Of all the stuff that tickled my funny bone this election season, complaints from the Right that Obama “campaigned as a moderate” in 2008 and then revealed some sort of “hard-Left agenda” are perhaps the most gut-bustingly funny of all.
Yeah, Obama’s imposing a regular Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution on the country, all right. Continuation of the Bush version of TARP, doubling down on the war in Afghanistan, a scorched earth battle to defend Bush-era war criminals from their rightful punishment, new claims of plenary Executive power … His most “progressive” innovation is a national version of Romneycare (you can almost hear the insurance CEOs crying “Please don’t fling me in that briar patch!”).
Obama’s an even more dedicated managerial centrist than he let on during the campaign. He was entirely truthful when he called himself a moderate. The real lie is the ideology of moderation itself.
Obama lied when he said, “There is not a rich America, and a poor America … We are one nation, one people.”
No, we’re not. As Howard Zinn said, the U.S. political leadership talks as if there was some single “national interest” that “applied equally to all of us, colored or white, rich or poor, as if General Motors and Halliburton have the same interests as the rest of us, as if George Bush has the same interest as the young man or woman he sends to war.” But it’s a lie.
I don’t belong to the same people as the rentier classes who make their money off of other people’s labor through political capitalism.
I don’t belong to the same nation as Bill Gates, living off monopoly rents on his so-called “intellectual property.” I don’t share a common “national interest” with the Copyright Nazis at the RIAA and MPAA.
The same goes for the bankers who collect interest on money they created from thin air, the military contractors who profit from selling instruments of murder to the wicked, or the Fortune 500 CEOs who downsize their workforces and then give themselves bonuses.
The slave-owner and the slave don’t belong to the same “American Club,” or share the same interest, just because they both happened to be born between the Rio Grande and the 49th parallel.
The Iraqi worker is my fellow countryman. The American plutocrat is my enemy.
The notion that Obama is “hard-Left” is utterly laughable. There is no Left in mainstream American politics. Nancy Pelosi’s husband is an investment banker. Joe Biden was the Senator from MBNA, and now he’s the Vice President from the MPAA.
The genuine American Left was virtually destroyed, as a major political force during Woodrow Wilson’s War Hysteria and Red Scare. Since then, popular anger has been effectively distorted and channeled by the myth of America as a “middle class country” with a common “national interest.”
A lot of people are hurting and angry after forty years of stagnant pay and a decade of chronic underemployment. Karl Rove politics has been devilishly effective at directing that anger toward targets of opportunity like “illegal aliens,” gay marriage, abortion, and ACORN. As Chris Hedges said at Truthdig (“The Phantom Left,”), the Tea Partiers
can use hatred as a mobilizing force because there are tens of millions of Americans who have very good reason to hate. They have been betrayed by the elite who run the corporate state, by the two main political parties and by the liberal apologists … who keep counseling moderation as jobs disappear, wages drop and unemployment insurance runs out. As long as the liberal class speaks in the dead voice of moderation it will continue to fuel the right-wing backlash …
Where Hedges goes wrong is in believing that a genuine Left can achieve anything by participating in mainstream politics, or that those controlling the state will ever speak in anything but “the dead voice of moderation.” There has never been a time when the so-called “Left” party in our two-party system represented a genuine alternative to the ruling class. Always, at all times, it has represented the “liberal” wing of the ruling class. The state, by its nature, cannot be controlled by a majority. It’s an instrument for extraction of wealth from the producing majority by a ruling class.
The phenomena Hedges points to are, if anything, an indictment of the ineffectiveness of political action.
I have no quarrel with those who think they can achieve something, however miniscule, by voting for the lesser evil. But as Zinn said, once you finish that two-minute act it comes back to the stuff that can make a genuine difference: Building a new society by our own efforts and choices, outside the political process, without waiting for permission from the state or from political parties.
See, Obama used the government to intervene in the economy, and the USSR was a government-controlled economy, therefore government bailouts to banks are socialism.
This is what teabaggers actually believe.
Without waiting for permission from the state or from political parties.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/
Take your time if you have never read James Hansen. Go to older postings 2009 and sack goldman sachs. Although it's all there the science take your time and kevin I would be interested in your thought's on Hansen's plan.
We scientists must admit that we have not yet informed the public well about climate change, nor have we stimulated governments to take the actions needed to preserve the blue planet.
Our planet is dangerously close to tipping points. Ice is melting worldwide and many species are stressed by climate change and other factors. Global warming, if we allow it to continue, will cause sea level rise, species extinction and increasing climate extremes out of humanity's control.
Stewardship of life on our planet demands action to stabilize climate. Geophysics reveals the requirements: phase out coal, leave tar sands in the ground, do not pursue the last drops of oil.
Yet as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy we will burn them, an economic law as certain as the law of gravity.
Solution therefore requires a rising fee on oil, gas and coal, collected from fossil fuel companies. All funds collected must be distributed to the public monthly to allow lifestyle adjustments and stimulate clean energy innovations. James Hansen
I don't belong to the same people as those who wish to fully reinstitute the patriarchal family, push LGBT people entirely to untouchable margins, prevent women from controlling their own bodies and destinies, or who equate sexual dissidents with religious archetypes of evil. I don't provide aid or comfort to movements which preach a false peace on these issues, such as libertarianism.
Incidentally, Chris Hedges has written and spoken extensively on the need to abandon the American two-party system and has been searingly critical of the American establishment Left. His position on this, if not his political economy, agrees with yours.
Not that I entirely trust Hedges, whose defence of the open society is vocal and erudite but almost perfectly misgrounded. Hedges is a child of the church and a self-appointed prophet of original sin; his attacks upon 'illusion' and 'spectacle' the humanism of the New Atheists derive directly from the worst of Christian antiworldliness, mitigated only by liberal class double-standards which illogically immunise the art and theatre of elite culture from an otherwise thoroughgoing iconoclasm. Hedges' opposition to corporations is not ultimately a function of their tyrannies and frauds but rather an indictment of commerce itself, and of human desire as the root of evil prior to commerce. He is an apologist for American localism and praises Islamic cultures without the slightest discussion of the suppression of free thought or the subjection of women, and has explicitly stated that our proper human end of the moral life entails the sacrifice of individual happiness. Be definition this praxis cannot lead to happiness, which should automatically exclude it from acceptablity by all who wish to be happy.
Hedges is an utterly brilliant and wonderfully impressive man, who understands history as few others. But he wishes to see the götterdämmerung of the Empire produce a new awakening of piety, and the cultural forces such an approach encourages will never be as liberal and as civilised as Hedges himself. Hedges understands the Christian fascists because he is psychologically and sociologically kin to them, as he himself admits. But the difference is not that Hedges is a truly spiritual Christian while the fundamentalists are worldly "heretics" (his words); the difference is that Hedges' instincts are largely those of the Hellenised liberal class from which he is an exiled apostate. In other words, he shares the deepest premises of the barbarians if not their barbarism; like them, he chooses Jerusalem over Athens. And this, sadly, means that he is atill part of the problem.
The only legitimate inheritors of the XX Century will be those institutions and polities willing to place abbsolute priority on the preservation of the essential values of the Enlightenment. The only political forces I care to see survive are those willing to fight, if it comes to that, to preserve the rights of individuality and autonomy to women. The centre-Left will do this- it has enough historical depth to ride out this storm, and it must keep most of these specific promises if it is to survive as itself. Libertarianism will not and is mostly in the camp of the enemy. My suspicion is that mutualism cannot.
Don: Thanks for the link. Not yet having explored Hansen's site, I'll restate my provisional view that the price effects of Peak Fossil Fuel will pretty much duplicate the effects the Greens seek through assorted carbon taxing schemes. I think we're either at or very close to peak extraction of fossil fuel and peak emission of CO2, and that both values will probably begin to decline rapidly pretty soon and fall by half or more in the next few decades. So geology will solve the problem regardless of what government does.
Aster: I have my problems with Hedges, as well, but I thought this quote was a good one. And while "plumb-line libertarianism," as such, may not have much to say about gender equality issues and female autonomy, many libertarians (like the assorted "thick libertarian" writers associated with C4SS and Molinari) have very strong positive views on those issues.
"atill"?
No, not quite. Sometimes it really is a majority gaining (though not necessarily equally, with an upper class gaining more but a middle class still gaining something), and only a minority ending up net losers. In fact, that is what Israel is trying to create, through "creating new facts" on the ground. Historically, that is just precisely what happened when the Anglo-Saxons moved into Britain, and more recently when the Scots-Irish majority was "planted" in Ulster. For a long time it probably applied to the white majority in the US south.
PML: I don't discount the possibility (the Great Barbecue) that sometimes a majority can gain in some ways. What I dispute is that a majority can exercise operational control of the state. If a majority pressures the state from outside, and those in operational control make concessions, it will be to maintain control of the state and to preserve its primary function of guaranteeing rents to the privileged classes. A majority, as such, cannot control the state. At most, their alleged representatives will secure a place at the table alongside the rest of the ruling class coalition–but in so doing they will succumb to the Iron Law of Oligarchy and cease to be the real agents in any real sense of those they nominally represent.
great article!
Kevin-
Thank you immensely for your kind response.
And I should emphasise that, whatever my own criticisms of Hedges, one can't help but admire him as a writer and orator, not to mention a truly political thinker. War is a Force that Gives us Meaning will endure. He's one of the few writers who makes you feel like a writer of classical stature is still perfectly possible today, and some of his best insights are borrowed from John Ralston Saul, another contemporary great whose writing is obnoxiously sexist, but brilliant, disarmingly cosmopolitan and not pious.
As for libertarianism and gender equity, it's true that some individual libertarians are good on these issues. But most of them aren't, and plenty of them are over-the-top patriarchs. And the better ones just haven't created the kind of internal movement culture which could become the kernel for a future libertarian feminist society. About half the existing left-libertarian movement is (American) conservative in its social instincts; the result (as Alex Strekal has noted) is a centrism in its social values. The result is that the left wing of the libertarian movement is to the right of New Zealand's centre. Would you support a radical movement which is worse for you on your life-and-death issues than is the status quo?
I sadly think that the reason is that libertarianism just isn't up to it- libertarianism relies on the notion of a preexisting natural justice which doesn't exist and which implicitly relies on concept of natural law which just can't survive a fully secularised view of the world or the consequences of the Death of God. Rothbard's structures in this regard derive from Thomism, echoing Rand's retention of an Aristotelian framework which is essentially pre-scientific. In real life, Nature is not just; justice is something we have to concieve of, create, and maintain by human action in tension with nature. There is no reason to believe that the emergent actions of a market will naturally produce humanly desirable results – unless one believes in a near-miraculous spontaneous order of self-regulation. It's worth remembering that neither Popper or Hayek would go this far, and when Mises, Rand, and Rothbard went farther it was always accompanied with some pretty nasty socio-cultural baggage. In Rothbard's case it was a couple of toes over the threshold of explicit racism. Bluntly, its an ecosystem that could be considered self-regulating only according to the needs and priorities of the top predators.
Greenhouse gases are one obvious contemporary example of this principle; I would argue that segregated social systems are another. To use the anology of your previous article, I would say that anti-discrimination laws and the like (especially as applied to corporations {=1}) are ameliorative corrections for systemic injustice. But unlike you, I see no reason to believe that all or even neccessarily most such injustice can be laid at the door of statism. Landlords are certainly capable of maintaining formal or informal systems of residential segregation without statist help; patriarchal social systems are quite capable of enforcing assymetric social structures upon women without even writing down the rules… for millenia. And at this point, the majority of libertarians will just jump in and say that the cultural market has spoken, while the others will make helpless and useless noises that they wish the world was better- essentially, neo-liberalism or social Darwinism of the soul.
Meanwhile, the Left has an answer today, and is true to its word about it, which lets me survive. The problem is that the only part of the Left that fuctions at all today has sold out and given up on economic issues, with increasingly Apocalyptic results. It's a shame that no one today stands up for both social equality and cultural humanism.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
{=1} I predict that if a left-libertarian were to come out in contingent favour of anti-discrimination laws as applied to state-privileged corporations a good portion of the libertarian movement would freak. That would be the portion of the libertarian movement which keeps a polished copy of Murray's Bell Curve on their bookshelves.
I agree with the analysis of Obama as just another ruling class flunkie. Goldman-Sachs are his primary backers, for God's sake. http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cyc…
"The genuine Left was virtually destroyed, as a major political force, during Woodrow Wilson’s War Hysteria and Red Scare. Since then, popular anger has been pretty effectively distorted and channeled by the myth of America as a “middle class country” with a common “national interest.”
The American revolutionary socialist Left in its classical form was certainly destroyed by the WWI era repression, but American society has certainly continued to move leftward since then. The trade union movement and the CPUSA actually grew larger during the Depression era and the New Deal compact amounted to the overthrow of the old 19th century classical bourgeoisie model of capitalism. American society has certainly moved much, much further leftward since the cultural revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s, as has the West generally. The big difference is that the revolutionary socialist Left has been replaced with neoliberal economics and a cultural radicalism that is much further to left of either classical 19th century socialism or what is commonly called the "Old Left" (the 20th century labor movement, social democracy, and/or Communism). Paul Gottfried outlines this historical trajectory pretty well here: http://www.alternativeright.com/main/the-magazine…
Jonathan Bowden also discusses how this synthesis of liberal economics and radical cultural leftism has come to dominate modern societies in this lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnBQUJJ-7iE
"I predict that if a left-libertarian were to come out in contingent favour of anti-discrimination laws…"
Well, what do you fuckin' know? A left-libertarian economics writer has indeed "come out in contingent favour of anti-discrimination laws as applied to state-privileged corporations" and would you believe that it's Satan Himself (may His Unholy Reign of Blood cover the Earth)?:
http://attackthesystem.com/2010/05/still-stuck-in…
http://c4ss.org/content/3350#comment-3849
Aster says:
"Incidentally, Chris Hedges has written and spoken extensively on the need to abandon the American two-party system and has been searingly critical of the American establishment Left. His position on this, if not his political economy, agrees with yours."
I'm sorry, but that's unadulterated bullshit. Chris Hedges is a Democrat, always will be. If you see him urging a break from Dem vs Repub dynamic, you're viewing a mirage.
You're seeing what you want to see, in defiance of Hedges' actual language. I suggest recalibrating your reading comprehension to accommodate the notion of the limited hangout, which is the strategy most often employed by Hedges — a minor criticism of a minor Democrat does NOT make Hedges post-partisan. He is as partisan as Rush Limbaugh… only he stands on the opposite side of the aisle.
Aster: Do you agree that if you aren't trying to change [society, culture, etc.] by force, you're just not trying?
I don't know what you take to be the sine qua non of (the *whats* referred to by your usage of) 'libertarianism'. For me, it's one step shy of pacifism, allowing for literal physical compulsion of another only in real-time response to an already-existing instance of the same. Maybe I should find another, less-baggage-tainted word. That may well be. But when I talk about 'libertarianism', it's never about groups, movements, parties other persons copping to the same label, or those persons who have had the same label foisted on them by other minds. It's about *which means* you take to be fair play in order to achieve *whichever* cultural values (or any other condition) you desire. It has nothing at all to do with how *I* might want society to be run or what sort of people I want to be around, and everything to do with *what I will or will not to do in order to get there*.
*Of course* I want no group chosen by chromosome pair, preference regarding the same, skin pigmentation, label of social class or caste, etc., marginalized or systematically or socially put into inferior positions in relation to anyone else – whether this is enacted by 'states' *or* individuals.
I just think that looking to the cleansing, ordering power of violence (explicit, or of the kind inherent in "so long as everybody cooperates, no one needs to get forced") to aright a social injustice is, sadly, implicitly (at the very least!) accepting the premise that not all persons have the same amount of moral authority as everyone else. Are you going to act like a state in order to combat the state? Are you going to act like an oppressor in order to combat oppression? Are you going to coerce others to associate or disassociate as *you* wish in order to promote tolerance?
I answer "no" to all. And I think it's sad that many persons think that is tantamount to admitting total and utter defeat from the start, just as I think it's sad, how many persons answer "yes", and commit themselves to the proposition that no, indeed some do actually have moral authority over others, consequently.
Aster said-
"I sadly think that the reason is that libertarianism just isn’t up to it- libertarianism relies on the notion of a preexisting natural justice which doesn’t exist and which implicitly relies on concept of natural law which just can’t survive a fully secularised view of the world or the consequences of the Death of God. Rothbard’s structures in this regard derive from Thomism, echoing Rand’s retention of an Aristotelian framework which is essentially pre-scientific. In real life, Nature is not just; justice is something we have to concieve of, create, and maintain by human action in tension with nature. There is no reason to believe that the emergent actions of a market will naturally produce humanly desirable results – unless one believes in a near-miraculous spontaneous order of self-regulation. It’s worth remembering that neither Popper or Hayek would go this far, and when Mises, Rand, and Rothbard went farther it was always accompanied with some pretty nasty socio-cultural baggage. In Rothbard’s case it was a couple of toes over the threshold of explicit racism. Bluntly, its an ecosystem that could be considered self-regulating only according to the needs and priorities of the top predators."
That isn't an argument against Anarchism, it's an argument that "anarcho"-capitalists aren't anarchists. "Left" libertarianism/Anarchism is built on Chaos; the circle-A is actually an A and an O meaning "Order from Anarchy". If you haven't, you should read Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality and Kropotkin's Mutual Aid.
Keith-
You're not a left-libertarian, and frequently express loathing of left-libertarians, so your position is irrelevant here. Otherwise, I have nothing to gain by another quarrel with you, and will not precipitate one unless you make it impossible for me to do otherwise- in which case, I will be as vicious as is necessary to maintain my social citizenship. Given that I'm really only interested in speaking to Kevin here, and could do in private conversation if he would allow it, I may hope that this indeed proves impossible. At any rate I don't consider libertarianism a salvagable movement and am no longer especially concerned with what influence you may seek within it; please devour the whole rotten cake if you like. Given that you and like individuals inspired me to refocus my life from politics to business, with wonderful consequences for my personal happiness, I almost feel that I ought to thank you.
CF Oxtrot-
Intimidate check= FAIL. I know my faults, but inability to read is not one of them. I don't know why you desire to try to crush my self-esteem and invalidate my mind over what appears to me an insanely petty issue, but the fact that you try says enough to make me not want to know more about your mind. You bore me.
But, for what it's worth, you're verifiably wrong:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_world_lib…
"The liberal class is finished. Neither it nor its representatives will provide the leadership or resistance to halt our slide toward despotism. The liberal class prefers comfort and privilege to confrontation. It will not halt the corporate assault or thwart the ascendancy of the corporate state. It will remain intolerant within its ranks of those who do. The liberal class now honors an unwritten quid pro quo, one set in place by Bill Clinton, to cravenly serve corporate interests in exchange for money, access and admittance into the halls of power. The press, the universities, the labor movement, the arts, the church and the Democratic Party, fearful of irrelevance and desperate to retain their positions within the corporate state, will accelerate their purges of those who speak the unspeakable, those who name what cannot be named. It is the gutless and bankrupt liberal class, even more than the bizarre collection of moral and intellectual trolls now running for office, who are our most perfidious opponents."
Now, I happen to consciously support the liberal class and what Hedges fairly enough terms liberal opportunism, given the present lack of alternative survivable options and alliances available to me. But what he says is clear as day to anyone who reads a book occasionally.
Kevin-
Gee, I wonder why I don't think libertarianism is a friend of mine, given that every time I walk in the door I have to deal with this racaille of the human spirit. Somehow this never happens with the Kiwi centre-Left, or the Kiwi street, for that matter.
RanDomino-
Oh, I don't mean to criticise (Left-)anarchism here. I'm broadly familiar with Rousseau and Proudhon (I think both have their virtues and errors), and spent about a year with the social anarchist movement and doing volunteer work for two movement organisations. I'm quite sympathetic to social anarchism and loved the spirit of most individuals in the Wellington anarchist scene- some very kindly attended my recent birthday party.
The reasons I've drifted away from the movement are (1) I'm an introvert by personal nature, (2) social anarchism doesn't appear to have developed anything like an economic infrastructure ready to take over from present state-capitalism and (3) as a sex worker and transgender woman expecting very nasty economic times and a likely right-wing cultural backlash, I find it necessary for my safety to cultivate sociopolitical ties with institutions with establishment levels of historical security. If we were still in sane times and if survival and social defence were not overwhelming priorities I would likely consider myself a libertarian socialist. Emma Goldman is one of my personal heroines, and a primary influence upon my thinging is the libertarian socialist sex-positive feminist Ellen Willis.
"You’re not a left-libertarian, and frequently express loathing of left-libertarians, so your position is irrelevant here."
We meet again, Obi-wan-Kenobi.
For the record, I'm a left-libertarian on foreign policy issues, most legal issues, most economic issues, and not a few social issues. Where I break with left-libertarianism is on the insistence of some on aligning left-libertarianism with the most extreme, reactionary, reductionist, narcissistic, philistine, and incoherent brands of cultural Marxism/totalitarian humanism. That makes about as much sense as aligning classical anarchism with Bolshevism.
"At any rate I don’t consider libertarianism a salvagable movement and am no longer especially concerned with what influence you may seek within it;"
I've made my intentions perfectly clear. I wish to network and form alliances with those superior individuals among libertarians who are capable of becoming a major part of a leadership corps whose purpose is to develop an Anarchist revolutionary movement in North America in a way that is grounded in political realism. I wish to form local and regional secession movements in which libertarians play a major leadership and ideological role. I wish to incorporate the many, many good and vital issues raised by libertarians into a wider pluralistic, alternative-anarchist/pan-secessionist paradigm that can be developed into a practical libertarian-populist-decentralist-left/right synthesist movement capable of overthrowing the US regime, ruling class, and empire decades from now.
"please devour the whole rotten cake if you like. Given that you and like individuals inspired me to refocus my life from politics to business, with wonderful consequences for my personal happiness, I almost feel that I ought to thank you."
That's very gracious of you. I'm very glad I was able to be of help.
"We meet again, Obi-wan-Kenobi."
You already used that line. And I prefer the Sith to the Jedi, anyway.
"I wish to network and form alliances with those superior individuals…."
ROTFL!!! My friend, I must grant that you never cease to be entertaining. This is almost as good as your recent reference to yourself as a philosophe. I can only imagine what Voltaire would think. Or say.
I also believe in superiority of stature. But such superiority has no relation to the social heirarchies of convention, save that, sadly, too often it is only caprice and privilege which permits talent to flower. True greatness is the refinement of human thought- of feeling, of sensitivity, of our capacities to know and to experience the world into which we are cast. It is the ability to parse the eternal from the ephemeral, and implies, above all, the ability to distinguish between essence and convention.
It is something utterly incompatible with the mediocrity which hides behind chauvanism and ethnic identity, or the smallness of soul that has nothing to be proud of except the valueless accident of being white and male. And there's the rub, Keith. You've committed your life to the politics of tribe and prejudice, which is to say, to the herding of inferior minds. The educated and the intellectual will shun you, not by any desire of mine, but because the ultimate minority in the world is the individual, and no one has a greater stake in the hegemony of reason over tradition than the thinking individual soul. You can have soldiers, Keith. You can find patriarchs and gang members and crawling masses- and perhaps, if truly blessed, a poet or two whose capacity for feeling far exceeds precision of thought. But the perfume which you infuse in the flesh of your soul is inherently repellant to philosophy. To embrace anti-intellectualism with a philosopher's capacities is to place onself within the echoing solitude of the bell jar. That's what most societies which even have books do to women, Keith- but, as professor Long noted, you've managed to do it to yourself.
You're a Spartan, Keith, a man of muscle- which means, a being who throttles his capacity for feeling and wonder to biologically survive in the prison of a Hobbesian world. It doesn't matter what kind of political mission statement you draft for the initation rite for your tong- it's still a tong; the ideas are window-dressing, and anyone who joins should bore you. Perhaps you can find your place of advantage in the barbarity and social breakdown which is the likely future of America. Perhaps- I think that anyone foolish enough to trust a man who publicly encourages others to conspire in the overthrow of a government is either hopelessly naive or deserves what is coming to him. But these are interesting times, and I can't fault you for trying to scry ahead and sieze the historical day. It may even come to pass that the powers-that-be do not come some day and toss you away like a rag doll.
Like you, Keith, I love Nietzsche. But you've gone and confused him for Wagner, and missed the part where Friedrich spat upon the nationalists of his day in favour of the good European- or as, one would say today in full extension of this principle, a citizen of the world. Superiority and the overman are in the other direction from everywhere you're going. Sure, you're a Nietzschean- an Elisabeth Förster-Nietzschean. Stare into vacuum of the eyes of your neo-nazi partners- Yeoman, for instance, or your admirer Quagmire- and tell me, Mr. Preston, that those your praxis has unearthed are the Napoleons, the aeronauts of the spirit, the best and the brightest, those who have the power to do harm and do none.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Meanwhile, the lovely city of Wellington has given me everything I have ever desired, my future is bright, and life truly is beautiful. People love me for being myself cand appreciate my mind; they comfort me when ill and and smile at my happiness. I have true friends, and a gaming session tomorrow, and I've been drafted to throw another party this Solstice. I even have a family. And, I might add, a polity which should no imminent signs of descending into social cannibalism.
Enjoy your life, Keith Preston, and farewell. It's been a pleasure knowing you.
"You’re a Spartan, Keith, a man of muscle- which means, a being who throttles his capacity for feeling and wonder to biologically survive in the prison of a Hobbesian world."
That's probably the greatest complement I've ever received. Thank you.
Aster,
"Like you Keith, I love Nietzsche. But you've gone and confused him for Wagner, and missed the part where Frederich spat upon the nationalists of his day in favor of the good European-or, as one would say today in full extension of the principle, a citizen of the world."
For the record, Nietzsche's "good European" was just that, a "European"…one whose achievement was to unite the continet under a pan-European flag. This view is a forerunner to that of Alain De Benoist and Guillaume Faye, not of liberal humanism.
"Mankind in the mass sacrificed to the prosperity of a single stronger species of man…that would be an advance.
These are not the words of a warm humanist who considers himself a "citizen of the world."
"My philosophy aims at an ordering of rank, not at an individualistic morality."
There goes the abstract egalitarianism and "individualism" you ceaselessly harp on…
"One must learn from war: one must learn to sacrifice many and to take one's cause seriously enough not to spare men."
That actually goes quite well with Preston's supposed Spartan nature now doesn't it?
"Stare into the vacuum of the eyes of your neo-nazi partners-Yeoman, for instance, or your admirer Quagmire"
How is describing the eyes of someone you never met, nor know nothing of as "vacant" (implying an empty mind) an act of reason or rational thought, or, for that matter, tolerance?
"and tell me, Mr. Preston, that those your praxis has unearthed are the Napoleons, the aeronauts of the spirit, the best and the brightest, those who have the power to do harm and do none."
I will not dignify your airy fairy faux-poetic, faux-philosophical drivel by responding to it.
I am not a sheeplike Preston sycophant , as your use of the term "admirer" seems to imply. I'm just someone who happens to agree in general with his analysis and vision, and frequents his site regularly as it has become the unoffocial headquarters of the movement to which I have attached myself. I concede freely that no, I am not a "Napoleon" nor am I an "aeronaut of the spirit"…I'm a mere armchair theoretician with an above average I.Q. who networks online with other like-minded individuals.
The most galling part of your above spiel was your thoughtless labelling of me as a "neo-nazi" but I will not allow that to bother me, as I can tell from previous posts of yours that "neo-nazi" and related terms, when typed by your fingers, are meaningless pejoratives used to dismiss anything you disagree with and/or do not understand. In any case, my communitarian-distributivist outlook is as far from nazism, neo or otherwise, as possible, and my being an opponent of authoritarian cultural leftism does not change this.
Aster, I realize bigotry exists in this world, and if you have indeed found yourself on the recieving end of it, I certainly do not begrudge you the obvious chip on your shoulder. In fact, one of the chief aims of anarcho-pluralism is to minimize victimization at the hands of "village fascists" as you call them by minimizing contact between oppressor and oppressed through radical decentralization and local autonomy. However, you must realize that "sensitivity" is a two way street, and wallowing in self-pity while engaging in baseless insults against complete stragners is wholly inconsistent with your own stated principles.
I find myself somewhat dismayed that this thread, under a column tenuously related at best to cultural issues, has become the occasion for another Aster-Preston drama.
And Keith: You have, in the past, accused Aster of cyberstalking you. But I note that while in this case she said nothing in her initial comments directed at you, you showed up rather quickly with a rather gratuitous snark directed at her.
re: "has become the occasion for another Aster-Preston drama."
Damage. Route around it. You know this.
"And Keith: You have, in the past, accused Aster of cyberstalking you. But I note that while in this case she said nothing in her initial comments directed at you, you showed up rather quickly with a rather gratuitous snark directed at her."
Perhaps, but as the saying goes, what goes around comes around. Karma and all that. Besides, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.
Kevin, you have a very civil, gentlemanly debating style that I very much respect and regard as worthy of emulation. For four years, I have maintained a forum where people of all kinds of political, cultural, religious, racial, and sexual backgrounds debate serious issues without any incidents at all other than an occasional troll. I am indeed achieving my goal of surrounding myself with superior people of diverse backgrounds who share the common objective of attacking the system head-on. I'm also achieving my goal of building a larger and larger network of peripheral associates who likewise understand that the system is doomed and that radical decentralization and pan-separatism are the most viable and most preferable alternatives. I consider your astonishingly brilliant work in political economy to be more or less the official economic position of our own movement and I have tried to introduce your work to others in parallel or overlapping movements. I also apologize if you feel that I or others have unduly hijacked this thread for other purposes.
That said, I do not apologize for any action I might have taken concerning Aster. She took it upon herself to wage ongoing attacks upon myself through the use of lies, slander, defamation, misrepresentation, and personal insults. By engaging in such behavior towards me, she declared herself my mortal enemy. An enemy is an enemy is an enemy. I do understand that you, Kevin, prefer that the comments threads for your columns be reserved for civil and scholarly discussion of your own ideas. Therefore, out of respect for you, I will say no more about the matter here. Once again, I apologize if you feel I have wrongfully commandeered this thread for purposes other than which it was intended.
Brad, Kevin-
Well, if you feel that my argumentation has been intrusive, then you are certainly within your rights to delete the unwanted comment(s), above, and to apply such moderation for the sake of maintaining the kind of space you desire in the future.
But, if you do this, I believe it is fair to ask that you apply this standard to everyone. And if personal quarrels or the drift of discussion onto tangential topics is intrusive, then surely at least one thing is more intrusive- namely, bigotry and hate speech.
If C4SS would adopt a policy of moderating any individual who employed bigoted language- including slurs whose content is racist, sexist or misogynist, homophobic, or transphobic (including the refusal, upon request, to respect gender identity), etc., then I would have no objection if such moderation was applied to me as well, however you feel that the same standard should apply to undesired or unhelpful material which proves troublesome on grounds other than bigotry. Nevertheless, if any material is intrusive, then bigotry is certainly is.
Perhaps Charles Johnson of Rad Geek People's Daily could craft such a safer spaces policy, as he has done in the past for other organisations.
In, fact I wouldn't object if you banned any and all posts tied to my email accounts and IP addresses, which (after some consultation with a more computer-literate friend, which I admit might take a bit of time) I am happy to provide.
Alice.
Thank you, Keith.
Aster, I'm not interested in banning yours or anyone else's IP address. I have deleted what I regarded as flat-out hate-speech, with no redeeming qualities, when I encountered it. The deleted remarks included deliberate trolling with Jew-baiting or use of the n-word. Had Keith made the infamous "bearded ladies and cock-ringed queers" remark here, I'd have deleted that.
In this case, as I already commented to Keith, I thought he bore most of the responsibility for turning this comment thread into another one of your mutual love-feasts.
I don't find comments by either of you that contribute to the subject at hand intrusive. I found nothing intrusive or offensive in your initial comments. And I recall nothing in Keith's remarks on this thread that would meet the standard for racial or sexual hate speech.
But I hope I can say, without any prejudice to the respect I bear you or your thought, that this sort of personal grudge-match has gotten very old to many of the people whose venues it has happened in, and conduces mainly to eye-rolling. And I repeat, I don't think you played the primary role in starting this exchange.
If I found you personally objectionable or intrusive in any way, I'd have probably dealt with the issue the way I deal with commenters I actually *do* find loathsome (JNS and TS are the initials of two of them) and simply refused to engage. Every time I've done so, I felt like taking a shower afterward and regretted the wasted hours of my life.
I would add: if there's to be a "policy," I wish both of you would simply make it your own policies that when either of you comments, the other doesn't immediately take it as the signal to show up and resume the grudge-match. It's beginning to feel like Superman and Lex Luthor are turning the entire blogosphere into a personal battlefield, or something.
On this:
Kevin, I assure you I would like nothing more than to say farewell to this struggle.
I devoted a great deal of time and attention to this quarrel because I had desired to have an active voice as a libertarian public intellectual, and, pace atomistic social theories of methological individualism, it is psychologically impossible to have a seat at a table unless one's rationality and elementary dignity are taken for granted. And I couldn't do this unless I had a supportive community which refused to tolerate transphobic bigotry- and, of course and by extended principle, the sort of racist, sexist, classist and homophobic bigotry which is regrettably routine within the greater libertarian movement. I had hoped that the formation of a left-libertarian movement would allow the existence of a sector of libertarianism with a baseline progressive cultural consensus.
This hasn't happened, and I don't think it can happen. I spent a great deal of time trying to understand how it was possible that those who believed in such a crucial thing as liberty could be so far behind a greater society which considered liberty disposable. When you find a contradiction, check your premises: I did and I've with much sadness come to the conclusion that libertarianism is wrong, and that a propertarian sense of the rights and boundaries of persons leads inevitably to social injustice and unbearable externalities, and that the reason which libertarianism so easily adheres to privilege and bigotry is that its core theory of rights is economically unfair in essence, with social and cultural privilege as its psychological corollary and parallel. Hans Hermann Hoppe is (right-)libertarianism; right-libertarianism is a historically understandable but inherently unhealthy reaction-formation to totalitarian socialism, whose betrayals of humanism and liberalism allowed Enlightenment ideals to be captured by a capitalist right. Hope for the future, if there is to be any, belongs to social democracy or social liberalism or libertarian socialism. Propertarian libertarianism has proven a historical dead end, and I've been on the wrong side for most of my adult life.
I don't want a place in this table any more. I've found places at other tables, and I'm much happier this way. I've had the immense fortune to find a country which really does treat me as an equal human being and has allowed me to acquire the essentials of everything I've wanted in my life, and I've other places than libertarianism invest my time, talent, and love.
My opinion of Keith Preston and his aims hasn't changed (google "entryism"), but so long as Keith and his neo-segregationist allies refrain from bigoted speech and can address me respectfully his aims just don't concern me any more. It's just not my fight. I don't think libertarianism can be salvaged as a political movement and I doubt that America can be salvaged as an Enlightenment civilisation. And I just don't have enough emotional connexion with anyone in the United States to care any longer, nor do I expect that which is distinctly American to retain its disproportionate cultural influence on the English-speaking internet community.
And to be entiely honest, I think that the factual picture coming out of climate science is likely to render all of these discussions pointless and obsolete. I would rather live passionately while I can, especially as the economic stresses of a future we are only beginning to feel will have unsurvivably reactionary social consequences. I don't think that I or any of us has much time, and I'd much rather make the most of it than quarrel.
Keith, I meant what I said. If and your cohorts can address me respectfully and stay out of my hair I'll be glad to do the same to you. This is a waste of my time and a waste of yours. Do as you wish, but don't talk to me and leave me alone.
Aster, what do you mean by "unsurvivably reactionary social consequences" and "I don’t think that I or any of us has much time"?
Feebloid Befuddleton-
First of all, and I'm really getting tired of saying this, I'm a girl.
I deeply agree with most of your essential humanist values stated here, tho' you misinterpet me if you think that I fault libertarianism for an alleged devaluation of human community- in fact I think one salutory effect of both social democracy and a commercial republic is to free us from each other. Otherwise, the problem isn't that I disagree with the ideals you invoke but that I look at the achievement of these ideals primarily as a matter of the good rather than the right.
I've come to feel, especially in response to reading too much about the realities of climate change, that the human condition regrettably doesn't beautifully coordinate individuals towards a spontaneous order. I do NOT like coming to this conclusion, which sinks some of my foundational premises, creates fatal ruptures and spiritual dichotomies, and has consequences for ethics and socio-political theory which I personally find as disturbing as James Lovelock or Clive Hamilton. For most of my life I have at least consciously believed something comparable to your humanist optimism, and I suppose I wish you were right. But my best attempts to work out the maths regarding the human condition and the nature of our happiness just don't come out that way. I am very truly sorry.
But it's not even about that. The decisive issue is that I don't enjoy the way talking with libertarianism feels and I do enjoy and grow from hanging out with centre-left types. There are plenty of individual exceptions and cases where libertarians are working through crucial intellectual issues which interest me- for instance Carson's successful distinction of capitalism as opposed markets or commerce as such. But most of the time I prefer centre-leftist or (in some situations) anarchist culture. The spirit and cultural practices of a political movement matter as much as its formal commitments in social structure or its choice of tools. And it just means a great deal to me that I now don't have to burn much energy to get heard and find a safe space to stand, that people like me and respect me without stumbling, and that here I have a future.
One reason that libertarianism has been overwhelmingly unsuccessful is that it doesn't grasp that a successful movement is not exclusively a true and just platform but also an alternative world to which it is worth giving one's time and thought and passion. This is something which is and ought to be necesse est- and I find it very perplexing that most modern liberals, conservatives, socialists, fascists, anarchists, and feminists understand and practice this, while the libertarian free-marketeers expect the world to flock to their banner from Platonism or Kantian disinterest. Um, no. There's also the trouble that I don't think that libertarianism is going anywhere or that libertarianism is the social space most likely to preserve my deepest values and those values which I depend upon for my survival and flourishing.
Alright, in light of what people some wont to say is or is not ‘libertarianism’, I’m going to, almost doubtlessly pointlessly, toss out some unassorted thoughts as they come to me here. Can anyone tell me what my philosophy is? I mean, apart from, I’m sure, naive, sophomoric, incomplete, unrealistic, idealistic and all that other silly human stuff? Thanks in advance.
Not me first, but not-me first.
Not my say over yours, but not my say beyond the bounds of my own authority.
Not atomistic individualism vs. community, but communities composed of individuals of like moral authority.
Society is made of naught but individuals, but individuals are not fully healthy and realized and flourishing outside of a social context. You cannot entirely compartmentalize away your culture, good or bad, as an individual, but there cannot even be a culture without individuals
Every person’s basic rationality and dignity should be assumed unless their own actions prove otherwise. Always should other persons be respected as beings like unto ourselves.
The interconnectedness of all things within an effectively closed system, such as planet Earth, makes for natural bounds on any one person’s rights (the primary rights from which others follow being the right to life and self-ownership) in the form of everyone else’s rights. Enter externalities as a standing, whopping consideration to stand alongside the basic principles of self-ownership, non-aggression, et al. They do not, however, dismiss them or disprove them, but rather stand as considerations necessary to their application in the real world. Principles are never to be held as disconnected abstractions, but can only ever be applied to concretes in particular and not always obvious ways. Neither a myopic, foolish rationalism nor a myopic, foolish empiricism is the correct view here. Synthesize, dude. heh
Any concentration of power or property held by anyone or any group which prevents others from retaining their own human dignity and healthily sustaining their own physical embodiedness and living their own values is unjust. This is the grounds for a proper concept of “social justice”, and it remains its sole concern. Any further concern pursued by force and fiat is not “justice”, and therefore not social justice either, if the term not be a misnomer.
An unjust concentration of power or property which nominally seeks to combat the same is nonetheless an instance of the same and necessarily fails at its self-contradictory goal.
An oppressive system which nominally seeks to combat oppression is nonetheless an instance of oppression and necessarily fails at its self-contradictory goal.
The only way to combat injustice is with justice. Injustice cannot restore justice.
Injustice is not merely bad pejoratively, but is inimical to human life.
The fact that it must be determined where one persons’s rights end and another’s begin and what can and cannot be claimed as property by anyone or any group does not mean that there must be one person or group of persons to make all such determinations.
Any person or group of persons claiming to be the arbiter of such considerations and of any disputes about them, and brooking no other voices of weight and no defense against or escape from their say-so, is an unjust concentration of power.
Such concentrations of power lead directly or indirectly, and inevitably, to unjust concentrations of material things. They also directly and immediately fail to respect everyone else’s human dignity and like moral authority. Again, this is not just bad as a matter of moral taste, but is also not conducive to human flourishing. Keep this point in mind, so I don’t need to keep repeating it ad nauseum, heh.
Codified laws, statutes and regulations cannot but be based on past individuals and past values and past circumstances, and always fail to capture the full context of the values and circumstances of present society (that is, the present set of individuals). Such laws cannot be be a standard to which everyone can be justly, forcibly held. What instead? The answer is to apply basic principles to particular individuals and particular circumstances. The relevant basic principle here consonant with all the above is that only actions which do not respect others’ like moral authority, self-ownership, human dignity, or their physical embodiedness and values as held and ongoingly sustained or grown in material things (their property) are disallowed. Such disallowed actions justly require restitution (not revenge, punishment or any other form of tu quoque) in not a calcified pre-codified manner but in a manner consonant with all the above and as applicable to the particular set of individuals and circumstances at hand.
Not only does it not follow from the need to have such a “legal system” to discern and enforce restitution for any instances of crime, or to resolve disputes, that there must be one set of judges, arbiters and enforcers, but rather, consonant with all the above, it follows that there ought not be only one.
A society steeped in calcified laws, statues, regulations and administrative law; or a society based around a calcified, institutionalized hierarchy of judges and arbiters and enforcers, is a society inclinably leaning away from a pluralistic valuing of individual judgment and individual dignity and individual worth and individual choices and value sets, and leaning toward obedience (to the law, to the rulers, to the land, to the tribe) above all else.
Obedience over personal judgment and responsibility accepted by particular individuals leads to those individuals accepting or enacting the Enforcement of Stupid Shit. Obedience accepted culture-wide leads to societies which do the same.
Obedience is the primary directive of the Cannibal Pot Mentality.
The Cannibal Pot Mentality views others as squabbling over the same pie and as partially constitutive of that pie; as resources to be used and consumed; as constant subject to the dictates of The All. I view others as valuable human beings who have the potential, at the very least, to jointly and individually create a world worth living in together, constantly restrained by others’ rights but constantly in possession of their own.
Individuals whose actions and behavior break from societal norms but which do not directly harm another’s like ability to act on their own values and which do not directly rob others of their property may not justly be physically compelled to fall into line. To do so immediately fails to respect that individual’s human dignity and moral authority. At an individual level, a response to such peaceful but extra-normal behavior which entails intense dislike and distrust of such eccentrics already entails a failure to respect the eccentric as a human of like worth, and is a dangerous seed for a culture and society which will fail to do so on a larger, more destructive scale. In a sane, healthy society, such seeds will have a hard time finding fertile ground in which to grow and spread. The less steeped a society is in (all the above), the more toxically fruitful such seeds will be.
Us vs. Them is disconsonant with respect for everyone’s life, dignity, worth, moral authority and value as a human being.
Not “tear it down.” Build it up.
Hi Aster! Thank you for your thoughtful response. I’m sorry my own input is not so much, but I’m at where I’m at, and all that.
I was wondering where in the lexicon of isms and such that outsiders would place me, given what I pulled off the top of my head there. It seems I should infer that you’d say “libertarianism”. Okay.
I don’t think you fault libertarianism for devaluing community – I was meaning to hit more at the way the subject there is often cast as a false dichotomy as “Either we’re all servilely beholden to each other or we’re all as islands to each other.”, as a general point.
Nor would I say I’m about the right vs. the good. I guess I’d say I think generally one must see to the means and let the ends take care of themselves. But I also think that far, far more important than making sure you follow strict anarchic principles or whatnot – to say nothing of making a white whale of “The State” – is living your own good life. So long as smashing the plutocracy is your *primary* pursuit, living *your own* good life is *not*. Offhand.
There are matters of self-defense, be it on an individual or cultural level (such as an “alternative world”), which I can conceive of allowing for actions and institutions which would not seem, prima facie, to be compatible with basic libertarian principles, but which can be, in the full context of principles-as-applied, nonetheless be revealed as not outside their bounds, after all. If it turns out that, in light of the full force of externalities, in light of the fact that “we’re all in this together” is not a totally empty homily, something *like* a government is required to ensure the basic and best human flourishing, well, so be it. (Though I would say, of course, that pretty much any extant government is a clear example of “….TOO FAR!!”) I also think that in a more sane, healthy society, the explicit recourse to rights and libertarian principles would be the exception, with basic respect for humanity doing the majority of the work instead. I don’t regard any of the things I said as static, concrete Platonic ideals just floating out there in the World of Forms. They are ideas which must be applied in action, and in doing so, be made to fit the particulars to which they’re applied – the permutations of which are not something one can predict, model and determine from one’s armchair.
I agree that the spirit and culture of a movement matters. I dunno if I’d say it matters *more* than formal commitments – I’m not even sure I’d say they can be extricated and separated, hermetically, from each other. But hell yes, they matter *just as much*, at least. And I’m happy that you’ve found a place better fit for yourself, where you’re not in a constant uphill battle and can be comfortable both in your own skin and with your own mind and values accepted as they are. (Sometimes I think of myself as borderline autistic (however objective and precise such a concept even is anyway, I’m sure I don’t know), but one thing I have managed to develop a decent sense of is mudita. Myself, I dunno that I’ve ever quite “fit” anywhere, but the more aware of that particular aspect I become, the more concerned I grow that others be able to do so, and the more happy I am for them when they do. The more I give up on myself, the more I appreciate it when others succeed on their own terms. I have no idea that means, or where it’s going.)
Re: your last paragraph, my *primary* concern is not if Jack and Jill are behaving badly, it’s that *I* am not. That said, it would be nice to have an alternative world – a more or less fully formed sub- or extra-culture/society in which to live and flourish with compatibly-minded persons too, yes. But I don’t regard this as an either-or. I don’t have a banner to flock to, I’m not a leader. I’m just some guy trying to “first, do no harm.” I don’t think that’s movement material in and of itself, but I also don’t think it’s ipso facto *incompatible* with joining alternative-world-building movements, either.
Now, about the climate angle: I’m not sure if you took my talk of externalities and such at full value and full implication, but they were meant to, among many other things, speak exactly to this. If we’re really on the verge of pushing our planet’s resources over the edge into effective oblivion, well, there’s there right to life and self-ownership “libertarian” grounds for what would *otherwise* be unjustifiable enforced restrictions right there, at the very least. As for the idea of “spontaneous order”, I do not believe it happens automagically in the least – for reasons including general human nature, the closed, interconnected system of the planet itself and the full force and domain of what I am – perhaps overly loosely, taking the word well beyond its usual usage – calling ‘externalities’. It remains that I do not regard fiat rule to be the answer – I think that’s the other side of the false dichotomy of automagic spontaneous order and what, ’round these parts, is usually called statism. I think somewhere inbetween automatic spontaneous order and statism lies room for an ongoing, iterative process of what could be called common law, not-necessarily-binding-in-all-cases but necessarily applied case-by-case, lest it be just another Platonic method of dealing with a real world.
For me, anarchy isn’t the thing. It’s being able to live my own peaceful life–or rather, not even that, considering my own sense of self-worth(lessness)–*others* being able to live *their own* peaceful, productive, flourishing lives.
All of this is just to say, I’m not entirely surely we’re entirely getting each other, but at the very least, I respect your point of view and, unlike some, or so I, uhh, *sense* in this thread here, have no animosity for you. Quite the opposite; when I read lines like “And it just means a great deal to me that I now don’t have to burn much energy to get heard and find a safe space to stand, that people like me and respect me without stumbling, and that here I have a future.” or “There’s also the trouble that I don’t think that libertarianism is going anywhere or that libertarianism is the social space most likely to preserve my deepest values and those values which I depend upon for my survival and flourishing.” I cheer and smile for you, and I wish the same for all those who presently struggling to find the same – wherever they may (peacefully) find it.
MRDA-
“I don’t think that I or any of us has much time”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gpwre6jQy0&fe…
“unsurvivably reactionary social consequences”
The result of these climate disasters will be a wave of insecurity and poverty which will threaten the survival of every tenet, facet, ideal, and achievement of liberal civilisation and in some cases of civilisation as such. Every index of human progress and development will falter.
My ability to survive depends upon the most recent, most fragile, most tenuous, most controversial, and most partial victories of reason and freedom- humane treatment of sex workers and transgender women (or women) is a rare thing in history, and in our time achieved within the last generation in a small number of countries. These roots are culturally shallow and easily torn away. It is a commonplace that hemlines rise and fall with the stock exchange, and a disaster on this level cannot help but institute a level of social conservatism and repressiveness to an intensity which I prefer not to actively imagine. A polity in the grip of terror tosses sanity and tolerance to the wind and almost inevitably seeks scapegoats in unpopular dissidents and percieved outsiders. Even without climate change, the political and economic situation was forbidding enough, and I doubt many here doubt that worse is to come. There were already plenty of good reasons to head for high ground.
I take significant personal comfort from the fact that at least New Zealand will be one of the places where this pressure will come the most slowly and will encounter the greatest internal cultural resistance. Besides, I love my life right now, and have found enough cards to play to keep having fun for some time. I'm just not making any retirement plans.
The bird is on the wing. The only question is whether it will take a few years or many decades for the situation to become severe, for me and of course for billions of others. I lack the knowledge to decide that question, but it would seem prudent to sieze the day.
Alice.
Feebloid Befuddleton-
Thank you for your kindness, and again, I second your passions and ideals, whether or not one names them as 'libertarian'. If it were at this moment merely a question of ideals, of what kind of world you or I might desire, I would find myself almost entirely at one with your approach, and the differences would be the sort of minor quirks of difference which make for amusing discussion and prosperity for the world's coffee dealers.
The trouble is that the objective, factual, situation surrounding us is one of cruel constraint, one which threatens to annihilate the mind's room to move and thereby forbid all reaching for ideals and heights, or at least any kind of height which allies itself with human flourishing and happiness. I have no answer here, do not pretend to have an answer. Any ideal or worldview which draws power to assert itself from an age of necessity and pain is one with whose first principles I can find no common ground and can make no compromise.