The thing I love most about coming here and reading these libertarian rantings is that I know they go not one inch further than your own keyboard. That is very comforting to me. I remember the old saw "the revolution will not be televisied". We need a new rendition which says "nor will it be caused through your message board postings".

I absolutely love your battle plan and would not change one thing about it. Keep it up. I hear that there is a knitting chatroom where the assigned libertarian has gone AWOL and a new Star Wars message board needs some help in a discussion about the Drug War. Maybe a few of you can pick up a few extra bucks getting your post count up.

Originally Posted by The Rani

If you're "comforted" by what you read on this forum, then I'm the Queen of France.

Maybe he means that he prefers to 'comfort' himself while reading libertarian postings on the Inter Nets ().

To each his own, I guess... (but still, )

Originally Posted by independent

How exactly does that justify the world's most extensive prison system, corrupt police, and laws that make 1/3 of our population into criminals?

It doesn't. You're just regurgitating the binary thinking that is so typical of the generation that leads us into crisis.

It must be comforting to imagine that the only alternatives are:

1. the status quo or
2. fantasy

Heaven forbid there's something possible that's better than what we have.

Let's start with an educational system that offers 'value-neutral' learning -- not so much because it rejects "piggish" thought but because, offering no cultural substance and no basis for ethical teaching. Guess what people become after undergoing thirteen years of K-12 education? Right -- all too often -- piggish people. Don't blame the teachers; they have now come from the very system in which they teach.

Then add the smorgasbord educations in most colleges. Liberal arts education with some intellectual structure might teach people that they are part of a historical continuum, that more exists in life than the primitive drives (acquisitiveness, hedonism, sex, power) and that such concepts as truth and beauty have validity. That's the old standard for education, but unfortunately it no longer has commercial value. What a pity! Someone spends four years in institutions that used to produce leaders and now produce people who might have as well spent four years studying sports trivia.

Then comes such a professional school as MBA school. Our universities are churning out more MBAs than physicians, attorneys, and dentists combined... and what does one learn in MBA school? One's materialism and one's capacity to manipulate people are honed to perverse perfection. The MBA becomes the difference between being a clerk facing a glass ceiling and being a Master of the Universe.

(Heck, we just had an MBA as President -- and look how bad a President we had!)

Our system creates sociopathic personalities well suited to exploiting the system through exploitation of the people. People who fail to rebel get stepped on; those who decide that they want better find that the cartels crush small business before it can get profitable enough to provide more than a bare living (hint: a small-business owner's "profit" is his living or that of his family who work in the business) or must find shady ways of making a living. Some of the available means are of course criminal. But what the heck? Many of the decisions of those MBAs are themselves cruel, if not criminal.

If the cops don't believe anything because they graduated from "value-free" education in high school and then from a police academy that makes them seem like members of a natural elite because of their training and discipline, then whatever scummy tendencies that they had beforehand are often intensified. But it's not only cops... but also sales clerks, securities dealers, bank employees...

Submit or rebel: such are the choices in a system going bad, if not one fundamentally corrupt. A system becoming increasingly unequal almost always becomes increasingly repressive.

Fantasy?

Not unless the fantasy is a return to what America used to do well and abandoned because it was "insufficiently profitable".

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Let's start with an educational system that offers 'value-neutral' learning -- not so much because it rejects "piggish" thought but because, offering no cultural substance and no basis for ethical teaching. Guess what people become after undergoing thirteen years of K-12 education? Right -- all too often -- piggish people. Don't blame the teachers; they have now come from the very system in which they teach.

Then add the smorgasbord educations in most colleges. Liberal arts education with some intellectual structure might teach people that they are part of a historical continuum, that more exists in life than the primitive drives (acquisitiveness, hedonism, sex, power) and that such concepts as truth and beauty have validity. That's the old standard for education, but unfortunately it no longer has commercial value. What a pity! Someone spends four years in institutions that used to produce leaders and now produce people who might have as well spent four years studying sports trivia.

Then comes such a professional school as MBA school. Our universities are churning out more MBAs than physicians, attorneys, and dentists combined... and what does one learn in MBA school? One's materialism and one's capacity to manipulate people are honed to perverse perfection. The MBA becomes the difference between being a clerk facing a glass ceiling and being a Master of the Universe.

(Heck, we just had an MBA as President -- and look how bad a President we had!)

Our system creates sociopathic personalities well suited to exploiting the system through exploitation of the people. People who fail to rebel get stepped on; those who decide that they want better find that the cartels crush small business before it can get profitable enough to provide more than a bare living (hint: a small-business owner's "profit" is his living or that of his family who work in the business) or must find shady ways of making a living. Some of the available means are of course criminal. But what the heck? Many of the decisions of those MBAs are themselves cruel, if not criminal.

If the cops don't believe anything because they graduated from "value-free" education in high school and then from a police academy that makes them seem like members of a natural elite because of their training and discipline, then whatever scummy tendencies that they had beforehand are often intensified. But it's not only cops... but also sales clerks, securities dealers, bank employees...

Submit or rebel: such are the choices in a system going bad, if not one fundamentally corrupt. A system becoming increasingly unequal almost always becomes increasingly repressive.

Fantasy?

Not unless the fantasy is a return to what America used to do well and abandoned because it was "insufficiently profitable".

Nice post, and a wonderful change from the libertarian navel gazing of the last few days.

Justin and Rani - our very own Odd Couple

I find it comforting to read your posts here because that means you are not out in the real world actually doing any crass roots political work to advance your idealogy. Its like you are trying to sow seeds on hard and dry stone.

Like I said, I think its a wonderful strategy and you should increase your efforts. Maybe expand to the Harry Potter message board or the model train forums on the hobby sites.

But then, you both knew that but opted for a masturbation joke. You are both so damn funny. You should be on the stage. And there is one leaving ... oh never mind. Well, you certainly enjoy the intellectual masturbation you engage in here so that is consistent with your track record.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Nice post, and a wonderful change from the libertarian navel gazing of the last few days.

Ditto and an a-F***ING-men to PB. I've liked his various posts on the need to revive the principle of an education in the Liberal Arts.

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

Justin and Rani - our very own Odd Couple

I find it comforting to read your posts here because that means you are not out in the real world actually doing any crass roots political work to advance your idealogy. Its like you are trying to sow seeds on hard and dry stone.

Like I said, I think its a wonderful strategy and you should increase your efforts. Maybe expand to the Harry Potter message board or the model train forums on the hobby sites.

But then, you both knew that but opted for a masturbation joke. You are both so damn funny. You should be on the stage. And there is one leaving ... oh never mind. Well, you certainly enjoy the intellectual masturbation you engage in here so that is consistent with your track record.

I must say, as a member of your political opposition, I find your fruitless exchanges and responses to be very educating.

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

I am so completely sick of reading about your crap. All this self serving manure about licking the hands of your masters and living in slavery and the rest of it. Its all libertarian sophistry of the lowest order. The really frightening thing is I actually think you folks believe your own crap.

But then I come around to the comforting realization that you are all as harmless as babies since typing here is your idea of fighting the political revolution.

There is no such thing as total and complete personal freedom as long as you live in a society with other people. Get that through your heads.

Funny, I'm not the one who has painted himself into a blue box.

pb's reaming of the Schooling Industry deserves a "Hells yeah."

And what makes it worse -- not only is the industry set up to churn out sociopathic exploiters (I can't imagine having put it better myself), but it distressingly frequently fails to teach them even the basic civilization-survival literacies.

So... ignorant sociopathic exploiters.

What a fine, fine system.

What about the fact that Obama hasn't lifted a finger to overturn the obscene "bankruptcy reform" bill passed in 2005?

I figured that would be near the very top of his to-do list.

from the Rani

Oh man, are you so pissed at us that you missed pb's attack on the entire U.S. education system? I thought that would send you into a flying fit for sure, with more pronouncements about how people who don't like it here should leave the country, etc, etc. ad infinitum ...

Obviously your own idealogical rigidity blinds you to truly seeing others as they are. I thought there was much of worth in the post that pbrower made about education.

Perhaps if you - and others here - are not quite so concerned with placing people into your own narrow boxes so you can then create strawmen to battle them within those same narrow confines, you would see that.

Or not.

It makes little difference to me.

Anthony
President Obama has been in office for fifty days. You were expecting a total overhaul of all that is bad with the government in a matter of weeks?

Originally Posted by K-I-A 67

Funny, I'm not the one who has painted himself into a blue box.

Does the color of the paint matter so much in that situation?

I think that I just explained how people paint themselves into a red box... and what Americans must do to get out of the mess that they have gotten themselves into. That mess includes a meth epidemic, spoiled-brat kids who despite the privilege that they are brought up in have no concept of noblesse oblige, a depraved mass culture, and executives who better resemble the fictional J.R. Ewing of Dallas than a fictional George Bailey of It's a Wonderful Life.

In recent years we have painted ourselves into an economic calamity with red ink resulting from scarlet sins. We voted for people who created incentives (including tax cuts) for people to do those horrible deeds, and we debased much in the process. Those people ensured that outside the professions that they could never qualify for (law, medicine, academia, engineering) or to some extent those that they were unsuited because of the implicit sacrifices (clergy, military life) they would be the masters and all others expendable objects to be discarded at will.

from pbrower

That mess includes a meth epidemic, spoiled-brat kids who despite the privilege that they are brought up in have no concept of noblesse oblige, a depraved mass culture, and executives who better resemble the fictional J.R. Ewing of Dallas than a fictional George Bailey of It's a Wonderful Life.

I would agree with that.

So the question then becomes 'how do you go back to a system where these things are not the problem they are today'?

I see in life and on these message boards, a group of people who want more capitalism, more free market despite the results, more power to corporations and their obsession with the short run goals, lifiting of cultural restrictions in favor of more personal freedom to do whatever you want, decrease in government power to regulate things important to many members of society, and the list goes on and on.

Obviously I am not in that group... as are not many others ... maybe the clear majority. But we are on a collision course here. How do we turn this around?

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

Anthony
President Obama has been in office for fifty days. You were expecting a total overhaul of all that is bad with the government in a matter of weeks?

Of course not; but this particular Bush-era injustice should have been among the very first to get the heave-ho - particularly how it relates so intimately to the home-mortgage debacle.

IMO at least, this should have gotten an infinitely higher priority than reversing the policies on abortion and stem-cell research.

Originally Posted by Anthony '58 II

What about the fact that Obama hasn't lifted a finger to overturn the obscene "bankruptcy reform" bill passed in 2005?

I figured that would be near the very top of his to-do list.

A lot of this is structural in a couple of different ways. First, since this bad bankruptcy bill was passed by Congress, it would have to be overturned by Congress. It's much easier to overturn a directive from an earlier president such the ones ordering the closing of Gitmo and the change in stem cell research policy.
Second, the credit industry is one of the most lushly endowed ones influencing Congress. The so called "blue dog" Democrats seem to be convinced that the current disorganization of the Republicans gives them an opening to be a proxy for the policies that have become discredited outside of the beltway.

We are very early in the 4T, and just like in the period after 1929, the insulated elite is going to persist in post-seasonal behavior longer than the rest of the country.

Despite many people telling you over and over, we are all in the damn box. But you persist in this delusional fantasy that you and selected fellow travelers are all outside the box living this freer life. Its sad and pathetic.

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

from pbrower



I would agree with that.

So the question then becomes 'how do you go back to a system where these things are not the problem they are today'?

I see in life and on these message boards, a group of people who want more capitalism, more free market despite the results, more power to corporations and their obsession with the short run goals, lifiting of cultural restrictions in favor of more personal freedom to do whatever you want, decrease in government power to regulate things important to many members of society, and the list goes on and on.

Obviously I am not in that group... as are not many others ... maybe the clear majority. But we are on a collision course here. How do we turn this around?

1. Graduated income taxes. When the highest tax rates were really high, big businesses didn't swallow up smaller businesses as quickly as they do now just to get market share. Cartels didn't operate so overtly as they do now.

Small business flourished in banking and manufacturing as they don't now. I must ask people whether we have gone away or toward the libertarian ideal of lesser government (as defined by taxes). Sure, the 1950s had their faults, with bland groupthink, McCarthyism, Jim Crow, anti-feminism, homophobia, and (by now-current standards) sparse technology. Those vices would no more return than microwave ovens and DVD players would vanish from people's houses.

Graduated income taxes would spread the work around more equitably and would discourage people in executive ranks from seeing things only in monetary terms. People would seek more leisure -- not a bad thing.

2. A return to the norm of liberal arts in undergraduate education.

Surely you saw my rant about America churning out sociopathic personalities as leaders because its educational system offers "value-free" learning. We need to rediscover humanity not to be found in a construct long derided -- until recently -- as homo oeconomicus. People who cherish liberal learning know that more can exist in life than acquisitiveness, power, and sex. Humanist education was more-than-adequate preparation at the least for such an activity as teaching (one of the largest 'consumers of college graduates) and a good preparation for the specialized professional schools of law, medicine, and -- yes -- business. People alert to patterns in history recognize that the most attractive pitfalls for fools await those who would know better if they were alert to history. Someone who has read Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt could have seen the real-estate meltdown of the last few years after a frenzy of speculation.

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

Despite many people telling you over and over, we are all in the damn box. But you persist in this delusional fantasy that you and selected fellow travelers are all outside the box living this freer life. Its sad and pathetic.

What makes you so angry about those of us in our own, bigger, more plush boxes? Is it the fact that we keep trading up while you remain afraid to even crack the lid on yours? Or merely regret that you cannot be as content with your life and among the people around you as are we?

from Justin

What makes you so angry about those of us in our own, bigger, more plush boxes?

Considering where and how you now live, this is one of the most absurd statements I have ever read.

Tell you what I will do libboy. I will put my net worth up against yours and the loser departs this board and never comes back. So now put up your bigger plush box against mine.

Or shut the hell up for once. Your fingers are writing checks that your ass can never cash.

Prediction: we hear some self serving BS that attempts to mock me but you tuck your tail between your legs and run away refusing to put up or shut up.

Lets see that Bigger and Plusher box you live in libboy.

Oh - I did not forsee his little flunky coming in to save his sorry behind.

You learn something new each day.

And if this is not about BIGGER AND PLUSHER Rani than maybe somebody should shut the hell up and not use the words.

Do words have any meaning for any of you otuy there? Or is everything a friggin metaphor?

I will keep my blood and anxiety levels where I please to keep them. And is my precious LIBERTY to do that at risk here?

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

Considering where and how you now live, this is one of the most absurd statements I have ever read.

o rly?

Tell me then, o wise one, exactly where and how do I live now?

Tell you what I will do libboy. I will put my net worth up against yours and the loser departs this board and never comes back. So now put up your bigger plush box against mine.

It all comes back to the cock-measurement with you, doesn't it?

But anyway, since the subject at hand wasn't money (unless you changed it above somewhere... hm...

..

..nope. I checked, and I can't see where you changed it until your most recent little dribble of excreta.), but rather the boxes we put ourselves in as regards our worldviews and the degree to which we see solutions outside the status quo, a mere bank-accout comparison is hardly relevant at all.

Prediction: we hear some self serving BS that attempts to mock me but you tuck your tail between your legs and run away refusing to put up or shut up.

Self-serving BS? Is that what you call it when someone, in the middle of a discussion about identifying weaknesses in a social model and the quest for their resolution, starts swinging around his checkbook?

(Clearly, the Award you were granted was not related to reading comprehension)

Originally Posted by herbal tee

A lot of this is structural in a couple of different ways. First, since this bad bankruptcy bill was passed by Congress, it would have to be overturned by Congress. It's much easier to overturn a directive from an earlier president such the ones ordering the closing of Gitmo and the change in stem cell research policy.
Second, the credit industry is one of the most lushly endowed ones influencing Congress. The so called "blue dog" Democrats seem to be convinced that the current disorganization of the Republicans gives them an opening to be a proxy for the policies that have become discredited outside of the beltway.

We are very early in the 4T, and just like in the period after 1929, the insulated elite is going to persist in post-seasonal behavior longer than the rest of the country.

But how about making the Republicans go on record as coming to the defense of the 2005 bankruptcy law? That would be much more productive than trying to turn Rush Limbaugh into a 21st-Century Jean-Paul Sartre, whom Charles deGaulle refused to suppress ("One does not arrest Voltaire," deGaulle went so far as to say).

Worse yet, the abortion reversal was wrong-headed, if not outrightly hypocritical: If you support conscientious objector's status for would-be military personnel - as the left has done consistently dating back to Roger Baldwin - then how can you fail to support a sincerely religious person's conscientous objections to participating in what s/he regards as murder? The exception should be drawn narrowly, however, and apply only to abortions and euthanasia/assisted suicide-type cases; any doctor who refuses to treat HIV patients on the grounds that to do so would somehow promote "sexual promiscuity," for example, should have their license yanked and should be thrown in jail for placing the health and well-being of the general public at risk.

Justin - you remind me of the old phony pro wrestler Roddy Piper who used to say "just when you know the answers, I change the questions". You are rather adept at moving the goal posts. It seems to be a major part of your "strategy" if that is the correct term for intellectual three card Monty.

So now you never said what you said and if you did you did not mean to say what you said and it really meant something else and not what those terms usually mean when somebody says them.

Right.

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

So now you never said what you said and if you did you did not mean to say what you said and it really meant something else and not what those terms usually mean when somebody says them.

If you're not too drunk yet, why don't you go ahead and use the [quote] function to actually communicate the point you may be trying to get across. You know, like the rest of us civilized posters do.