The Paul File

[Trippy]

Thankyou, though, this conversation has served to perfectly illustrate what I think the problem is with modern socirty (one of them, anyway).

The recognition of individual rights and individual liberties, without the tempering or recognition of individual responsibility.

 

[Michael]

Noteably, Paul's prescription for the Middle East is analogous to his position on racism - USA should take it's ball, go home, and let things run their course.

This nifty little political trick allows him to appeal to the pro-Israel side (sure, he wants to cut the aid, but he's personally pro-Israel!) and the pro-Palestine side (since he'll cut the aid to Israel). Both, then, get to project their fantasy of what would happen after that onto Paul. Zionists can dream of unaccountable domination, while Palestinians can dream of Israel withering and dieing without US support.

It works the same way with the racism stuff - racists love it because he advocates for their "right" to discriminate, anti-racists can fool themselves into thinking that government non-interference will somehow "cure" racism through market forces, and Paul laughs his way into office.

Of course, these sorts of techniques only work well if you're an "outsider" without much political track record to answer for. Obama was way better at this - good enough to get elected President - and now everybody's disappointed that all the stuff they projected onto him was just that.

The I-P conflict has never been worse and racism in the USA is still as rampant as ever. Have you been to an inner city lately? At night?

The USA is literally rotting to death.

Will "Libertarianism" fix the USA? Probably not. But, why is it so scary to try and get people to think differently about the problem. That they shouldn't wait for the government to fix things and should take matters into ... OMG... their own hands, you know, like a.... Democracy

If Paul would have been elected the Too Big to Fail Banks would have failed and the wealthiest Americans, people like the tax cheat Warren Buffet, would have went under. Most of the CEOs like that dick face Blankfeid, would have lost everything. We would not be in-debt up to our asses and probably the economy would be moving upwards right about now.

But, we'll see won't we. Let's see what 2012-13 brings. I'll make a prediction now: Obama is reelected and the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. The economy is in the sewers for the middle class (while the upper class have never had it so good) and the State uses the "Patriot Act" against pissed off rioting Americans. Oh, and Joe will still be blowing Obama kisses from the side of the sinking Titanic while Obama and his Goldie handlers sail off into the sun set

 

[Trippy]

Now go back and re-read what I actually said

And stop wasting my time

There is a key difference between where rights come from and the role of government to protect them that you have chosen to ignore, which is disingenuous.

And you still haven't understood the significance of the qualifier in that sentence, have you.

I have to ask, is english your first language?

 

[786]

And you still haven't understood the significance of the qualifier in that sentence, have you.

I have to ask, is english your first language?

Same to you. I see you still haven't understood the difference between the words 'come' and 'protect'.

Your question by the way is quite stupid. People whose second language is English may speak and understand English better than 'Englishmen'.

Anyways I'm done wasting time with you guys. If someone else wants to take up on responding to them, be my guest.

 

[quadraphonics]

They can buy the food wherever someone is willing to sell them. Again voluntary interaction.

And if that is "nobody," then they can starve, apparently.

If the government is forcing people to sell something to someone they don't want to sell it to, they are in fact taking away their right to choose their customer.

You don't have a right to choose which customers you want to deal with on the basis of race, or gender, or religion, or etc.

Government instituted racism should have ended which is also part of the Civil Rights Act so like I said no one is talking about repealing the whole bill.

You're talking about repealing the part where businesses can't discriminate in hiring and other activities on the basis of race.

Since all businesses are basically enabled by the government (through its provision of various public good already enumerated), it follows that government allowing business discrimination is government instituted racism.

They will obtain all of that from somewhere else, or they will find all of that themselves. They are not 'prevented' to pursue it.

They are if there isn't anywhere else to get the stuff. Used to be large numbers of states, spanning thousands of square miles, where blacks couldn't sit down and buy lunch like a normal person.

Because 'pursuit of happiness' shows the point even clearly. It is a much freer term, not bound to any location or thing.

The point is shows clearly, is exactly that property rights are not fundamental, while the pursuit of happiness is.

You aren't using the 'infrastructure' to oppress black people. Courts have to give the same treatment to everyone, the roads should be available for all.

And so, courts cannot enforce employment or business contracts made on a discriminatory basis. Hence, the Civil Rights Act that you oppose.

So why can I refuse blacks from coming into my home, when my home was built through the use of those 'public' facilities?

The Civil Rights Act fails to cover such cases, because they do not rise to the same level of deprivation of basic necessities (income, food, shelter) that business discrimination does.

Property rights don't come from anyone. See we see them as inalienable.

How do you even define what your "property" is, absent some mechanism for dispute resolution? And if that mechanism is brute force, in what sense is that a "right?"

? People paid for those things. Why would I advocate against it?

Because people didn't pay for them for the limited purpose of "protecting rights," which you cited as the sole justification for public projects. If you think those public projects are legitimate, then you must also agree that there are legitimate purposes to public pursuits beyond "protecting rights."

All those public facilities were paid by private citizenry. How can then anything be public?

And all public citizens depend on various public facilities and services for their income. How can then anything be private?

This logic is circular.

Everything that is created by by your own resources is private, everything that involves resources of others is public.

Then essentially everything is public.

Business is built by private resources and it is private, anything public it uses remains public.

Businesses cannot be built without using myriad public goods and services - roads, courts, etc. We've been over this - you're just repeating mantras without substantiating them.

Its quite simple.

That you're being simplistic - attempting to oversimplify the situation - is no criticism of me.

This is why you can't 'steal' other peoples water or electricity because that is THEIRS even though it is coming from public wells. Public has created the infrastructure but when it receives money for its use then it becomes private.

That public entities can sell things to private entities is beside the point.

Everything that is public though like roads remain public. And anyone can use it

And entities that depend on said public goods for their very existence, despite having some element of private ownership and operations, therefor cannot discriminate in which parts of the public they will interact with.

 

[quadraphonics]

If you apply it on the global scale, sure, but that's not quite what I intended.

I'm aware of that, but the point is that once you couch the issue in terms of national territorial rights, you're necessarily into a system that has global implications. You can't have one framework of national territorial rights for Israel/Palestine, and another for everyone else. Especially if the entire point of such a system is to guide outsiders from all over the rest of the globe in addressing the conflict.

 

[quadraphonics]

The I-P conflict has never been worse

Sure it has. It's been a lot worse in the last decade, let alone previous ones.

and racism in the USA is still as rampant as ever.

If you can't tell the difference between today (black President, etc.) and Jim Crow (let alone fucking slavery), then you suffer from a serious lack of perspective.

Have you been to an inner city lately? At night?

Sure.

Actually a lot of inner cities are quite nice and white. It's not like rust-belt suburbanization is uniform all over the country.

Will "Libertarianism" fix the USA? Probably not. But, why is it so scary to try and get people to think differently about the problem. That they shouldn't wait for the government to fix things and should take matters into ... OMG... their own hands, you know, like a.... Democracy

What does that have to do with Libertarianism?

If Paul would have been elected the Too Big to Fail Banks would have failed and the wealthiest Americans, people like the tax cheat Warren Buffet, would have went under. Most of the CEOs like that dick face Blankfeid, would have lost everything. We would not be in-debt up to our asses and probably the economy would be moving upwards right about now.

Upwards from a stone age level, sure, but at least we'd be free of the banksters I guess...

But, we'll see won't we. Let's see what 2012-13 brings. I'll make a prediction now: Obama is reelected and the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer.

Probably that happens regardless of who gets elected.

 

[786]

@quad

I'm done with this thread. You can re-read what I said and it will answer your points. Whenever you say 'beside the point'- in it there is a point from my point of view. You're just ignoring big differences.

Anyways, if someone else wants to take it from here be my guest.

 

[Michael]

At the momment there are more important things than the US debt - specifically the economy. Obama and congress need to focus not on the immediate debt problem but rather economic growth. The problem we face is really quite simple. We need some good old fashioned wealth distribution. Wealth has become to concentrated. We have not seen such extreme concentration of wealth since the last Great Depression.

We need to get wealth in the hands of the middle class. The middle classs spends the money which creates opportunities and more wealth. The middle class has been squeezed and will continue to get squeezed unless and until we see some wealth redistribution. That means higher taxes on the wealthy. And that is not what Paul is advocating. In fact it is the exact opposite of what Paul is advocating. The middle class needs a bigger slice of the pie and they are not getting it. They have a better chance of getting it under a Democrat than they do a Republican. And that is the bottom line.

You do know that thanks to Bush-bama the wealthiest were bailed out while the Middle Class was plundered.

Under Libertarian policies the Banks would have failed and the wealthy New York and London elite along with them. Instead the middle class was screwed.

A lot of the problems we face, we wouldn't be facing, if we remained true to our Libertarian ideals. Take medicine for example. Because the AMA has a strangle hold over who can and who can not practice medicine we have a corrupt system where the very few who are chosen make unreasonably high wages (particularly surgeons) while millions of other competent students end up doing all sorts of shit they didn't want to do because they weren't picked. We complain about high costs of medical care. Well, if we let the HUGE mass of willing students get educated we'd do something about that. Oh, but then we wouldn't have total control over which hack gets in and which would-have-been brilliant surgeon is axed. Meh..... anyway.

This is going to come to a head one way or another, lets hope its not WWIII.

 

[Michael]

Sure it has. It's been a lot worse in the last decade, let alone previous ones.



If you can't tell the difference between today (black President, etc.) and Jim Crow (let alone fucking slavery), then you suffer from a serious lack of perspective.

Wait a second here, are you suggesting Libertarians would ... what exactly? A person can be Libertarian AND be multiculturalism, social progressive, etc... Changes in social consciousness are related to economic decisions but only in so far that a wealthy society tends to be permissive and progressive and poor societies tend to be conservative and even regressive. As the US government runs our economy into the ground, I suspect some segments in society will tend more towards conservationism.

I'm libertarian and progressive. The two are not mutually exclusive.




Did/Do you favor bailing out the so-called "Too Big To Fail" Banks like GoldmanSuxs and BofA? DO you really think we'd be living in the "Stone Age"? Surely you can't believe something like that. After the "Great Depression" the US didn't go back into the "Stone Age". As a matter of fact, the Great Depression had no significant effect on the progression of science and discovery at all.

 

[joepistole]

You do know that thanks to Bush-bama the wealthiest were bailed out while the Middle Class was plundered.

No the country was saved. You seem not to understand that the bailout saved the middle class. If your had had a wart on it, would you chop off your head to rid yourself of the wart? Not me.

Under Libertarian policies the Banks would have failed and the wealthy New York and London elite along with them. Instead the middle class was screwed.

Under Libertarian policies we would be back in the stoneage.

A lot of the problems we face, we wouldn't be facing, if we remained true to our Libertarian ideals. Take medicine for example. Because the AMA has a strangle hold over who can and who can not practice medicine we have a corrupt system where the very few who are chosen make unreasonably high wages (particularly surgeons) while millions of other competent students end up doing all sorts of shit they didn't want to do because they weren't picked. We complain about high costs of medical care. Well, if we let the HUGE mass of willing students get educated we'd do something about that. Oh, but then we wouldn't have total control over which hack gets in and which would-have-been brilliant surgeon is axed. Meh..... anyway.

This is going to come to a head one way or another, lets hope its not WWIII.

Yep and we would have a host of new and bigger problems. The better solution is to fix the current problems as opposed to nuking the current system and thinking that somehow a new and better system will magically appear. There are no magic bullets; no magic templates; no magical solutions.

 

[Trippy]

Same to you. I see you still haven't understood the difference between the words 'come' and 'protect'.

Your question by the way is quite stupid. People whose second language is English may speak and understand English better than 'Englishmen'.

Anyways I'm done wasting time with you guys. If someone else wants to take up on responding to them, be my guest.

Then you're an exception to that rule?

This statement:

Yes they do.

Without the government there would be no rights for anyone, save those you could enforce by naked aggression.

Comes with the caveat:
"save those you could enforce by naked aggression"
Implicit in that caveat is a degree of aknowledement of your objection, that even were the goverenment to legislate against certain rights - removing them, that you may still endeavour to exercise those rights regardless, however it will, at some point nececssitate the use of some degree of aggression, or, should the government cease to exist you would still be able to exercise those rights that you were able to enforce.

But it gets worse for you, in that you keep harping on about the governments job to be protecting your rights, that job is the tool by which the government gives you your rights, that and the passing of legislation which neccessitates on occasion the restriction of the rights of a few, so the rights of a greater number might be protected. You also do not seem to recognize any form of heirachy within rights, where as I view some rights as having prioriy over others - for example, I consider the right of an individual to exist peacably to have a higher priority than the right of an individual to the freedom of expression - in other words, as far as I'm concerned you have the right to say what you want as long as it doesn't interfer with my right to peace and quiet.

Your level of argument is on a par with some mentally disabled individuals I worked with once upon a time - each of the recognized that they had rights, like the right to enjoy watching their favourite TV show in peace and quiet. The trouble always erupted when they failed to recognize that others had the same right as they do. The would sit and talk through anothers show, and become agitated to the point of violence when another did the same to them, because they knew they had that right, but they failed to recognize the responsibility that came with it.

 

[eyeswideshut]

Select Ron Paul and see how country goes to stoneage, racism and KKK run rampant and people have no rights, Israel gets destroyed, did I get it right or did miss something ?
Fascinating.

 

[Tiassa]

I'm libertarian and progressive. The two are not mutually exclusive.

I would ask you to consider the context of Quadraphonics' statement, though.

While you might suggest that libertarian and progressive are not mutually exclusive, I'm not certain whether you represent the rule, or the exception.

To wit, I asserted earlier that:

There are two primary problems with the proposition that Ron Paul will win enough support to be taken seriously as a candidate:

• Ron Paul
• Ron Paul's supporters​

Our neighbor 786 sort of makes the point for me. In this case he considers equality before the law—i.e., "the right to not be discriminated against for the color of one's skin"—an "ideal not a right".

And, furthermore, he feels that other Paul supporters understand his argument.

Certainly, he doesn't explicitly declare that Paul supporters necessarily agree with him, but it may well be that some consider that suggestion implicit.

And I think that's the context in which one can most effectively understand Quadraphonics' point. Perhaps I'm wrong, as he and I haven't seen eye to eye of late, but it seems to me that his point arises in the context of Ron Paul, the candidate's supporters in general, and one supporter in particular.

It does not seem appropriate to suggest that Paul, his supporters, or our neighbor 786 comprehensively represent the whole of libertarianism.

(And we might also note that I'm one who is generally critical of practical libertarianism, as I think it fails, as do most political ideologies, to fulfill its theoretical virtue. In other words, sure, I have a lot to gain in certain contexts by painting the whole of libertarianism in 786's—ahem!—colors, but I don't think that would be either kind or productive; I do not think Quadraphonics would push so far, either.)

 

[786]

^I think people understand the argument.

Unfortunately people who disagree simply don't want to acknowledge the they understood it. Or their bias is such that it keeps them from understanding it. By the way when you say ""the right to not be discriminated against for the color of one's skin" keep in mind this doesn't include the government discriminating. So people do have that 'right' in terms of being protected from the government of discriminatory policies.

Anyhow.... I think libertarian viewpoint would have almost ended slavery and racism overtime without any bloodshed.

Anyways.

 

[Tiassa]

(chortle!)

Anyhow.... I think libertarian viewpoint would have almost ended slavery and racism overtime without any bloodshed.

I've heard that one before. Human history does not support the theory.

But, of course, that isn't really the important thing, is it? What is more important is that people relinquish their dangerous superstitions, instead of by force of law.

And what is less important than all of that, of course, are the people hurt, over time, while waiting for the "libertarians" to get around to granting them the privilege of liberty.

This is one of the reasons why so many people find "libertarianism" a sad joke.

 

[eyeswideshut]

This thread sure is funny reading, hysterical even, when one cant attack the man himself or hes policies, then lets attack on some label that has been projected over him (libertarian) and lets ridicule hes "devotees"/"followers",
using some pseudo intellectual academic rhetorics painted with large brush,
it wont fool anybody, its looking more like one convincing himself why not support the man. Look, look, he is Libertarian, eek, lets run.

 

[joepistole]

This thread sure is funny reading, hysterical even, when one cant attack the man himself or hes policies, then lets attack on some label that has been projected over him (libertarian) and lets ridicule hes "devotees"/"followers",
using some pseudo intellectual academic rhetorics painted with large brush,
it wont fool anybody, its looking more like one convincing himself why not support the man. Look, look, he is Libertarian, eek, lets run.

The fact is Paul is an avowed Libertarian. He ran for president on the Libertarian ticket. So why is it not relevant to talk about the man's political beliefs? In every debate, he has taken the Libertarian position on the issues. You do know he is running for POTUS? Like it or not, Paul's politics are very relevant to his bid for POTUS.

 

[Tiassa]

Because he is a "libertarian"

So why is it not relevant to talk about the man's political beliefs?

Because he's a "libertarian". They want to "change the system", so they expect to be treated differently.

As I noted earlier, one good thing that would come from a Ron Paul nomination is that he finally would have to answer for himself.

"Congressman Paul, not only has your son come out as an opponent of the Civil Rights Act, but some of your supporters argue that it is not a right in this country to be treated equally regardless of skin color. Are you willing to tell your son and your supporters that they are wrong, or do you agree with them?"​

Right now he's coasting on his cult appeal.

The two problems with Ron Paul as a serious candidate are the man himself and his supporters. He can only fix one of those. The question is whether his followers will stay with him after he admits they're bonkers.

Of course, that question presumes he would try to repair his own image. Who knows? Maybe he would celebrate his thoughtless, fake "libertarianism".

 

[786]

I've heard that one before. Human history does not support the theory.

I disagree. Historically government has played major roles in institutionalizing slavery and racism, as well as selectively giving 'rights'- which is what libertarians like myself disagree with. Rights are inherently human and shouldn't/can't be 'given' by government- something that historically was never the case.

Present a historical case of a libertarian society which you are using as 'history'. I feel all of you have just closed your minds and are goody-two-shoes making emotionally charged statements so that you can close yourself from considering an alternative idea because you have 'evidence' against it- evidence which doesn't count as evidence due to its lack of applicability under the condition; that is if your bias left any shred of intellectual honesty for you to recognize that.

And what is less important than all of that, of course, are the people hurt, over time, while waiting for the "libertarians" to get around to granting them the privilege of liberty

They would be have liberty all the way