column advocating exactly that three months ago. Welcome to the right side, Democrats. Like most Libertarians, I’m amused when our ideological opponents see a parade forming around one of our ideas and try to hustle their way to the front to “lead” it. Unlike some ...
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