JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
- 63,590
- 16,756
- 2,220
Just wanted to share my personal experiences here. These personal experiences do not empirically prove anything, but some readers might find some resonance with their own experiences with ideological libertarianism and might share theirs as well.
I read Atlas Shrugged way back in high school, 9th grade. I was truly enamored with the story and the characters and I was outraged that such things could happen to a person at the hands of indifferent bureaucrats. I knew that the story was fiction, but that it was deemed believable by enough people that the novel sold well was itself damning.
My union officer grandfather, who had passed away in 68, had been my political mentor for years. And I tried to grasp the books events and themes with his voice and guidance in mind. He would have pointed out the great harms that the government had prevented would have far outweighed the harm it caused less frequently in regulating industry and that corruption was inevitable in any system. He would have told me that the Founding Fathers had a libertarian streak to their philosophy and statecraft, but that the demands of the urban modern age made much of that obsolete. But still it couldnt salve the outrage I felt, an outrage I had not felt since I read 'Uncle Toms Cabin'.
I spoke with the librarian at my high school about what I could read that would be a rhetorical response to Rands libertarian philosophy, and she mentioned a number of articles and books, which I read. Most of them were using arguments I was already familiar with. But I read one from National Review, by Whitacker Chambers who said that Rands philosophy was Godless, amoral and silly. He tempered my slow slide into Libertarianism and allowed me to pull myself out of its moral quick sand years later.
Most of my friends were libertarians of one variety or another. The Great Deracination of White Southerners was ongoing at the time and most of them felt a need to latch on to something that could replace the values of their Southern upbringing, and Rand made a very compelling and glib alternative to anything that hinted of conservatism and its familiarity with the racism of Jim Crow. We discussed Rand quite a bit though I can only remember bits and pieces of it all now.
But one thing I do remember was the insistence of my friends that one can have a moral philosophy even if an atheist, even if one had no religious institutions to guide ones moral formation. I would counter that while it is possible that children abandoned to grow up in the wild could survive and end up as civilized as the next man, but feral children have never done so without the help of their fellow man. We are a social creature, not a mere collection of independent Philosopher Kings.
Well that went on for decades with different people I would meet. From discussions with the Libertarian Party booth 'venders' at country fairs to young programmers fresh out of college spitting out the same old slogans as if no one had ever heard them before, I really enjoyed these conversations. "Everything should be allowed unless it is violent or fraudulent" was the most frequently heard Libertarian bumper sticker slogan I heard during all that time. But close to that was "The common good is no excuse for stealing a persons property to give it to those who did not earn it and do not deserve it." was another. Those are not direct quotes but a composite of the many times I have heard this from enthusiastic freshly scrubbed Libertarian acolytes.
I considered myself to be a Constitutional Christian Libertarian, by and large from the time I left the Army till this year. It was all about hypothetical utopian dreaming while Libertarians had no chance of ever getting any real political power which made it fun, but it still rubbed off on my thinking. Libertarianism was too 'pure' for actually winning an election for many reasons, from the legalization of drugs and prostitution to the deregulation of commerce. But that was OK, it only made it more fun as we would build these fantasy castles out of Dreamers Sand.
That all changed with Ron Paul's run for the Presidency in 2012. For the first time, Dr Paul was having real impact on the Republican Party, though not at the voting booth. Dr Paul was slipping in his people as delegates in states across the country, with the intention of having them vote for him on subsequent rounds if the convention turned into an open convention.
"But wait, isnt that fraud to pose as a Romney supporter while your full intent is to vote for Paul instead?" I would ask them.
"Well, yes, but it is what we have to do to change things for the better." They would respond in utterly unRandian terms.
"Isnt that what every ideological despotism justified itself with?" I would counter to silence or a change in subject.
And so I began to see that Libertarianism is as morphable as any other ideological system and Libertarians along with it all. Its principles are only as good as the next election and the needs of its promoters to win.
Then this election was the double knock out Death Punch Spinning Roundhouse Kick of Doom. Libertarians have actually welded themselves to the Preachers Kid Ted Cruz. Growing up, 'PK' was a dismissive way of referring to a preachers child that was unruly, contemptuous and a bit of a hooligan. And Ted Cruz is a PK, in spades, as he has all the ear marks to include smooth rhetorical delivery while espousing things that are just blatant lies or irrational nonsense.
Cruz can calmly sit in front of a camera interview and say that Trump has little chance of getting the nomination since 60% of the GOP has been voting against Trump and Trump still has to win 65% of the remaining delegates...even though the same logic, if applied to Cruz means that Cruz has even less chance of winning. But no, somehow the previous logic does not apply to Cruz and he has the inside track to win. The Baghdad Bob school of political rhetoric is now the reigning spin method used by all 'Die Standing Never Trump' zealots.
But the current fraud that Cruz's libertarian supporters is using to pose as Trump supporters to get on a slate of delegates while fully intending to vote for Cruz on the first open ballot is just irredeemable fully knowing that we are likely to have a brokered convention. Fraud is one of only two prohibitions for people in Libertarian philosophy, and this is fraud that not only do these people admit to, but they gleefully wallow in. They are proud that they are defrauding Trump supporters, because these people DESERVE it for not being as smart as the Cruz people and thus fraud has become a competitive tool, somehow OK if it is to beat the bad guys.
But this is not the only nonsense that I have encountered in this election from Libertarians. Most of the younger ones have completely absorbed all the Establishment anti-white racism that colleges today spew out. I have heard these morons repeat the biggest bunch of nonsense, everything from 'White privilege' to 'immigration restrictions are racism' to 'everything white people have was stolen from someone else'. And no, they wont discuss it, unlike everything else. A libertarian friend I have known for 12 years now, just told me a few weeks ago that there is no basis for wanting secure borders other than racism. Nothing more than purely racism. He tells me this even though he and I both know he has been posing as a conservative for the whole time I have known him. These 'Conservative Libertarians' are closet amoral Ends Justifies The Means slime, just like the Nazis, the Stalinists, the Maoists and every other totalitarian group that I and other Libertarians have condemned with complete moral superiority for decades. Today's Libertarians are not Conservative Libertarians, they are Marxist Libertarians; culturally Marxist with Libertarian politics.
Again, Principle does not outweigh need, and the need to avoid correcting racist ideological nonsense among today's youth is a trade off that Libertarians are making.
It is all for the common good, you see?
I read Atlas Shrugged way back in high school, 9th grade. I was truly enamored with the story and the characters and I was outraged that such things could happen to a person at the hands of indifferent bureaucrats. I knew that the story was fiction, but that it was deemed believable by enough people that the novel sold well was itself damning.
My union officer grandfather, who had passed away in 68, had been my political mentor for years. And I tried to grasp the books events and themes with his voice and guidance in mind. He would have pointed out the great harms that the government had prevented would have far outweighed the harm it caused less frequently in regulating industry and that corruption was inevitable in any system. He would have told me that the Founding Fathers had a libertarian streak to their philosophy and statecraft, but that the demands of the urban modern age made much of that obsolete. But still it couldnt salve the outrage I felt, an outrage I had not felt since I read 'Uncle Toms Cabin'.
I spoke with the librarian at my high school about what I could read that would be a rhetorical response to Rands libertarian philosophy, and she mentioned a number of articles and books, which I read. Most of them were using arguments I was already familiar with. But I read one from National Review, by Whitacker Chambers who said that Rands philosophy was Godless, amoral and silly. He tempered my slow slide into Libertarianism and allowed me to pull myself out of its moral quick sand years later.
Most of my friends were libertarians of one variety or another. The Great Deracination of White Southerners was ongoing at the time and most of them felt a need to latch on to something that could replace the values of their Southern upbringing, and Rand made a very compelling and glib alternative to anything that hinted of conservatism and its familiarity with the racism of Jim Crow. We discussed Rand quite a bit though I can only remember bits and pieces of it all now.
But one thing I do remember was the insistence of my friends that one can have a moral philosophy even if an atheist, even if one had no religious institutions to guide ones moral formation. I would counter that while it is possible that children abandoned to grow up in the wild could survive and end up as civilized as the next man, but feral children have never done so without the help of their fellow man. We are a social creature, not a mere collection of independent Philosopher Kings.
Well that went on for decades with different people I would meet. From discussions with the Libertarian Party booth 'venders' at country fairs to young programmers fresh out of college spitting out the same old slogans as if no one had ever heard them before, I really enjoyed these conversations. "Everything should be allowed unless it is violent or fraudulent" was the most frequently heard Libertarian bumper sticker slogan I heard during all that time. But close to that was "The common good is no excuse for stealing a persons property to give it to those who did not earn it and do not deserve it." was another. Those are not direct quotes but a composite of the many times I have heard this from enthusiastic freshly scrubbed Libertarian acolytes.
I considered myself to be a Constitutional Christian Libertarian, by and large from the time I left the Army till this year. It was all about hypothetical utopian dreaming while Libertarians had no chance of ever getting any real political power which made it fun, but it still rubbed off on my thinking. Libertarianism was too 'pure' for actually winning an election for many reasons, from the legalization of drugs and prostitution to the deregulation of commerce. But that was OK, it only made it more fun as we would build these fantasy castles out of Dreamers Sand.
That all changed with Ron Paul's run for the Presidency in 2012. For the first time, Dr Paul was having real impact on the Republican Party, though not at the voting booth. Dr Paul was slipping in his people as delegates in states across the country, with the intention of having them vote for him on subsequent rounds if the convention turned into an open convention.
"But wait, isnt that fraud to pose as a Romney supporter while your full intent is to vote for Paul instead?" I would ask them.
"Well, yes, but it is what we have to do to change things for the better." They would respond in utterly unRandian terms.
"Isnt that what every ideological despotism justified itself with?" I would counter to silence or a change in subject.
And so I began to see that Libertarianism is as morphable as any other ideological system and Libertarians along with it all. Its principles are only as good as the next election and the needs of its promoters to win.
Then this election was the double knock out Death Punch Spinning Roundhouse Kick of Doom. Libertarians have actually welded themselves to the Preachers Kid Ted Cruz. Growing up, 'PK' was a dismissive way of referring to a preachers child that was unruly, contemptuous and a bit of a hooligan. And Ted Cruz is a PK, in spades, as he has all the ear marks to include smooth rhetorical delivery while espousing things that are just blatant lies or irrational nonsense.
Cruz can calmly sit in front of a camera interview and say that Trump has little chance of getting the nomination since 60% of the GOP has been voting against Trump and Trump still has to win 65% of the remaining delegates...even though the same logic, if applied to Cruz means that Cruz has even less chance of winning. But no, somehow the previous logic does not apply to Cruz and he has the inside track to win. The Baghdad Bob school of political rhetoric is now the reigning spin method used by all 'Die Standing Never Trump' zealots.
But the current fraud that Cruz's libertarian supporters is using to pose as Trump supporters to get on a slate of delegates while fully intending to vote for Cruz on the first open ballot is just irredeemable fully knowing that we are likely to have a brokered convention. Fraud is one of only two prohibitions for people in Libertarian philosophy, and this is fraud that not only do these people admit to, but they gleefully wallow in. They are proud that they are defrauding Trump supporters, because these people DESERVE it for not being as smart as the Cruz people and thus fraud has become a competitive tool, somehow OK if it is to beat the bad guys.
But this is not the only nonsense that I have encountered in this election from Libertarians. Most of the younger ones have completely absorbed all the Establishment anti-white racism that colleges today spew out. I have heard these morons repeat the biggest bunch of nonsense, everything from 'White privilege' to 'immigration restrictions are racism' to 'everything white people have was stolen from someone else'. And no, they wont discuss it, unlike everything else. A libertarian friend I have known for 12 years now, just told me a few weeks ago that there is no basis for wanting secure borders other than racism. Nothing more than purely racism. He tells me this even though he and I both know he has been posing as a conservative for the whole time I have known him. These 'Conservative Libertarians' are closet amoral Ends Justifies The Means slime, just like the Nazis, the Stalinists, the Maoists and every other totalitarian group that I and other Libertarians have condemned with complete moral superiority for decades. Today's Libertarians are not Conservative Libertarians, they are Marxist Libertarians; culturally Marxist with Libertarian politics.
Again, Principle does not outweigh need, and the need to avoid correcting racist ideological nonsense among today's youth is a trade off that Libertarians are making.
It is all for the common good, you see?
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