Monday, September 24, 2007
blabberwocky
The wonkiness of some Libertarians is simply amazing. On a list created to (ostensibly) discuss the Party's platform, one fellow with more thesaurus than brains writes with a perfect assurance which makes me wonder if Wikipedia is, after all, an unalloyed Good Thing:
Our situation can also be discussed in terms of the people of this country being stuck in a sub-optimal Nash-Cournot equilibrium, in which the typical individual cannot get better outcomes only by changing his own strategy unless others also change theirs. What we in the LP are, in effect, trying to do, is to persuade enough people to change their individual strategies so that we attain a Nash-Cournot equilibrium with a higher utility function value of the liberty component.
Oh, well; since he's put it so clearly, naturally I have to agree!
Actually, as far as I can make out what he's jawing about, it's simply a particularly uninspired description of the human condition: You can only change yourself, not those around you. Well. At the risk of seeming crude: Duh.
This bogus erudition turns out to be the soporific prelude to this warmongering self-styled libertarian's defense of military (and perhaps non-military) interventionism:
The LP will never gain this popular support, so long as it repels about one half of potential libertarians. Liberty theory is distorted by addition of anti-interventionism. The LP must welcome both wings if it is to triangulate and gain any kind of leverage.
This means, the platform must not prohibit US military actions abroad or on US soil.
I love it. The LP must embrace interventionism to 'triangulate' - whatever that is supposed to mean. But it gets better:
Do not think that anti-interventionists will be satisfied will merely trying to prohibit foreign intervention.
The same logic (to the extent that it is based on liberty theory) would apply equally to domestic intervention.
To which I say (setting aside the confusing term 'liberty theory'): Damn Right!
This is rich: Here is a so-called libertarian defending foreign intervention on the grounds that if we admit that it's wrong for the US government to bully/murder foreigners, it's wrong for the US government to bully/murder Americans. And we can't have that sort of dangerous thinking in the Libertarian Party. Next thing you know, people will be saying dangerous things such as government is the problem, not the solution. Horrors!
¶ 8:54 AM
Our situation can also be discussed in terms of the people of this country being stuck in a sub-optimal Nash-Cournot equilibrium, in which the typical individual cannot get better outcomes only by changing his own strategy unless others also change theirs. What we in the LP are, in effect, trying to do, is to persuade enough people to change their individual strategies so that we attain a Nash-Cournot equilibrium with a higher utility function value of the liberty component.
Oh, well; since he's put it so clearly, naturally I have to agree!
Actually, as far as I can make out what he's jawing about, it's simply a particularly uninspired description of the human condition: You can only change yourself, not those around you. Well. At the risk of seeming crude: Duh.
This bogus erudition turns out to be the soporific prelude to this warmongering self-styled libertarian's defense of military (and perhaps non-military) interventionism:
The LP will never gain this popular support, so long as it repels about one half of potential libertarians. Liberty theory is distorted by addition of anti-interventionism. The LP must welcome both wings if it is to triangulate and gain any kind of leverage.
This means, the platform must not prohibit US military actions abroad or on US soil.
I love it. The LP must embrace interventionism to 'triangulate' - whatever that is supposed to mean. But it gets better:
Do not think that anti-interventionists will be satisfied will merely trying to prohibit foreign intervention.
The same logic (to the extent that it is based on liberty theory) would apply equally to domestic intervention.
To which I say (setting aside the confusing term 'liberty theory'): Damn Right!
This is rich: Here is a so-called libertarian defending foreign intervention on the grounds that if we admit that it's wrong for the US government to bully/murder foreigners, it's wrong for the US government to bully/murder Americans. And we can't have that sort of dangerous thinking in the Libertarian Party. Next thing you know, people will be saying dangerous things such as government is the problem, not the solution. Horrors!
¶ 8:54 AM
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"Our situation can also be discussed in terms of the people of this country being stuck in a sub-optimal Nash-Cournot equilibrium, in which the typical individual cannot get better outcomes only by changing his own strategy unless others also change theirs. What we in the LP are, in effect, trying to do, is to persuade enough people to change their individual strategies so that we attain a Nash-Cournot equilibrium with a higher utility function value of the liberty component."
Like sandpaper across the ass.
I'd as soon pluck out my eye than read that again.
Like sandpaper across the ass.
I'd as soon pluck out my eye than read that again.
# posted by 
: 11:29 PM
: 11:29 PM
Though it's tedious to wade through the pseudo-intellectual doublespeak, the writer says that the Libertarian Party is stuck in a rut because people aren't willing to change their voting patterns. No kidding, really? He thinks that no matter how many Libertarians change their own voting habits (which is not relevant to the problem, since Libertarians vote for the LP candidate where there is one, and changing that strategy is precisely the opposite of what the LP is trying to achieve), it won't make a difference unless non-Libertarian-voting voters decide to vote LP. This guy is either too clever by half, or he's trying to baffle us with bullshit. Anyone have a good recipe for red herring?
I would not by any perversion of the lexicon consider the writer a libertarian, considering his subtle apologistic advocacy for federal military intervention on American soil, which is fundamentally the Hitlerian recipe for a police state. How free is an individual in a police state? What liberties does an individual have in a society under total government control? None, unless that individual runs the police, of course.
No, the writer sounds more like a government plant, a sort of agent provocateur whose rhetoric is carefully crafted to divide the libertarian movement from the Libertarian Party while his government masters go quietly about destroying the Constitution they are sworn to defend and consolidating their hold on power. Though certain clips are taken out of context to support their hypothesis, the 10-minute presentation at http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/164.html is a worthwhile watch. Individual Liberty in America is on tenuous ground indeed.
If one is looking for a telltale indicator of the Constitutional cluelessness of elected Republicrat legislators in Congress - and how ingrained is the corresponding American somnambulism - one need only look at the behaviour of the Idaho senator caught this summer in Minneapolis with his pants down while returning home from a session of Congress. Initially Sen. Larry Craig pleaded guilty in order to sweep the matter under the rug, but it surfaced anyway, as things of this nature tend to do. What did he do next? Resign.
But wait. Some clever spin-meister whispered into Craig's ear that the Constitution makes federal legislators immune from arrest while traveling to or from a session of Congress (Article 1, Section 6). Now Craig wants to withdraw his guilty plea and finish his term.
The boot-lickers and useful idiots in the mainstream media aren’t reporting the REAL news here. Clearly it's not news when some legislator changes his mind, whether he's gay, straight or eunuch.
But, HEL-LO? It SHOULD be news - BIG news - when a federal legislator that has sworn to uphold the Constitution is IGNORANT OF ITS CONTENTS, so much so that he destroys his OWN career by his ignorance!
To what end was Freedom of the Press protected by the Founding Fathers if not to expose the treacheries of the government? If the Press is complicit - wittingly or unwittingly - in government deception of the American populace, have we now lost Freedom of the Press entirely?
The Second Amendment plainly acknowledges our individual right to defend our liberties in well-trained civilian groups in order to preserve them. It certainly can't hurt to heed Oliver Cromwell's famous admonition to "keep your powder dry." I fervently hope that we'll never need to use that powder, and I'm certain that ordinary Americans will never fire the first shot. But will we awaken from our sleep and realize that we're being fired upon politically? When we try to save our freedoms at the ballot box, will we have a political party to vote for that respects the rights of all people equally? Will sufficient numbers of us be able to resurrect our Republic from its accelerating slide into a socialist police state?
We must let neither libertarians nor the Libertarian Party forget that we are the only peaceful alternative.
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I would not by any perversion of the lexicon consider the writer a libertarian, considering his subtle apologistic advocacy for federal military intervention on American soil, which is fundamentally the Hitlerian recipe for a police state. How free is an individual in a police state? What liberties does an individual have in a society under total government control? None, unless that individual runs the police, of course.
No, the writer sounds more like a government plant, a sort of agent provocateur whose rhetoric is carefully crafted to divide the libertarian movement from the Libertarian Party while his government masters go quietly about destroying the Constitution they are sworn to defend and consolidating their hold on power. Though certain clips are taken out of context to support their hypothesis, the 10-minute presentation at http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/164.html is a worthwhile watch. Individual Liberty in America is on tenuous ground indeed.
If one is looking for a telltale indicator of the Constitutional cluelessness of elected Republicrat legislators in Congress - and how ingrained is the corresponding American somnambulism - one need only look at the behaviour of the Idaho senator caught this summer in Minneapolis with his pants down while returning home from a session of Congress. Initially Sen. Larry Craig pleaded guilty in order to sweep the matter under the rug, but it surfaced anyway, as things of this nature tend to do. What did he do next? Resign.
But wait. Some clever spin-meister whispered into Craig's ear that the Constitution makes federal legislators immune from arrest while traveling to or from a session of Congress (Article 1, Section 6). Now Craig wants to withdraw his guilty plea and finish his term.
The boot-lickers and useful idiots in the mainstream media aren’t reporting the REAL news here. Clearly it's not news when some legislator changes his mind, whether he's gay, straight or eunuch.
But, HEL-LO? It SHOULD be news - BIG news - when a federal legislator that has sworn to uphold the Constitution is IGNORANT OF ITS CONTENTS, so much so that he destroys his OWN career by his ignorance!
To what end was Freedom of the Press protected by the Founding Fathers if not to expose the treacheries of the government? If the Press is complicit - wittingly or unwittingly - in government deception of the American populace, have we now lost Freedom of the Press entirely?
The Second Amendment plainly acknowledges our individual right to defend our liberties in well-trained civilian groups in order to preserve them. It certainly can't hurt to heed Oliver Cromwell's famous admonition to "keep your powder dry." I fervently hope that we'll never need to use that powder, and I'm certain that ordinary Americans will never fire the first shot. But will we awaken from our sleep and realize that we're being fired upon politically? When we try to save our freedoms at the ballot box, will we have a political party to vote for that respects the rights of all people equally? Will sufficient numbers of us be able to resurrect our Republic from its accelerating slide into a socialist police state?
We must let neither libertarians nor the Libertarian Party forget that we are the only peaceful alternative.
# posted by : 3:01 AM
: 3:01 AM
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