Letters to the Editor
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Tribes
Tim W. Brown -- Tell it to the Hatfields and McCoys. BTW, did you know there was a genetic disorder that may have caused that? Known for some time but only recently publiciized.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17967965/
I'll not get into a debate with you but you are no more evolved than Glenn Reynolds or the people, cultures and practices you think you are so far superior to. You ain't.
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"The allegiance of civilized peoples is to the community, nation and world"
The allegiance of civilized peoples is to the community, nation and world, regardless of family, religious or ethnic ties.
You're not serious, are you? IMHO, allegiance to community and nation is just more tribalism. Why have allegiance along those lines, any more than having allegiance along religious lines?
I have neither patience nor tolerance for cultural equivalency types who argue that certain practices of non-Western cultures are okay, because Westerners cannot grasp the traditions of other cultures. Female genital mutilation, child slavery, and, yes, murdering people from tribes other than yours are always barbaric, uncivilized and wrong.
Mmm, indeed. So, um, how many people have we killed in Iraq, people who are from other tribes? Is that barbaric, uncivilized and wrong.
As for female genital mutilation, i agree that it shouldn't be forced on anyone. But what do you say to a grown woman who says, "this is my tradition, this is what I want"? should you tell her that you know better than she what is best for her? This is an oft-encountered situation by well-meaning western humanitarian workers, I know people who have encoutered this personally. What to do, which is the lesser evil, paternalistic treatment African women, or FGM? I don't know.
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Political science and economics
Frankly, My Dear--
This shocks people.
"Private ownership is the cure for all problems, despite the historical record of privately owned states such as Nazi Germany, Czarist and Stalinist Russia, and Maoist China."
They just don't believe it.
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/onelesson.html
Fairhope, Alabama, while not socialist, Marxist or communist, works rather well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairhope,_Alabama
So does The Ardens, Delaware. It's growing. LVT.
Land Value Taxation.
Churchill was a Georgist.
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shooter242's questionable scoring
I'm not outside the mainstream, the bulk of commenters here are.
That presupposes you answered the questions honestly. Based on your track record of unsourced assertions and factual fallacies, distrust of any claim you make is justified.
Feel free to defend how "authoritarianism is the only game in town" with an actual argument and you might earn a bit of creditability here. Or don't. Your choice.
Frankly, I doubt you have the intelligence to do so even if you wanted to, but feel free to surprise us.
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Another Conservative Big Lie
Most of the time, conservatives demonize liberals, more or less overtly. But sometimes they switch gears and say things like this:
shooter242:
There is also the disconnect between how one would like life to be like, versus what actually works, albeit imperfectly. That alone is what I consider the primary divide between liberals and conservatives. We both want the same things essentially, but differ on how, or even whether, a particular goal is achievable.
However, both historical reality and empirical research combine to show that this is not true in some very fundamental ways.
Put simply, liberals want equality--liberty and justice for all--while conservatives want inequality--liberty and justice for their own kind. In fact, conservatism is a form of identity politics--the original form. All the other forms of identity politics are merely reactions against the pre-existing landscape of conservative identity politics. The MyDD diary of mine that Glenn linked to was part of a series that was dedicated to establishing that point--a series that was initiated because I disagreed with Glenn's take on conservatism at the time (which has since changed).
A particularly telling chart is here:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/PaulRosenberg/Free-Cantril/FC-Outgroups-By-OpSpec-Table.jpg
It's a chart from 1964 showing how operational conservatism correlates with saying that different groups should have "less influence"--Blacks, Jews, Catholics and unions.
Operational conservatism is part of core conservatism, representing opposition welfare state spending. A large number of ideological or self-described conservatives--more than half--support increased or stable welfare state spending Those who don't, operational conservatives, show a clear unwillingness to let marginal social groups gain power. Liberals, OTOH, are either supporters or members of such groups. They want a much more pluralistic society, where liberty is the birthright of all, where social justice is available for all, where respect, opportunity, and political power are available for all--a very different world than that which hard core conservatives want.
Of course, the liberal vision is the one America was founded on. And so one of the conservative's favorite fallbacks is the claim that conservatives want the same thing, only they are just more realistic. It was this "realism" that said, "unfortunately, blacks just aren't equal to whites," and that liberals were "unrealistic" to support black equality. It said the same thing about women as well. It says today that non-Christians aren't "real Americans" (good luck with that, Mr. Romney). That's what conservative "realism" looks like.
And of course, it says that gays scum of the earth. Just like it used to say about Jews.
Pretty damn ugly if you ask me.
And not the least bit liberal--which, among other things means generous and tolerant.
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There's a difference
between where one sits on a political scale and what team one chooses to play for. I'm centrist in the economic scale but very libertarian on the authority scale. So I oppose the administration on two fronts. A. Their auhtoritarian streak which threatens to morph into fascism and B. Their utter failure to adhere to the principles of Conservatism as traditionally expressed.
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Georgists
"Libertarians" like to posthumously claim all kinds of people as "L"ibertarians. (ALP) Tom Paine would never have joined the American Libertarian Party today. Neither would Tom Jefferson or Ben Franklin. They would be left-libertarian Georgists, like Churchill. Paine would definitely be a mutualist, free market anti-capitalist like Benjamin Tucker:
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/
Personal property is the effect of Society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally. Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist, the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation therefore of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes, on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came. This is putting the matter on a general principle, and perhaps it is best to do so; for if we examine the case minutely, it will be found, that the accumulation of personal property is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for the labour that produced it; the consequence of which is, that the working hand perishes in old age, and the employer abounds in affluence. It is perhaps impossible to proportion exactly the price of labour to the profits it produces; and it will also be said, as an apology for injustice, that were a workman to receive an increase of wages daily, he would not save it against old age nor be much the better for it in the interim. Make then Society the treasurer to guard it for him in a common fund, for it is no reason that because he might not make a good use of it for himself that another shall take it.
Thomas Paine, "Agrarian Justice" 1797
... legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property... Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.
Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to James Madison), 1785
While it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from Nature at all ... it is considered by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no one has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land ... Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society.
Thomas Jefferson
Private property ... is a Creature of Society, and is subject to the Calls of that Society, whenever its Necessities shall require it, even to its last Farthing, its contributors therefore to the public Exigencies are not to be considered a Benefit on the Public, entitling the Contributors to the Distinctions of Honor and Power, but as the Return of an Obligation previously received, or as payment for a just Debt.
All property, indeed, except the savage's temporary cabin, his bow, his matchcoat and other little Acquisitions absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the creature of public Convention. Hence, the public has the rights of regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the quantity and uses of it. All the property that is necessary to a man is his natural Right, which none may justly deprive him of, but all Property superfluous to such Purposes is the property of the Public who, by their Laws have created it and who may, by other Laws dispose of it.
Benjamin Franklin