For Liberty(and pwnage) Ron Paul 2012 Part II

[Abegweit]

Mean while, some Ron Paul supporters show their level of sanity and deceny.

Man. Just where did you get this garbage from? Let's look at it. Some scumbag wanted to paint Ron Paul supporters as racist so he made this "joke". Hint: it's not funny. Then the scumbag doubles up by claiming that decent folk "threaten-atlanta-family-with-rape-death". Hint: there is nothing anywhere in this article which makes any such claim. Statist scumbags have no shame. None.

 

[Antilogic]

Also, you have to consider how many different products a person uses in a day. It would be very hard to determine exactly what it is that made you sick. Obviously in the can-of-death-meat case, it should be fairly obvious, but what if the condition builds over time? An intelligent businessman would surely avoid such blatant cases if possible. In fact, it seems pretty clear from the wiki link that part of the reason the food was so bad was that they knew the army would buy immediate. And how would the market properly punish the offending product anyway, when they really aren't sure who they they should be punishing?

A good supporting point I failed to bring up. My dinner contained no less than 6 ingredients, and one of them was a pre-packaged pasta sauce that contains more than a few things as well.

Not everybody has a home biochemistry kit to test all the products that come into their homes.

 

[Aleenik]

Even though Ron Paul won't win, the movement that is behind him only seems to be growing over time. Obviously though, I'm no fan of Ron Paul.

 

[danjuno]

Man. Just where did you get this garbage from? Let's look at it. Some scumbag wanted to paint Ron Paul supporters as racist so he made this "joke". Hint: it's not funny. Then the scumbag doubles up by claiming that decent folk "threaten-atlanta-family-with-rape-death". Hint: there is nothing anywhere in this article which makes any such claim.

It's doesn't matter whether you think it's funny, two wrongs don't make a right.

Statist scumbags have no shame. None.

Yes, the evil commie-nazi-socialist-muslim-big-government people have no shame!

 

[Traitorfish]

So what is your argument? I keep losing your point.

State = bad.

Grow or die. The alternative is endless stagnation.

You can't simply assume that to be true of all human society, because it is of capitalism.

There is a saying used in the study of public policy. Probably used elsewhere as well. "The perfect is the enemy of the good". What that means is that the endless searches for, and diversion of resources to the search for, are obstacles to making things better in concrete ways now.

I don't believe there is a perfect. Humans are involved, therefor perfection is not.

And, you know, the people who oppose "good" are every bit the advocate of the "perfect" as the idealists are. Effectively they are much more serious enemies. The search for the "perfect" is a strategy for preventing the "good". We saw a lot of that last year in the health care debate in the US. We see it constantly in environmental debates. But it exists in many other debates as well.

We have something that is far from perfect. But it is better than anything anyone else has ever come up with. We can work to improve it and fight those who would dismantle it. Or we can throw the baby out with the bathwater.

That's great (well, insofar as what amounts to Vichy-apologism can ever be considered "great"), but what does it have to do with how you define the state? Which was the actual topic of my comment.

Let me know when you have something concrete. I'm not going to stop wanting to improve what we have and consider replacing it with something else until I see proof that it can work and be better. So far no one even has a theory that's as good, much less better, than what we have now.

Unfortunately, I don't believe that historical change comes about because intellectuals come up with some particularly viable or attractive blue-print, so I can't help you with that one. That is, in fact, the very essence of utopianism. It comes about because people are compelled by circumstances to pursue it.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Question. Lets imagine that Ron Paul, although being a career politician, is actually the first really honest candidate in history.

He gets elected president, and he will try to push his ambitious policies through. How will he tackle the same blockades and hurdles Obama had to face? There's a lot of people that can and will try to halt the less popular (less popular in the statist-controlled congress and house) policies. His ideas will meet with more resistance than Obama's.

How will he deal with this?

 

[Leoreth]

I assume he will act like a spoilt child and fight a veto-override war with Congress. His hardcore voters will cheer him on for fighting the statist establishment, while ironically the candidate that wanted to change the most will get done the least.

But better let an actual Paul supporter answer this, can't trust my statist scumbaggery.

 

[~Corsair#01~]

As far as defining the state is concerned, I would define it as "the group of individuals in a society to whom all other groups and individuals are ultimately held accountable for their actions, and which as a result has a controlling influence over the society".

To put it a bit more crudely: the state is those who have the most power.

Under that definition, I personally think it is impossible to have any kind of society without a state- any society without one will either select a controlling group or individual from its midst or split into several smaller societies (which then proceed to do so) as soon as a dispute appears which requires some sort of definitive resolution.

Due to this, I am far more interested in a political philosophy that tries to control the state and hold it accountable to robust laws -to control power- than one which claims that simply getting rid of the government (the outward manifestation of the state) will make everyone be free.

It is that sort of nonsense which makes both Ron Paul's libertarianism and "anarchism" (as I understand it) actually very dangerous from the perspective of protecting individual freedoms- because while the government may be one threat to our liberty (among many), it is also our only real tool in the defense of freedom.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Question. Lets imagine that Ron Paul, although being a career politician, is actually the first really honest candidate in history.

He gets elected president, and he will try to push his ambitious policies through. How will he tackle the same blockades and hurdles Obama had to face? There's a lot of people that can and will try to halt the less popular (less popular in the statist-controlled congress and house) policies. His ideas will meet with more resistance than Obama's.

How will he deal with this?

Some major portions of Paul's agenda do not require any Congressional cooperation at all. No one has any authority to stop the president from pardoning every single person convicted of violating Federal drug laws. He can also unilaterally bring the troops home, and issue executive orders cancelling out all other executive orders in history. He cannot change the law by himself, but the vast majority of regulation was delegated to executive agencies and can be eliminated with one stoke of the president's pen.

While the president has no de jure authority to eliminate federal departments, he pretty much has the de facto ability. He can neglect to include any funding for them in his budget requests, and can veto all bills that try to fund them. He can fire the old personnel and firmly refuse to appoint replacements. Congress has the authority to accept or refuse presidential appointments, but cannot make such appointments on its own. While he cannot just fire the chairman or board of directors of the Federal Reserve, he can still refuse to appoint replacements once their terms are over. Just trying to maintain the status quo would require Congress to pass massive bills with enough support to override a presidential veto. Fighting against Paul would require that Congress reduce the power of the office of the presidency, which is one of his goals in and of itself. They would also have to follow his recommendation to earmark every dollar they want spent on something he opposes, as otherwise he could spend education or agriculture money to pay down the national debt.


Paul could accomplish pretty much half of his agenda within a single day of taking office. As there is a good chance that he won't want to run for reelection at age 81, he can ignore most of what concerns most first term presidents. Obama had to compromise with Congress because he wanted to push through massive new programs and had the desire to be seen as a president that gets things done. Presidents generally decide not to veto bad bills because they include sections that favor their base's pet programs. Ron Paul does not want many new programs, but wants to undo many old ones and stop new ones. He is not a go-along-to-get-along kind of guy, and his base would rather see him veto almost everything that comes across his desk than compromise in order to get their pet projects passed. He certainly would have to compromise on some things, but few in Congress could win a game of chicken against a man who doesn't view the shutdown of the federal government as particularly undesirable.

 

[Cutlass]

State = bad.

Why?

You can't simply assume that to be true of all human society, because it is of capitalism.

Leaving aside population growth, let's call that part outside the scope of the discussion.

What do people want? Do they want to work their entire lives and end up right where they started? Are they content with that? If they are, fine. There's nothing stopping them from pursuing that route.

But what of those who are not content with that? Why should they not have the choice?

That's great (well, insofar as what amounts to Vichy-apologism can ever be considered "great"), but what does it have to do with how you define the state? Which was the actual topic of my comment.

How is it apologism for anything, much less the Vichy? What it is is incrementalism. One step at a time.

I don't really know how to express myself in ways that you find clear. That much is apparent. Not every organization is a state, that's true. I don't really know what to say that we haven't been over 3 times already, and I can't at the moment think of how to say it differently.

Unfortunately, I don't believe that historical change comes about because intellectuals come up with some particularly viable or attractive blue-print, so I can't help you with that one. That is, in fact, the very essence of utopianism. It comes about because people are compelled by circumstances to pursue it.

And yet all the utopias that I'm familiar with have been an intellectual who devised a concept and tried to get others to follow it.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Thanks Magister, that was very clear.

 

[Traitorfish]

As far as defining the state is concerned, I would define it as "the group of individuals in a society to whom all other groups and individuals are ultimately held accountable for their actions, and which as a result has a controlling influence over the society".

To put it a bit more crudely: the state is those who have the most power.

Under that definition, I personally think it is impossible to have any kind of society without a state- any society without one will either select a controlling group or individual from its midst or split into several smaller societies (which then proceed to do so) as soon as a dispute appears which requires some sort of definitive resolution.

What's the basis for this claim? The need for resolution does not imply the need for a third-party mediator, and certainly not one which is military empowered to defend the exclusivity of its mediating function. If that were true, then every minor household dispute would need to be taken to an external tribunal, and you would be criminally prosecuted for failing to do so.

Why?

Freedom = good. Therefore, to the extent that state =/= freedom, state =/= good, which is to say state = bad. Of course, in practice it's far more complex than that, because freedom is more complicated than simply being present or absent. Sometimes, the state is a more effective short-term guarantor of freedom than the alternative, hence the need for things like unemployment benefits, public healthcare and education, and so on. But that doesn't mean that it's necessarilly the most effective short-time guarantor of freedom (although you are of course aware with this; I have the luck to be debating with a sensible liberal type fellah, not a slavering stars-and-striper), nor that it is the most effective long-term guarantor of freedom. That's an argument that has to be made in itself, and my conclusion is that we're ultimately best off without it.

Leaving aside population growth, let's call that part outside the scope of the discussion.

What do people want? Do they want to work their entire lives and end up right where they started? Are they content with that? If they are, fine. There's nothing stopping them from pursuing that route.

But what of those who are not content with that? Why should they not have the choice?

What does that have to do with growth?

(Also, you basically just described the lives of 99% of people in capitalist society. So I don't entirely follow?)

How is it apologism for anything, much less the Vichy? What it is is incrementalism. One step at a time.

Exactly, you deal with the Nazis one step at a time. Cooperate! Be reasonable! Try to see it from their point of view. Don't run around like this silly Gaullists and maquis shooting at them like that will solve anything.

I don't really know how to express myself in ways that you find clear. That much is apparent. Not every organization is a state, that's true. I don't really know what to say that we haven't been over 3 times already, and I can't at the moment think of how to say it differently.

I want to know how we can distinguish the form of organisation called "the state" from other forms of organisation.

And yet all the utopias that I'm familiar with have been an intellectual who devised a concept and tried to get others to follow it.

Um, yes, that's what I said?

 

[Oruc]

Mean while, some Ron Paul supporters show their level of sanity and deceny.

Death threats are a regular occurence on the internet, I'm not excusing it but you say something offensive (like that tram lady) you'll have opinions ranging from you should be beaten up, to locked up and raped, to the person is going to kill you. You can't paint an internet thing as a Ron Paul supporter thing, try reading some youtube comments.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Yeah, people can be really dishonest in portraying other people's sentiments.

Don't have to read youtube comments, just what some people put into their sig on internet forums.

 

[Oruc]

Yeah, people can be really dishonest in portraying other people's sentiments.

Don't have to read youtube comments, just what some people put into their sig on internet forums.

So you agree?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I agree that people can be dishonest, and are quick to resort to characterisations.

 

[Oruc]

I agree that people can be dishonest, and are quick to resort to characterisations.

You mean useless?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I mean what I say.

You can stop trying now.

 

[Antilogic]

So you agree?

Your sig is adding a little nugget of delicious irony to this debate.

 

[Traitorfish]

You mean useless?

It does make attempting to engage in serious discussion with them a bit useless, yes, now that you come to mention it...