RoR: Forum

This was an absolutely brilliant piece of humor. It had me laughing hysterically, tears streaming down my face. Quite a wake-up to start my day!

JR

Post 1

Monday, May 23, 2005 - 12:03pm

Interesting article James.

I didn't know you had the Whigs in the nineteenth century. Was there a Whig president too?

In the UK in the nineteenth century there was also a Whig party. I think they were loyal to the monarchy but also very Libertarian.

You say the next way to get a Libertarian US President is through the Republican parties religious right.

However, a current disturbing trend of the religious right through George Bush to promote the political ideology of "compassionate conservatism, which is really just socialism by a different name.

Post 2

Monday, May 23, 2005 - 1:26pm

James,

I found this very thought-provoking. Looking forward to part III before I comment too much, but so far I'm following your logic.

Jason

Post 3

Monday, May 23, 2005 - 2:57pm

Marcus,
the whigs became the liberal party (classical liberal) in the U.K. and were in power or sharing it until Ramsey Macdonalds ' Labour party won power in1924.
The present day Liberal Democrats seem to have little in common with their illustrious forbears.

Post 4

Monday, May 23, 2005 - 2:56pm

A convincing, powerful strategy to assure individual freedom and tolerance for all. I especially like the part about really bringing the religious right further into the fold- bring them in until we get a rash! Idea: offer FCC positions and unlimited free airtime to Dobson and Robertson.

Post 5

Monday, May 23, 2005 - 5:46pm

James, I am curious to see what bones you want to throw to the Religious Right. Abortion and homosexuality are the two issues that they will want to see results on.

Post 6

Monday, May 23, 2005 - 5:59pm

Oh -- so the article wasn't meant to be funny?

JR

Post 7

Monday, May 23, 2005 - 7:51pm

Great article James; Marcus let me let you in on something, compassionate conservatism doesn't exist. It's an idea born purly out of politics as a compromise on the social agenda under Clinton. Republicans slapped a new label on it and called it their own. When Bush took office, republicans dropped it like a bad habit. A good example of this is the social security reform, everyone with one eye can see Republicans would have liked cutting it even more but couldn't so they proposed a compromise and claimed the bill as their own. That's politics, deal with it.

So you don't get to smoke pot and men's rectums stay intact, so what? We got bigger fish to fry, economically and militarily over what are essencially small matter. And there is no man that would even come close to protecting Americans and restoring their rights as George Bush.

Post 8

Monday, May 23, 2005 - 11:00pm

It's worth noting that most people don't bother to vote. So if you are talking about getting 50.1+% to go along, what you are really talking about is getting 25-30% of the eligible population to vote for a moderate libertarian Republican that doesn't alientate the christian right too much.

or it means that you are going to motivate some small percentage of people who don't vote or vote rarely to come out to vote and get your psuedo-dream candidate into power without, again, alienating the christian right too much. I can say from experiece the failed plans of others to do the same would fill a large graveyard. The biggest success you could site would be 'Club for Growth' which basically sacrifices social freedom for economic freedom. And barely economic freedom. Basically you get a libertarian-ish congressman who votes for vaguely lower taxes and vaguely free trade (can you spell CAFTA?) and a couple other vaguely free-er economic issues at the cost of a social agenda that increases the drug war, ends legal abortion, keeps up legal barriers to gay and lesbians, bans genetic research/ pick your social issue and come down on the wrong side from the view of most posters on this board.

I apologize for focusing on pragmatic considerations.

As a side note. The Liberal Democrats in the UK are right bastards, however, their younger activists are decidely more cool/libertarian than their elders -- even releasing an 'orange book' before the last election thats the most free-market document released by a mainstream political party in britian since at least Margaret Thatcher. (too lazy to link, find it yourself). The Independent, an old skool LibDem supporter newspaper/Labour when its socialist enough decried the recent promotion of the 'youth lts' to high posts after the election just because of their emphasis on civil liberties and free market economics. Now, don't get me wrong, these new young guns aren't advocating total free market capitalism immediately, but they look like the brightest piece of fresh air in english politics from the angle of classical liberals since at least Maggie Thatcher. Thats about the best you can ask for based on current brit culture IMHO

Post 9

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 12:03am

There are two kinds of people here. Those who want to see the advancement of liberty in the physical world; and those who merely enjoy spouting their belief in liberty.

A subset of the latter, epitomized by Murray Rothbard, unconsciously don't want to see the advancement of liberty. Had America become a completely libertarian society, it would've been Rothbard's worst nightmare, for it would've destroyed his cherished rebel-status. He would've spent every waking minute and invested every degree of sophistry in denying that it was indeed a libertarian society. A number of things he did during his life prove beyond doubt that this would have been his reaction, but the most directly revealing of all was his assertion -- in his screed attempting to explain away Reagan's achievements -- that Reagan had specifically harmed the movement of liberty by only inadequately advancing it, because the "spirit for liberty in the 70s" was now gone. By claiming that the *intellectual* state of libertarian ideas was better off before Reagan than after, Rothbard was directly and explicitly valuing marginalization over success.

Such ideologues can still contribute a whole lot in the realm of ideology (as Rothbard did), but there is a point at which denying the advancement of liberty -- as it is happening -- becomes tantamount to actively opposing the advancement of liberty.

As for those of you who do care about real-world political success: doesn't it behoove you to wait until James explains his strategy, in his announced follow-up, before criticizing it?

Alec

(Edited by Alec Mouhibian
on 5/24, 12:06am)

Post 10

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 1:06am

Quoth Alec Mouhibian:

"A number of things [Rothbard] did during his life prove beyond doubt that this would have been his reaction, but the most directly revealing of all was his assertion -- in his screed attempting to explain away Reagan's achievements -- that Reagan had specifically harmed the movement of liberty by only inadequately advancing it ..."

Reagan didn't "only inadequately advance" liberty. He dealt exceptional damage to liberty.

On the practical level, he acted to expand, and cooperated with Congress in expanding, the size, scope and power of the federal government.

On the intellectual level, he pretended to be doing otherwise.

Reagan was bad for liberty in the concrete, and in the abstract. He occasionally talked a good talk -- and then discredited that talk with his walk. His administration was the apotheosis of the conservative welfare state and the logical result of Nixon's dictum that "we are all Keynesians now."

Tom Knapp

Post 11

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 1:27am

Thomas,

The many loathsome aspects of your comments sort of prove my point, and evoke no desire in me to debate them; but in that quote I was specifically referring to the *movement* of liberty in general.

To say that the movement of liberty was better, stronger & more influential in the 70s, before Reagan, than it has been since Reagan, is to profess a major factual inaccuracy, pure and simple.

And to say that the monumental expansion of liberty throughout the world during that time had nothing at all to do with Reagan, is to confess delusion.

Alec

Post 12

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 4:35am

Had America become a completely libertarian society, it would've been Rothbard's worst nightmare, for it would've destroyed his cherished rebel-status.

I agree with you Alec. His (and other Libertarians) agenda is to be "anti-Government", no matter what. And if that Government is Libertarian or close to being Libertarian, they still would hate and attack it. Without their spiteful hate against anything to do with the Government, what else would they be able to do?

PS. Thanks for the historical info David.

(Edited by Marcus Bachler on 5/24, 4:36am)

Post 13

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 5:41am

I agree with Knapp that Reagan domestically worked against liberty while often wielding (and tarnishing) its rhetoric. USSR aside, Reagan's mishmash foreign policy also negotiated with, appeased, or outright aided terrorists and regimes that would be the US' bogeymen for the next seventeen years.

It has puzzled me how many people rush to shower credit upon Reagan for the collapse of an economic system, that happened in a foreign country and several years after his administration. The only interesting argument I've seen before for him hastening that collapse was US providing military equipment to Saudi Arabia, in exchange for depressing the world market for oil; even this I've never seen quantified to suggest how much impact it really had on USSR economy. For those who believe Reagan is responsible for the collapse of communism in Russia, how do you think he did it?

Post 14

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 5:47am

"I agree with you Alec. His (and other Libertarians) agenda is to be "anti-Government", no matter what. And if that Government is Libertarian or close to being Libertarian, they still would hate and attack it. Without their spiteful hate against anything to do with the Government, what else would they be able to do?"

I actually agree with you, and think many libertarians would choose to keep finding more and more minute points to rail against. However, I think the same thing holds for Objectivists too; if we ever reached a utopian Objectivist minarchy, many would still proceed to spew about how people weren't rational enough or didn't share their objectively correct aesthetic values.

Post 15

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 7:37am

Quoth Alec Mouhibian:

"The many loathsome aspects of your comments sort of prove my point"

The fact that you find my comments "loathsome" sort of proves that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

Which, as it happens, is about par for the course.

"To say that the movement of liberty was better, stronger & more influential in the 70s, before Reagan, than it has been since Reagan, is to profess a major factual inaccuracy, pure and simple."

Thank you for stating the case plainly and revealing your error: You are confusing correlation with causation.

For the sake of argument, I'll accept your claim that "the movement of liberty was better, stronger and more influential" after Reagan than before as a given.

It does not follow from that claim that the state of the "movement for liberty" before or after Reagan was due to Reagan. The rooster crows. The sun rises. The former does not, however, cause the latter.

Reagan did not simply acquiesce in the expansion of government power, he reveled in it. To the extent that his pro-liberty rhetoric -- be it his 1964 speech nominating Goldwater for president or any of the soundbites from his 1980 campaign or his presidency -- was useful at all, it was as a) an inspiration to others who did what he declined to do and b) a benchmark against which to measure his abject failure to put that rhetoric into action.

The foundation of the Cato Institute in 1977 had more to do with moving pro-liberty public policy to the front burner than anything Reagan ever did. And, as it happens, one of the founders of the Cato Institute, and the man who named it, was ... Murray Rothbard.

But, please, don't let silly little things like facts get in the way of your ability to pluck adjectives out of the thesaurus and throw them around when you don't have a rational argument to offer.

Tom Knapp

Post 16

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 8:50am

However, I think the same thing holds for Objectivists too; if we ever reached a utopian Objectivist minarchy, many would still proceed to spew about how people weren't rational enough or didn't share their objectively correct aesthetic values.

This is not exclusively about being critical of the Government.

This is about how some Libertarian groups have virtually nothing positive to say about their own Government.

However, most Objectivists - although critical of the Government - give it credit where credit is due.

Post 17

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 9:15am

My favorite presidents are:

Washington (established precedent and laissez-faire attitude of leadership)

Andrew Jackson: Destroyed national bank.

Calvin Coolidge: Very laissez-faire and part of reason for "roaring twenties"

Reagan: Inspiring speeches on liberty and squashed communism via military buildup and laissez-faire economics (though his pullout of the Marines after bombing in Lebanon is indicative of his pragmatism on many fronts that led to emboldening of terrorists)

Lincoln was a disaster, as many have noted. Worse, he was an eloquent and sublime monster who began the era of big government. He suspended habeas corpus; he was the first to institute conscription; he controverted the constitution by exacting a poll tax; he began the printing of Greenbacks and extraordinary inflation; he suppressed rebellion against conscription with murderous tactics in New York and elsewhere. He imprisoned newspaper publishers and others who disagreed with him. His tenure as president ushered in the view that the government's "rights" supercede those of its citizens -- to a much greater degree than even FDR.

The so-called freeing of the slaves cast them headlong into 80 years of nightmarish murder and oppression because 90% the country was not ready yet to deal with the issue. Many books that I agree with show that slavery (because of bad economics and world opinion) was on its way out within 25-50 years. I think Lincoln's anti-human-rights governing set a precedent that was worse in the long term for liberty than allowing the North and South to split and allowing slavery to exist for a while longer -- with perhaps the two sides agreeing to hook back up later as one country, rid of its evil institution.

Post 18

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 3:33pm

Thomas,

Aside from your apparent confusion over what an adjective is, I already addressed what you considered my "error" at the end of my post, where I noted that if you do not think the expansion and popularization of liberty was at all due to Reagan, you fall under the category of "delusional." A category to which you're no stranger, to be sure.

Let's see. An immense expansion of the liberty movement occurred during the exact same time as the presidency of the most powerful politician in the world, who happened to wield the rhetoric of liberty incessantly and courageously, in unprecedented contexts, and who also happened to be immensely popular. Yet his rhetoric, according to the Knappsacks, "tarnished" liberty.

Interesting. And exemplary of how much casuistry certain people will employ to dance around their all-or-nothing approach to the real world. Perfect rhetoric followed by imperfect action constitutes a "tarnishing" of that rhetoric. And since perfect action, in the world of politics, is impossible -- it is therefore impossible to advance liberty in the real world (according to this all-or-nothing logic).

To say that Reagan's rhetoric "tarnished" liberty proves my point in the most dramatic way possible, quite apart from Reagan's actual governmental achievements (the denial of which requires a great deal of determination, too.)

My point here was not that deluded and detached ideologoues have made no contribution to the advancement of liberty -- they (including Rothbard) certainly have and can. My point was that there is such a category of people who think it's impossible to achieve anything in reality. Which means that, if it were *entirely* up to them, nothing would ever be achieved.

Alec

P.S. You can also ask any of the heads at CATO if they don't think the institute's vast increase in influence and funding is owed largely to the popularity that Reagan brought to the ideas of free-enterprise.
(Edited by Alec Mouhibian
on 5/24, 3:50pm)

Post 19

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 3:58pm