I feel a vague sense of social alienation, although that probably has more to do with the psychologically unsound environment of my upbringing, and the resulting angst has led to years of self-questioning, analytical thought and the gift of greater intellectual freedom, probably similar to the many great Jewish thinkers and scholars. True story ^^
I'm pretty sure mפst of the forum will be on the libertarian socially side of the scale, but we will probably be spread around the economic left and right.
Why don't you all take the http://www.politicalcompass.org test? I'm almost at the edge of the green
Economic Left/Right: -8.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.59
Apologies, I was in a strange mood today and maybe was a bit childish.
I admit Ron Paul is ridiculously radical. But he also seems very brave and he makes a lot of good points IMO... I like people who promote personal empowerment. This is probably a discussion for OT, but I don't hang out there so I don't know
He's a hypocrite, he's a racist, his understanding of the way the economy works is the same as a half-baked half-asleep freshman drifting through his Econ 101 classes, and his ideas about Constitutional law weren't even valid when they were current (and they were current two centuries ago). The man has no redeeming qualities and the pack of morons on the Internet that slavishly follow his every word as if he were some halo-encrusted newborn-delivering nerd Jesus have successfully converted him from a fringe wacko everybody can point and laugh at to a fringe wacko that actually has an infinitesimal impact on the modern policy debate.
Alternatively, just remember this: Ron Paul's zombies are some of the most irritating people on the Internet, with just the right combination of "fringe lunatic" and "horde" to be both annoying individually and annoying in bulk. The man attracts an outrageous proportion of jackasses and nutjobs. So how good could any of his ideas even be?
That's certainly an interesting way to put it. That said political discussions are certainly more interesting to follow if you try and understand where both sides are coming from. The problem is that the different paradigms fueling many current debates are practically irreconcilable, which means that "discussions" as often as not just end up being monologues.
Personally though I'm finding I have an increasingly Bolshevik mentality when it comes to those things. Not in terms of my own politics - they are quite far from that - but in terms of viewing the most vocal proponents of different ideologies as useful idiots. This relates both to the way their ideologies serve various narrow social interests and to the possibilities for putting them to use to either help maintain the great balancing act of civil society as a whole, or to readjust it in certain directions. My point, I suppose, is that libertarians can have their uses.
This seems more entertaining and more enlightening than taking them (or the far left, or what have you) at face point, I feel.
That sounds more like wishful thinking than anything else, IMO. Nobody's ever really used the fringe lunatics with dangerously stupid ideas as a rallying cry or a focus for opposition, and unfortunately there are so many like-minded of them that any exposure at all tends to benefit them rather than the other way around.
I'm pretty sure mפst of the forum will be on the libertarian socially side of the scale, but we will probably be spread around the economic left and right.
Why don't you all take the http://www.politicalcompass.org test? I'm almost at the edge of the green
Economic Left/Right: -8.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.59
I'd love to have the opportunity to pointlessly lie to another bad and skewed political self-affirmation exercise, but I'd rather have Type II diabetes.
I'd love to have the opportunity to pointlessly lie to another bad and skewed political self-affirmation exercise, but I'd rather have Type II diabetes.
To be honest, I can't see Ron Paul as particularly dangerous. His Internet popularity far outstrips his actual influence. I'm not really that familiar with him, but from what little I've read his views seem to be pretty unexceptional for a modern American libertarian, for better or for worse. He does appear to be very consistent in his views, which while admirable in a way also brings to mind a certain demotivator.
His ubiquitous popularity on the Internet is admittedly quite annoying, though.
As for his usefulness, I admit I may have been too rash. Still, he could be used as a lightning rod.
Libertarianism in general falls completely apart once you need governments and other influential organizations to do things that the free market would not do, like provide good public education and create useful environmental legislation.
Yes, like I said, a freshman economics understanding of the way things work.
The gold standard did not positively impact inflation while it was in force, and in concrete terms it decreased a state's fiscal and economic flexibility. Its chief value, when it had a value, seems to have been in that virtually all of the large economic powers of the world adhered to it, which imparted a certain public and systemic confidence in the system. A nebulous "being on the gold standard is good because reasons" stance is usually not a good idea, and a British person of all people should know that very well because of the disaster the United Kingdom had to endure when Churchill attempted to put the country back on the gold standard and almost single-handedly wiped out the entire North (and Ulster, but screw Ulster) because of it.
I disapprove of that test on visceral and rational grounds. Rational because it's painfully bad at doing anything but a) pigeonholing people into the categories they want to be viewed as anyway and you don't need a test for that and b) because it accounts for a very wide spectrum of belief in what is generally considered the modern "left wing" while doing stupid crap like assuming all nationalism is the racist vaguely Nazi genetic kind.
To be honest, I can't see Ron Paul as particularly dangerous. His Internet popularity far outstrips his actual influence. I'm not really that familiar with him, but from what little I've read his views seem to be pretty unexceptional for a modern American libertarian, for better or for worse. He does appear to be very consistent in his views, which while admirable in a way also brings to mind a certain demotivator.
His ubiquitous popularity on the Internet is admittedly quite annoying, though.
As for his usefulness, I admit I may have been too rash. Still, he could be used as a lightning rod.
I don't think he's very dangerous electorally. He's still a fringe wacko, despite (or because of, or connected to) his legions of Internet zombies. But in terms of the policy debate, whether this is due to Paul or not, his ideas have increasingly been adopted by elements of the Republican base over the last several years. They even tried to put the gold standard in the GOP party platform this year. And this is annoying to me, because I feel compelled to vote now in order to try to stop these nut jobs from taking office.
I don't have any objection to Paul staying like he is in most respects. The buttcoiners, for instance, are one of the most hilarious groups in Internet history, and we wouldn't ever have been gifted with, say, this glorious image if not for Paul. (The buttcoiners have also been reenacting the development of state economic policy in slow motion, discrediting their own libretard and goldbug beliefs in the process while remaining completely oblivious to the applications of this stuff in the real world.) He and his adherents are frequently good for a laugh. Attracting the attention of a well-meaning irrelevant foreigner like Daft isn't really a bad thing either. It's just the spillover from their actual political effect that irritates me.
Libertarianism in general falls completely apart once you need governments and other influential organizations to do things that the free market would not do, like provide good public education and create useful environmental legislation.
As far as I could tell, a lot of it is basically pining for the sort of society that existed 100-150 years ago, when both of those things were not considered as overwhelmingly important as they are now, even in "progressive" quarters.
Having studied it, I can't really deny that the sort of semi-voluntary civil society that, for example, existed in Britain before WWI had some definite appeal and strengths, but a lot of things have changed since then. Even if it is accepted as an ideal (and funnily, many people back then did not see it that way), trying to turn back the clock now would be disastrous.
I disapprove of that test on visceral and rational grounds. Rational because it's painfully bad at doing anything but a) pigeonholing people into the categories they want to be viewed as anyway and you don't need a test for that and b) because it accounts for a very wide spectrum of belief in what is generally considered the modern "left wing" while doing stupid crap like assuming all nationalism is the racist vaguely Nazi genetic kind.
I'm pretty sure mפst of the forum will be on the libertarian socially side of the scale, but we will probably be spread around the economic left and right.
Why don't you all take the http://www.politicalcompass.org test? I'm almost at the edge of the green
Economic Left/Right: -8.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.59
Besides, on their little graph, they've got a vast amount of space so you can differentiate between the likes of Bakunin and Kropotkin and Goldman and all sorts of random wankers whose opinions are irrelevant to the great mass of humanity, while leaders like Obama, Romney, Groovy Dave, King Abdullah, Putin, and Adolf freaking Hitler get crammed into a single corner.
It's obvious that lj is not stereotyping or putting all "Christian Americans" into one category, but is instead referring to the extreme religious right (of which Ron Paul is part of, which automatically makes me dislike him).
Dachs said:
and the pack of morons on the Internet that slavishly follow his every word as if he were some halo-encrusted newborn-delivering nerd Jesus
That implies that you're partly serious. But conflating "American Christianity" with "the relatively small but extremely vocal collection of disparate evangelical Protestants who do the megachurch/televangelist/aggressive political protagonism thing" is just ridiculous. It's like thinking of Geert Wilders when you think of "Dutch politics".
It's obvious that lj is not stereotyping or putting all "Christian Americans" into one category, but is instead referring to the extreme religious right (of which Ron Paul is part of, which automatically makes me dislike him).
Ron Paul and politically protagonistic evangelical Protestantism don't overlap that much. I mean, they obviously do to some extent, but Paul draws more of his support from Internet atheist Randroids.
Starlife said:
I'm pretty sure you just described the entire electorate and their candidate of choice.
Hey guys, now that we're talking politics, I heard Mitt Romney got nominated for the 2012 Republican candidacy! Thoughts?
In all seriousness, in regards to Ron Paul's effect on the electorate, he's at least around to counterbalance the Tea Party. So, I guess in that sense he's doing a useful job, in my eyes at least. I'm a kind of moderate conservative, and the Tea Party absolutely terrifies me, so if somebody's around to counteract their brand of ultra-conservatism within the Republican Party I'm okay with that.
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