Paul Dirks:

We libertarian socialists get along much better...

You've got friggen GANDHI in your quadrant. What would you expect?

All I can say is I'm glad I wasn't drinking coffee when I read that. It's too late in the day for me to be going out to buy a new keyboard.

I go away for a couple of hours, and return to this:

...lifted the economy from the Clinton-9/11 recession...

It's the Clinton Penis-911 recession, idiot. Can't take you anywhere.

This probably won't get read, either, and if it is I probably won't get to the response ... sigh ...

I now look forward to telling people I'm "with squirrel." Partner does think I'm more adorable now than before -- men are very strange creatures. I'll try not to scare him away after sproglet actually blinks his eyes at us.

The deer ate all our blueberry bushes, and now all I look at, sadly, is their nervous little new leaves testing the air for safety. Next year they'll be okay again. But the currants -- black and red -- are wow! going to be bumper crops. And the tomatoes are now protected from woodchuck's scampering chucklets.

I did go see a girl about a goat. The goat (actually, two now) will obligingly come to chomp the bindweed that they love and my honeysuckle does not. Oh honeysuckle! Sad, sad am I, I think half of one bush died from blooming too early and then freezing.

bebop-o, probation? But Annabelle is so very much more important. She is real -- whatever the silly DOJ people want is spurious. Maybe spike them some mead.

Ungrouchiness? I just saw a Pirates movie, where the first 5 minutes were an eerie reflection of our current political situation (from the obliging East India Company), but the good guys won :-) When all else fails, we can live and love virtually, eh?

He wants to forget how much of a War hawk he was back in the day (2003) and how much he abetted this misbegotten presidency. Andrew Sullivan actually argued for the war on the basis of it's popularity in public opinion polls. Great, he is repentant, but Mr. Greenwald gives him too much credit.

On the other hand Republicans have secured the country from additional attacks, cut taxes, raised revenue, lifted the economy from the Clinton-9/11 recession, deposed a tyrant, reshaped the Middle East, gotten the NK and Iran to the table, and gotten two excellent Supreme Court judges passed.

In order: no evidence of this, not an actual accomplishment, ditto, debateable, nothing to brag about, untrue, untrue, untrue.

These are what you define as "accomplishments"? I truly fear for the world you live in.

I could keep typing all night but the point is clear. One's opinions are an expession of what is RIGHT not necessarily what will get you ahead. That you don't realize that speaks volumes about why you continuously fail to understand what takes place here!
It's all about self interest Uber Alles.-- Paul Dirks

Just to make sure you understand my point, I use "self interest"in the literal sense of doing what is what is best for ones self, overall. Not as a synonym for "greed". You want to maintain an ideological perspective which I understand. It is part of what makes you feel good about yourself, and that, rather than your job is your self-interest. At least until it's in your self interest to make hard choices regarding your production. At some point principles may have to give way to practicality because of the self interest keeping a job. The kind of woman you married was a matter of self interest, as is the car you drive, as are the vices you have. Your preferences in life, what it is that suits you own interests, form your opinions.

Your link to http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/chomsky.html piqued my curiosity. I have followed Chomsky's work for some time, but I have never really tried to nail the guy down where his personal political philosophy is concerned. I first came into contact with him through his work on transformational grammar, his theories of language acquisition and his theories of mind. It was only later that I read his work in politics and media.

When commenters on this blog use terms like socialism, libertarianism, social democracy, anarchy, capitalism and the like, I try to take the time to understand precisely what they mean. Too many times, I have witnessed heated arguments between two or more people over the meaning of some word or idea, only to realize that they were using different terms to describe similar things, or similar terms to describe entirely different things. After a certain level of frustration is reached, even the nicest people can end up saying bad things about each other's mother.

I went to this link:

http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2007/05/86787.html

and found a fairly interesting discussion of Chomsky's political leanings in the context of anarchism, libertarian socialism and anarcho-syndicalism.

I have to mull this over.

This much I do think. The libertarianism of Lew Rockwell is not the libertarianism of Antiwar.com. No way. And the ideas of social democracy and libertarian socialism have a similar distance between them.

Anarchy as an individual act means one thing. Anarchy as a form of social organization means something entirely different.

And individualism as a synonym for libertarianism is much further away from libertarian socialism than libertarian socialism is from social democracy.

Maybe we need another blog for these discussions in the same way several commenters proposed a new blog for issues related to grammar and punctuation.

Of course, I'm not going to do it. I can barely keep up with this blog.

If there is already one out there, let me know and I'll go lurk.

The gophers ate my agave, and my ocotillo, and the javelina ate my nopal (the drought is bad, and the little darlings need their moisture.) Somehow, it doesn't seem as romantic as blueberry bushes.

Bebop-o, is there a defense fund? We can't afford to lose you to those who don't know your value.