What is a libertarian?

[Worlocked]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

Originally posted by: Worlocked

Originally posted by: Dissipate

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

Originally posted by: Dissipate

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

If things are structurally flawed do you throw them out or fix them so they work as intended?

Democracy's 'structural flaws' cannot be fixed. Mass franchise democracy will always be mired in perpetual corruption and outrageous laws.

People have been talking about 'fixing' our democracy for decades. Read my lips: it will never happen.

Trying to 'fix' mass franchise democracy is like trying to fix the Titanic on its way down. The ship is sunk and now it's time to throw democracy into the wastebasket of history.

The term mass franchise democracy means nothing to me. Care to elaborate on the types and meanings of democracies?

The phrase is pretty easy to understand.

Mass:

A large but nonspecific amount or number (of people)

Franchise:

A privilege or right officially granted a person or a group by a government, especially:

The constitutional or statutory right to vote.

Democracy:

Majority rule.

So we have a huge mass of people (in the U.S. 18 and older non-felons) with the 'right' to vote in a 'majority rule' system. And of course there is nothing these voters cannot vote on. Everything is up for grabs.

What do you think will be the result of such a system? What do you think has been the result of such a system?

I can give you the answer as to what generally has been the result:

The unabated growth of warfare, welfare and regulations on a massive scale.

Cliff notes:

Mass franchise democracy is I piss in your Cheerios, you piss in mine and the government extorts from us its Cheerios tax for granting us the 'priviledge' of pissing in each other's Cheerios.

Well said. To add to that:

?A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.?
-Thomas Jefferson

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
-Benjamin Franklin

So many people refer to the United States as a democracy, when it is a constitutional federal republic. It may have strong democratic traditions, but it isn't supposed to be a mob rule.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html

Why is it well said? It makes no sense at all to me. What is the meaning of piss in somebodies cheerios? Why would you want to do that. Where does the tax come in?

How do one hundred people break up in a mob of 51 beating up on 49? What do the two wolves have for lunch tomorrow? How is an armed lamb not an immature killer sheep. Why, if man is a wolf or a killer lamb, has he survived for millions of years to produce something as noble as libertarianism? How did the individual come to fear the group? How did the group become vile?

And who will address the issue that we owe the matrix in which we have our being and are each our brother's keeper?

Uh, you woulden't. That's the whole point.

EDIT:

How do one hundred people break up in a mob of 51 beating up on 49?

Usually through unorthodox and "un-civil" tactics. See the Revolutionary war and what led up to it.

What do the two wolves have for lunch tomorrow?

I don't think you quite get the concept of the metaphor.

How is an armed lamb not an immature killer sheep.

Wtf? You're going to have to elaborate on this one. I'm not good with psychobabble, especially brief non-descript psychobabble.

Why, if man is a wolf or a killer lamb, has he survived for millions of years to produce something as noble as libertarianism?

I think you need to flip through a history book and read how "great" it was to be the common man in the vast majority of societies throughout history.

How did the individual come to fear the group?

By reading history books and seeing how "great" it was to be the common man in the vast majority of societies throughout history.

How did the group become vile?

When they forced their views on others, be it the majority or the minority.

And who will address the issue that we owe the matrix in which we have our being and are each our brother's keeper?

Uh... yeah... Here comes that psychobabble rearing its ugly head again. Seems to be communist themed psychobabble.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: hscorpio
Why do you think libertarianism is all about group hatred? I think of it as a philosophy that teaches that the best way for people to interact in the group is by not using force against other members of the group to get what you want.

The fact that humans form groups to have better odds of surviving/etc is not somehow denied by libertarianism.

That is exactly what it is.

That the group might abuse its individual members through forceful acts like war, slavery, genocide, oppression, etc. is not something our communal friend Moonie here wants to recognize. That these forceful acts against the individual members are essentially like a cancer to the body of the whole group, weakening and destroying it from within, is something he must just ignore. To him, it seems, the group is supreme and the individuals that comprise it are irrelevant. Dust. Simply for being born, the individuals owe the group a debt: their lives. To be taken by force as necessary. Basically, Moonie doesn't think humans are primates like he always says, he thinks human beings are worker ants.

 

[Worlocked]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: hscorpio
Why do you think libertarianism is all about group hatred? I think of it as a philosophy that teaches that the best way for people to interact in the group is by not using force against other members of the group to get what you want.

The fact that humans form groups to have better odds of surviving/etc is not somehow denied by libertarianism.

That is exactly what it is.

That the group might abuse its individual members through forceful acts like war, slavery, genocide, oppression, etc. is not something our communal friend Moonie here wants to recognize. That these forceful acts against the individual members are essentially like a cancer to the body of the whole group, weakening and destroying it from within, is something he must just ignore. To him, it seems, the group is supreme and the individuals that comprise it are irrelevant. Dust. Simply for being born, the individuals owe the group a debt: their lives. To be taken by force as necessary. Basically, Moonie doesn't think humans are primates like he always says, he thinks human beings are worker ants.

Yeah pretty much. Communism = Hive mentality. You're just a drone.

 

[Moonbeam]

hscorpio: "Why do you think libertarianism is all about group hatred? I think of it as a philosophy that teaches that the best way for people to interact in the group is by not using force against other members of the group to get what you want.

I think the answer is pretty clear from what has been said. I have suggested that the whole thrust of our evolution has been away from that; that the group should come first is what's natural and led to human survival and success. This whole notion of the using force against the group is foreign and unnatural and has to arise, somehow, as a result of something unnatural, my guess being the ego, the notion of self as separate from others and under some sort of attack or stress. It looks like to me that the very act of delineating a personal self as opposed to the group is the act of force because it denies all the intangibles of obligation that the artificially constructed market of the ego has sought to deny. I refereed to it as the idea that only those who kill meat have any value which is complete nonsense. You make money on meat only after you've paid off the debt of your life and for that you owe the group everything, no? Every person is the society you owe. To personally profit, then, is theft, and it is this theft that libertarianism seeks to deny by the fiction of a self without strings. To love is to love all and that is man's natural state.

The fact that humans form groups to have better odds of surviving/etc is not somehow denied by libertarianism.

 

[imported_hscorpio]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
hscorpio: "Why do you think libertarianism is all about group hatred? I think of it as a philosophy that teaches that the best way for people to interact in the group is by not using force against other members of the group to get what you want.

I think the answer is pretty clear from what has been said. I have suggested that the whole thrust of our evolution has been away from that; that the group should come first is what's natural and led to human survival and success. This whole notion of the using force against the group is foreign and unnatural and has to arise, somehow, as a result of something unnatural, my guess being the ego, the notion of self as separate from others and under some sort of attack or stress. It looks like to me that the very act of delineating a personal self as opposed to the group is the act of force because it denies all the intangibles of obligation that the artificially constructed market of the ego has sought to deny. I refereed to it as the idea that only those who kill meat have any value which is complete nonsense. You make money on meat only after you've paid off the debt of your life and for that you owe the group everything, no? Every person is the society you owe. To personally profit, then, is theft, and it is this theft that libertarianism seeks to deny by the fiction of a self without strings. To love is to love all and that is man's natural state.

I think your putting the carriage ahead of the horse.

 

[Moonbeam]

When Mulla Nasruddin was seen riding about town backward on his donkey the people laughed and asked what he thought he was doing. "Has it occurred to none of you" he said, "that it could be the donkey which is the wrong way round?"

 

[imported_hscorpio]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
When Mulla Nasruddin was seen riding about town backward on his donkey the people laughed and asked what he thought he was doing. "Has it occurred to none of you" he said, "that it could be the donkey which is the wrong way round?"

Just googled him.

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: hscorpio

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
When Mulla Nasruddin was seen riding about town backward on his donkey the people laughed and asked what he thought he was doing. "Has it occurred to none of you" he said, "that it could be the donkey which is the wrong way round?"

Just googled him.

Yes, so if you want to say I'm backward with the horse and cart, please present and argue your case.

 

[imported_hscorpio]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

Originally posted by: hscorpio

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
When Mulla Nasruddin was seen riding about town backward on his donkey the people laughed and asked what he thought he was doing. "Has it occurred to none of you" he said, "that it could be the donkey which is the wrong way round?"

Just googled him.

Yes, so if you want to say I'm backward with the horse and cart, please present and argue your case.

Now everytime I read one of your posts I'm going to imagine a clown sitting backwards on a donkey with a cart in front of it.

 

[LunarRay]

Originally posted by: hscorpio

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

Originally posted by: hscorpio

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
When Mulla Nasruddin was seen riding about town backward on his donkey the people laughed and asked what he thought he was doing. "Has it occurred to none of you" he said, "that it could be the donkey which is the wrong way round?"

Just googled him.

Yes, so if you want to say I'm backward with the horse and cart, please present and argue your case.

Now everytime I read one of your posts I'm going to imagine a clown sitting backwards on a donkey with a cart in front of it.

It just might be that the Mullah trusts the direction the donkey will choose while he, the Mullah, marvels at what has occurred .... a second time.. or third. It also could be the Mullah might just be showing the crowd that it matters not how you get to your destination but, rather, if you get there and at times serendipity is as reasonable as seeing your best made plans stagnate as you pass them by... could be... I think.. Mullah are a bit funny in the examples they allow us to witness... at times anyhow.

 

[Moonbeam]

The carriage, the horse, and the driver, are, of course, allegorical representations of the physical, the emotional, and the intellectual. When these three are fully developed and functional the passenger can appear on the scene and reach his destination. But we are not far enough on, I fear, to say who this passenger is.

What we do seem to have discovered though, is that libertarians have no answer to their basic unexamined assumptions, that there is an independent unencumbered self or that the market has anything at all to do with real value.

 

[imported_hscorpio]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
What we do seem to have discovered though, is that libertarians have no answer to their basic unexamined assumptions, that there is an independent unencumbered self or that the market has anything at all to do with real value.

What I've discovered is that you assume that libertarianism is unnatural and fraudulent based on some more assumptions about mans evolutionary history which appears to all be based around your idolization of a bygone era where you assume the individual was of no significance, mixed in with some more assumptions about how markets work.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: hscorpio

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
What we do seem to have discovered though, is that libertarians have no answer to their basic unexamined assumptions, that there is an independent unencumbered self or that the market has anything at all to do with real value.

What I've discovered is that you assume that libertarianism is unnatural and fraudulent based on some more assumptions about mans evolutionary history which appears to all be based around your idolization of a bygone era where you assume the individual was of no significance, mixed in with some more assumptions about how markets work.

Haha, that pretty much sums it up. Good one. :thumbsup:

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: Dissipate

Originally posted by: hscorpio

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
What we do seem to have discovered though, is that libertarians have no answer to their basic unexamined assumptions, that there is an independent unencumbered self or that the market has anything at all to do with real value.

What I've discovered is that you assume that libertarianism is unnatural and fraudulent based on some more assumptions about mans evolutionary history which appears to all be based around your idolization of a bygone era where you assume the individual was of no significance, mixed in with some more assumptions about how markets work.

Haha, that pretty much sums it up. Good one. :thumbsup:

Why is it a good one? Where is the argument and data for his case? What is this BS about idolization if not a projection? I have no desire at all to live as a nomadic hunter. Also, I said that the individual is of no significance without a group, not the other way round. What are the assumptions I make about the market. I don't know where either of you got the notion that a logical argument somehow is formed by simply contradicting what somebody says. My statement continues to stand because you cannot make your case. My assumption is that you both may just be religious believers who simply cannot analyze your faith.

You are monkeys who have made up a game called "I own the banana tree".

Everything is connected to everything else. Libertarianism looks to me like an attempt to establish illusions to the contrary as normative thinking. The libertarian says, I have that particular skill in hunting meat that is specialized and vital and I will charge for my meat, but I will not pay the woman down the street on whom I depend for a sale and who is my sister and holds my environment together with her social skills. The libertarian it would seem wants to crown the parasite and the hoarder. A libertarian rejects his historical obligations with intellectual theory.

 

[Votingisanillusion]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Howard
" 'Bread and Circuses' " is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs, to an invader - the barbarians enter Rome."

- Jubal Harshaw, from To Sail Beyond the Sunset, by Robert A. Heinlein

(to no one in particular )

A study of Heinlein's life makes for an interesting study in the development of Progressive (or Left) Libertarianism. Did you know that in the 30's he was a Democratic party candidate for Upton Sinclair's socialist movement EPIC?
What you find is that many Libertarians are people who abandoned leftist movements because they were intelligent enough to realize that government power and money always corrupts. That the revolution against the old gang of thugs simply puts a new gang of thugs in power. That it's not a change in people (or the class in power) that is required, but a change in system. That the solution is not to empower corrupt government to solve all the problems, but to limit government and empower the people for themselves. This is the little dirty secret the leftists don't want people to know, and why they attack Libertarians so harshly.

You oppose "corrupt government" and the people, which you want to empower. But in your magic market, people are not in position of power. Most of them are wage slaves, who work for corporations and spend their daily lives obeying people in position of power who receive their power from the many capitalist governments: the boards of directors. Of course these corporations are pure and not corrupt, unlike the "corrupt government". What a beautiful fairy tale. Typical libertarian delirium tremens.

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: Votingisanillusion

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Howard
" 'Bread and Circuses' " is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs, to an invader - the barbarians enter Rome."

- Jubal Harshaw, from To Sail Beyond the Sunset, by Robert A. Heinlein

(to no one in particular )

A study of Heinlein's life makes for an interesting study in the development of Progressive (or Left) Libertarianism. Did you know that in the 30's he was a Democratic party candidate for Upton Sinclair's socialist movement EPIC?
What you find is that many Libertarians are people who abandoned leftist movements because they were intelligent enough to realize that government power and money always corrupts. That the revolution against the old gang of thugs simply puts a new gang of thugs in power. That it's not a change in people (or the class in power) that is required, but a change in system. That the solution is not to empower corrupt government to solve all the problems, but to limit government and empower the people for themselves. This is the little dirty secret the leftists don't want people to know, and why they attack Libertarians so harshly.

You oppose "corrupt government" and the people, which you want to empower. But in your magic market, people are not in position of power. Most of them are wage slaves, who work for corporations and spend their daily lives obeying people in position of power who receive their power from the many capitalist governments: the boards of directors. Of course these corporations are pure and not corrupt, unlike the "corrupt government". What a beautiful fairy tale. Typical libertarian delirium tremens.

A corporation is just an organized gang that is legal because they bought the law that declares them legal, no?

Post edited to extract my comment and put it properly at the end.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

Originally posted by: Votingisanillusion

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Howard
" 'Bread and Circuses' " is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs, to an invader - the barbarians enter Rome."

- Jubal Harshaw, from To Sail Beyond the Sunset, by Robert A. Heinlein

(to no one in particular )

A corporation is just an organized gang that is legal because they bought the law that declares them legal, no?

A study of Heinlein's life makes for an interesting study in the development of Progressive (or Left) Libertarianism. Did you know that in the 30's he was a Democratic party candidate for Upton Sinclair's socialist movement EPIC?
What you find is that many Libertarians are people who abandoned leftist movements because they were intelligent enough to realize that government power and money always corrupts. That the revolution against the old gang of thugs simply puts a new gang of thugs in power. That it's not a change in people (or the class in power) that is required, but a change in system. That the solution is not to empower corrupt government to solve all the problems, but to limit government and empower the people for themselves. This is the little dirty secret the leftists don't want people to know, and why they attack Libertarians so harshly.

You oppose "corrupt government" and the people, which you want to empower. But in your magic market, people are not in position of power. Most of them are wage slaves, who work for corporations and spend their daily lives obeying people in position of power who receive their power from the many capitalist governments: the boards of directors. Of course these corporations are pure and not corrupt, unlike the "corrupt government". What a beautiful fairy tale. Typical libertarian delirium tremens.

You seem to not understand what corporations are. Corporations are legal fictions. The products of government regulatory power, not a pure capitalist environment. The very first modern limited liability corporation, Credit Mobilier, was created with the help of bribed congressmen and solely for the means of helping certain Union Pacific fatcats to funnel and steal all the government money that UPRR was getting for their part in building the transcontinental railroad (this became a famous scandal in the Grant administration, but the business model is alive and well to this day).
Now, with the business dealings of the common people already dictated under the corruption, theft, and threat of government force for the benefit of a few, what is the communists' (meaning YOU) solution to the problem? That we give government absolute power and control over ALL our business dealings. Wow, what a concept! Whereas we have only limited corruption today, you dream of a world of absolute corruption and think it a utopia! Your problem began, of course, when you thought to be utopian in the first place, as that only revealed your own personal bitterness and naivete to the world. In your petty desire to spite those you hate, you would enslave us all. It's pretty sad...

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: hscorpio

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
What we do seem to have discovered though, is that libertarians have no answer to their basic unexamined assumptions, that there is an independent unencumbered self or that the market has anything at all to do with real value.

What I've discovered is that you assume that libertarianism is unnatural and fraudulent based on some more assumptions about mans evolutionary history which appears to all be based around your idolization of a bygone era where you assume the individual was of no significance, mixed in with some more assumptions about how markets work.

Moonie is a left communitarian. It is essentially as opposite a philosophy from libertarianism as one can have. It is IMO the most ridiculously naive and utopian of ideologies. In short, it believes that the community trumps the individual in every way, but that the community won't abuse the individual either. It's pretty much in defiance of all known reality.

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: hscorpio

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
What we do seem to have discovered though, is that libertarians have no answer to their basic unexamined assumptions, that there is an independent unencumbered self or that the market has anything at all to do with real value.

What I've discovered is that you assume that libertarianism is unnatural and fraudulent based on some more assumptions about mans evolutionary history which appears to all be based around your idolization of a bygone era where you assume the individual was of no significance, mixed in with some more assumptions about how markets work.

Moonie is a left communitarian. It is essentially as opposite a philosophy from libertarianism as one can have. It is IMO the most ridiculously naive and utopian of ideologies. In short, it believes that the community trumps the individual in every way, but that the community won't abuse the individual either. It's pretty much in defiance of all known reality.

Well well well, I had no idea that such a thing as communitarianism even existed. All my points were made by my own reasoning based on my own analysis or so when my delusions. But while I'm all in favor of you having a humble opinion I think you owe it to the argument here to do more than say that to make your case. How is what I've said ridiculously naive and Utopian? What is it about your elevation of the importance of the self that is not itself ridiculously naive and Utopian? How is the individual more endangered by the community then the community by the individual, especially the individual who hides behind a mass illusion that his privately amassed horde is his? What happened to concepts like the greatest good for the greatest number or 'well heck it just flew out of my head'

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Well well well, I had no idea that such a thing as communitarianism even existed. All my points were made by my own reasoning based on my own analysis or so when my delusions. But while I'm all in favor of you having a humble opinion I think you owe it to the argument here to do more than say that to make your case. How is what I've said ridiculously naive and Utopian? What is it about your elevation of the importance of the self that is not itself ridiculously naive and Utopian? How is the individual more endangered by the community then the community by the individual, especially the individual who hides behind a mass illusion that his privately amassed horde is his? What happened to concepts like the greatest good for the greatest number or 'well heck it just flew out of my head'

History answers all these questions. But the most logical way to answer them is to ask you to think Star Trek -- if "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one" (the so-called "greatest good for the greatest number"), then the many are free to kill, plunder, rape, and enslave as many of the few and the one as is necessary to meet their needs, now aren't they? No amount of force or violence can possibly be considered inappropriate if the many are in need. BUT what is the many but a large collection of fews and ones? Oops! You're basically guilty of an illogical "top-down" mentality on freedoms and rights, when appropriately all freedoms and rights are "bottom-up," beginning with the individual, with the few and the one.

edit: I wonder, does the so-called "pacifist" left ever consider just how violent and forceful their own ideology is? It seems to me that they do not.

 

[imported_hscorpio]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

Originally posted by: Dissipate

Originally posted by: hscorpio

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
What we do seem to have discovered though, is that libertarians have no answer to their basic unexamined assumptions, that there is an independent unencumbered self or that the market has anything at all to do with real value.

What I've discovered is that you assume that libertarianism is unnatural and fraudulent based on some more assumptions about mans evolutionary history which appears to all be based around your idolization of a bygone era where you assume the individual was of no significance, mixed in with some more assumptions about how markets work.

Haha, that pretty much sums it up. Good one. :thumbsup:

Why is it a good one? Where is the argument and data for his case? What is this BS about idolization if not a projection? I have no desire at all to live as a nomadic hunter. Also, I said that the individual is of no significance without a group, not the other way round. What are the assumptions I make about the market. I don't know where either of you got the notion that a logical argument somehow is formed by simply contradicting what somebody says. My statement continues to stand because you cannot make your case. My assumption is that you both may just be religious believers who simply cannot analyze your faith.

You are monkeys who have made up a game called "I own the banana tree".

Everything is connected to everything else. Libertarianism looks to me like an attempt to establish illusions to the contrary as normative thinking. The libertarian says, I have that particular skill in hunting meat that is specialized and vital and I will charge for my meat, but I will not pay the woman down the street on whom I depend for a sale and who is my sister and holds my environment together with her social skills. The libertarian it would seem wants to crown the parasite and the hoarder. A libertarian rejects his historical obligations with intellectual theory.

The bolded part is the belief you started this thread with (under the guise of not understanding libertarianism) and apparently no matter what anyone says to the contrary you are going to continue believing such. You like to talk of arguments despite having not made one good argument throughout the entire thread, just many 'probing' questions based on your own unexameined assumptions. And you act as if now we can all share your 'discovery' that libertarianism is just an illusion based on unexamined assumptions. Who's really the one playing games in this thread?

 

[imported_hscorpio]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Well well well, I had no idea that such a thing as communitarianism even existed. All my points were made by my own reasoning based on my own analysis or so when my delusions. But while I'm all in favor of you having a humble opinion I think you owe it to the argument here to do more than say that to make your case. How is what I've said ridiculously naive and Utopian? What is it about your elevation of the importance of the self that is not itself ridiculously naive and Utopian? How is the individual more endangered by the community then the community by the individual, especially the individual who hides behind a mass illusion that his privately amassed horde is his? What happened to concepts like the greatest good for the greatest number or 'well heck it just flew out of my head'

History answers all these questions. But the most logical way to answer them is to ask you to think Star Trek -- if "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one" (the so-called "greatest good for the greatest number"), then the many are free to kill, plunder, rape, and enslave as many of the few and the one as is necessary to meet their needs, now aren't they? No amount of force or violence can possibly be considered inappropriate if the many are in need. BUT what is the many but a large collection of fews and ones? Oops! You're basically guilty of an illogical "top-down" mentality on freedoms and rights, when appropriately all freedoms and rights are "bottom-up," beginning with the individual, with the few and the one.

edit: I wonder, does the so-called "pacifist" left ever consider just how violent and forceful their own ideology is? It seems to me that they do not.

It all boils down to this indivual vs collective debate. If anyone really wants to examine the real world implications of this debate I suggest you ltake a look at the difference between North and South Korea.

The problem is who decides whats best for the collective? Ultimately it is individuals that decide, be it either one dictator/king/tyrant/whatever or each individual. With collectivism/communism you will never see a situation where each individual decides through some means such as democracy. It will always be one individual (or a small group) that decides what they think is best for everyone, in other words forcibly imposing their will on the entire group. This is because of the collectivist mentality we can see in our friend Moonie's words, that the individual can't be trusted to decide for himself lest he hurt the collective by being selfish and hoarding. But somehow we are supposed to trust one individual with complete power to do whats best for everyone.

Thats what it boils down to for me. Who is going to decide whats best for me? NO one can make that choice better than myself.

 

[Moonbeam]

Vic: History answers all these questions.

M: Ah but I claimed the millions of years of history of our hunter gatherer existence as definitive proof that you are wrong.

V: But the most logical way to answer them is to ask you to think Star Trek -- if "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one" (the so-called "greatest good for the greatest number"), then the many are free to kill, plunder, rape, and enslave as many of the few and the one as is necessary to meet their needs, now aren't they?

M: Just as the suicide bomber can walk into a shopping mall and blow him or herself up along with hundreds of other people. And it seems to me that Bush was the one who bombed Iraq.

V: No amount of force or violence can possibly be considered inappropriate if the many are in need.

M: You know what the baboons did with the leopard. You know what a father or a mother will do to save their kids. You talk as though the need was for a stick of gum. The few have been dying for the many since societies of animals began.

V: BUT what is the many but a large collection of fews and ones? Oops! You're basically guilty of an illogical "top-down" mentality on freedoms and rights, when appropriately all freedoms and rights are "bottom-up," beginning with the individual, with the few and the one.

M: Hehe, so you say but it is actually you who are upside down. The freedom of the individual is insured by the group not the other way round. Only others can grant you rights. Your rights are insured because you are part of the group and the group looks out for their own. It looks more and more like paranoia born of sociopathology lies at the root of libertarianism. Perhaps you feel rejected and now don't want to belong. Perhaps it is folks like you that form tight little clicks and gangs of cancer cells that prey on the whole, eh?

 

[Moonbeam]

M: "Libertarianism looks to me like an attempt to establish illusions to the contrary as normative thinking. "

hs: The bolded part is the belief you started this thread with (under the guise of not understanding libertarianism) and apparently no matter what anyone says to the contrary you are going to continue believing such.

M: Please....I am simply looking at the evidence presented to raise this suspicion and based on the fact there is no evidence to the contrary presented.

hs: You like to talk of arguments despite having not made one good argument throughout the entire thread, just many 'probing' questions based on your own unexameined assumptions.

M: You have been free right along to argue the validity of my case and point out my assumptions but all you do is say I am wrong and full of assumptions. You do not know how, apparently, to debate. I win every argument with you, therefore, by default. All you do is consistently say I am wrong. Try to get the fact that that is not an argument, OK.

hs: And you act as if now we can all share your 'discovery' that libertarianism is just an illusion based on unexamined assumptions. Who's really the one playing games in this thread?

M: You, of course, because you refuse over and over to put up logical reasoning that what I have discovered is wrong. The last time I argued about this subject the conclusions I drew were completely different than the ones I presented here because the course of that argument led in a different direction, but one again which had no answer. That tells me that I have no preconceived assumptions as you imply but am looking at the evidence presented.

 

[Moonbeam]

hs: It all boils down to this indivual vs collective debate. If anyone really wants to examine the real world implications of this debate I suggest you ltake a look at the difference between North and South Korea.

M: Nonsense. In neither society is there much concern for the welfare of the individual or the whole.

hs: The problem is who decides whats best for the collective? Ultimately it is individuals that decide, be it either one dictator/king/tyrant/whatever or each individual. With collectivism/communism you will never see a situation where each individual decides through some means such as democracy. It will always be one individual (or a small group) that decides what they think is best for everyone, in other words forcibly imposing their will on the entire group. This is because of the collectivist mentality we can see in our friend Moonie's words, that the individual can't be trusted to decide for himself lest he hurt the collective by being selfish and hoarding. But somehow we are supposed to trust one individual with complete power to do whats best for everyone.

M: Nonsense. We know that the hunter gatherer societies reach agreement based on consensus in which each individual buys in and that in such a society the phenomenon of hording does not arise. It is only a recent pathology that has created the notion of I me me mine.

hs: Thats what it boils down to for me. Who is going to decide whats best for me? NO one can make that choice better than myself.

M: Rubbish. Every drunk thinks he can drive a car. Every big-time depressed person thinks he should take his life. Every child is directed intimately by his or her parent(s). The thief is put in jail so he can't make those kinds of choices. You speak of choice without a conception or framework for determining the morality and ethics of your choice. At a Thanksgiving table do you choose to eat the whole turkey? Ah no, because you have been at least partially socialized.