Reason Magazine: More Fun Than A Teabagger Rally

[Freeky]

Everyone makes mistakes.  Apparently you just haven't been over in a while or something.

Freeky,
Generous because she skipped the wall o' text.

[LMNO]

DP, I'm sort of with you. I stumbled on Reason a while back, and it certainly appeared at the time to be coming at the issues with a different perspective, and they were just reasonable (heh) enough not to dismiss out-of-hand.

These days though... Whoooooo. Nutbags.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I barely skimmed the tl;dr and I was going to say something snarky about also giving White Nationalists credit where they're right, but then I saw your followup post so I won't.

Hopefully the lesson you're taking away from this is "know your source".

[Laughin Jude]

As well as I can remember, back in the day I agreed with their stances on the War in Iraq (against), the PATRIOT Act (against), the drug war (against) and gay marriage (for). They were critics of the Bush administration without being Democrat shills, and they had articles blasting the military-industrial and prison-industrial complexes that tried to use logical arguments instead of being whiny hippies about it. They had a long-running series of blog posts re: "another isolated incident" about police departments around the country who would fuck people's fourth amendment rights and often kill people in no-knock raids (often at the wrong houses). The magazine/site definitely had its issues; they had a hard-on for Rand/Objectivism and seemed to believe the free market was the solution to everything, among other things. But at least it was something different and seemed to have a mostly consistent philosophy, even if it wasn't one I always agreed with.

Nowadays it looks like a Tea Party playground. I have to wonder how much of that comes from Nick Gillespie (editor in chief until 2008) having left. Apparently Matt Welch has been in charge since then. What that's done to change the site/zine I couldn't say as I haven't really been keeping up on it in the past few years, but that might start to explain the massive shift in content and philosophy.

That and the spooky black man with a funny name in office, of course.

[Cain]

Welch, amusingly, used to be a big Clinton supporter, back in the day.  Great libertarian credentials, that.

HEY KORESH!  IT'S NOT LIKE THE CONSTITUTION SPECIFICALLY PROHIBTS THE FBI BURNING YOU ALIVE, RIGHT?
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[Slyph]

Welch, amusingly, used to be a big Clinton supporter, back in the day.  Great libertarian credentials, that.

Lot of Libertarians thought they could lead Clinton around by the nose. It wasn't that they felt he was "their man", it was more like they thought he was "their bitch" via Greenspan.

[Cain]

Yeah, I could see that.

On the other hand, radical expansion of Federal power, stepping up the drug war, no lessening of state involvement in the economy....I know a certain kind of "libertarian" (ie Matt Welch, the numpties at the Adam Smith Institute who I've had the misfortune of dealing with before etc) doesn't really care about that so long as certain people's interests are looked after carefully, but it tends to cast libertarianism as a whole in a pretty hypocritical light.  And I would think at least other libertarians, beyond the usual suspects (Kevin Carson, ED Kain) would try and distance themselves from such people due to the kind of poisonous support and brand recognition they help create.

[Slyph]

See, that's the problem with Libertarianism... No matter how moony-eyed you wanna get over personal liberty, YOU HAVE COMPETING CLASS INTERESTS. It relies on the philanthropy of the poor, basically. Even if you're the most true-blue Libertardian in the world, you will assign different weights to say, drug prohibition, depending on your class. A guy who can afford a good lawyer, and a guy who's stuck with a public defender, well, the drug laws matter a hell of a lot more to the second guy, even if they both love yay.

Poor guy sees Libertarianism as either, nievely, a route to the big boy's table, or else a means of not going to jail over stupid shit.

A rich guy just wants minimum wage laws to fuck off, etc.

Borgoise's power is his capital, Worker's power is his politics. It's kind of noble being a poor libertarian, sticking to your principles in the face of, well, being poor and powerless, but it's also really fucking dumb, because you're embracing the shitty end of the stick.

[Bruno]

So poor libertarians are either stupid or altruistic, and poor objectivists are both?

[BabylonHoruv]

So poor libertarians are either stupid or altruistic, and poor objectivists are both?

Or possibly they are Libertarian Socialists and would like the government to stop protecting the interests of the rich.

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

So poor libertarians are either stupid or altruistic, and poor objectivists are both?

Or possibly they are Libertarian Socialists and would like the government to stop protecting the interests of the rich.

BLASPHEMY
     \
   

[The Good Reverend Roger]

So poor libertarians are either stupid or altruistic, and poor objectivists are both?

Or possibly they are Libertarian Socialists and would like the government to stop protecting the interests of the rich.

Um, yeah.   

[Slyph]

Keep Government out of Government

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Keep Government out of Government

Fuck all of you libertariantards.  I say MORE government.  Give the people what they demand, until they scream with happiness, and never stop.

You anarchist slobs just aren't serious about having a good time.