The threat posed by bogus 'libertarians' - Preemption needed

[militant]

This story was linked from the Official Campaign section:
http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/12012007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/crackpot_revolution_616186.htm

Note the author's words in the final paragraph.

I've noticed several writers and pundits calling themselves 'libertarian' while promoting Giuliani. My thought is that maybe certain people see libertarianism's accelerating rise in this country, and are attempting to co-opt the label 'libertarian', and pose as the modern version of such.

Are they preemptively positioning themselves as the original 'mainstream libertarians' while accepting surveillance and executive power abuses? Sure, freedom lovers! A police state is fine as long as the economy hums and minorities have an illusion of equality or even better, special privilege, in this wonderful new socially liberal fascism. Any kind of lifestyle is fine, but we've got to all agree and get along ideologically, and if you don't think so, you're a threat to our finely tuned plan.

Are they preparing to do to the broader libertarian movement what the neocons did to the Republican party?

We need to start discrediting these bogus libertarians before people end up taking them seriously. Time for our own preemption.

[fortilite]

They always us it in the following sentence, too:

I'm a libertarian at heart but...

Add what ever big government idea they support after the but.

[user]

I've been seeing this trend too. "Liberal" and "conservative" are already lost, we don't need to lose "libertarian" also.

[werdd]

kind of like how glenn beck is a libertarian at heart but he supports perpetual wars overseas with muslims.

[militant]

glad i'm not the only one who's noticed it. it worries me. this is exactly how the neocons took over the GOP - by stretching, even flat-out redefining words, and selectively eliminating the context and frame of reference for ideas they needed to eradicate.

there's an opposite example:

ayn rand to some degree built her success on redefining english words and showing that they could have a cleaner, more honest meaning, and enable people to communicate more sincerely, directly, and effectively. philosophy is spread through the word, so craft the words and even sometimes their meanings to correctly frame one's point. redefine 'selfish' as a positive, a sign of confidence and self-respect. take the word 'capitalism' back from its detractors, and insist on the original and true definition.

maybe we can learn from that?

[user]

Maybe we should aggressively challenge fake libertarians' usage of the word. Everyone from Bill Maher to Glenn Beck is using it. Maher in particular is very proud of it. It's still early in the game so we could have a chance.

The LP has been consistent about having a non-interventionist foreign policy, and one effect of Ron Paul's success has been to expose the liberventionists for what they are.

Unless you're against fiat money I don't think you're a true libertarian. I guess people made an exception for Milton Friedman because he was pretty good on everything else.

Show the article in my sig to as many people as you can to highlight the differences between the Establishment and those who love liberty.

[jblosser]

Redefining terms is a standard part of their playbook and has been for a very long time. As long as they control the major information channels and education system this isn't likely to be something we can beat them at. We just need to deal with it.

Classical liberal is still a bit safer term because it sounds academic enough they mostly leave it alone, the masses don't hear it much.

[user]

Redefining terms is a standard part of their playbook and has been for a very long time. As long as they control the major information channels and education system this isn't likely to be something we can beat them at. We just need to deal with it.

Classical liberal is still a bit safer term because it sounds academic enough they mostly leave it alone, the masses don't hear it much.
The problem with that is it's two words and has "liberal" in it.

As long as we have the Libertarian Party and its platform isn't corrupted, we have a shot at defending "libertarian". But you're right, the odds are against us.

[TooConservative]

glad i'm not the only one who's noticed it. it worries me. this is exactly how the neocons took over the GOP - by stretching, even flat-out redefining words, and selectively eliminating the context and frame of reference for ideas they needed to eradicate.

As former hardcore doctrinaire Marxists, they are masters of Hegelian dialectic and the subtle power of words. They also occupy key positions in think tanks and in the media. Not merely at Fox News but even at the supposedly liberal outlets like NYT, WaPo, LAT, major broadcast networks.

They all want to be antiwar. But look how quickly they change their tune if they think there's a chance to win and they can then pretend that somehow they supported the glorious "liberation" all along.

[jblosser]

As former hardcore doctrinaire Marxists, they are masters of Hegelian dialectic and the subtle power of words. They also occupy key positions in think tanks and in the media. Not merely at Fox News but even at the supposedly liberal outlets like NYT, WaPo, LAT, major broadcast networks.

QFT. It's depressing how few people have a clue what "Hegelian dialectic" means these days.

[militant]

this sorta confuses me. i'm not sure whether to believe the story, that libertarians are actually more interventionist these days, or whether it's just another part of the attempt to co-opt libertarianism.

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/11/why_did_so_many.html

[MoneyWhereMyMouthIs2]

They aren't talking about the libertarians I know. Libertarianism is a pretty cohesive philosophy. Unless I've garbled it in my head over the last several years, that philosophy couldn't support this war.

As far as the Libertarian Party, they stick pretty close to the philosophy. I think they write ad copy like clowns, but they understand the principles.

[MoneyWhereMyMouthIs2]

From the original article...


Rudy is nobody's idea of a libertarian (at least on issues such as government surveillance and executive power), but he's fiscally conservative and socially liberal - the best a libertarian can hope for from today's GOP.

That's just the dumbest shit I've ever heard.

[FreeTraveler]

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."
- L. Neil Smith

http://www.ncc-1776.org/whoislib.html

Edit: note the "to advocate or delegate its initiation" clause. This includes any form of taxation, since taxation has, as its ultimate authority, the use of force.

[GunnyFreedom]

From the original article...



That's just the dumbest shit I've ever heard.

Yeah, no kidding.

Copied in it's entirety from my blog entry on 14 July 2007:

Rudy Giuliani pushes Doublethink for INGSOC

Back in March of 1994, then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani during a speech on crime had this priceless gem to offer on what freedom is:


We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
The New York Times, pub March 20, 1994

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E2D9173CF933A15750C0A9629582 60#

Let me point out again the truly stunning revelation in Mr Giuliani's thinking: "Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

Now, from George Orwell's seminal work 1984 we have the following definition:

"doublethink - Reality Control. The power to hold two completely contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accept both of them."

Here is how the character Winston Smith described doublethink in the novel:


"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink."

Let me point out one last time, the truly stunning revelation in Mr Giuliani's thinking: "Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

Now compare that statement with Big Brother's "Principles of INGSOC" from the novel:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

I don't really have a whole lot to add to the above comparisons between Mr. Giuliani's quote and the excerpts from Orwell's 1984, except to point out that this is typical to the kind of thinking we find throughout both authoritarian parties on the left and on the right.

So long as we as a nation continue to elect those politicians who live by the statement that "Freedom is slavery" errm, or rather "Freedom is about authority" then we as Americans will continue down the road of eroding liberty until we are nothing more than a totalitarian police state no better than Saddam Hussein or the Taliban itself.

It is time for a change. As for myself, I am very enthusiastic about Ron Paul. I have more hope in this coming election because a truly freedom-minded person is running for President, and has a very good chance of getting elected. More hope than I have had since before Jimmy Carter. I encourage you, however, to vote your conscience, wherever that may lead.

As for me, I would that your conscience will lead you to putting freedom-minded people into office. Rudy Giuliani is clearly not one of those.

[Wendi]

A lot of the libertarians I have met in the last six months are just as interested in personal agendas and controlling others as the neocons I know :(

[GunnyFreedom]

A lot of the libertarians I have met in the last six months are just as interested in personal agendas and controlling others as the neocons I know :(

Then they are not libertarians. That would be...the very definitive antithesis of libertarianism. That's like saying "hot is cold" or "black is white" or "1+1=3"

(Ok that last bit came from George Orwell...)