Educating Hunter: Libertarians

[Kai]

A good one liner, if you want to get him on edge:

"A libertarian becomes a hypocrite the moment his rear tires leave the driveway."

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Perhaps the approach to take is this:

"Ok, so let's pretend that social security and similar programs are cut. Provide evidence (historical, economic, sociological etc) whereby letting citizens 'free fall' is beneficial to any society. Cite actual examples whereby disease, homelessness, and a widening gap between rich & poor has brought value to civilization." 

If they can't make a coherent rebuttal, then it boils down to simple selfishness and greed. Selfishness & greed don't count, IMHO as 'a political philosophy'. That's just being a dick. I don't need to study geo-politics to be a dick. I can do that for free, with no training or qualifications. I don't need to get a degree in economics from Harvard to be a dick. I can come from any educational & economic strata of ANY society in the world, from any historical epoch and BE A DICK. All that I must do is work from the assumption that I/Me/Mine trumps everything, even when there is substantial evidence to the contrary. In fact, extreme dickishness suggests that I would resort to the I/Me/Mine paradigm especially because there was opposing evidence. The more compelling the evidence, the more entrenched I can become. It's real easy & takes mere milliseconds of knee jerk reaction. 

Being a dick transcends language, nationality, ethnicity, culture, economics & education. The Hindus call it 'adharma' but we know it as BEING A DICK.

Atheism, Objectivism, Libertarianism, Conservatism, Liberalism etc. Somewhere in all of them lurks a pathway to BEING A DICK.

If people spent more time figuring out how to be LESS of a dick, they could rely less upon the above mentioned 'isms'. The 'ism' they find attractive is often the 'ism' that best allows them to justify and rationalize their dickishness. "No, I'm not a selfish jerk with scant concerns for others. I have a philosophy."

This is a most excellent post, indeed.

[Reginald Ret]

I was just going to say something about my nametrick working but then this came along being all well said and stuff:

Perhaps the approach to take is this:

"Ok, so let's pretend that social security and similar programs are cut. Provide evidence (historical, economic, sociological etc) whereby letting citizens 'free fall' is beneficial to any society. Cite actual examples whereby disease, homelessness, and a widening gap between rich & poor has brought value to civilization." 

If they can't make a coherent rebuttal, then it boils down to simple selfishness and greed. Selfishness & greed don't count, IMHO as 'a political philosophy'. That's just being a dick. I don't need to study geo-politics to be a dick. I can do that for free, with no training or qualifications. I don't need to get a degree in economics from Harvard to be a dick. I can come from any educational & economic strata of ANY society in the world, from any historical epoch and BE A DICK. All that I must do is work from the assumption that I/Me/Mine trumps everything, even when there is substantial evidence to the contrary. In fact, extreme dickishness suggests that I would resort to the I/Me/Mine paradigm especially because there was opposing evidence. The more compelling the evidence, the more entrenched I can become. It's real easy & takes mere milliseconds of knee jerk reaction. 

Being a dick transcends language, nationality, ethnicity, culture, economics & education. The Hindus call it 'adharma' but we know it as BEING A DICK.

Atheism, Objectivism, Libertarianism, Conservatism, Liberalism etc. Somewhere in all of them lurks a pathway to BEING A DICK.

If people spent more time figuring out how to be LESS of a dick, they could rely less upon the above mentioned 'isms'. The 'ism' they find attractive is often the 'ism' that best allows them to justify and rationalize their dickishness. "No, I'm not a selfish jerk with scant concerns for others. I have a philosophy."

This is a most excellent post, indeed.

[Mangrove]

Oh, Mang...

You brought this thread back to where I wanted it. I owe you a "hug."

One of the best thoughts on politics in general I've seen in a while.

Yer welcome! Glad I could help out. In fact, you helped me out.

Our local paper runs the most stupidly, irritating reader's letters column. Most of the take the form of 'Obama is/is not the devil' or 'We are still/we are no longer living in the fallout of the Bush era' etc repeat ad nausea.

Last week and the week before, there was one of the typical 'Democrats destroying America' letters written by the same guy. In both letters he got very frothy about Obama's 'dream act' and in the most recent missive, he basically said that anyone who supports the Dems is a 'baby killer' and then got into 'homosexuality being against the laws of God and nature'.

Normally, I ignore this stupidity because well, it's stupid. Because the weather is getting colder, this letter is going to end up in my wood stove anyway. However, I happen to know the person who wrote the letter because he is the husband of one our clients. Replying would probably cause more trouble than it's worth. Still, it left me with this uneasy feeling. Your Libertarian thread turned out to be a great way to vent my frustration creatively.

Had I bothered to written back to this person, the likelihood that my one letter would somehow snap him out of his idiocy was very very slender. If people lack the maturity to 'receive', then all I'd be doing is getting mad and stoking my own ego. "Yeah, I snarked the hell out of that homophobic motherfucker!!!" And then in the following week, that too ends up in the wood stove.

Mang'