RoR: Forum

Are you seriously saying that Steven supports the principles of Karl Marx?!?!?!?!?

In regards to his interpretation and understanding of history, he is unmistakeably Marxist. Marxist history says that individuals play no role in history, and history is nothing but deterministic reactions to anonymous social and economic factors. In the context of this discussion, the 'actions' which we are engaged in which generated 'blowback' are a prime example of this. He has said things like 'every action has a reaction' suggesting that human reactions to stimuli are like Newtonian reactions to forces - again, an unmistakeably Marxist interpretation.

As an aspect of Marxism, this has seeped into common usage much more prevalently than actual communism has, and even many people who oppose communism embrace this particular irrationallity, people apparently such a Steven.

Post 81

Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 9:18pm

Mr. Wolfer,

See, if you oppose needless occupations that drain the productive resources of the good American people, you're a Marxist. Go figure, eh?

Also:

You can do your marxist psuedolibertarian desk-pounding all you like, but you're full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Wow...how inventive. I am thoroughly devastated.

I am frankly no longer interested in throwing pearls before swine on this topic - if you want to continue to be a warmonger without regard for the consequences thereof, be my guest. America is, by and large, populated by good and productive people. It is its government that gets in the way, both domestically and in international affairs. I would not think that would be such a hard thing to realize, but there is an odd strain of Objectivists, including Ayn Rand, who at times seem to think that individualism stops at the water's edge.

You can scream until you're blue in the face about how your cause is "just", which is up for debate, but all the innocent Gazan (for example) knows is that American-bought bombs destroyed his farm and killed his son. I don't know why it is you think it's America's responsibility to foster justice all across the world, with a sword in one hand and checkbook in the other, but it's a terribly altruistic belief. The government exists by our consent to guard our interests, and overseas meddling fosters resentment that makes that sole goal that much more difficult to achieve.

Instituting the attitude of "MYOB" in America's foreign policy would save us a lot of heartache and grief, with the added bonus of saving other nations a lot of heartache and grief.

Even if we pulled every soldier out of the middle east, our products would still infuse Islamic culture, and they would *still* hate the west for that, and *still* committ terrorist acts. So what do you propose we do, blockade the middle east to prevent copies of Titanic from getting smuggled in?

Really? Do you have any evidence for that? Perhaps we should, you know, try pulling back first, instead of constantly expanding our footprint, eh? Sounds like you're clinging to an article of faith - why not take the enemy at his word?
(Edited by Steven Druckenmiller on 1/21, 10:16pm)

Post 82

Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 9:22pm

He has said things like 'every action has a reaction' suggesting that human reactions to stimuli are like Newtonian reactions to forces - again, an unmistakeably Marxist interpretation.

As an aspect of Marxism, this has seeped into common usage much more prevalently than actual communism has, and even many people who oppose communism embrace this particular irrationallity, people apparently such a Steven.

Not that I care to defend Marx so much as point out your own ignorance, but that is not an accurate statement.

Regardless, are you suggesting that man does not have a nature? Meaning that governments can act however they want, with no regard for liberty, and nothing bad will come of it?

I suppose that whole pack of people known as "economists", who say that "people respond to incentives", are Marxists too?

Is not being terribly well-read a point of pride for you?

Post 83

Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 9:34pm

"Innocent Gazan" and "expanding footprint"?

To use a favorite expression of yours, STD, "Hah!"

Words have meanings, and the meanings of yours are moral relativism and hysterical historical ignorance. It is only rarely that Israel even responds to attacks from the Gazans, and it is her fault she does not do so definitively. Any innocent Gazans have either left or are fighting their own "leaders" in order to form a peaceful secular capitalist society. Can you name ten? Can you name one? As for our "expanding footprint," our supposed imperialism ("blood for oil!") is just another Marxist big-lie fantasy so blatantly false it is not worth one more word.

Pearls before swine? Not even nacre on sand.

Post 84

Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 9:42pm

You can do your marxist psuedolibertarian desk-pounding all you like, but you're full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Wow...how inventive. I am thoroughly devastated.

As devastated as I was no doubt, the point was that your comment was a waste of time to make. Any comment that can be repeated right back to you and still make coherent sense is a waste of time to make. Might as well start calling me a poopy-head while your at it.

if you want to continue to be a warmonger without regard for the consequences thereof, be my guest

If you want to continue being an irrational pacifistic isolationist without regard to the consequences thereof, be my guest...

And of course, you did not answer the question, was it just or not to oppose the soviet union? yes or no? And if just, are we morally culpable for the unjust reactions to that?

I don't know why it is you think it's America's responsibility to foster justice all across the world, with a sword in one hand and checkbook in the other, but it's a terribly altruistic belief.

This is why you are a psuedolibertarian, because individual freedom means nothing to except as a pragmatic convenience for you. If the rest of the world rots in a totalitarian hell whole, who cares, as long as you got yours. And no, in fact, it is not an 'altruistic' belief any more than assisting your neighbor who is being mugged is 'altruistic' or paying into a police service which captures criminals who have committed no crime against YOU in particular. Both of these are in your own long term rational best interest, and so is fostering free markets and representative democracies.

Libertarians are properly rigorously rational with regard to their own individual self defense, but suicidally irrational with regard to their national self defense. If a neighbor is being raped, an armed libertarian is entirely rational in helping, that rapist might attack a loved one of his next. But if a neighboring country is being raped and pillaged by another country, libertarians like you cry fowl if there is any intervention, even proper and rational intervention. If a libertarians friend is attacked by someone, the libertarian is proud to help defend him. If a libertarian nations ally is attacked by a tyrannical enemy, the libertarian cry foul and blowback this and interventionism that. Need I go on? I think you get the point.

The theocratic and tyrannical regimes of the world start all the wars, have the most internal violence, breed all the terrorists, it is not ever and never will be in your own rational long term self interest to completely disregard what goes on in these nations, especially in an age of nuclear terrorism and the ability to genetically engineer artificial life forms.

Post 85

Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 10:06pm

Fine, Ted, innocent Afghani wedding parties, perhaps. Or innocent Iraqi families. Pick your poison - they all exist and the American government has, at one point, killed innocents.

Mr. Dickey, - you can continue to think that America is required to be it's "brother's keeper", but I hope you do not call yourself an Objectivist in doing so. Can you even name the last "neighboring country" we intervened in? Did Canada or Mexico or, hell, any of the Western Hemisphere, get invaded recently when I wasn't looking?

For you to practically say (without saying it, of course) that America owes a duty to the rest of the world based on some dubious, nebulous and unprovable concept of "self-interest" is specious at best and an attempt to guilt us all into self-sacrifice at worst. I mean, you have, in the language of Ingsoc, managed to twist "self-interest" around so much that it's now Dickey-code for "self-sacrifice"! It takes a truly committed warmonger to take a good concept like enlightened self-interest and twist it to the point that he tries to sell endless war as "self-interested".

As for our "expanding footprint," our supposed imperialism ("blood for oil!") is just another Marxist big-lie fantasy so blatantly false it is not worth one more word.

I am starting to think that "Marxist" is code from a couple of you for "la, la, la, I can call names and safely ignore the argument!" What does Marx have to do with the stone-cold fact that America does continue to operate in more and more nations? It is a fact, Ted, do you dispute that? I don't believe that "blood for oil" nonsense either - hell, at least it would be (admittedly shortsightedly) in Americans' interests to get that oil. It's altruist such as Mr. Dickey who think we have a Holy Crusade, handed down from God, to institute "democracy" around the world, all, of course, at your personal expense.
(Edited by Steven Druckenmiller on 1/21, 10:10pm)

Post 86

Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 10:13pm

"Libertarians are properly rigorously rational with regard to their own individual self defense, but suicidally irrational with regard to their national self defense."

This is a correct and an exact description of the problem of anarchism and its fellow travelers. The cause for that irrationality is their failure to understand the nature and the reality of the state. There is no stateless civilized man. The state is part of our nature. The state is not a human invention. Man evolved within the context of the tribe. Our nearest animal relatives live in primitive states. The authority of the alpha male is accepted so long as he can protect the group from outside threats and do so without becoming an unacceptable burden.

That is the default state for man, a tribe of thirty people in a wilderness in constant war with their neighbors. We do have reason and language. We can communicate and rise above this state. But we cannot fall below it. A lone man does not reproduce, nor does a lone couple last long in a world at war. It does take a village to raise a child, to provide a secure place within which to protect him to adulthood, if the rest of the world is in a state of anarchy. No society has ever been without the state. With reason the state can grow from a tribe to a free nation.

The anarchist imagines himself alone, taking for granted the benefits of a free state that allow a man to exist alone. If he choses not to support that state whose protection he enjoys he is simply choosing parasitism. This is usually motivated by resentment, usually of daddy, and it is usually justified by some fantasy of repression and what they owe me. If only this world were like Avatar! (The joke is that for 75,000 years and even now in the remoter jungles of New Guinea it has been and still is, and you can follow Michael Rockefeller's steps if you want to.)

Man can do without the state no better than he can without Oxygen, just on a slightly different timescale. Look at Haiti, they have no state right now. You can fantasize that you can live without the state on your island or your spaceship, but you cannot build a spaceship or buy the title to an island without a state as your place of origin. And if you wish to build a colony you will need to form a state. If you want to die heirless, that can be done without one.

Post 87

Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 10:54pm

The Nuts versus the Creeps

"Speaking broadly: In the 2006 and 2008 elections, and at some point during the past decade, the ancestral war between Democrats and the Republicans began to take on a new look. If you were a normal human sitting at home having a beer and watching national politics peripherally, as normal people do until they focus on an election, chances are pretty good you came to see the two major parties not as the Dems versus the Reps, or the blue versus the bed, but as the Nuts versus the Creeps. The Nuts were for high spending and taxing and the expansion of government no matter what. The Creeps were hypocrites who talked one thing and did another, who went along on the spending spree while lecturing on fiscal solvency.

"In 2008, the voters went for Mr. Obama thinking he was not a Nut but a cool and sober moderate of the center-left sort. In 2009 and 2010, they looked at his general governing attitudes as reflected in his preoccupations�health care, cap and trade�and their hidden, potential and obvious costs, and thought, "Uh-oh, he's a Nut!"

"Which meant they were left with the Creeps.

"But the Republican candidates in Virginia and New Jersey, and now Scott Brown in Massachusetts, did something amazing. They played the part of the Creep very badly! They put themselves forward as serious about spending, as independent, not narrowly partisan. Mr. Brown rarely mentioned he was a Republican, and didn't even mention the party in his victory speech. Importantly, their concerns were on the same page as the voters'. They focused on the relationship between spending and taxing, worried about debt and deficits, were moderate in their approach to social issues. They didn't have wedge issues, they had issues."

Post 88

Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 11:26pm

I'm saddened at the state of this recurring argument. To make the point that our government has intervened militarily in ways and at times that were not justified, gets one labeled an anarchist and a Marxist. (Somebody's having logical difficulties since those are difficult to combine.)

Ted makes an excellent argument against anarchy - I find no flaws in it except what does it have to do interventionism. Clearly no one can argue against interventionism as a possibility. I mean, we could each imagine our government doing things that it would be reasonable to call 'interventionist' - so our argument should be about whether the things our government is doing or has done rise to that level.

This is a massive strawman - since we would all agree that 'state' in some form or another exists, that reason can give rise to varying kinds of government, and that rational people will want them to defend us. Notice that no where in that progression is there a mention that interventionism can exist - and by the way, it has had a rich history from the earliest times (e.g., one tribe raids another).

The argument is when to intervene and when not to. Labeling those that disagree with a particular level as anarchists, when they aren't does absolutely no good.

-----------------------

In regards to his interpretation and understanding of history, he is unmistakeably Marxist. Marxist history says that individuals play no role in history, and history is nothing but deterministic reactions to anonymous social and economic factors. In the context of this discussion, the 'actions' which we are engaged in which generated 'blowback' are a prime example of this. He has said things like 'every action has a reaction' suggesting that human reactions to stimuli are like Newtonian reactions to forces - again, an unmistakeably Marxist interpretation.

Steven must have said that individuals play no role in history in invisible ink - I'm just not seeing that at all.

I'm also not seeing his statement that would justify saying that Steven believes history is deterministic. Every action does have a reaction, but that means different reactions if you are discussing billiard balls than if you are discussing humans. But one can draw conclusions about probable reactions based upon the nature of the entities. If I do x to a number of people, we will be able to estimate a probable reaction of y. That doesn't contradict volition. It just means that we expect people to react in ways that will be consonant with their ideas and options for a given context.

That kind of overblown and out of this world characterization of Steven as a Marxist takes away from the point that deserved to be made... the question that does deserve honest attention: When does self-defense of a nation arise? Waiting till a nuculear device is triggered is wrong. Waiting till the missle is under way is wrong. But declaring war on Pakistan today because they might transform sufficiently to attack us is wrong. The question is good. The need for it is real (we have already been attacked multiple times). But calling Steven a Marxist is absurd and detracts from the real question and serious thought.

Post 89

Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 11:48pm

Mr. Dickey, - you can continue to think that America is required to be it's "brother's keeper",

Mr. Druckenmiller, you can continue to 'make an effort to not understand me' - to quote Rand - if you want, but I said nothing about being my brothers keeper. Again to quote Rand, no one is under any moral obligation to assist others in fighting a tyrant, but doing so is not immoral. And unless you consider helping an ally fight a murderous tyrant which is an enemy to both us and our ally, a 'sacrifice' there is nothing altruistic about it. But you can keep trying to pigeon hole me in catchy red herring phrases to avoid actually challenging your own superficial beliefs if you want.

Can you even name the last "neighboring country" we intervened in? Did Canada or Mexico or, hell, any of the Western Hemisphere, get invaded recently when I wasn't looking?

Ha, wow. Ok, Mr. non-interventionist Libertarian, lets say in 1980 the Soviet Union invaded CANADA AND MEXICO instead of Afghanastan. What would you do? After all, if Libertarians were in power, they would be safe in the knowledge they would face no opposition even if they steamrolled over EVERY SINGLE OTHER NATION on the planet. So, let's hear it, 1,000,000 Soviet troops are plowing through Canada and Mexico. WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST THE US DO? No Soviet soldier has set a single boot on US soil, nor lobbed even a stone across the border.

Of course, 'neighbor' is a metaphor and is as relevant in the case of international self defense as it is in individual self defense in assisting a 'neighbor' across country by supporting an inter-state police system. But who cares about principles, apparently not you...

It takes a truly committed warmonger to take a good concept like enlightened self-interest

Oh now I am a warmonger! wow, does that mean as a libertarian if you assist your neighbor who is being raped you are a violence crazed vigilante? Believe what you want, but the fact is your principles about self defense are completely inconsistent. Mine are not. And actually I think war would rarely be needed and I've elaborated on this point on many other threads if you care to consider it.

And still you keep refusing to answer such simple questions.

1)Was it just or not to oppose the Soviet Union?
2)And if just, are we morally culpable for the unjust reactions to that?

Post 90

Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 11:56pm

To make the point that our government has intervened militarily in ways and at times that were not justified, gets one labeled an anarchist and a Marxist.

Steve, the other Steve has made no such comment. I'll be the first to admit that many of our actions opposing the Soviet Union during the coldwar were not justified, but the other Steve, and the default isolationist libertarian position - is that NO intervention is EVER justified. Despite ICMB's and suitcase nukes, to them national self defense is waiting for an Iranian battleship to charge up the Hudson. This was fine during the days when it took 3 months to cross the Atlantic and all you could do was lob cannon balls. Today it is utterly stupid.

I've attempted to get the other Steve to fully acknowledge with a simple yes or no question if it was right to oppose the Soviet Union, he keeps obfuscating his answer because he knows it's an absurd 'no' if he is to remain consistent with the conventional libertarian beliefs.

Post 91

Friday, January 22, 2010 - 4:58am

You are walking down your side of the street.

You see two thugs across the street beating a man senseless, robbing him, brutalizing him.

It's not happening on your side of the street.

1] Not your problem. It's not on your side of the street.
2] Avert your eyes. Maybe they won't see you.
3] Surrender just one side of the street to thugs, maybe they won't take that as an open invitation to cross the street.
4] Cross the street.

If you value freedom and liberty, when, if ever, is it best to do 1,2, or 3, and when is in your best interests to cross the street?

Or, the Atlantic?

4] isn't altruism.

Post 92

Friday, January 22, 2010 - 5:29am

Fred, there is a big difference (other than proximity) between the scenario you describe and international government intervention. Making it more alike would be you walking down the street, seeing the thugs and victim, and then you demanding others, perhaps threatening them, to help you go after the thugs.

Post 93

Friday, January 22, 2010 - 9:39am

Merlin, who are those "others" to which you refer in your proffered refutation?

Post 94

Friday, January 22, 2010 - 10:09am

Merlin, who are those "others" to which you refer in your proffered refutation?

The point of my adding "others" to Fred's scenario was to allude to the case that when a government intervenes forcefully outside its borders to protect the interests of foreigners, there are many other of its own citizens affected, most of whom who have little or no say in whether the intervention is proper or not.

Post 95

Friday, January 22, 2010 - 10:21am

I suspected that's what you meant. By saying "others" when speaking of a nation you imply other nations.

But I am still not sure exactly who these victims are. We do have a volunteer military. Do you have a problem with the ability itself of the congress to declare war?

Post 96

Friday, January 22, 2010 - 10:27am

Ted,

The taxpayers, perhaps? If you and Mr. Dickey want to go on a "save the world for democracy and freedom" war spree, be my guest, but pay for it yourself.

Post 97

Friday, January 22, 2010 - 10:57am

You are walking down your side of the street.

You see two thugs across the street beating a man senseless, robbing him, brutalizing him.

It's not happening on your side of the street.

I would help.

I would not point guns at others and say "Come on, y'all, pay me to help this other guy".

The fatal flaws from the "other" side here is that you keep anthropomorphizing states and nations, and it does not work that way.

Post 98

Friday, January 22, 2010 - 10:57am

Well, STD, I suppose at least you didn't break your promise not to cast a pearl.

There is a difference between opposing a government policy and claiming a personal immunity to paying taxes. Rand didn't advocate what you wish to claim as a privilege.

As an Objectionist you don't believe in the validity of the state under any circumstances, whether it operates by a simple majority or a supermajority. Your position amounts to the startling claim that you don't think the world is perfect. Your opposition to war between sovereign states is trivial and your statement of it redundant.

Post 99

Friday, January 22, 2010 - 11:02am