Alex Pareene has a nice roundup of the GOP candidates views on science — all of them, except Jon Huntsman, are science-denying wackaloons who reject evolution. As we in Minnesota know, that’s actually where Michele Bachmann’s career got its start, campaigning locally against evolution.
But poor Ron Paul. He only gets a brief mention, and it’s to say that he thinks the evolution debate is irrelevant. Au contraire! He fits in perfectly with the other Republican candidates. Watch him declare that evolution is just “a theory” and he doesn’t accept it.
Darn that lamestream media — they just can’t treat Ron Paul fairly. Come out and admit it, he’s a perfectly representative member of the Nutbag Party.
(Also on Sb)
He doesn’t believe in (r)evolution? But it’s right there in his stupid tagline!
I actually wrote a paper for a political theory class that came to the conclusion that Ron Paul (during the 2004 cycle) was the “true” Meyersian fusionist conservative. Basically, everybody needs maximum freedom from burdensome government so that they can submit fully to God (or be judged by God based on their free will). There are some pretty big hypocrisies inherent in that philosophy, in case that isn’t clear. th Yuck. At least Goldwater, the original fusionist, ended up a pretty big civil libertarian.
I’ve always wondered why otherwise sane people turned completely loonie at the mention of Ron Paul. People like Jon Stewart, for example, who can’t get himself to criticize the tinfoil-headed lunatic.
Now you’ve done it PZ. Paul is the iconic focus of a Cult and you’ve gone and insulted him.
The Paulites will be here in droves with their “It’s just a theory” and “Don’t tread on me” and “Fuck you I’ve got mine”.
Oooo… Picking on Ron Paul. This should be interesting, the way this thread fills with cries about how Ron Paul is a super-duper to the infinity plus one times nothing is grater than this infinity smart and honest demigod and he’s the only one that can fix this country.
Just be careful. The last time someone picked on the Pauls, someone tried to crush her skull against a curb.
This is an old video. Look at his book on Amazon and search in it for evolution. There’s a whole chapter on it where he shows himself not to be a creationist, but definitely a religious nutbag who timidly accepts evolution. Doctors generally regard it as true even when it goes against their religion. Still, shame on him for the dishonesty before and his wishy-washiness now. (This is not too much unlike Obama, or untold other politicians, pretending to be Xian)
haha
Who else is getting a R*n P*ul 2012 ad (“Money Bomb”?) in the sidebar? Good thing they can’t scan our retinas yet!
(Using my daughter’s non-Adblocked computer–weird!)
It is actually much worse than that. Ron Paul is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons
Some of the positions that they have taken include:
1) that the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are unconstitutional;
2) that “humanists” have conspired to replace the “creation religion of Jehovah” with evolution;
3) that human activity has not contributed to climate change, and that global warming will be beneficial and thus not a cause for concern;
4) that HIV does not cause AIDS;
5) that the “gay male lifestyle” shortens life expectancy by 20 years.
Paul appeals to a lot of well meaning but stupid college students because he says simplistic things about legalizing drugs and ending the wars. However, he is a genuine crackpot and he needs to be called out on it.
He doesn’t stand a chance of winning the Republican nomination or the presidency, of course, but he does have an extremely devoted, cult-like following. He definitely needs to be knocked down a couple of notches.
All the GOP candidates with the possible exceptions of Romney and Huntsmen seem to be oogedy boogedy kooks. They are trying to out crazy each other for the 20% of the population that describe themselves as fruitbat insane fundie xians.
Which ignores the fact that 80% of the US population aren’t all that fond of fruitbat crazies.
The presidency is the GOP’s to lose. And if one of the theothuglican crazies is elected, we can stop worrying about the US’s future.
There won’t be one. Already there is a widespread perception among the world intelligensia and many USAians that the USA is a declining superpower.
If one of them do get elected, I’m just going to stock up on cats and white wine. And work on my hobbies and survival plans, not in that order.
I remember that video. Some big heavy set moron knocked a small woman down in a moment of tremendous courage. IIRC, he was arrested by the police but never charged and ended up released.
IIRC, that is a fundie xian front. It’s just a small group of fundie kooks with MD’s.
HIV doesn’t cause AIDS? Really? That would be news to the tens of millions who have died of HIV induced AIDS.
I’ve dealt with HIV deniers before. They are a motley group. There is a long list of HIV deniers who have died…of AIDS.
pinkboi says
I did, and you should too. Particularly the last two paragraphs in the searched section
Here is how it ends
“There is one argument against evolution that deserves consideration. If man is evolving and progressing, why is man’s involvement in mass killings getting worse and the struggle for peace more difficult? Government wars and exterminations in the twentieth century reached 262 million people killed by their own governments and 44 million killed in wars. I fear that doesn’t say much for the evolutionary process”
He also laments about evangelical atheist oppressing religion in the public square.
No, he is a loon alright.
Also, Romney has, like Huntsman accepted APG. His position on evolution has been unstated, he certainly did not raise his hand among those who did not believe in evolution, which means that he does accept it, but finds it detrimental to let it be known.
Perfect? — No.
Representative? — No.
Nutbag? — Yes.
Don’t forget, Ron Paul is a fucking medical doctor and denies evolution, and he isn’t some kind of freak compared to other doctors. People seem to erroneously feel that doctors are like scientists or at least scientific in how they approach things, but a lot aren’t. A shit load of them “suffer” through biology education just so they can Be A Doctor and Save Lives and Feel Important. Never mind that biology (understood through evolution) is the entire reason that modern medicine exists in the first place.
also-
John Huntsman isn’t half bad really, for a politician. I hope all the non-insane republicans get behind him in the next election.
He has claimed both positions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4Cc8t3Zd5E
Here he did not raise his hand, meaning that he believed in evolution. So, take that as it is, I guess.
Jon Huntsman should run as an independent after he so brutally loses the primary to Bachmann or Perry.
I guess
Being a physician, I wonder what he thinks of the “germ theory.” Maybe more than just a guess?
Well, I was going to note that he seemed to be leaving evolution open, at least, before I read pinkboi @6, who says he does indeed accept evolution.
But then it is even more sad that he plays with the word “theory” as if it meant it was in question–when he in all likelihood does know better.
Glen Davidson
The question every evolution-denier should be asked is if they accept something because of the evidence supporting it or do they accept something because it fits into their world view. We need our leaders to accept things and bases his/her actions on evidence even (especially) if they contradict their world view.
Anyone who accepts germ theory MUST accept evolution, otherwise you cannot explain why so many bacterial strains are becoming immune to our antibiotics.
Saying you believe in bacteria but not evolution is like saying you believe in gravity but not relativity. It’s not like you have an option.
You kinda have to feel a little bit sorry for the poor bastard. Now that bugfuck insane is the norm among the goddamnrepublicans his marketing gimmick is all shot to hell.
Maybe he should try to cultivate a “retro” image- “Iwas stone cold crazy BEFORE it was hip, goddamnit!”.
Heh @ #20 Ktesibios: Hipster Ron Paul
I like the guy, though. As politicians go, it’s nice to have one with absolutely no filter and no compunctions about calling people crazy during an otherwise dull debate.
I’m still voting Tyson/Nye in 2012, and I don’t care if neither of them is running.
It’s interesting how the media completely ignores him. He’s certainly no more nutty than Bachmann or Perry. But he doesn’t toe the imperialist line on foreign policy so the media dismiss him as a fringe candidate while treating Bachmann and Perry as serious candidates.
Maybe that’s it. But there’s another explanation:
Ron Paul has a Ron Paul fanclub, and they are his voting base. His base is very consistent, but it is not expected to grow.
Ron Paul is a perennial candidate, and thus a known element. Ron Paul has consistently demonstrated that he cannot win a Republican nomination. The other candidates have less of a track record, and are less predictable.
pinkboi the libertarian crackpot conspiracy theorist:
Citation needed that Obama is pretending to be Christian.
@Juice (#14)
He explains in his book on page 106 that he didn’t raise his hand because he feels the question is more complex, but that he is still a creationist:
“I interpreted raising one’s hand as an all-or-nothing answer and as an insult and didn’t bother to answer the question.”
(http://www.amazon.com/reader/145550145X?_encoding=UTF8&query=evolution you need to be logged into amazon to see it, it is the second result on evolution)
Freerefill:
There’s always Intelligent Falling.
pinkboi tried to claim before that Ron Paul is not representative of the libertarian movement. That is not true.
The two Pauls are demonstrably representative of the libertarian movement’s majority.
Compare Ron Paul’s campaign with Bob Barr’s campaign.
Paul got 11,817 votes in Iowa, Barr got 4,590. Paul 18,308 New Hampshire, Barr 2,217. Paul 54,475 Michigan, Barr 23,716. Paul got 6,084 in Nevada caucuses, for fuck’s sake, Barr got 4,263 in a normal vote. Paul 16,154 in South Carolina, Barr 7,283. And so on.
The Ron Paul movement are the typical American-style right-wing libertarians.
A pro-choice libertarian is an anomaly.
+++++
The leaders of the libertarian movement oppose reproductive choice, and work hard to reduce women’s rights.
Ron Paul and Rand Paul actively attempt to outlaw abortion, and these two guys are the most influential libertarians in the USA, major drivers of libertarian opinion.
Ron Paul is sometimes mistakenly assumed to oppose federal anti-choice legislation, preferring that anti-choice measures take place at the state level. But this is a falsehood. He votes to restrict choice at the federal level. He voted to outlaw the intact dilation and extraction procedure, federally, while complaining that the ban did not go far enough:
«For example, 14G in the “Findings” section of this bill states, “…such a prohibition will draw a bright line that clearly distinguishes abortion and infanticide…” The question I pose in response is this: Is not the fact that life begins at conception the main tenet advanced by the pro-life community? By stating that we draw a “bright line” between abortion and infanticide, I fear that we simply reinforce the dangerous idea underlying Roe v. Wade, which is the belief that we as human beings can determine which members of the human family are “expendable,” and which are not.»
That is for the free market to decide!
Looks like we have to go over Why Libertarians Are Bad People 101 again.
There have been a lot of reductions in personal freedoms in the United States. On this, libertarians, left-liberals, greens, progressives, and socialists agree. Some of the libertarians have a kind of zealotry that makes them very single-minded about getting their message out, and it is in general a simplistic message so it’s easy to communicate. So there’s a generation coming of age on the internet who don’t have strong views on economics but who know that they don’t feel free, and the libertarian message is the loudest one that resonates with this feeling.
The problem with libertarianism is that economic inequality is not conducive to freedom.
This much is recognized by the undeniably capitalist Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine, who jointly publish the Failed States Index, which counts uneven economic development along group lines as one of the indicators of dangerous instability. On this particular measure, by the way, the United States scores more than half as bad as Zimbabwe.
There’s more detail from the Equality Trust on how economic equality buys us all the kind of society that is conducive to freedom.
Right-wing economic policies, though, tend to favor the consolidation of wealth, at the expense of other freedoms.
This is short-sighted. In the long run it’s not even safe for the rich, because highly unequal societies eventually collapse into violence. Tim Wise gives a good description of how privilege ultimately hurts those who have it; he’s talking about white privilege but you can easily see the parallels to class privilege.
Conservatives are famously short-sighted, wouldn’t you agree? Isn’t that one of the reasons libertarians don’t want to be identified with them? Being tough on crime and tough on terror and tough on any foreign country that looks funny is short-sighted. Yet libertarian economic policies, in line with other right-wingers’ economic policies, are similarly self-destructive.
Nobody is really free in the chaos and violence of a failed state. But even in a relatively stable state, the poor live under threat of violence and coercion.
And so today in the United States, even if we could get immediately rid of the PATRIOT Act and the war on drugs and the border walls and the cameras and the high-tech police cruisers and all the other obvious manifestations of the police state, and the corporate lobbying and the military-industrial complex and the military bases around the world and the constant state of undeclared war—and we should get rid of all these things immediately, but even if we did—life in the United States, for a substantial portion of the citizens, would still be more about violence and fear than freedom and opportunity.
And there is no laissez-faire policy that will address this reality.
Libertarians were conservative and self-centered racists before the Tea Party came along.
Lew Rockwell’s site, a major driver of libertarian opinion, is strongly opposed to civil rights. Libertarian Lew Rockwell lies about history to defend Trent Lott, Strom Thurmond, the Dixiecrats, racial segregation and Jim Crow laws.
Libertarian Steven Yates calls the response to Lott’s pro-Dixiecrat comments the “lynching of an uppity Southerner.” Seriously. He seriously compared complaints about Lott’s words to Klan terrorism. He then race-baits about “affirmative action hires” and, typical neo-Confederate that he is, whines that the Tenth Amendment “was thrown out when Lincoln forcibly prevented a group of states from seceding and forming a new republic.” On and on about “the covert warfare that philosophical materialists [have] been waging against Christianity” and “basic property rights and freedom of association.”
Remember the Nazi apologia by Pat Buchanan?
There’s a reason it’s still up at Lew Rockwell’s and Justin Raimondo’s websites, both libertarians long before the Tea Party.
The honest way for libertarians to argue is to admit that many libertarians fight against women’s reproductive choice, and many libertarians are neo-Confederates who support segregation. Then, from that honest position, you can try to argue why they should be ostracized by the libertarian movement. (Then, from that idealistic position, you can start dealing with the reality of why they haven’t been ostracized, and instead have so much influence within the movement.)
Not really, unless that libertarian happens to be a Republican, or a very recent Republican who could not get the nomination simply running on the LP ticket. The Libertarian Party itself does not endorse a pro-forced-pregnancy position. See 1.4 at http://www.lp.org/platform
It is mainly the Republicans who run on the Libertarian ticket that fit that description of the anomaly. Ron Paul, Bob Barr, for e.g. Carla Howell, is not such an example. Harry Browne, who ran twice for POTUS was similarly very unlike the Pauls in his position. The genuine LPers simply do not want government involved in that decision. In any way.
Neither Paul is a Libertarian. They are both Republicans. Each is however claiming to be a libertarian. If they are *real* libertarians, they would quit the GOP and run on the LP ticket. It is like calling the Tea Party to be anything other than the rabid fundagelical wing of the GOP. They are more Tea baggers than libertarians.
Note to some commentators: Ron Paul is not, nor will he ever be, a libertarian.
He has self-identified himself (as as Rand Paul) as a “constituaional conservative”. The fact that many self-identified libertarians claim him as one of their own essentially proves next to nothing.
One of the sad truths about libertarianism is that it is beyond a broad church. All sorts of wackaloons self-identify as libertarians. Most commonly, authoritarians self-ID as libertarians because it sounds cool (or maybe the soubriquet “batshit crazy intolerant mean-spirited wanker” somehow interferes with their self-image). I keep pointing out that if the Libertarian movement continues to work on the principle that your enemy’s enemy is your friend, then libertarianism will continue to be marginalized.
Most of the people that I regard as true libertarians are not in favour of restrictions on divorce, and regard religiously-driven public policy as beyond fuckwit dangerous, they regard it as anti-American. If you find somebody who self-IDs as a libertarian espousing such views, try asking them what they think of the PATRIOT ACT, military spending, the war on some drugs etc. I predict that you will soon find them to be closet authoritarians, in favour of “big government” as long as the government spends money on stuff that they like.
If they are *real* libertarians, they would quit the GOP and run on the LP ticket.
This is fucking idiotic.
@Shripati Kamath
Ah, the old: “No true
ScotsmanChristianlibertarian” excuse.I also hear he wears trousers under his kilt.
No, it is a landmark SCOTUS decision that upholds the right of a woman to choose not to be forced into forced pregnancy by (mostly) males.
But since you called it a belief, you should actually look at who was responsible for the belief. Today, AM radio and Cable TV bloviate obsessively about how it was and is the “libruls” that are “abortionists”.
For a fuller analysis of which political breed the Supremes who ruled on RvW were, who appointed them to the bench, and how they ruled, take a look at this:
http://tinyurl.com/3emremn
(yes, it is a posting on my blog)
I don’t think you understand basic politics.
First of all, Ron Paul did run on the Libertarian ticket in 1988.
Second, there are libertarians and then there are Libertarians. There are plenty of libertarians in the Republican Party, and assuming for the sake of argument that libertarianism would be something a person might want to promote, promoting it within a mainstream party is not an unreasonable course to take. Hell, there are even libertarians within the Democratic Party, although not as many as in the Republicans. But there are actually more libertarians within the Republican Party than within the Libertarian Party. It’s not strategic for them to destroy their chances for influence by going strictly LP; what is more sensible is to take a good look at the situation as it changes from year to year, and decide accordingly what to do at the moment.
Your reasoning here is complete nonsense, equivalent to saying that “all real socialists would vote for a Socialist party.” But they don’t; the largest contingent of socialists in the USA is within the Democratic Party: http://www.dsausa.org/
The liars are thick today.
You don’t get to unclaim Ron Paul as a libertarian, when Ron Paul won the 1988 Libertarian Party presidential nomination.
Idiot.
Which excuse is that? The Pauls are Republicans. Harry Browne, Carla Howell are Libertarians. Was mine too confusing an explanation to miss the distinction?
Surely you recognize the difference between Stalin being an atheist and Stalin being a communist, don’t you? Or will you be trotting out the old “No true
Scotsman communistatheist” excuse for that one?And the Libertarian Party is anti-choice, very strongly in favor of forced abortion.
Let’s take a look at some of the Libertarian Party platform’s most evil parts:
«1.4 Abortion
Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.»
And when they say “government should be kept out of the matter”, they mean no public funding, and they mean removal of current funding for the generalized women’s health clinics which currently exist.
Those clinics currently can’t use public funding to perform abortions (which is a problem, a problem which libertarians refuse to help with), but the buildings can exist and their staffs can be maintained for other health services with public funding. Remove the funding, and many of them couldn’t stay in operation, and would have to close.
Libertarianism would make abortion even less available than it already is, which is pretty darn unavailable, particularly in rural areas.
Our resident economist has more to say about their platform.
lol wut?
I see SGBM beat me to it
Strange Gods: Stop being a wanker. Ad hominems and peurile insults do not an argument make.
It’s the “principled kook” effect: when you spend a lot of your time observing demagogues who will use the most insane rhetoric as a cheap trick to earn money without actually working (Beck, Palin, Limbaugh, Coulter, etc…), seeing a guy who seems to sincerely believe his own speeches is going to provoke an overwelming feeling of sympathy.
Oh I see you think that in order to call oneself a Libertarian they have to be a member of the party? It’s like the libertarian idea never existed before there was a party?
That Liberatarianiam isn’t an ideology and it’s just a party? Like conservatism isn’t an ideolgy and it’s jus… ooops.
Really. That’s fascinating.
It took longer for the ad hominem misusers to arrive this time.
odd
The comment delay / cache issue el sucks
I’ve run into some Ron Paul supporters who don’t know these things about him. It’s surprising, I think it’s because they simply want him to be who they want him to be.
Correct. No governmental involvement in providing or preventing abortions. Which is exactly what we have today, no federal funding of abortion.
That is not anti-choice. Anti-choice would be banning abortion by law, not even allowing private entities to provide it.
It is reasonable to disagree with libertarianism being against government funded clinics, it is even reasonable to say that they would not be in favor of government making abortion services available for those who need it, it is not reasonable to characterize that to be the same as banning abortion, which would be anti-choice. If they prevented a private clinic from opening up to perform abortions, *then* they would be anti-choice. If they mandated that hospitals cannot perform abortions, or that women should not have them, then it would be anti-choice.
Probably, but that does not make anti-choice. Because “less” available still would mean “available” unless you are going to quibble and use the special case that you did not explicitly mention.
Did you folks hear that they’ve recently studied the psychology of 10566 libertarians? It turns out libertarians experience less love; they even love their own families less than non-libertarians love theirs.
http://keenetrial.com/blog/2010/11/17/whosthelibertarian/
The part I’ve bolded is of interest because libertarians often claim that they are just as loving, just as caring, full of just as much empathy as anyone else.
It turns out that this is demonstrably, empirically false.
(This is not to say that they’re deliberately lying about it. Everyone’s ultimately alone in their own heads, right? And since they are lacking in empathy, they have a harder time understanding other people than the rest of us do, and so they have a harder time understanding that others really do feel more empathy, more care, more love.)
+++++
Full text free at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1665934
In which case, I don’t think I should discuss this with you any further. I am afraid we cannot make any progress. I laid out the differences, and you seem to have ignored it or dismissed it without an explanation.
Be well.
What’s the take on Medicaid covering abortion? In all states.
What we have today is bad, though. The Hyde amendment is bad. The Libertarian Party would in effect spread the Hyde amendment to all the states as well. You want to take a bad thing and make it worse.
It is anti-choice, which is why so many of your fusionist allies support simply defunding abortion.
Recall the recent attempts to defund Planned Parenthood. Who made these attempts? The anti-choice far right wing.
Defunding is anti-choice. Reducing availability is reducing choice.
Why are you libertarians such liars?
Where did you see that?
No, it is not like that at all. It is more like pointing out that Abe Lincoln and John Boehner both being Republicans don’t stand for the same ideas, and that you should not make the mistake of assuming that Boehner represents Republican ideals just like Lincoln did. Just like you should not assume that the Pauls represent libertarian ideals (on abortion) like Harry Browne or Carla Howell did.
I consider it irrelevant, but OK, you win. Fascinating it is.
In which case, I don’t think I should discuss this with you any further. I am afraid we cannot make any progress. I laid out the differences, and you seem to have ignored it or dismissed it without an explanation.
You’ve done your own share of ignoring. So please step down off that high horse and walk, not ride, out of town.
Yes, it does. It’s anti-choice to make it more difficult, if not impossible, for someone to exercise one of the choices. Perhaps you do not realize how difficult it already is to get an abortion in this country.
gshevlin: Would you like a couch to faint on as you clutch your pearls?
sigh, blockquoting failure all over the place.
Hey, if the libertarian liars want to claim that eliminating choices is not anti-choice, then to be consistent they should argue that segregation wasn’t racist.
It’s typical of libertarians even today to claim that segregation wasn’t racist—as noted above, libertarian leaders like Lew Rockwell are openly pro-segregation—so let’s see how our current crowd likes it.
Time to talk about how libertarianism would deal with the real world.
As a result of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, restaurant owner Lester Maddox was forced—forced by the government!—to serve black people.
Was Title II morally wrong?
Someone here, I forget who; I had a discussion with whether the libertarianism was due to a lack of empathy or intentionally repressed empathy. So far this one is a point in my favor.
SGBM @#60: To them, yes, because gummint bad and gummint force and whatever else they can pull out of the Big Book Of Lolbertarian Jargon. These are people to whom “moral” is the opposite of “collective”.
Seeker Lancer:
Just like Jesus!
Because “we libertarians” prefer words to represent their actual meaning.
Anti-choice proponents oppose abortions. The LP position is to leave the matter of having an abortion to the person, and not have government involved in it in anyway. That means private clinics are not banned from conducting them. Get to be practitioner, open a clinic and perform abortions. The LP will have no issue with that. An anti-choice party WILL, and they will not let you do that.
That you see no difference between the two is your fight with what the established meaning of the phrase anti-choice, and not my problem.
At least not anymore.
SGBM I can’t believe you don’t see the difference! Pro-Choicers are for the option for all, Anti for none and Libertarians are for the rich only!
Ok so does Libertarian mean “shares the belief in the Libertarian ideology” or does it mean “member of the Libertarian party”?
Well maybe not, perhaps our Libertarian (party member!) can answer about what the Libertarian (party!) thinks about expanding Medicaid coverage of abortion to all states.
Rev,
I’m really starting to think that The One True Libertarian™ doesn’t actually exist. Self-identified libertarians are out, as are members of the Libertarian party (apparently).
Curious.
Surely the way to oppose anti-science politicians is to remind the populace that the modern world is driven by technology and that the US needs good quality science education if it wants to keep up. at the moment it appears that the west is designing hi-tec toys and sending the designs over to China to have them made. How long will it be before the Chinese are designing them for themselves? I am old enough, just, to remember when Japanese motorcycles were considered to be a joke.
Perhaps science educators should tell the story of Lysenco and point out the parallels between his revolutionary science and Biblical science.
In other words, “I’ve got mine; fuck you.”
I have to say, it’s somewhat impressive how looneytarians can apply that one simple idea to almost every conceivable situation.
Ugh. I don’t feel like arguing about this today, except I can’t let the argument in #27 go unaddressed.
Your logic seems to be if you are part of some movement and you are popular, then you are more representative of that movement than those who are less popular. In reality, the opposite is the case. You will have to deviate from its tenets in a number of ways to be electable unless the movement represents a majority of voters.
By your reasoning, Obama is the best representative of liberals. Ergo, liberals are against gay marriage (or willing to claim to be against it), for preemptive wars, for nuclear power and offshore drilling, wishy-washy on closing gitmo, etc. Obviously, in a room full of Obama supporters, Obama is the odd one out when you look at his record and his stated positions. This is because you cannot become the president only getting the votes of liberals (liberals being what, a third of the population? Democrat != liberal) You need votes from disaffected conservatives and independents as well. He got this independents’ vote (I didn’t believe my commie friend’s warning that he was going to start a war – now I owe him a beer). In the same way, someone who only gets votes from people who call themselves libertarian will not get elected. Period. Not all RP supporters are libertarian (by their own admission). So it’s nonsense to suggest that the popularity of the Pauls makes them typical libertarians. Typical libertarians are unelectable. Many of their positions are typical, including many I disagree with, but their pro-life positions, for example, aren’t.
Also, I hate to say this, but you used Bob Barr as the model libertarian for comparison. Unfortunately, he’s the reason a lot of libertarians became disillusioned with the party (as if there wasn’t enough reason beforehand). For starters, he wanted to outlaw “witchcraft” in the military. I think he might have changed his position on that since then but the fact he ever could find a restriction of religious freedom reasonable and get nominated is quite frightening.
I don’t mean to waste too much time defending typical libertarians since I have approximately as many disagreements with them as I do with liberals. I think this is the last of me defending typical libertarians. I just want to set the record straight – on some issues at least, Ron Paul is an atypical libertarian. Most self-described libertarians are for a woman’s right to choose (that they typically don’t want taxpayers to pay for abortions is a fair point but suggesting that most of them want to outlaw it is wrong). I also don’t find arguments about my group verses your group interesting. I’m not guilty of all the intellectual crimes committed by whoever used whatever broad label I might happen to use.
I’m out for the day. Maybe I’ll check in tonight but if I watch this thread, I know I won’t get much work done. I don’t foresee anyone making any points that haven’t been made 1k times already anyway.
SBGM:
But that can’t possibly be! Everyone knows that it would just be economically infeasible for a business owner to be racist. The free market would encourage, nay compel, business owners to open their doors to all. So by flawless ideological ratiocination, your version of history must be wrong.
Lysenkoism killed millions at least.
The Soviets persecuted and killed most of their Mendelian biologists who didn’t get and keep quiet soon enough. Soviet agriculture never really recovered from that and they always had trouble feeding themselves.
The Chinese also adopted Lysenkoism. There were some serious famines in the 1950’s that killed millions.
Creationism is simply the Lysenkoism of today. Evolution is critically important in medicine and agriculture. It only matters if you want to eat and live a long, healthy life.
But, of course, those African Americans could have, through the power of the free market, opened their own restaurant that excluded whites! See? Equality! Libertarianism results in a utopia, if you just ignore:
1.) unequal access to information/education
2.) unequal access to resources
3.) unequal treatment by law enforcement due to cultural biases
4.) collusion/monopoly by entrenched interests
5.) irrational actors
6.) I’m sure people could find more.
I think that’s the main problem. (G)libertarian reasoning seems generally to implicitly start with, “Assume a group of perfectly rational actors on a completely level playing field with perfect access to information who make all decisions based on cost-benefit analyses.”
Ron Paul’s a joke.
He’s got a gaggle of loudmouth fans on the internet, and that’s ALL he ever had. I saw that from day 1.
And that he’s a racist fundie, for those who didn’t yet figure out, wasn’t something that took me long to figure out either.
He’s apparently some sort of libertarian messiah, even though he has more in common with the fundies then the libertards. I think the only thing he shares with them is wanting to go back to the gold standard. Which I don’t think is a feasible plan.
A better thing would just be to tax the rich again already. Best to do that quickly. Besides the few billionaires who DO have some ethics even AGREE they should be taxed more anyway.
gshevlin:
Jayzus, didn’t your head explode when you typed that second sentence about insults directly after the first sentence with your unprovoked insult towards SG ?
P.S. It’s puerile, you blithering ass, from the Latin “puer” meaning boy/child.
Grow up, puer, and at least turn on your fucking spellcheck if you can’t turn on your brain.
You all tarred that Libertarian unfairly. He was absolutely right and you were all wrong. It’s apparent to anyone that reads this thread. The fact that you all have preconceived notions of (and a clear hatred) for Libertarians completely blinded you to the simple logical argument he was making.
I’m a lib/dem, and hate Libertarianism, but all of that back and forth was juvenile and based on your emotional, knee-jerk reaction to Libertarianism. It contained barely a sliver of rational discourse. The net result is that you all made a Libertarian look reasonable. Egads.
It’s sad that you all can’t separate a philosophy from a human being and talk about ideas in the abstract without getting all hung up on emotional claptrap. The irony given the name of this site is just too rich.
This place is sad.
Oh I’m sorry, we somehow made the person calling for social Darwinism look reasonable by using bad language? You’re not fooling anyone.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/08/ron_paul_gets_no_respect.php
It wasn’t the language. It was the misrepresentation of what he was saying and trying to argue him down by force instead of by substance.
If you wanted to address him on the level of social darwinism and why libertarianism isn’t practical at the current scale of society you should have done so.
All I goddamn see is substance
“These are views the Libertarian party has had, stop with the bs that these views are not libertarian”
Libertarianism isn’t practical at ANY scale of society.
Oh gee. Another fallacier. The No True Libertarian fallacy again.
We don’t hate loonytarians. A few teenage boys living in Mom’s basement and posting dumb stuff on the internet hardly merits it. At most it is mild amusement tinged with contempt and a fond hope that they stay in their mom’s basment rather than trying to destroy our society.
“to the simple logical argument he was making”. Which argument from with loon? Never mind it doesn’t matter.
There is no way to determine who the True Libertarians are. No DNA test, no Pope, no written test. This is similar to xians. There is no way to determine who the True xians are.
In practice we have to assume that anyone who claims to be a libertarian is…a libertarian. That most of them seem silly and stupid and/or downright evil and crazy, isn’t our fault.
So why are you here? Besides to babble like the idiot you are?
Which Libertarian are you talking about, dumbfuck ? We’ve tarred a lot of libertarians here – and none of them unfairly.
Anyone ?
Then I, Waffler, raven, Audley, Rev BDC, Ing, etc, must all not be anyone at all.
You’re a fucking liar, mersault.
And now you’re a mind-reader, mersault ?
You know for a fact that we all have “preconceived notions and hatred” ? You know this fact how ??
No, you’re not a mind-reader, you ass. You’re just another pointless liar.
Citation required as to any “simple logical argument” made by any idiot libertarian, anywhere, ever – you don’t have to limit yourself to this thread for points.
Ahh, why bother.
If you respond at all, mersault, it will just be with more egotistical lies. People like you are boring.
Forget it, I’ve got more interesting things to do than play with you.
It’s not the same as claiming to be a christian. Being a christian involves pure belief whereas a political philosophy requires practical adherence, particularly when it comes to elected officials.
If George Bush (43) came out and said he was a Democrat, you’d take his word for it? You’d start calling him a Democrat and wouldn’t argue the point at all?
Granted, there is no litmus test for a political philosophy, and it’s not black-and-white, but you can’t just say that if someone claims they are something that they are. That’s reduced to absurdity.
“Forget it, I’ve got more interesting things to do than play with you.”
This is one of the problems with this place. What is your point of being here? To “play”? To “win”?
I read this stuff because I want to get other viewpoints, to test my own assertions, and to perhaps learn something new. Mostly to solidify my understanding and identify holes in my thinking. It’s about me, it’s not about you.
I suspect you’re here because you’re insecure and are looking to prop up your fragile ego because you don’t get much respect in your daily life. Everyone says “yeah! you showed that guy *back pat*” Or perhaps it’s a go home and beat the dog because my boss yelled at me sort of thing.
Well, we reality-based thinkers prefer to consider how policies would actually play out in reality. It’s true that in a libertarian utopia, everyone would be equally free to either have to drive to the next state over to obtain an abortion on the few days every month that they are actually offered, or equally free to bleed to death in a botched back-alley abortion, but we’re not so blinkered by dictionary definitions to consider those to be worth much as choices.
I’ve read PZs blog for years now, and I’ve always ignored his political meanderings. This post, however, spurred me to actually register and leave a comment.
We have 865 military bases in over 150 countries, not counting Afghanistan and Iraq, or the secret ones. We’re on track to be 74 trillion dollars deeper in debt in 10 years. There are around 400,000 millionaires in the US to tax, less than 4,000 of them make more than 10 million, and there are less than 400 billionaires. Tax all of them at 100% and you haven’t solved the debt/entitlement problem.
There isn’t a single man on the political stage that isn’t claiming to be some form of Christian True Believer. Whether or not they actually “believe in” evolution is rather moot when all of them are claiming to believe in a guy walking on water. It’s a wash, like the 2 in 2x = 2y.
What matters most is which politician is willing to pander to your beliefs at the expense of the non-believers. Ron Paul does not make religious statements from the podium. He makes political statements, and not only do those statements make sense, they are grounded in our founding documents. This is the kind of man that will not try to redefine “hostilities” to bypass a check or balance.
The best way to differentiate these people is to look at what they 1) claim they want to do with our country and 2) their voting records. Ron Paul has an excellent plan to end our many wars and the voting record to back up his claims.
I’m not going to vote based on which politician agrees with this or that unrelated issue.
@73 …
True enough. However, it is a mistake to assume that a physician understands and/or believes in the tenets of evolutionary theory.
In my neck of the woods, about 1/3 of the healthcare is provided by the Seventh Day Adventist health system — which is a multi-billion dollar industry. And a large fraction of the physicians in that system are graduates of Loma Linda School of Medicine.
To get into Loma Linda School of Medicine, you have to be a practicing Seventh Day Adventist and sign a loyalty oath. To the effect that you firmly believe in the literal interpretation of the bible as set out in Genesis (6 days of creation, literal poofing all the animals into existence whole and intact, and NO evolution).
My otolaryngologist is a graduate of Loma Linda. He displays a nice steady hand when he’s pulling wax out of my ear canals. That’s about all I trust him to do.
As a pacifist, I say great job!
His voting record on everything else, though? Not so much. I’m sorry, I don’t really care how much you’d cut military spending if you also want to take away my right to choose.
I would never vote for that snivelling little toadstool.
I was still in college during the 2008 election season and it made me gag how popular Ron Paul was amongst a not-insignificant portion of the population at my school. Seriously, it was this and that about how Paul would actually follow the constitution and how he respected civil liberties more than any other American and so on and so forth. I wanted to gag.
Mersault, you’re a liar again:
Have you forgotten that we can just look up thread and see your entry:
Tell us again, how this is all “about me, it’s not about you”.
You lying ass, the reason you entered this thread – as evident from your posts – has nothing to do with “learn[ing] something new” as you pretend, and everything to do with making yourself feel superior by insulting anyone else.
Fuck off, you idiot. You’ve already overstayed your welcome.
Great debut, powersbane.
*golfclap*
“Ron Paul does not make religious statements from the podium.”
I think you don’t know a cult when you see one. His economic policies come from the Austrian school – a group of con-artists who revised history in order to claim that the private sector can do no wrong.
Paul’s position on evolution matters because it shows he’s not an independent thinker – and without that quality his honesty doesn’t do us much good.
In all fairness Romney seems to have relatively pro-science views at least on evolution.
@89: You make it sound like he wants to outlaw abortion, and that isn’t the case. He is against federal funding of abortion, sure, but on matters like these he thinks we need to respect the Constitution, specifically the 10th amendment, which says:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”.
That seems reasonable: get the federal government out of the peoples business, and let the people deal with it. It’s not as if the Feds are protecting our freedoms now, anyway: see also Patriot Act, Bradley Manning, Anwar Awlaki, et al.
Nope, seems like a morally bankrupt policy intended to keep the unprivileged, unprivileged. Just like all liberturd policies. Not quite what they claim, as intention and results are two different things.
@ethax: okay, sure, Keynesian economics has clearly prevented crony capitalism and corporatism — bailout after bailout, recovery just over that next bailout.
What do you consider an “independent” thinker, anyway?
Jeeze, suddenly the 10th amendment is an unreasonable and morally bankrupt policy intended to keep the little guy down… this is just absurd. I’ll go back to watching silently from the bleachers. You kids keep up the good work.
IMO, giving any power to “states” that doesn’t directly revolve around their geography in modern American politics is silly. The “states” are no longer a loose confederation of nations, they’re parts of a larger whole, and should be treated as such.
So yes, the 10th amendment is stupid for modern America.
This requires the federal government to be made into less of a shitpile, of course, but it’s not like state governments are shining beacons of liberty and freedom and bald eagle firemen either.
powersbane:
Sorry, that’s a lie. It’s meant to make Paul look more moderate on abortion than he is – to avoid scaring off a certain group of semi-moderate Repugs who still don’t accept forced birth – while at the same time not offending his fanatical anti-woman teabagger allies – who correctly understand that making abortion a “states’ rights” issue is the scheme whereby they will be able to make it completely illegal (and punishable by life sentences for any woman accused of getting an abortion) state by state by state, until there are no abortions available anywhere in the entire nation.
Meanwhile, Paul himself thinks any abortion is murder from date of conception. Why would you even begin to hope that he would NOT push to make it illegal nationally, since he thinks it’s murder, IF he had national power ?
He’s among the worst of the dishonest slimeballs we currently have running for president.
You accepting him at face value and defending him on “states’ rights” does not make you a friend of reality. It makes you either dishonest yourself or a sucker.
As has been argued above*, there is no freedom if you cannot afford or access safe, reliable reproductive services. If left up to the states, how long do you think it would take the bible belt to outlaw abortion completely?
Oh and there’s this from his own fucking website
http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/abortion/
I can’t believe I actually looked up that shit. I shouldn’t have to do this for you, jackass.
Let me guess, he wants to leave matters of marriage equality up to the states as well, huh? ‘Cos that’s really speeding up the process of ensuring civil rights for gay couples. *eye roll*
*Protip! Read the thread, asshole.
Blockquote fail in my last paragraph.
This is mine, not supposed to be quoted:
read post #28 upthread which shows what Paul really says on the subject !
That means only rich people will be able to get an abortion. The anti-choice crowd has always wanted to turn abortion into a privilege for the rich: if your intent is to pretend that you’re not anti-choice: do not include the admission of your vice in your very whitewash.
I did not lie: Ron Paul does not advocate outlawing abortion. If you suggest otherwise, you are mistaken.
Like it or not, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. If you don’t like the 10th amendment, vote for a politicians that want to repeal it. We don’t have the right to ignore the parts we decide are outdated.
Our flirting with statism is not the answer.
Ahem, 14th amendment…
More “True” Libertarians here, with “Paul ISN’T a Libertarian!” claims.
Just fuck off once and for all with your variations on how REAL Libertarians eat porridge, you have nothing but dreck to offer in any discussion, with ideas and solutions anyone simply sensible, and even at odds with the pap that passes for “libertarian philosophy,” has already thought up.
The only questions remain whether you are simply deluded (and vain) or bugfuck crazy. If you believe in a return to the “gold standard” or that slavery was overall a benefial institution, you’re the latter.
The official Libertarian Party is even uglier and more openly bigoted and racist than the “Republicans” ever were. Paul is a BETTER person for moving away from the LP.
Politics as a replacement for “faith” religion – a recipe for horrors, should they ever get the chance to “implement” the “solutions,” final or not.
powersbane:
The what the fuck does this mean?
And allowing states to outlaw abortion isn’t exactly supporting reproductive freedoms, is it?
Dumbass.
*Then. Arg, that’s what I get for typing while cooking.
Yes, you lie when you repeat the dishonest claims that Paul is not going to attempt to outlaw abortion if elected president. You can’t fool us by ignoring the posts above of Paul’s own words which make his intentions clear.
He has signed that gawdawful teabagger Anti-Abortion Pledge wherein he promises to get the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT involved in additional anti-abortion laws by pushing through a FEDERAL law to protect “pain-capable” embryos from being aborted (even at the cost of the woman’s life, because of course there can’t be any exemptions from such a law for the “pain-capable” mother) and by pledging to appoint ONLY pro-lifers to such important FEDERAL positions as the DoJ and the NIH.
He even had the gall to attack Romney as being insufficiently anti-abortion when Romney declined to sign that same thuggish pledge.
So much for dishonest talk about leaving it to “states’ rights”. Paul is as much a liar as any other politician, or worse, and you’re lying, too, when you repeat his dishonesty.
And what the fuck is flirting with statism supposed to mean? Is this a new dogwhistle for racist sexist idiots, like “UN black helicopters” used to be?
Ron Paul has never stated that he would, if elected president, work to outlaw abortion. Get it straight: he says that while he is personally opposed to abortion, it is a matter for the individual states, and not for the feds to decide either way. The quotes you gave do not lend veracity to your argument, they undermine it.
Statism is a political system wherein a central power has considerable control over social and economic affairs, and that describes what we have here pretty well. We are flirting with statism and it isn’t working.
If you think I’m a racist, sexist idiot, you clearly know nothing about me. Do I sound ignorant? I received a 1380 on the GRE, I’ve maintained a 3.5 GPA throughout my ongoing 3 years of computer science studies, and I was the only male in my Women’s Studies class, and I got an A in it to boot.
I do NOT support “group rights”, like women’s rights or minority rights, because rights are not assigned to groups, they are given to individuals — ALL individuals, equally. This is not nearly equivalent to racism and that should be apparent to a group of so-called freethinkers. Beginning to have my doubts about the level of freethinking going on around here, though, given my recent experience.
Yeah, and instead of one big federal government, giving 50 individuals states even more control over social and economic affairs is going to be the panacea: after all, giving a lot of autonomy to individual states with virtually no federal government worked sooooooo well for the EU that now the local conservatives are trying to jetstart a federal government to fix the mess they created.
Do you honestly want me to answer that?
And how long would it take for states in the South and the Midwest to outright outlaw abortion?
Ron Paul’s stance is a fucking cop-out and you fucking know it, your *snerk!* GRE scores notwithstanding.
Oh fuck jebus you’re naive. When a group is denied their rights due to discrimination your little fantasy doesn’t work.
If you think I’m a racist, sexist idiot, you clearly know nothing about me. Do I sound ignorant? I received a 1380 on the GRE, I’ve maintained a 3.5 GPA throughout my ongoing 3 years of computer science studies, and I was the only male in my Women’s Studies class, and I got an A in it to boot.
*hopes for a MENSA card
Do you always have these reading comprehension problems, or only selectively where it comes to your Liberturd heroes ?
If it’s not for the feds to decide, then Paul had no honest basis for signing that thug pledge to push FEDERAL law to outlaw abortions and to select ONLY pro-lifers for FEDERAL government positions. He’s a dishonest slimeball, and you’re making yourself look even more dishonest by repeating the garbage.
Bwah ha ha ha, Yep, a bogeyman dogwhistle just like I surmised. UN black helicopters. New World Order. Statism. Fuck off with your uninformed paranoia.
“Statism” as you like to call it is the only possible defense for ordinary persons against the otherwise-uncontrollable corporations and their Rethug puppets. “Statism” may not be enough to preserve us from the real enemies of freedom, but it’s orders of magnitude more rational than your pie-in-the-sky loonytarian fantasy.
Hee hee. You’re so cute when you’re an idiot. As if anyone besides your mommy cares what you got on the GRE. As if anyone cares that you got an A in Women’s Studies, when you clearly learned nothing about issues that matter to actual women in the real USA, where your beloved “states’ rights” are going to kill actual living women for the principle of anti-abortion. You’re a fool and a braggart, which is an especially unappealing combination.
You don’t approve of us and our “level of freethinking” ? Oh, that’s wonderful. I wouldn’t want your approval unless it came with a million-dollar paycheck. Yes, I could be bought, but not by your insignificant little level of approval or disapproval.
Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out !
Raven –
His name is Tim Proffit, he was tried, and he got one year of probation and had to pay $600 (yes, six hundred dollars and zero cents) to the victim. He had no prior criminal record. Unconfirmed comments suggest that his wife works at a school cafeteria, and that he doesn’t have a job at all.
I flirted with statism for a while. Turns out it thought I was being creepy and asked me to stop.
Fucking blockquote fail again.
But on this again
Do you support equal rights?
I concede: Ron Paul wants to outlaw abortion, all abortion, at the federal level. My *snerk* scores mean nothing: I can still be a racist idiot, even if I donate to the NAACP and am a member of MENSA. Doesn’t matter.
What matters is that *Ron Paul doesn’t give full-throated endorsement to a certain scientific principle*, therefore, he’s a stupid little troll and deserves no respect. Point taken.
Pharyngula : A place for freethinkers*
*libertarians not welcome.
FTFYL. Yep, they are religious just like the fundies. Thay can’t prove their theology isn’t morally bankrupt, so they are treated like they should be–as fuckwitted presuppositional idjits.
Because of course, I don’t support different rights for women, ethnic minorities, or gays, either. I support equal rights for them.
But historically, those groups were denied equal rights.
Therefore, if I use the language “women’s rights”, for example, it clearly means that I support truly equal rights for women.
And you know that.
So, while you may or may not be a “racist”, however you define that term, you are clearly a liar, because with this statement, you deliberately misrepresent support for equal individual rights for those who have been denied equal individual rights as some sort of support for “special group rights”.
That’s just rock bottom Fox/Limbaugh/Focus on the Family BS.
You know the old joke “I tried to vote a straight Republican ticket, but I couldn’t find a straight Republican”?
Well, I tried to have an honest conversation with a libertarian, but I couldn’t find an honest libertarian.
I do NOT support “group rights”, like women’s rights or minority rights, because rights are not assigned to groups
the problem is not that they need to be assigned to groups, it’s that it’s all to easy to REMOVE them from groups.
this, in fact, is exactly the history and struggle of the US.
sometimes we overcome it, and RESTORE rights where they have been lost, sometimes… not.
Ha!
Of all places, I thought this would be the last group of people to stoop to ad hominem. I was wrong: you’re all over it. I’m afraid half of you don’t know the meaning of the word “bigotry”.
Yes, I support equal rights. And that’s a great point: how can they be equal if there is a history of inequality? Which begs the question: how do we measure equality? When WILL they be equal? Can we pass legislation to correct that?
Is it justice to argue that Person X and Person Y are equally qualified, but… X is a member of Group A, and Y is a member of group B… group B was once treated unequally, therefore, we must put a finger on the scale and choose someone from that group, and in doing so, we create balance.
If you guys REALLY want to talk about the failings of Ron Paul, do so with logic: how can we have ECONOMIC equality if there has been such a long history of crony capitalism? There’s no way MyTinyCorp can compete with Goldman Sachs when they’ve been given so many handouts. That’s a great question for a Ron Paul supporter… but we’re off on these distractions about evolution and abortion. Fucking ridiculous.
I can tell my voice is unwanted here, so I will take it elsewhere.
*sigh*
Why is it so hard for so many people here to believe that others are simply wrong? Many (most? the vast majority of?) conservatives are genuinely well intentioned and trying to do what they believe is right. Do I think they are horribly misguided and wrong? Yes. Do I think they are evil? No, I don’t. Too many of the pharyngulite horde are just as narrowminded, petty, and thick as the people they attack for exactly those attributes. I don’t mean that in the “atheists are narrowminded sense” because I don’t think they are. I don’t mean that in the “scientists are narrowminded” sense because I don’t think they are. I think it takes a special kind of narrowminded arrogance to believe that people either agree with you or are evil, though. That’s the same black and white thinking that far right Christians show.
When you jump down someone’s throat and assume they must be a heartless thug simply because they disagree with you on one single issue (you don’t even know what they think about a lot of other things), you are being every bit as bad as a Bible Thumper who assumes any atheist is immoral. The best example of this is, of course, when libertarianism comes up. It’s an acceptable punchingbag here, so too many people don’t stop and consider before they let loose. Most Libertarians (for the sake of simplicity, big L for American Libertarianism, little l for social liberal liberatianism) really believe that their ideas are what will make the world best for people. Do I agree? Again, no, I don’t. Economic Conservatism doesn’t work. But I don’t think they’re heartless, just wrong and perhaps naive.
Most Libertarians really are serious that they believe in personal freedom, for example. They really would defend your right to speak freely. Many really do believe in separation of church and state, free exercise, rights of the accused, and so on. Yes, their economics are terrible and would result in far more suffering, but that isn’t their goal. They are wrong, not out to ruin lives. Bash them to your heart’s content, because that’s the general rhetorical strategy here, but stop with the bullshit about heartlessness and lack of empathy. You’ve probably been badly wrong about a lot of issues in the past, too, right? I bet a lot of people here didn’t start out as feminist as they are today, for example. Does that mean you were heartless before you learned more and changed your mind?
Where?
So do you think nothing should have been done to deal with how African Americans and women were treated historically in this country?
In my experience, some libertarians have very high academic ability, which has nothing to do with the quality of their ideas.
Yes. I mainly agree with libertarians on what they claim to be their non-economic values. However, libertarian economic ideas are bizarre and unrealistic enough to justify the term “ignorant”.
Also, Ron Paul is a strong opponent of legal abortion. Minimizing this is either dishonest or ignorant.
None of that has anything to do with the discussion at hand.
And that lessens the idiocy or danger of their platform how?
Creationists are really serious about creationism.
Willful ignorance and arrogant ignorance are not things to celebrate.
Still hoping for a MENSA card.
Um.
What.
This was already demonstrated false. He has voted to restrict abortion at the federal level. “It’s not just a theory.” ;)
+++++
Ron Paul is sometimes mistakenly assumed to oppose federal anti-choice legislation, preferring that anti-choice measures take place at the state level. But this is a falsehood. He votes to restrict choice at the federal level. He voted to outlaw the intact dilation and extraction procedure, federally, while complaining that the ban did not go far enough:
«For example, 14G in the “Findings” section of this bill states, “…such a prohibition will draw a bright line that clearly distinguishes abortion and infanticide…” The question I pose in response is this: Is not the fact that life begins at conception the main tenet advanced by the pro-life community? By stating that we draw a “bright line” between abortion and infanticide, I fear that we simply reinforce the dangerous idea underlying Roe v. Wade, which is the belief that we as human beings can determine which members of the human family are “expendable,” and which are not.»
Most Libertarians really are serious that they believe in personal freedom,
yes. The problem is, the vast majority of them are too ignorant to understand what that really means, and what the implications are.
and NONE of them understand what it is really like to have complete personal freedom.
If they did, they’d be scared shitless.
so let me get this straight. The argument presented here is “Ron Paul doesn’t want to make abortion illegal, he just wants to make it impossible to attain”? As a counter-argument to “if he gets elected, I won’t be able to make the choice to have an abortion”?
That’s impressively fucking stupid, even if taken at face value.
Do I think they are evil? No, So, Philip, Why is it so hard for you to believe that others are simply evil?
Why is it so hard for you to believe that you are wrong?
Why is it so hard for you to believe you are an idiot?
In case you don’t get it, people can be evil. You are an idiot and just wrong. And a troll.
how can we have ECONOMIC equality if there has been such a long history of crony capitalism?
oddly, I don’t see that Libertarianism is needed to deal with standard corruption.
just a will to deal with the corruption itself.
Let me repeat that:
If the idea of libertarianism is to save us from political corruption…
IT IS NOT NEEDED.
*waves bye as libertarians head out the door*
Seems to me you have it exactly right.
Libertarianism = myopathy personified.
Says the brainless troll who stoops to multiple lies and ad hominems.
You can tell the Mom’s basement-gibbertarian crowd is here. The average IQ of the thread dropped 50 points and it got really stupid and boring.
They are at that awkward age. Too old for a babysitter but not old enough for a car and driver’s license.
Most of them are christofascists authoritarians who believe in anything but personal freedom.
Cthulhu, this troll is stupid. They don’t have any choice. It’s the law of the land, that first amendment right. If they tried to outlaw freedom of speech, they’d be lucky to stay out of jail.
Big deal. Those have been part of the US constitution for 200 years. They either like it or overthrow the US government and set up a dictatorship. Good luck with that one. The US armed forces are 3 million strong and we have half the world’s nuclear weapons. You are not only an idiot but a babbling idiot saying nothing.
I think the throat-jumping down is due to a genuine hope that either the possibly heartless libertarian will realize that they are indeed advocating heartless policies, and, not really being heartless, will re-evaluate them. People do change their minds. There’s plenty of rational responses to libertarian blinkeredness that get posted here all the time, along with altogether warranted down-throat jumping. So the glibertarians get it with both barrels: rational arguments, which they usually ignore, and mockery and derision, which they are usually offended by. But sometimes, some of them listen.
I gave empirical evidence that they have less empathy, up at 51. This isn’t speculation, and it isn’t even necessarily an attack. It’s just a fact. They have less empathy. A person might take this fact and decide to feel sorry for them. I personally feel sorry for them and distrust and fear them, because I can handle emotional ambiguity.
There are a lot of obvious things wrong with gibbertarianism. It’s just a fairy tale utopianism like communism was.
Wherever it exists or has existed, it leads to crony capitalism at best and war lordism at worst.
Today in the third world, many countries have low taxes and no regulations. The result is an economy controlled by oligarchies, stagnant societies going nowhere with huge gaps between rich and poor.
Same thing happened with laissez faire capitalism in the 19th century, monopolies and oligarchies.
The current champion libertarian paradise is Somalia. No government and you can get as rich as you want to. The leading occupations are “warlord” and “pirate”.
trange gods, have I recently told you how much i love your extensive collection of relevant papers?
two sides of the same coin
No one is suggesting that millionaires be taxed at 100%, so you can drop that straw man. What we want is for millionaires to pay their fair share. What conservatives want is to kiss the millionaire’s asses, and put the burden on the backs of the poor and the middle class. Heck, they are so stupid that many of them are supporting stances that are actually harmful to their own pocketbooks.
Why thank you, Jadehawk, and you should know the feeling’s mutual. :)
This one comes from Jonathan Haidt; if you recall Amanda Marcotte blogging about the connections between physical disgust and moral revulsion, Haidt was probably one of her sources.
Haidt has a lot of interesting research, which has recently added up to his declaring himself a centrist and no longer a liberal. Of course we have to wait for his next book to hear his explanation. I suspect he’s done a reverse-Walton; slowly coming to terms with evidence that some people were more likely from birth to end up as conservatives, Haidt’s own empathy has made him feel ever so sorry for them and can’t we all see that these poor conservatives really mean it.
I wonder what happens when he realizes that some people were somewhat more predisposed to become fascists.
Anyway, I’m rambling. This was to say, if you look up Haidt, it’s interesting stuff, but he may be going off the rails real soon now.
The idiot’s strawperson numbers are made up anyway.
There are 30 million millionaires in the USA, 1% of the population. He might have meant 400,000 who make 1 million USD/year, a whole different metric.
That 74 trillion figure for the national debt is fantasy. Our debt today is 12 trillion and our deficits are running 1 1.5 trillion. Even at 1.5 trillion a year. the debt would be 27 trillion.
There is a problem all right with the budget and deficits. Libertarianism isn’t the solution though. Responsible adults need to sit down, think it through, and do the obvious things. Unfortunately, those responsible adults are so far missing.
or maybe it was to say, I want to get this speculation into the record, because when Haidt’s book comes out, I totally called it. ;)
Anyway. What I like most from him: http://people.virginia.edu/~jdh6n/elevation.html
You do not know what an ad hominem is. Therefore I can dismiss the unrelated remainder of your argument.
the meta, it burns…
:D
Tone trolling and ignorance of ad hominem in the same sentence. This looneytarian is on a roll.
:D
…and that deafening silence you hear is the liberturkeys reading the definition of ad hominem and scratching their heads in bewilderment…
I vote the phrase “ad hominem” be stricken from the record.
it’s been misused far to frequently for it to have meaning any more.
it will be henceforth replaced with dumbed-down versions for those who refuse to understand latin, with the phrases:
-insult
-personal attack
-well poisoning
to differentiate between meanings.
Tu quoque will no longer be a type of ad hominem attack, but can stand on its own.
the world will be a better place.
LLOL!
(The extra “L” stands for “literally”)
Life is hard for libertarian atheists.
I know evolution happened, I subscribe to Skeptic Magazine, am a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and I have recorded and uploaded YouTube videos of James Randi. I’ve been an American Atheist since 18, a Secular Coalition donor supporter for years, and was a founding member of Project Reason.
But, I’ll be supporting Ron Paul in 2012 anyway. I don’t care what he thinks about science, because I agree with him on the constitution. I’m more interested in evolution getting a chance to continue than being accepted as fact by the president. Priorities matter, and when it comes to voting right now economics and civil liberties rule the day. If these two things matter most, I don’t see how I could vote for anyone but Ron Paul.
So, life is hard for libertarian scientists. I’ll never get all I want, I’ll never get anything close to it. But the most popular candidates of both parties seem to promise fiscal calamity, so I’ll take the kindly bookish obstetrician.
http://www.libertarianatheist.com/ – a hangout for our tiny minority.
Ron Paul is an honest moron. The honesty part is where he breaks with most Republicans.
Uh, OK.
About what, specifically? Please explain. And why do you think the US constitution is some sacred document?
What could you possibly mean by this?
“and when it comes to voting right now economics and civil liberties rule the day. If these two things matter most, I don’t see how I could vote for anyone but Ron Paul.”
Speaking of LLOL.
Do you often take your lessons in economics from an advocate of returning to the gold standard? Do you think that civil liberties amounts to treating people equally while intentionally ignoring the vast gulfs already existing between same people due to the cumulative effects of decades without such equal treatment? Do you think that somehow a candidate can be abysmally wrong on scientific issues in the name of religious nonsense and still be the best of ALL candidates from an atheist perspective? Are you basically a Democrat but just don’t feel right about helping out the poor and letting women have a say over whether or not they will have a tenant in their uterus? Do you suffer cognitive dissonance from the fiery desire to vote for a Republican but also the desperate need to not associate with the patriarchal, homophobic theocrats that make up America’s mainstream Republicans?
Well, worry your pretty little head no more: Ron Paul 2012 is here! He’s everything you want him to be! Because you can ignore everything about him that you don’t want to be there. Which works, because that’s how the methodology libertarians use to arrive at their complex and sophisticated political philosophy. Convenient!
Naw, he is just a routine Tea Party christofascist authoritarian. And a known and vocal racist who hates black people.
He knows less about economics than my cat.
A crackpot from the far reaches of the lunatic fringes.
Now for something fun. Some libertarian is trying to build an island and try to create libertarian paradise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0Ty9jFRtOw&feature=channel_video_title
If they build it, man, that island is going to be a disaster. It will be Somalia 2.0.
It starts with an island. Then they realize that it’s not enough of a vacuum for their beliefs to work in any meaningful way, so one of them suggests building a city somewhere away from everything else… like the ocean floor.
Pick up that wrench… would you kindly?
Priorities matter, and when it comes to voting right now economics and civil liberties rule the day.
well then, WITHOUT REFERENCING THE INTERTUBES….
tell us what about Paul’s economic policies, SPECIFICALLY, will help improve the US economy.
what about Paul’s policies SPECIFICALLY, will lead to improved civil liberties for ALL of us.
if you spout “laissez faire”, then you’re a moron who is entirely ignorant of not only world economic and political history, but your own country’s as well.
we don’t need your ignorance in support of science.
more like a short-lived Atlantis, since these guys are against building codes. One storm, and the whole thing sinks below the waves
#145 Mr. Fire
T-shirt please.
Libertarianism: giving those who have hands and those who don’t equal permission to reach for the cookies.
You mean that just because you combine selfishness, self-righteousness and gormlessness with your atheism, nobody likes you?
Life is so unfair, isn’t it?
In this thread we have seen how respect for the consequences of policy is inimical to libertarianism.
ibyea | 20 August 2011 at 1:34 am
My forecast: a few liberatarians will find a way to use this program to scam millions of dollars out of many other liberatarians, and the program itself, hollowed out by unhinged theft, will eventually collapse, without ever producing a testbed for liberatarian ideals.
(crosspost from facebook)
Libertarianism: because in politics, it’s the thought that counts.
I was wondering about what I should write about concerning libertarian economics. Then it struck me, I should discuss the one true economic triumph of the libertarians’ economist hero, Milton Friedman.
Friedman made his name as a theoretical economist, especially on his analysis of the role of money, the importance of inflation expectations in wages and employment, and perhaps his most lasting contribution, the permanent income hypothesis, which suggests that households take a longer view of anticipating their past and future income than previously thought. His Nobel prize in economics was richly deserved, even if he was churlish in accepting it (he said after winning: “I would not want a professional judgment of my scientific work to be those seven people who selected me for the award”).
In terms of the policies he inspired or influenced, however, his reputation is not so glowing. His great claim, the idea that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” may have set off the Monetarist versus Keynesian “econ-wars” of the late 1970s and 1980s. But Friedman’s ideas of directly targeting the money supply were tried and rejected as a failure in the US, the UK, Germany and Japan. Friedman himself backed away from his dogmatic earlier positions. Today, no central bank directly targets money supply data in setting monetary policy, instead they are far more pragmatic. Even Friedman’s great admirer Alan Greenspan never tied himself to the monetarist mast, preferring to keep his options open.
And Friedman’s one success? During World War II Friedman went to work for the US government. While there he helped design the payroll tax known as withholding tax, the system that allows the government to administer the taking of income tax directly from salaries and wages. Withholding tax has withstood the test of time and is in use all around the world. It was the best thing that Keynesian-style government could ever have wished for–and Friedman bitterly regretted it. In his memoirs he wrote:
wut
myopathy
From context, I’d guess you meant ‘myopia’.
pretty embarrassing.
There’s already [half] an island that is the libertarian paradise. It is called Haiti. You can build your tent anywhere you want and the government is so small that you’ll have to rely on foreign aid to survive.
As far as I know every Republican candidate for President of the United States is an evolution denier except for Romney. Romney isn’t much better than the Bible thumpers because he seems unable to talk about science without sticking his magic fairy in there. Romney said “I believe that God designed the universe and created the universe, and I believe evolution is most likely the process he used to create the human body.”
I wrote a post about Mr. god-soaked Romney: Mitt Romney (who wants to be USA president) is a fucking idiot.
It’s good that you don’t care about science. A libertarian in office would kill science in the USA.
Only if they don’t have alternative career skills. Can you drive a cab?
Yes, the payroll tax that allows people who don’t pay attention to feel like they aren’t paying taxes and vote accordingly. He did have real accomplishments in addition to the faux accomplishment you mentioned. I suppose the problem I have with Ron Paul is that he’s more of a Rothbardian than a Friedmanite (he seems to get a lot of his ideas from Lew Rockwell, for one). To deontological libertarians, anything the government does other than provide a basic legal system, defense and minimal safety net is a priori illegitimate. To utilitarian libertarians, just as with utilitarian liberals and utilitarian conservatives, it is a cost/benefit analysis.
I should point out to people that there is a Republican candidate who also gets no respect and loudly accepts Evolution, separation of church and state and AGW. He is for more open borders, equal status for gay and straight marriages (civil unions for both, no government marriages) and (up to a point) a woman’s right to choose. He is Gary Johnson and as you probably guessed, he hasn’t a chance in hell at winning the nomination. He has problems, like flip-flopping on the Gitmo issue, but at the expense of the other Republican candidates at least, I wish him luck.
Human Ape | 20 August 2011 at 9:26 am:
Huntsman’s stance on evolution is essentially the same as Romney’s. (As is Huntsman’s stance on AGW.) Huntsman hasn’t dropped out of the race yet, but he’s polling in the low single digits, while Romney seems to be in the lead … just barely.
Gary Johnson? Yes, apparently, he recognizes that global warming is a fact. Let’s see what Reason magazine has to say about rhis:
Lovely person, indeed.
@phalacrocorax
Say, I remember once of a picture where they show the borders of Haiti and Dominican Republic, and I remember that in one side, it was completely deforested, while on the other side, the forest was there. The boundary was so clear cut that you could see where exactly the borders were. I wonder if the cleared out area is Haiti.
So allowing business to police themselves, allowing manufacturers to decide how much polution they can release into the environment, and removing all other environmental regulations will, through the magic of the free market, create a cleaner environment? Please explain how that would work.
The 2 pages on evolution in Ron Paul’s newest book is densely packed with stupid strawmen and inane blather. It’s truly quite remarkable how much he packed into such a little space.
http://books.google.com/books?id=KGsAPgSJpIwC&q=evolution#v=snippet&q=evolution
ibyea,
I couldn’t see the borders clearly from Google Maps, but you’re probably right according to Wikipedia. At least the Haitians don’t have to worry about big bad government messing with their Freedom Wastelands.
Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity | 20 August 2011 at 12:56 pm :
But the financial sector largely policies itself. And we haven’t had any major financial collapses recently, have we?
Oh.
Nevermind.
Anyone who believes in “states’ rights” has clearly either never lived in a state like Idaho, or does and wishes for even more regressive policies. And they most likely fly a Confederate flag. Either way, I fart in their general direction.
And the further that libertarians can stay from environmental policy, the better. Talk to them about externalities and the tragedy of the commons and see how fast their eyes glaze over.
The thread over at ScienceBlogs is a classic example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Seldom have I seen so much arrogance combined with so little knowledge.
If Badmedia keeps it up over there he will surely reach meme status. Lots of good responses in that thread if you dare to wade through it — hard to call it a good discussion though when it’s half insane.
Bad Media: abort, retry, ignore?@llewelly, #166
Argh. Blockquote failure.
Well, Brother Ogvorbis, it’s simple.
Cooperation for the better future of our species, and of the planet as a whole, is in the best interest of the corporations involved. After all, the people running the corporation are vampires, who are immortal, and do not wish to despoil the only planet on which they live.
Also, it’s worked really, really well in places that don’t have such harsh regulations, such as Mexico and China.
And finally, when corporations do good deeds, it produces magic pixie dust which heals the environment.
This let’s-found-a-libertarian-utopia-on-a-magic-island-far-far-away concept seems to pop up every now and then. There was a similar project called Oceania – The Atlantis Project back in the mid-1990’s. Needless to say, it failed before it even got started. I guess the difference now is that they actually found someone stupid enough to fund this idiocy. I’m confident that after Mr. Paypal’s donation runs out, this project will also fade into oblivion. The new attempt at this craziness seems to be the undertaking of something called the Seasteading Institute, headed by libertarian Patri Friedman, son of libertarian David Friedman (of “medieval Iceland was a libertarian paradise” fame), grandson of Milton Friedman.
Actually, Ron Paul is not that great a defender of the Constitution. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAU3jDjAPN0 in which Paul says,
Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution says
In 1830, when people were making gestures about nullification, James Madison wrote
As early as 1809, the U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. Peters, 9 U.S. (5 Cranch) 115 (1809) held that “If the legislatures of the several States may, at will, annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, the Constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery, and the nation is deprived of the means of enforcing its laws by the instrumentality of its own tribunals.” The Supreme Court has upheld this principle ever since. For instance, see Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958).
No, Dr. Paul, nullification cannot be constitutionally supported.
I’m not a troll, you are!
Wait… how did I get here..? :/
I would actually encourage as many right wing libertarians to support Ron Paul in 2012 as possible. Get him to run again as a third party candidate after losing the Rethug nomination, and split that right wing vote!
Take it as a message from a higher power advising you to withdraw from that other thread where you’re being eviscerated.
Haha :) Yeh, you can’t reason with some people. Thanks buddy! I’m glad my joke wasn’t wasted…