Don't know if anyone would be interested, but in case anyone here cares how Tea Partiers view themselves and what they really stand for, this was an interesting blog article.
This is, of course, a tea party apologetic, so don't expect an unbiased or objective look, but rather something that a lot of tea partiers (Being in suburban Texas, I know several, many of them my close relatives.) would identify with and point to to say "yeah! that's us". Particularly well-defined is the idea that conservatives reject the idea of what Malcolm Reynolds called "making people better".
Some of the comments are pretty funny... especially where they talk about actually being the original hippies the blogger was discussing.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
It's not surprising to me- selfish individualistic and cynically self-righteous. Yep. Hippies and Tea-Partiers, I never liked either.
Gotta love a graphic that puts "FDR/Obama Democrats," and "the Eu" in the same space with "Stalinists."
Graphs are amazing! They only tell the truth!
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
His "The REAL political spectrum" is so contrived and sociopolitically juvenile that it takes his already convoluted 'see, tea partiers are like hippies!' and turns it into something that makes me want to facepalm my brains onto the wall behind me.
What an amazingly not-convoluted axis that puts trustafarian anarchists closer to the distributive center than Obama liberals and puts Objectivists closer to the government control median than Libertarians, with no divide between, say, Anarcho-Capitalists and Consequantialist Libertarians.
I don't care that this has anything to do with the tea party. I'm ignoring that entirely. I just can't help but be appalled with the amateur social studies hour. aaah
Posted by DDDaysh (Member # 9499) on :
"In short, the Tea Party and the hippie movement share four fundamental core values:
* A craving for independence; * A celebration of individualism; * Joy in the freedom offered by self-sufficiency; * And an acceptance of the natural order of things."
I'd laugh out loud, but I'm sitting in class right now.
Seriously though, what's up with all the TEA party people in Texas, it's getting so I can't open my mouth at all at family gatherings anymore!
Posted by Shanna (Member # 7900) on :
quote:Originally posted by DDDaysh: Seriously though, what's up with all the TEA party people in Texas, it's getting so I can't open my mouth at all at family gatherings anymore!
Its because Texans are a proud people. Even the sanest state citizens enjoy a guilty little giggle at the mention of secession.* The Tea Party movement is anarchist so its no wonder that Texas, of all states, would be attract to it.
*Speaking as someone who spent 3/5ths of their life in Texas.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Thanks for sharing this, Jim-Me. I've been a fan of Zombie's since he was taking pictures at Berkeley protests during the Bush years. He always has an interesting perspective on things. Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
I have no idea how accurate any of that is, the 60s having been covered precisely once in the 10th grade for a day or two. But it's certainly an interesting read.
I was always more interested in hippies like on Good Neighbors who were working their pants off trying to be self sufficient rather than the crazy "Let's take LSD and have sex" kinds that are always depicted.
I think my favorite part is his insistance that human nature doesn't change. But it's definitely said with a sense that other people are selfish, greedy, and power hungry. But rejecting the ability of the government to get them those things personally, the Tea Party would be denying their human nature. So it's not that they think no one can change - just that other people can't.
The Tea Party might be useful as a check on crazy liberal ideas, but I suspect the truth is somewhere closer to the middle of their spectrum. When presented with the opportunity to change, a certain percentage will do so. I think we should design our opportunities to give everyone the chance to do better while minimizing our risk of getting ripped off.
Posted by Foust (Member # 3043) on :
This guy gets that "hippies" were a tiny minority even at their zenith, right? They were a vague subculture that has somehow found its way into our collective memory.
I count only 2 distinct arguments in that blog post for his position that hippies would be tea partiers today.
(Post Edited by Janitor Blade. Calling members of the tea party "teabaggers" is a bit derogatory as they do not like the label, and it is meant to be derisive.)
1. Hippies opposed LBJ and the Democrats. Well, of course they did; LBJ was at the head of the Vietnam war, the most hated war in American history. The Republicans weren't.
There is a poster which he claims depicts LBJ's "big-government 'Great Society' programs as hell on Earth.
Did this chucklehead even read his own link? That poster is a criticism of the way whites maintained economic dominance. It is connected to civil rights, it has nothing to do with the size of government.
In short, this first argument is claiming that because the hippies were anti-Democrat, they must have been anti-left. The two are not the same thing at all; this is a hilariously bad false equivalency.
2. Jack Keruac was a conservative. Awesome, he was also almost as racist as the KKK.
quote:And an acceptance of the natural order of things.
Ah yes, the "natural order of things." This is always code for "male white Christians" on top, usually but not necessarily in that order.
[ October 13, 2010, 01:36 PM: Message edited by: JanitorBlade ]
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
Good to see you, Jim-Me.
I've seen this sort of relationship drawn before, between conservatism and "human nature" vs. liberalism and the "blank slate." It just doesn't hold up. I agree that conservatives and liberals at least have a different notion of what human nature is. But if you look at the scientists who have done the most to back up the claim that there is a robust sort of biological and psychological human nature, they're people like E.O. Wilson and Steve Pinker -- who tend to draw quite liberal conclusions from their work.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
Conservatives, on the other hand, especially in the Catholic stripe, tend to draw their conception of human nature less from science and more from classical texts, like Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. (This comes out very clearly in the work of Robert George and Leon Kass, for example.)
For my own part, I trust 20th-century psychology and biology more than its 13th-century counterpart.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
The article seems to me to give one more sad indication of the degree to which "freedom" has become a buzzword rather than a concept to which particular expectations should be attatched.
Too many of the "Tea Party" darlings espouse freedom only for the "right" people or only within the moral standards that they are perfectly willing to have imposed from on high. There doesn't seem to be a strong enough center for the typical self-identified "Partier" to be independently angry about any new issue aside from anything related to taxes, or enough clarity to recognize when the tax policies they oppose don't actually fall on anyone within their income bracket.
It's like "the hippies" in about as much as it feels good to identify yourself with a group that seems to have the world's attention and has the courage (albeit the courage of the mob) to "stick it to the man". But (and here noting a genuine division between "hippies" and the actual peace movement) like the hippies, one wonders if it will actually accomplish anything, or just be viewed with bemusement by later generations for its self-indulgence.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jim-Me: Don't know if anyone would be interested, but in case anyone here cares how one Tea Partier views himself and what they really stand for,
Fixed that for you.
I honestly think it is hilarious how people on this board continually take the comments of one person and insist it reflects an entire movement.
I wonder where all the threads are making fun or condemning all of the progressive groups that have popped up over the years for comments one of their members have made?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I wonder where all the threads are making fun or condemning all of the progressive groups that have popped up over the years for comments one of their members have made?
Probably on sites with stupider people. Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Geraine:
quote:Originally posted by Jim-Me: Don't know if anyone would be interested, but in case anyone here cares how one Tea Partier views himself and what they really stand for,
Fixed that for you.
I honestly think it is hilarious how people on this board continually take the comments of one person and insist it reflects an entire movement.
I wonder where all the threads are making fun or condemning all of the progressive groups that have popped up over the years for comments one of their members have made?
Find dumb stuff progressives say and make threads about them. Talking about Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi though is kinda tiring because everybody already dislikes them immensely.
Also the next time Sarah Palin starts talking about elitism, intellectualism, and "real America" tell her to shut her gob so that smart people feel comfortable in the Republican party.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Shanna: The Tea Party movement is anarchist so its no wonder that Texas, of all states, would be attract to it.
There's a huge difference between anarchism and minarchism. Wanting limited government isn't the same as wanting no government.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Foust: I count only 2 distinct arguments in that blog post for his position that hippies would be teabaggers today.
I'm going to ask that you and others stop using the term "teabaggers". It's an intentionally offensive term, the equivalent of an ethnic slur.
quote:Originally posted by Foust:
quote:And an acceptance of the natural order of things.
Ah yes, the "natural order of things." This is always code for "male white Christians" on top, usually but not necessarily in that order.
So much for honesty. No, it means acceptance of the fact that people do act in their own self-interest. It means acceptance of the natural fact that some people succeed and others fail. It's rejection of the Harrison Bergeron society.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jim-Me: Don't know if anyone would be interested, but in case anyone here cares how Tea Partiers view themselves and what they really stand for, this was an interesting blog article.
Thanks, Jim-Me. It was fascinating. I thought the video was better than the article, though. More cogent and to the point. Having been born in 1963, comparisons to hippies mean next to nothing to me, and that's probably true for most people my age or younger.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by DDDaysh: "In short, the Tea Party and the hippie movement share four fundamental core values:
* A craving for independence; * A celebration of individualism; * Joy in the freedom offered by self-sufficiency; * And an acceptance of the natural order of things."
I'd laugh out loud, but I'm sitting in class right now.
Seriously though, what's up with all the TEA party people in Texas, it's getting so I can't open my mouth at all at family gatherings anymore!
I know I'm probably going to regret asking this, but... rather than just say "this is laughable", do you think you might do us the honor of telling us what part of it you disagree with?
* A craving for independence;
Do you think tea partiers don't crave independence? Conversely, do you think that the left in this country does not work day and night to create a sense of dependency, whereby everyone has to be protected from themselves, whether they like it or not?
* A celebration of individualism;
Do you think that tea partiers aren't motivated strongly by the idea of individualism? Conversely, do you think that the left in this country does not believe that the good of the individual is and should be subordinate to the good of the many?
* Joy in the freedom offered by self-sufficiency;
Do you think that we don't take joy in freedom? Or that we don't think that self-sufficiency leads to freedom? Conversely, do you think that the left in this country does not think freedom comes from being artificially made "equal"?
* And an acceptance of the natural order of things."
Do you think we're out to create some sort of utopic society where people are fundamentally different than people were, are, or ever will be? Conversely, do you think the left in this country is not aiming for that?
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Do you think we're out to create some sort of utopic society where people are fundamentally different than people were, are, or ever will be? Conversely, do you think the left in this country is not aiming for that?
Regarding your second question: of course that's not their aim.
The left in the United States, at its most ambitious and "radical," is trying to create a comfortable welfare state society like the ones that already exist in Western Europe and Scandanavia.
... and avoid fighting needless, aggressive wars.
[ October 13, 2010, 01:32 PM: Message edited by: Destineer ]
Posted by Javert (Member # 3076) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by Foust:
quote:And an acceptance of the natural order of things.
Ah yes, the "natural order of things." This is always code for "male white Christians" on top, usually but not necessarily in that order.
So much for honesty. No, it means acceptance of the fact that people do act in their own self-interest. It means acceptance of the natural fact that some people succeed and others fail. It's rejection of the Harrison Bergeron society.
Actually, according to the Tea Party members I've spoken to, it means "heterosexuals only".
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Truth. "Natural order of things" is nearly always a placating code for conservative religious and social precepts, indulging naturalistic fallacy for the sake of The Way Things Ought To Be. Necessarily included is the ideal that homosexuality is unnatural and shouldn't be allowed to have equal social status, because that brainwashes kids. Also usually included is the whole male as the head of the household thing.
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: I've seen this sort of relationship drawn before, between conservatism and "human nature" vs. liberalism and the "blank slate." It just doesn't hold up.
Thank you. It's even not the least of the problems with this attempt at social and political matrices. It's just an amateur pseudosociological estimation of placement.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Do you think we're out to create some sort of utopic society where people are fundamentally different than people were, are, or ever will be?
Yes. I disagree rather passionately with Randians about human nature; in a nutshell, I think they're fundamentally wrong about it.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote: It's an intentionally offensive term, the equivalent of an ethnic slur.
If I were to use the term, it would be intentionally offensive. I don't grant that everyone using it is being intentionally offensive, because I don't think everyone is familiar with the insult.
But even if they were, it's not the equivalent of an ethnic slur, which is socially regarded as worse, usually, than just insulting someone. Calling someone a racial name is usually worse than just calling them a name, Lisa, and I'm pretty sure you know that's how society looks at it.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Javert:
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by Foust:
quote:And an acceptance of the natural order of things.
Ah yes, the "natural order of things." This is always code for "male white Christians" on top, usually but not necessarily in that order.
So much for honesty. No, it means acceptance of the fact that people do act in their own self-interest. It means acceptance of the natural fact that some people succeed and others fail. It's rejection of the Harrison Bergeron society.
Actually, according to the Tea Party members I've spoken to, it means "heterosexuals only".
Not all tea partiers are in lockstep. There are gay, black, hispanic, asian, transsexual, female and every other kind of people in the Tea Party.
There are also Republicans who will tell you that they want their party to be "heterosexuals only". Log Cabin Republicans (the ones who just got DADT overturned) disagree.
I heard one woman say that tea partiers probably agree on a core 70% of issues. But I know there are tea partiers who wouldn't like me on many different counts. The degree to which I care about their opinions... well, you can probably guess.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote: It's an intentionally offensive term, the equivalent of an ethnic slur.
If I were to use the term, it would be intentionally offensive. I don't grant that everyone using it is being intentionally offensive, because I don't think everyone is familiar with the insult.
But even if they were, it's not the equivalent of an ethnic slur, which is socially regarded as worse, usually, than just insulting someone. Calling someone a racial name is usually worse than just calling them a name, Lisa, and I'm pretty sure you know that's how society looks at it.
quote:Do you think we're out to create some sort of utopic society where people are fundamentally different than people were, are, or ever will be?
Yes. I disagree rather passionately with Randians about human nature; in a nutshell, I think they're fundamentally wrong about it.
What's a Randian, and what do Randians have to do with any of this?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Yes, Lisa, really. It's a term I've heard used often, particularly by younger people, and equally often I hear older people I work with ask, "What does that mean?" And do you really think that a racial slur and just a slur are considered equivalent in our culture?
Posted by Javert (Member # 3076) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa: Not all tea partiers are in lockstep. There are gay, black, hispanic, asian, transsexual, female and every other kind of people in the Tea Party.
They may not all be in lockstep. But I have not seen any tea partier who wasn't white. I haven't looked terribly hard, of course, so maybe they make up the majority of the tea party and only the caucasians make it out to the rallies.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:Do you think we're out to create some sort of utopic society where people are fundamentally different than people were, are, or ever will be?
Yes. I disagree rather passionately with Randians about human nature; in a nutshell, I think they're fundamentally wrong about it.
What's a Randian, and what do Randians have to do with any of this?
whoooooooooooooooooooosh
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Make them actually define "acceptance of the natural order of things", and I bet you will find fewer people agreeing with them. Not that many do as it is...
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Javert:
quote:Originally posted by Lisa: Not all tea partiers are in lockstep. There are gay, black, hispanic, asian, transsexual, female and every other kind of people in the Tea Party.
They may not all be in lockstep. But I have not seen any tea partier who wasn't white. I haven't looked terribly hard, of course, so maybe they make up the majority of the tea party and only the caucasians make it out to the rallies.
You need to get out more. Hell, I went to a thing for Joel Pollak (composer of The Ballad of the Tea Party, and the guy who God willing is going to kick Jan Schakowsky's a** next month), and the crowd was quite a mix. Not to mention the fact that Joel is virtually a leftist compared to his wife Julia, who is black herself.
Edit to add the first handful of links on the subject that I found with a simple search on Google and YouTube:
[ October 13, 2010, 04:35 PM: Message edited by: Lisa ]
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:Do you think we're out to create some sort of utopic society where people are fundamentally different than people were, are, or ever will be?
Yes. I disagree rather passionately with Randians about human nature; in a nutshell, I think they're fundamentally wrong about it.
What's a Randian, and what do Randians have to do with any of this?
I assume Tom is talking about those who agree with Ayn Rand. Many of the tea partiers I have seen talking mention Atlas Shrugged as at least part of their intellectual base.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:Do you think we're out to create some sort of utopic society where people are fundamentally different than people were, are, or ever will be?
Yes. I disagree rather passionately with Randians about human nature; in a nutshell, I think they're fundamentally wrong about it.
What's a Randian, and what do Randians have to do with any of this?
I assume Tom is talking about those who agree with Ayn Rand. Many of the tea partiers I have seen talking mention Atlas Shrugged as at least part of their intellectual base.
Oh. Oh, I get it. He was calling people Randians because he wants to make it seem like we're sheeplike followers of Ayn Rand. Got it.
You know, though, talking about the principles of liberty in an intellectual way without mentioning Objectivism is sort of like talking about biology without mentioning Mendel or Darwin. You can do it, but it's a helluva lot easier to refer to someone else who has done the heavy lifting.
It doesn't make tea partiers Objectivists, though, any more than supporting Obamacare makes someone a Marxist. Much less so, in fact.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
No it doesn't, but I completely agree that Ayn Rand is indispensable when discussing how many Tea Partiers approach government.
I've heard Glenn Beck specifically endorse Atlas Shrugged. And when he started doing that, copies flew off the shelves in book stores.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Let me point out, for the record, that I was answering this question: "Do you think we're out to create some sort of utopic society where people are fundamentally different than people were, are, or ever will be?"
And yes, absolutely, I think that you are.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: No it doesn't, but I completely agree that Ayn Rand is indispensable when discussing how many Tea Partiers approach government.
I've heard Glenn Beck specifically endorse Atlas Shrugged. And when he started doing that, copies flew off the shelves in book stores.
Maybe because they liked what they heard. I suspect he didn't just say, "Great book", but rather told people a little about the values described in it.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Let me point out, for the record, that I was answering this question: "Do you think we're out to create some sort of utopic society where people are fundamentally different than people were, are, or ever will be?"
And yes, absolutely, I think that you are.
I remember when I used to spend time on Usenet. Killfiles were such a useful thing. On a forum, I guess I'm going to have to rely on my willpower to put you in a sort of virtual killfile. Here and on Ornery.
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
Believing in objectivism to be the answer to how society should be is, pretty much, hoping for a utopia that ignores human nature. Jut as much, in fact, as any supposed narrative about how the american left wants to set up an impossible utopia.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
There's quite a lot to disagree with that, but I'm interested specifically in the idea that "human nature" is innate and unchangeable.
That sounds to me like they're enshrining the Fundamental Attribution Error into a fundamental aspect of their worldview, which isn't a surprise considering the population involved, but seems like an obvious mistake.
I'd note also that a lot of people's support of cooperative or "collectivist" structures stems from their belief (and there's often math and science and stuff backing this up) that the individual often fares better in these structures then in the "every man for themselves" ones. Of course, there is also the fundamental human drive for community in play.
Basically, when someone talks about how human nature is unchangeable and fully selfish, it's a lot like a late middle age white conservative Christian talking about how all these gay guys want to have sex with him or a autocratic manager talking about how the only/best way to motivate people is through rewards and punishments. The scientific understanding of "human nature" has left these ideas way behind and these people are really talking about their own issues, not about any reasoned assessment of the human condition.
---
Honestly, I think that the whole country could benefit from a open consideration of the Progressive Era. It was a time of immense social and economic change and reform that seems really to be glossed over or forgotten. And, as a Tea partier or a libertarian complaining about government intervention and "progressives", this is really the time where this came into place in our country. Were they able to enact the what they say they want, it would be reversing the changes made in this era and returning us to the ways things were before.
There's an important distinction between FDR and Teddy Roosevelt that I think is often lost when we currently talk about these issues.
Myself, Teddy Roosevelt is maybe my favorite President and I regard the Progressive Era as representing a massive improvement over what came before it. I feel like the argument over Big Government versus Big Business sort of misses the point. The problem I have is with the Big part, not whichever comes after it. I think we need a balancing act. In the world that we live in, businesses are going to get big and history has shown that not restricting or regulating them leads to them screwing things up majorly. We need government to counter the pernicious effects of companies that have grown past accountability.
However, when government gets big, it also loses accountability and tends to assume powers and scopes of influence that it should not have.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: No it doesn't, but I completely agree that Ayn Rand is indispensable when discussing how many Tea Partiers approach government.
I've heard Glenn Beck specifically endorse Atlas Shrugged. And when he started doing that, copies flew off the shelves in book stores.
Maybe because they liked what they heard. I suspect he didn't just say, "Great book", but rather told people a little about the values described in it.
Well, yes. They liked what they read and got their friends to read it and so Ayn Rand becomes an indispensable part of the Tea Party.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Make them actually define "acceptance of the natural order of things", and I bet you will find fewer people agreeing with them. Not that many do as it is...
Make them actually aware of their place in "the natural order of things" and I bet the numbers would fall off, too.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Dest, In what way are Wilson and Pinker scientists when it comes to human nature? I may have missed significant parts of their research, but my impression of their work in this area is very different.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: No it doesn't, but I completely agree that Ayn Rand is indispensable when discussing how many Tea Partiers approach government.
I've heard Glenn Beck specifically endorse Atlas Shrugged. And when he started doing that, copies flew off the shelves in book stores.
Maybe because they liked what they heard. I suspect he didn't just say, "Great book", but rather told people a little about the values described in it.
Well, yes. They liked what they read and got their friends to read it and so Ayn Rand becomes an indispensable part of the Tea Party.
Thus, everybody wins! Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Dest, In what way are Wilson and Pinker scientists when it comes to human nature? I may have missed significant parts of their research, but my impression of their work in this area is very different.
Pinker's work on evolutionary psych and inborn linguistic ability has a pretty direct relevance to human nature. Of course, "The Blank Slate" is a pop science book, but it is related to his actual research.
And Wilson is the father of sociobiology.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa: Hell, I went to a thing for Joel Pollak (composer of The Ballad of the Tea Party, and the guy who God willing is going to kick Jan Schakowsky's a** next month), and the crowd was quite a mix. Not to mention the fact that Joel is virtually a leftist compared to his wife Julia, who is black herself.
I don't think that either God or the people of the district are willing. "Kick a**"? Rep. Schakowsky is polling at 67.6% with Mr. Pollak at less than 30%.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Also the next time Sarah Palin starts talking about elitism, intellectualism, and "real America" tell her to shut her gob so that smart people feel comfortable in the Republican party.
Here is one conservative's take on elitism. Done by the same guy who did the video in the OP's link (not the guy that wrote the article, but the video that was shown in the middle of the article.)
Posted by DDDaysh (Member # 9499) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by DDDaysh: "In short, the Tea Party and the hippie movement share four fundamental core values:
* A craving for independence; * A celebration of individualism; * Joy in the freedom offered by self-sufficiency; * And an acceptance of the natural order of things."
I'd laugh out loud, but I'm sitting in class right now.
Seriously though, what's up with all the TEA party people in Texas, it's getting so I can't open my mouth at all at family gatherings anymore!
I know I'm probably going to regret asking this, but... rather than just say "this is laughable", do you think you might do us the honor of telling us what part of it you disagree with?
* A craving for independence;
Do you think tea partiers don't crave independence? Conversely, do you think that the left in this country does not work day and night to create a sense of dependency, whereby everyone has to be protected from themselves, whether they like it or not?
* A celebration of individualism;
Do you think that tea partiers aren't motivated strongly by the idea of individualism? Conversely, do you think that the left in this country does not believe that the good of the individual is and should be subordinate to the good of the many?
* Joy in the freedom offered by self-sufficiency;
Do you think that we don't take joy in freedom? Or that we don't think that self-sufficiency leads to freedom? Conversely, do you think that the left in this country does not think freedom comes from being artificially made "equal"?
* And an acceptance of the natural order of things."
Do you think we're out to create some sort of utopic society where people are fundamentally different than people were, are, or ever will be? Conversely, do you think the left in this country is not aiming for that?
Ok, I'll grant you I wasn't actually alive during the Hippie Movement, but here is my take. From what I understand, Hippie's were actually all about working together (hence, the whole commune thing), I really don't see how that jives with the Tea Parties motives. Hippies may not have liked the current government, but I don't think it is because they believed society shouldn't work together as a whole for the common good.
I certainly do NOT think that Tea Partiers really like individualism. Almost every single one I've actually met in person is very interested in the government mandating a heck of alot of social policy (everything from prayer in school to a constitutional amendment for marriage being defined as XY+XX.) You can say that that isn't really "part" of the party's philosophy all you want, but if those are the kinds of things that most of their members are expecting to get in the end (most being defined as all of the ones I come in contact with day to day) then I can't see why I should distinguish between some official "party line" and what they really want. In my opinion, none of those policies promotes individualism in any way!
He MIGHT have a case for the "joy in self sufficiency", but I don't really believe that. For one thing, none of the Tea Partiers I've come in contact with really have any inkling of what true "self sufficiency" would mean for them. As I think I've mentioned before, I live in a rural area with many farmers and ranchers. They truly have no grasp what minimal federal government would do to their lives. We're also not a rich area. While most of the people I've talked to aren't on Welfare, tons of them work for government subsidized programs like utilities. Many of the others have never actually paid any income tax that wasn't refunded (and more) when they filed their taxes. That isn't to say that they couldn't be willing to take the hit that would come with small government because they believe it's the "right thing to do", but I seriously doubt that's the case.
Finally, the "natural order of things" is very VERY obviously not something Hippies and most Tea Partiers would agree on. They simply mean two totally different things by the term. As I said before, for nearly all of the Tea Partiers I know personally, their "natural order of things" includes no evolution, a strictly heterosexual society, and often includes white supremacy if you really did down deep.
I realize that it is very easy to argue against everything I've just said by saying that I don't actually know anything about the beliefs of the group "as a whole". And, you're right, I don't. I haven't actually done statistical surveys of the entire population. But I can be allowed to disbelieve arguments if they defy the evidence I'm seeing in front of my eyes unless someone can provide me with verifiable evidence that what I'm seeing is an anomaly.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
The real problem with those four categories is that they're kind of like astrological cold-reading. With the exception of "an acceptance of the natural order of things" which kind of falls flat as a tautological experiment in naturalistic fallacy anyway, they're feelgood concepts that even the people on the far far far end of the scale are unlikely to differentiate themselves from the teaparty. According to this process, Obama liberals are at least three quarters tea party despite being on the other end of this guy's convoluted sociological matrix.
Who the hell is going to disagree with "Joy in the freedom offered by self-sufficiency?" who is going to disagree with "A celebration of individualism?" Short of the stereotypical imagined strawman liberals who live in Harrison Bergeron inspired narratives, nearly nobody.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Also the next time Sarah Palin starts talking about elitism, intellectualism, and "real America" tell her to shut her gob so that smart people feel comfortable in the Republican party.
Here is one conservative's take on elitism. Done by the same guy who did the video in the OP's link (not the guy that wrote the article, but the video that was shown in the middle of the article.)
Thanks for the link.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Also the next time Sarah Palin starts talking about elitism, intellectualism, and "real America" tell her to shut her gob so that smart people feel comfortable in the Republican party.
Here is one conservative's take on elitism. Done by the same guy who did the video in the OP's link (not the guy that wrote the article, but the video that was shown in the middle of the article.)
Thanks for the link.
You're welcome!
Obviously he doesn't necessarily speak for all conservatives, but I really like what he had to say on that issue. For those that don't care to watch the video, my shorthand summary would be:
"Elitism" in the sense of just thinking you're better than other people may make you conceited, but it's not really what most conservatives are railing against. Elitism in the sense that you think you're better able to make decisions for me than I can for myself is what's antithetical to typical conservative or libertarian values.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
Here's an interesting look at the original Tea Party... I know the author personally, and he has a book out now on the history (which I haven't read), but this is a 600-word synopsis.
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Also the next time Sarah Palin starts talking about elitism, intellectualism, and "real America" tell her to shut her gob so that smart people feel comfortable in the Republican party.
Here is one conservative's take on elitism. Done by the same guy who did the video in the OP's link (not the guy that wrote the article, but the video that was shown in the middle of the article.)
Thanks for the link.
You're welcome!
Obviously he doesn't necessarily speak for all conservatives, but I really like what he had to say on that issue. For those that don't care to watch the video, my shorthand summary would be:
"Elitism" in the sense of just thinking you're better than other people may make you conceited, but it's not really what most conservatives are railing against. Elitism in the sense that you think you're better able to make decisions for me than I can for myself is what's antithetical to typical conservative or libertarian values.
All in the same way a 12 year old railing against "abuse of parental authority".
We wouldn't have things called "government" if people were capable of governing themselves.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: All in the same way a 12 year old railing against "abuse of parental authority".
We wouldn't have things called "government" if people were capable of governing themselves.
as for the first part, youre conclusion isnt entirely clear to me so i wont make any comment. it you could, please clarify your reference to 'parental authority' as it relates to the discussion.
to not acknowledge man's ability of self-governance is to deny the existence of individual sovereignty (a sovereign being one that exercises supreme authority within a limited sphere). history has made it clear that people are able to govern themselves. for example, i can identify my needs, create goals and achieve the desired results. i dont need government to do this for me.
the need for government, in the context youve used it, as a noun, arises out of the complex social interactions between multiple individuals (society). government can aid in and facilitate the inevitable interactions between individuals but it cant govern the individual actions without usurping the sovereignty and freedom of the individual.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:to not acknowledge man's ability of self-governance is to deny the existence of individual sovereignty
Do something like taxes 'deny the existence of individual sovereignty'
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
That didn't seem to be talking about elitism much at all. It talked about long term elected officials and somehow how them getting elected many, many times by a populace that was free to vote for someone else was the same as a simplistic view of a tyranny created by military force.
I also talked about problems with a centrally planned economy, which, as far as I can tell, no one in this country wants. Although, I gotta say, the example of a gas station owner was a really bad one, unless he was trying to make the point that he had no idea how gas stations work. There's a reason why Kenneth Goldbraith used gas stations as an example in The Affluent Society. Unless you're talking about the vanishingly small number of independent stations, a gas station owner has little to no control over the price he sells gas at. They are locked in to buying gas from whichever large oil company they belong to at the price that the oil company sets based on their formulas. The price of gas is set by "smart" people in fancy rooms, just by big corporations, not politicians.
---
Dan, I'm curious. You really seemed supportive of this guy's video. Does the fact that his account of how gas stations work is made up and the reality is antithetical to his claims change your opinion of it?
[ October 17, 2010, 10:13 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti:
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: All in the same way a 12 year old railing against "abuse of parental authority".
We wouldn't have things called "government" if people were capable of governing themselves.
as for the first part, youre conclusion isnt entirely clear to me so i wont make any comment. it you could, please clarify your reference to 'parental authority' as it relates to the discussion.
to not acknowledge man's ability of self-governance is to deny the existence of individual sovereignty (a sovereign being one that exercises supreme authority within a limited sphere). history has made it clear that people are able to govern themselves. for example, i can identify my needs, create goals and achieve the desired results. i dont need government to do this for me.
the need for government, in the context youve used it, as a noun, arises out of the complex social interactions between multiple individuals (society). government can aid in and facilitate the inevitable interactions between individuals but it cant govern the individual actions without usurping the sovereignty and freedom of the individual.
The statement regarding "elitism = bad because its a bunch of people deciding they're better at determining whats good for me" is almost inherently idiotic, 90% of society is determined by an individual or a group of individuals who may or may not be qualified to make such decisions, and for 6000 years has worked just fine give or take historically unimportant irrelevant statistics.
If society was capable of self-government it WOULD have been self governed by now, meaning that over a 6000 year period the most successful governments have been those that governed that took stuff and gave back stuff according to an arbitrary self determined criteria.
The individual is irrelevant to history.
The eventual inevitable trend is for growing top-down statism, with individuals, individual states, individual nations, increasingly giving up a little 'soveriengty' for a little 'security'.
Statism works, individualism doesn't. Survival of the fittest of political ideologies overtime determines which one is right.
People complaining about government being too powerful or there being individuals making decisions on behalf of other individuals is just immature ranting of inept children envious they couldn;t get to be one of the deciders.
Strangely enough when republicans and other "anti elitism" people get into power such talk stops for 4 years, I find that strange.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote: Elitism in the sense that you think you're better able to make decisions for me than I can for myself is what's antithetical to typical conservative or libertarian values.
Isn't that a basic fact of life? I mean, conservatives don't really think that every person everywhere is equally able to make good decisions about any topic, right? When you're sick, you still go to a doctor by virtue of his smarts and years of training and experience making him far more likely to be able to help you compared to people who don't have the same qualities, right?
Was I elitist up there to think that I am more qualified to talk about how prices are set at gas stations just because I know more about the apparently nothing he does?
I believe in standards and I believe in responsibility. I agree that that many of the people who believe they belong to a ruling elite are wrong in doing so, but because these don't measure up in terms of standards and responsibility and often the scope they take on is beyond what they should, not because of a theoretical belief that people are not better than other people at knowing the correct answer to things.
Were the standard of anti-elitism talking about the former, I'd think that they were being imprecise, but ultimately agree with the criticisms. But it seems to me that they really are talking about the second, about how standards and responsibility are not important.
There seems to be this drift among certain populations about both divorcing this idea of standards and objectively reliable evidence and arguments from the things that people want to believe, from what is convincing to them.
I believe this is the anti-elitism (and its corresponding anti-intellectualism, which I think is even more damning) that is behind people's support of people like Tea Party leader Sarah Palin or obviously unsuitable President George W. Bush. It's what is behind the Prop 8 supporters coming up with all measure of false or otherwise poor arguments that fade away when they actually have to stand behind them. It's what is behind this guy's use of his made up idea of how gas stations work to support his arguments.
---
I'll ask, for the supporters of this idea of anti-elitism, do you agree that no people can know better than other people about other things? Do you think that standards and responsibility are irrelevant? If not, what does anti-elitism mean to you?
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Squick, in the course of your post you essentially shift from "better able to make decisions for me" to "know more about X topic than I do."
The two are vitally different. When I am sick, I go to a doctor and listen to his advice because he has years of training and experience in the matter. But I don't necessarily heed that advice. He may be wrong. I may get a second opinion.
Ultimately, he doesn't make the final decision regarding what sort of treatment I get. I make that decision.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Aren't those two points sort of linked? Isn't someone who knows more about subject X likely to make a better decision concerning subject X?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
This is an interesting discussion on the subject of elitism and anti-elitism, but I fear it may only be superficially related to the common mentality of an average tea partier when it comes to their conceptualization and opposition to 'elitists.'
I don't know though! I could ask!
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Ultimately, he doesn't make the final decision regarding what sort of treatment I get. I make that decision.
Sure, you do, for decisions affecting you alone. Tea Partiers, on the other hand, demand that same right of relationship for themselves and insist they speak for the entire country, the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and sometimes God thrown in for good measure.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:Ultimately, he doesn't make the final decision regarding what sort of treatment I get. I make that decision.
Sure, you do, for decisions affecting you alone. Tea Partiers, on the other hand, demand that same right of relationship for themselves and insist they speak for the entire country, the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and sometimes God thrown in for good measure.
And when making political decisions, they are choosing for all of us. They are not just making decisions for themselves or that affect only themselves.
[ October 18, 2010, 10:55 AM: Message edited by: kmbboots ]
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Squick, in the course of your post you essentially shift from "better able to make decisions for me" to "know more about X topic than I do."
The two are vitally different. When I am sick, I go to a doctor and listen to his advice because he has years of training and experience in the matter. But I don't necessarily heed that advice. He may be wrong. I may get a second opinion.
Ultimately, he doesn't make the final decision regarding what sort of treatment I get. I make that decision.
I feel like in this post itself, there's a shift made from "knowing better what decision to make" to "having the right to make a decision," when these are obviously two separate questions.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
Article tl;dr - the new Tea Party candidates swept into office will find it impossible to cut federal government spending. Should they by some miracle succeed, they will face a severe backlash by their own constituency.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Good quote in there by David Frum.
quote:As Republicans and conservatives have scrambled to rally the support of the Tea Party movement, many have failed to take notice of some of the important inconsistencies implicit in the Tea Party message. A recent New York Times/CBS poll reveals some interesting information about the movement and its fundamental “principles.”
According to this poll, 91% of Tea Partiers want a smaller government with fewer services. Despite this hostility to big government, 62% of Tea Partiers believe that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are worth the cost (apparently no one bothered to tell them that Social Security and Medicare are evil Godless socialist programs).
It's kind of like the kinder, gentler, from-within-conservatism voice noting what Taibbi much more aggressively asserted in October:
quote:Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn't a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — "Government's not the solution! Government's the problem!" — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.
"The scooters are because of Medicare," he whispers helpfully. "They have these commercials down here: 'You won't even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!' Practically everyone in Kentucky has one."
A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it.
After Palin wraps up, I race to the parking lot in search of departing Medicare-motor-scooter conservatives. I come upon an elderly couple, Janice and David Wheelock, who are fairly itching to share their views.
"I'm anti-spending and anti-government," crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. "The welfare state is out of control."
"OK," I say. "And what do you do for a living?"
"Me?" he says proudly. "Oh, I'm a property appraiser. Have been my whole life."
I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"
Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!
"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"
"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."
"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"
"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much." Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry's medals and Barack Obama's Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what this movement is all about — and nowhere do we see that dynamic as clearly as here in Kentucky, where Rand Paul is barreling toward the Senate with the aid of conservative icons like Palin.
Invective aside, I agree (what a surprise, right?) — it's really true. We need to cut back on government, but the stuff we need to cut back is for other people. Not for us! And most certainly not for our capitalist-class beneficiaries. These people are more likely to get up and fly than to elect people who are going to take away their Rascal power scooters.
it's really worth noting, as I saw on reddit — If you're for a giant military, the PATRIOT act and torturing prisoners, legislating against abortion, legislating to prevent gays from marrying, preventing the legalization of pot, you're not for 'limited goverment,' you're for limiting government to your moral aims. And, in the case of the tea party, don't be surprised when this doesn't reduce its size.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Can't wait for the time when the tea partiers end up where they belong, in the ash heap of history.
(Post Edited By Janitor Blade. Blayne, please stop using the derogatory term for those who affiliate with the tea party.)
[ October 18, 2010, 02:23 PM: Message edited by: JanitorBlade ]
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
You don't even have to be for a giant military; you just have to be against them shutting down the military base or military manufacturing (planes, weapons, tanks and so forth) in your area along with all those jobs and money. Unlike the much maligned auto industry, military plants and bases are spread around.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Squick, in the course of your post you essentially shift from "better able to make decisions for me" to "know more about X topic than I do."
The two are vitally different. When I am sick, I go to a doctor and listen to his advice because he has years of training and experience in the matter. But I don't necessarily heed that advice. He may be wrong. I may get a second opinion.
Ultimately, he doesn't make the final decision regarding what sort of treatment I get. I make that decision.
I'm pretty sure I don't agree. You seem, as Dest noted, to be conflating the idea of having the right to make a decision with being better able to make the decision. Do you believe that you are better able to make a decision about what medical procedures/medications will better your condition than a doctor?
I don't believe so. I think it's incorrect - or perhaps incomplete - to view this situation as you making the final decision on your medical treatment. Certainly you are choosing, but not on the level of medical treatment. Rather, you are choosing between more or less set courses of treatment provided by members of an elite group. it's not like you are saying "I'll take medicine A and B and also get treatment X". Rather, the doctor (or doctors) make their decisions on what treatments might work for you and then present them for you to choose from, generally with a very strong recommendation of which you should do.
Yes, a doctor may be wrong and different doctors may disagree with what is the best treatment, but in nearly all cases, they are going to be far better able to decide what is a good treatment for you than if you tried to decide it on your own, because they don't know better than you.
From the video, there's a theoretical point about the 10 smartest people in the world that leaves out this very important point. That is, they may not fully agree with each other on how to run an economy, but they are all going to disagree with the stupid ideas that most people have on the economy. Any one of these people is far, far better able to make these decisions than an average person. I can guarantee, for example, that if they were looking to build off of how prices are set at gas stations, they'd actually know how this was done, unlike the guy in that video.
The fact is, there are elites who are provably much better at making decisions that fall within their area of expertise than the average person. If you want to talk about whether or not they should be able to do this without or against the average person's consent, that's another conversation. But it seems like you and other anti-elitists are maintaining that they don't exist.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:I think it's incorrect - or perhaps incomplete - to view this situation as you making the final decision on your medical treatment. Certainly you are choosing, but not on the level of medical treatment. Rather, you are choosing between more or less set courses of treatment provided by members of an elite group. it's not like you are saying "I'll take medicine A and B and also get treatment X". Rather, the doctor (or doctors) make their decisions on what treatments might work for you and then present them for you to choose from, generally with a very strong recommendation of which you should do.
that's true; I can't go to this member of the Elite and decide to get oxycontin for my headache. They'll not only decide that I don't get that, because they know better than me, but they'll be looking to kick out those who would, unprofessionally, allow me that decision. Just to make a sample case.
Not to mention, the Elitists (in this case, we could say the CDC) definitely get to decide my best interests for me and know better than Joe & Jane in the event of an emergency like a national epidemic of fatal contagion.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I want to return to the detrimental aspects of allowing businesses free reign.
As I pointed out, the example of gas stations actually makes the opposite point that the video tried to make. That is, as things stand now, the local owners of the gas stations are not making the decisions on what price to sell their gas. Instead, these decisions are made by people (elites, if you will) at the various large oil companies. edit: The point here is that these types of decisions are pretty much always going to be made at levels far above the individual. For example, the complaint of the government rationing medical treatment and making medical decisions in health care reform ignores the fact that right now, these decisions are not made by the individual or doctors, but rather by profit-maximizers at insurance companies. We're often really making the decision between the people in the government making these decisions and people in large companies making them, not taking them away from the individual and giving them to the government.
Another thing the guy in the video got wrong was he kind of bizarre idea of the structure and maintenance of feudal society. He seemed to think that it was primarily set up and maintained by military force. But, it was actually largely a system of economic domination. People at higher positions in the hierarchy owned or at least had rights to the property that the people under them lived and depended on.
I'm experienced enough here to not expect that anyone considered or looked in detail of the American Progressive Era that I talked about earlier, but you really should, especially if you are anti-"progressive". I think you will see a movement that was very much about fighting existing and developing systems of economic dependencies similar to those of the feudal period.
[ October 18, 2010, 03:26 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Those scooter commercials (and the medicare giveaway behind them) really bug me. That would be a government benefit that I'd very much be behind cutting. It seems like an obvious misuse of government funds to provide a substantial voting block with a luxury and also prop up a private industry.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
quote:I'm experienced enough here to not expect that anyone considered or looked in detail of the American Progressive Era that I talked about earlier, but you really should, especially if you are anti-"progressive". I think you will see a movement that was very much about fighting existing and developing systems of economic dependencies similar to those of the feudal period.
In this context, reading up a bit about the Gilded Age is useful as well. The excesses of that time prompted a lot of the trends that MrSquicky is talking about.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: All in the same way a 12 year old railing against "abuse of parental authority".
...says the man who is constantly clashing with his parents over such issues as helping around the house and playing video games.
quote:We wouldn't have things called "government" if people were capable of governing themselves.
So people cannot govern themselves, but they can govern others? What part of putting a man in an office and painting "Minister of X" on the door makes him better able to judge issues of X?
You are making two points here: One is that people cannot make good decisions for themselves, which is possibly true. The other is that governments can make good decisions for them, and that-does-not-follow. You assume that good decisions have to be possible somehow; well, why is that? It could well be that all decision-making systems are horrible; demonstrating the badness of one does not demonstrate the goodness of another.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Your completely ignorant of my family situation, you have no idea what precisely I do clash with them with, what my issues are, or what their issues are, the most you've ever heard is me complaining "sorry guys cant show up today have to help with a fair" and "be right back need to move some boxes", so shut the hell up and shut the hell up, respectively.
So, specifically I never complain "you don't have the right to tell me what to do!".
quote: So people cannot govern themselves, but they can govern others? What part of putting a man in an office and painting "Minister of X" on the door makes him better able to judge issues of X?
You are making two points here: One is that people cannot make good decisions for themselves, which is possibly true. The other is that governments can make good decisions for them, and that-does-not-follow. You assume that good decisions have to be possible somehow; well, why is that? It could well be that all decision-making systems are horrible; demonstrating the badness of one does not demonstrate the goodness of another.
I already explained this, over a period of time humanity has tried out and experimented with numerous forms of government, failures have essentially all collapsed, conquored or were overthrown.
People are inherently unable to govern themselves because it is provably self-evident that there has never been a functioning nation-state of individuals 'just self governing' but in fact have always relied on some form of representation or civil service to manage the masses.
Thus we can make the observation that there has never been a functing society of anarchists, we can also make the observation that for 6000 years humanity has always with varying degrees of success/failure been governered.
Thus the conclusion that Humans can only ever be governed and that statism is what is inherently best for humanity as it is the most successful over the broad strokes.
The next step would be to determine what truly makes for a successful government and then try to replicate the features that lead to success and craft the best-netpositive possible government.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:People are inherently unable to govern themselves because it is provably self-evident that there has never been a functioning nation-state of individuals 'just self governing' but in fact have always relied on some form of representation or civil service to manage the masses.
Argument by definition. Obviously if there is no state, then there is no nation-state; if "having a government" is going to be your criterion of success, then yeah, there's never been a successful society without one. Duh. But assuming you actually meant something sensible like "there's never been a well-functioning society without a government", have you had a look at Iceland before it became a fief of the Norwegian kings?
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Iceland's society was remarkably successful and peaceful with 'only' a system of reinforcing societal norms combined with the structure of relationships. It definitely didn't have a government in any typical sense of the word, but it was based on ideas about society-as-a-group having rights over individuals-separately.
Now, that success was supported by a host of factors that are nigh-impossible to replicate in any decent-sized, modern society, but there are still a lot of good lessons to learn.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Now, that success was supported by a host of factors that are nigh-impossible to replicate in any decent-sized, modern society, but there are still a lot of good lessons to learn.
I want you to jam this fact forcefully into the heads of classmates that love to argue with me that the native americans were an Anarchist society that would make an excellent model for overhauling modern society.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
quote:I want you to jam this fact forcefully into the heads of classmates that love to argue with me that the native americans were an Anarchist society that would make an excellent model for overhauling modern society.
Well, I'd start first with "which native americans?" -- and if they can't even tell me which specific society (since there were hundreds of very different ones) they want to emulate, give up there.
Also, most of those hundreds of societies wouldn't be considered very good by modern standards. Iceland's probably would have, though.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:[I]deas about society-as-a-group having rights over individuals-separately.
What rights are those? There is no enforcement of any Alting ruling except as individuals choose to comply.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:to not acknowledge man's ability of self-governance is to deny the existence of individual sovereignty
Do something like taxes 'deny the existence of individual sovereignty'
of course not. sovereignty allows an individual to enter into, reject or modify a social contract. any social contract is going to require the individual to forfeit a degree of sovereignty in exchange for something else, such as the creation, implementation and enforcement of laws (essentially 3rd party arbitration), security and/or increased economic prosperity through aggregation. clearly there is a large percentage of the US population which doesnt find the current degree of government involvment, as defined in the social contract or not, acceptable.
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I want to return to the detrimental aspects of allowing businesses free reign.
...
Another thing the guy in the video got wrong was he kind of bizarre idea of the structure and maintenance of feudal society. He seemed to think that it was primarily set up and maintained by military force. But, it was actually largely a system of economic domination. People at higher positions in the hierarchy owned or at least had rights to the property that the people under them lived and depended on.
it may be detrimental to allow businesses absolute control of the process of government or unfettered market abuse, sans accountability. but i dont see many people on this forum, or in the US, advocation such a system. i do notice a lot of disillusioned citizens who have seen their governments ineptitude at ensuring the growth and prosperity of the economy. i see a demand for decreased market regulation and intrusion as well as a demand for fiscal responsibility. those arent unreasonable demands in my eyes but were going to have disagreements as to the degree of change needed, if we agree on the change at all. as i see it, the tea party represents a movement that is "very much about fighting existing and developing systems of economic dependencies similar to those of the feudal period".
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:to not acknowledge man's ability of self-governance is to deny the existence of individual sovereignty
Do something like taxes 'deny the existence of individual sovereignty'
of course not. sovereignty allows an individual to enter into, reject or modify a social contract.
Taxes aren't optional. Unless you're willing to unseat from this country (and go to another one with taxes, realistically), you are obligated to pay taxes merely by being or having been in this country. Sovereignty, in the loose, Hobbesian form you've developed for it, does not 'allow' an individual to 'reject or modify' their taxes.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
The government's "ineptitude", as I see it, has largely (not entirely) consisted of a lack of regulation. Calling it ineptitude is actually a little off the mark. It's more like the successful use of politics by a tiny minority to increase its economic power.
I think a lot of older conservatives remember the 50s as a sort of a golden decade. A lot of liberals like see racist implications in this, but I think it actually has more to do with economics. It was just a pretty good time to be middle class (with a few caveats). The top tax bracket for that decade was around 90%.
The article I linked earlier argued that, should the Tea Partiers actually cut government spending to the degree they wish to, they would face a severe backlash. The tax policies they'd like to implement would be at least as harmful to the economic interests of their constituency.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
KoM: the right to punish was not made generally available, but specifically allocated by the authorities. That is, the authority to punish (and the amount that was allowed) was still considered to derive from the collective in part.
Posted by Foust (Member # 3043) on :
quote:I'm going to ask that you and others stop using the term "teabaggers". It's an intentionally offensive term, the equivalent of an ethnic slur.
As others have pointed out, there is no equivalence here. Mockery is not the same thing as a racial slur, which amounts to verbal terror. Racial slurs are used to make sure someone "knows their place" and to express one's own alleged inherent dominance; it is not the same thing at all as eye rolling contempt.
I just noted the mod edit as I type this. Fair enough.
What this discussion really needs is a critique of the idea of innate human nature.
It is easy for common sense to accept that there is such a thing as unchanging, innate human nature; after all, there is a laundry list of seemingly innate or universal behaviors that people like Steven Pinker have pointed out.
These lists may establish a certain set of universal human behaviors, but they do not establish that these behaviors are innately human. What I mean is, there is no reason why humans could not have evolved in such a way that shaking our heads could stand for "yes."
Therefore, there is a distinction between universal and innate. We can offer solid empirical founding for the universal, but not for the innate. Even if every single human shakes their head to indicate "no", we cannot claim this is an innate law of humanness. It is neither logically nor empirically necessary that head shaking should indicate "no." Empirical observation can tell us that a particular behavior appears to be universal, that all observed humans engage in this behavior, but it cannot tell us that it is innately human.
When we speak of human nature, we are speaking of a common X that all humans share. Different cultures and people have filled in that X with different things; Christians fill in the X with their idea of being created in God's image, Nietzsche filled it in with Will to Power, etc, etc. Since we cannot truly defend statements about innateness, we cannot claim that the content of the X is innate. We can only say that the content of the X is universal. Maybe we all do it, right down to the last remote African tribesman, but claims about the innateness of our version of X can never be truly proven.
Now, for Libertarians (and the West in general, I think) this X is usually the desire and freedom of the capital-I Individual. The Individual as master of their lives, striving towards freedom and prosperity. From now on, please read capital-I Individual as shorthand for "the freedom, desire and self-interest of the individual human").
I'm saying that Libertarians, tea ba... partiers and and Randians fill in that supposedly-innate-but-at-best-universal X with the Individual.
Really, all it takes is a handful of counter-examples to dispel any notion of innateness. Whatever behavior you consider innate, humans - by definition - would work that way. We know that humans do not always act in accord with the ideal of the Individual - some people give up their freedom to become slaves of whatever stripe. This is another reason that this Individuality cannot be innate - the best it can hope for is universality. An innate behavior cannot be changed; if the Individual's striving for freedom were innate, there would be no slaves - only people defeated and killed by their would-be masters. What is innate cannot be changed. However, universal behaviors could be changed. A human giving up on their desires, freedom and self-interest could simply be falling short of a universal ideal.
Here is the tricky thing about the universal, however. Our perspective on it is always going to be partial. That bare word, "universal," does not mean much without content, at least not at first. If we're going to say humans share something other than X, we need to say what that X is. And that X is always going to come from a particular person's or group's partial perspective.
Above, I said that "the way things are" is always code for the "male white Christian." The Libertarian's Individual, their version of X's content, is built around the partial perspective of men. White men. Often white Christian men. Look at the long list of examples, both broad patterns and specific anecdotes. Rand Paul's criticism of the civil rights act - it limited the freedom of white business owners. Phyllis Schafly's insistence on women staying in the home. The opposition to the "Ground Zero" mosque. Oh, and here's a question for everyone: how many people have you met that want to limit the role of slavery in the civil war? Every single apologist for the pre-war South I've ever met was a Libertarian. That is not an accident: these things are actually built into their perspective.
The Individual is white, male and Christian because the whole idea of the Individual was developed by and championed by middle class white males - especially the moderns. People like Descartes and Hobbes and Locke trying to subtract away any and all qualities that they consider particular. What they were left with were the qualities that they could not consider themselves without - all the qualities that went into making up their social position. White, male. Toss in straight and Christian as well.
I know you're an obvious counter-example, Lisa, but I'd suggest your libertarianism sits uneasily with with your Judaism (which is entirely founded on collective memory, see your arguments for the truth of the Torah based on national revelation). What probably greases the wheels for that co-existence is your extreme defensiveness. Libertarianism is basically bunker mentality these days.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by Foust:
quote:I'm going to ask that you and others stop using the term "teabaggers". It's an intentionally offensive term, the equivalent of an ethnic slur.
As others have pointed out, there is no equivalence here. Mockery is not the same thing as a racial slur, which amounts to verbal terror. Racial slurs are used to make sure someone "knows their place" and to express one's own alleged inherent dominance; it is not the same thing at all as eye rolling contempt.
I just noted the mod edit as I type this. Fair enough.
What this discussion really needs is a critique of the idea of innate human nature....
the pejorative term used by some to refer to tea party supporters is an ethnophaulism; the offensive label is used to create a negative cognitive image of the target group or individual. does the slur somehow become less derogatory or demeaning because its not being used within the context of etnicity or race?
it reflects poorly on ones character to use such a term and its just plain stupid to address someone of an opposing view with such an expression and expect meaningful and civil dialog to ensue.
as for the larger discussion, what are some examples of innate human traits or behaviors?
Posted by Foust (Member # 3043) on :
quote:does the slur somehow become less derogatory or demeaning because its not being used within the context of etnicity or race?
Yes, it definitely does. People have been enslaved, butchered, oppressed and stripped of all dignity on the basis of their race. Racial slurs are a part of that sad, sorry tradition.
Taking the piss out of a flash in the pan populist movement that will not exist in ten years is nothing like that.
Equating "teabagger" with the n-word is highly obnoxious, but I guess predictable since it's hard to find a group that has a larger unjustified persecution complex than the populist right.
Posted by Foust (Member # 3043) on :
quote:as for the larger discussion, what are some examples of innate human traits or behaviors?
If you're asking me, I'd say universal rather than innate. Smiling, head shaking as negative, other stuff like that. Steven Pinker has a long list in his book The Blank Slate. Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:to not acknowledge man's ability of self-governance is to deny the existence of individual sovereignty
Do something like taxes 'deny the existence of individual sovereignty'
of course not. sovereignty allows an individual to enter into, reject or modify a social contract.
Taxes aren't optional. Unless you're willing to unseat from this country (and go to another one with taxes, realistically), you are obligated to pay taxes merely by being or having been in this country. Sovereignty, in the loose, Hobbesian form you've developed for it, does not 'allow' an individual to 'reject or modify' their taxes.
how so? theres a multitude of actions one can take which allows the individual to reject or modify their taxes. a legislative decree doesnt cause ones body to seize and brain to cease functioning.
taxes only exist within the terms of a social contract. why and how would an individual impose a self-taxation? we already established the fact that when an individual is born into a society, or to become part of one, they must give up a degree of sovereignty. thats just a fact of life and must be delt with accordingly. you make it seem as if the citizens of this country have no options at all when i comes to deciding the amount of government taxation levied on them. a society such as ours must strive to exist despite the injustices inherent to nature. since leaving the country isnt often feasible, and not paying taxes could result in negative consequences, our country has given the people large degree of control by means of democracy. taxes are indeed optional but the consequences of nonpayment are not.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by Foust:
quote:does the slur somehow become less derogatory or demeaning because its not being used within the context of etnicity or race?
Yes, it definitely does. People have been enslaved, butchered, oppressed and stripped of all dignity on the basis of their race. Racial slurs are a part of that sad, sorry tradition.
Taking the piss out of a flash in the pan populist movement that will not exist in ten years is nothing like that.
Equating "teabagger" with the n-word is highly obnoxious, but I guess predictable since it's hard to find a group that has a larger unjustified persecution complex than the populist right.
it seems you dont think too highly of your fellow citizens. whats predictable is that you dont find teabagger offensive since youre not a supporter of the movement, just as nigger isnt offensive to me since im not black. what i find sad, as opposed to obnoxious, it your insensitivity when applying labels to those with opposing views. your guilt complex profits you little but the time to criticize others and seems to somehow make you less conscious of your own imperfections.
and despite your alleged precognitive abilities, the tea party currently has a profound effect on the political and economic processes of this country, the results of which will likely be seen in ten years time. i dont know how to help you cope with that but i can assure you, name calling, by any one on any side, isnt productive.
Posted by Foust (Member # 3043) on :
quote:it seems you dont think too highly of your fellow citizens.
I'm Canadian.
quote:hats predictable is that you dont find teabagger offensive since youre not a supporter of the movement, just as nigger isnt offensive to me since im not black.
I'm white too. Don't you get why the n-word is such an obnoxious thing for white people to say? That single word carries an entire history behind it? Call a black person a nigger, and you're saying "Hey, remember that time when your great grandmother had her baby tossed in front of a car? Remember when the KKK lynched your grandfather? Remember when looking at a white woman could get you a beat down? Yeah, I remember those times too..." *stares wistfully into the distance*
Call a tea partier a tea b***** (sigh) and you're saying "Ha, ha, ha."
Big difference.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: i dont know how to help you cope with that but i can assure you, name calling, by any one on any side, isnt productive.
He's not saying that name calling is productive, he's pointing out that equating 'teabaggers' (well, when tea party members themselves aren't hilariously using that term to define themselves without understanding the connotation) with an ethnic slur is a retarded comparison.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: how so? theres a multitude of actions one can take which allows the individual to reject or modify their taxes. a legislative decree doesnt cause ones body to seize and brain to cease functioning.
Great. And when the legislative process which requires taxes to be paid by all members of nation-states are out of one's individual control, this is irrelevant to whether or not the taxes impose upon one's 'sovereignty?' — presumably, of course, because you can still make the choice not to pay, regardless of negative repercussion?
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: how so? theres a multitude of actions one can take which allows the individual to reject or modify their taxes. a legislative decree doesnt cause ones body to seize and brain to cease functioning.
taxes only exist within the terms of a social contract. why and how would an individual impose a self-taxation? we already established the fact that when an individual is born into a society, or to become part of one, they must give up a degree of sovereignty. thats just a fact of life and must be delt with accordingly. you make it seem as if the citizens of this country have no options at all when i comes to deciding the amount of government taxation levied on them. a society such as ours must strive to exist despite the injustices inherent to nature. since leaving the country isnt often feasible, and not paying taxes could result in negative consequences, our country has given the people large degree of control by means of democracy. taxes are indeed optional but the consequences of nonpayment are not.
Dude, capax, this is not what you want to say here. So anything illegal is also optional as long as the brain and body remain healthy?
If correct, this means there's nothing the government can do to infringe your freedom unless they start lobotomizing criminals.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: theres a multitude of actions one can take which allows the individual to reject or modify their taxes. a legislative decree doesnt cause ones body to seize and brain to cease functioning.
So? If I hold a pistol to your head and tell you to give me your wallet, you can still choose to defy me. But that doesn't mean I'm not coercing you, and essentially committing an act of violence against you.
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: taxes only exist within the terms of a social contract.
I want to throw up every time I hear the phrase "social contract". There is no contract without agreement in advance by all parties to the contract. That's so basic that I don't get why it should need to be said. But clearly it does need to be said, because you come along telling me that I've entered into a contract that's binding on me despite the fact that I never entered into it.
It's like saying, "I'm volunteering you to go and do this." It's an abuse of language, at the very least.
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: why and how would an individual impose a self-taxation? we already established the fact that when an individual is born into a society, or to become part of one, they must give up a degree of sovereignty.
We've established nothing of the sort. Possibly when they choose voluntarily to become part of one. But there's a technical term for someone who is bound by terms from birth. The term is "slave".
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: you make it seem as if the citizens of this country have no options at all when i comes to deciding the amount of government taxation levied on them.
It's like the Churchill and Lady Astor thing. "We've already established what you are. We're only haggling on the price." Where do you get the idea that a majority is entitled to take away the property of a minority? Majority rule may be a decent way of deciding between multiple legitimate actions. But it doesn't justify illegitimate ones.
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: a society such as ours must strive to exist despite the injustices inherent to nature. since leaving the country isnt often feasible, and not paying taxes could result in negative consequences, our country has given the people large degree of control by means of democracy. taxes are indeed optional but the consequences of nonpayment are not.
That's inane. Taxes are not optional in any sane sense of the word.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:But there's a technical term for someone who is bound by terms from birth. The term is "slave".
That's not actually what slave means at all. Which is a good thing, because otherwise you've rendered the term mostly meaningless, and any citizen born into any country with taxation (in effect, all of them but the collapsed broken ones full of factional warfare) is now a 'slave.'
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
them asians
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: KoM: the right to punish was not made generally available, but specifically allocated by the authorities. That is, the authority to punish (and the amount that was allowed) was still considered to derive from the collective in part.
This is not my understanding. Rather, the Ting was a forum for negotiation between clans, with some third-party arbitration. If you read the sagas, you will see examples of Ting meetings breaking down into violence, of people ignoring Ting decisions and daring their opponent to enforce them, and even of outlawry being defied. Being outlawed, the strongest sanction available at Ting, is not an act of government but an act of one's own clan: In effect it means one's own kinfolk say "This guy is so obnoxious, we understand why you guys want him dead. Go ahead and kill him, we won't interfere; we wash our hands of him". And even then, people who'd made Iceland too hot to hold them would go into exile for a few years, then come back when anger had faded and there wasn't going to be a huge lynch mob baying for their blood. (The average magnate could, of course, deal with a small lynch mob out of his own resources.)
Oddly enough, the UN makes a better model for the Ting than does any national parliament. It's a place for sovereign warlords to meet and try to hash out their differences without resort to fighting, and with third parties saying things like "Well, it seems to me that Einar has a good point there" or "Ok, if this goes on I'm going to have to throw my weight in with Harald". The possibility that negotiations will break down and there'll be fighting is very present; there's a reason "come man-strong to Ting" is an expression. (It means bringing a lot of your retainers and kinfolk so you can fight your way out if things go badly.)
Another linguistic point: The result of a Ting is usually 'forlik', agreement or reconciliation, rather than 'dom', judgement. Again this points to negotiation between sovereign parties, with one side agreeing to pay tribute rather than bear the cost of all-out warfare, and the other side agreeing that the tribute is sufficient recompense. It does not indicate a powerful third party imposing his own evaluation of what is fair recompense, and then enforcing that settlement - in other words, what we'd think of as government.
If you check through the Norwegian (as opposed to Icelandic) sagas, you'll see a lot of cases of someone offending a king or powerful noble, and asking a third party, usually a friend of both, to make reconciliation ('forlik') between them. People without such a connection are just out of luck; usually they flee to another country. Observe that the third party is, generally speaking, himself quite a powerful man; thus there is always, unspoken, the threat that if no reconciliation is forthcoming, that noble might himself go into rebellion or opposition. "So my friend pissed you off; anything he can do to make it better? Oh, by the way, he is my friend. Good friend. Just like you're my good friend. I really hate it when my friends aren't friends, don't you?" As a side note, one of the most-quoted tags from the Håvamål is "Be a friend to your friend, and to his friends; but with unfriend's friend, friendship to hold, suits not the seemly man". As the kings get more powerful, however, we see less of this; and similarly in Iceland: As power becomes concentrated in the hands of a few magnates, the Ting becomes less important, because there are fewer third-party allies one could find there. Probably the process would ahve ended in a real oligarchy or monarchy if the kings of Norway hadn't got in first.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: BUT WHATEVER
Meanwhile, on that note with conservative pundit David Frum:
quote:Let me just draw your attention to one of them. So one of the really demoralizing things about the current demographic reality in America is that the immigrant groups that you might think, based on a traditional economic analysis, should be attracted to the Republican Party – East Asians, for example – are actually especially repelled by the Republican Party. I think one of the points that Ruy Teixeira would make is that East Asians are the only group where a plurality call themselves liberal. And that’s increasingly true. We see even among Vietnamese-Americans under age 30 – we had a story about this on my site – younger Vietnamese-Americans, one of the most pro-Republican demographic groups, are trending Democratic.
quote:And one of the things that I think Republicans should be worrying about every single day, is why does the party – why does the message of enterprise and entrepreneurship and self-reliance not do better among East Asian and South Asian migrants, who you would think ought to respond to it? But they don’t because they hear other messages packed in with the enterprise message that they understandably don’t want.
quote:Yeah. I don’t think – I don’t think you need hypersensitive ears. I don’t think you need hypersensitive ears to hear a lot of racial coding in the Republican message as it’s being propounded over the past half-dozen years and especially over the past two. And even if that racial coding is not packed in, it can be taken out. And these things then become very self-fulfilling.
Lots of other interesting stuff in there as well.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:We've established nothing of the sort. Possibly when they choose voluntarily to become part of one. But there's a technical term for someone who is bound by terms from birth. The term is "slave".
Does that make us all God's slaves, on your point of view?
I certainly never agreed to become subject to the Commandments.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Not a great analogy destineer- the tax system and Christian mythology are not analogous, and the "bound by" or "subject to" terms are semantics. You are not bound to the commandments by law in the way that you are bound to the tax system, full stop.
As to Lisa's hyperbole: Lisa, I think what people like you don't understand or don't want to accept is that whatever you call the social contract, it is an inevitability of human life, and not an aberration or a perversion of our nature. We are all slaves to it yes, in the way that we are all slaves to its nature. But we can affect it and change it- we can influence it powerfully if we are able. Your ideal world is one of barbarism- where you are in control of all aspects of your personal life, and where no one, including you, can have any lasting impact on the world. When we came out of the trees onto the savanas, hunted and slept and worked together, learned languages and customs and formed governments, we were following our nature- we were doing what it took for our species to survive.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote:We've established nothing of the sort. Possibly when they choose voluntarily to become part of one. But there's a technical term for someone who is bound by terms from birth. The term is "slave".
Does that make us all God's slaves, on your point of view?
I certainly never agreed to become subject to the Commandments.
Yes.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
So now slavery is a positive and necessary thing in your worldview.
That's .. even more profound dilution of a word. It's like deciding to redefine words like 'rape' to include even friendly eye contact.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: http://www.cis.org/PanelTranscripts/ConservativesAndImmigration
Lots of other interesting stuff in there as well.
That is pretty interesting. Frum is a well-spoken guy who likes to tell his own party what they don't want to hear (or, at least, don't want publically disseminated).
In my reference, though, there aren't any asians. Just hispanics that Sharron Angle was bizarrely insinuating were probably asian.
quote:The Tea Party Senate hopeful is in the middle of a new controversy after telling a group of Latino high school students that some of them looked Asian.
Angle, speaking at Rancho High School, was responding to students asking the candidate to explain recent ads she has run attacking her opponent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, over illegal immigration.
The ads depict dark-skinned men who appear to be Latino crossing the border.
Angle's reply was caught on tape and sent to The Associated Press.
"I think that you're misinterpreting those commercials," Angle told the students. "I'm not sure that those are Latinos in that commercial. What it is, is a fence, and there are people coming across that fence."
Citing the diversity of the U.S. population, Angle added: "I don't know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me."
The comment left several students grumbling, with one girl whispering, "I hate this lady."
Angle furthered her point, talking about her half-Latino grandchildren and then bizarrely mentioned she was once mistakenly called "the first Asian legislator in the Nevada Assembly."
With two weeks until Election Day, Angle and Reid are locked in a heated, neck-and-neck race.
(hey sharron, the people in your commercial are hispanic)
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: In my reference, though, there aren't any asians. Just hispanics that Sharron Angle was bizarrely insinuating were probably asian.
Oh I know, but I think that that and the odd "first Asian legislator" bit won't play well among Asian communities either anyways.
Posted by Foust (Member # 3043) on :
Here is another interesting article on the loose-leaf tea partiers.
quote:There is genuine populist anger out there. But the angry have been deceived and exploited by posers who belong to the same class of "elites" and "insiders" that the Tea Party movement supposedly deplores. Americans who want to stick it to the man are instead sending money to the man.
Really, can they go more than 5 minutes without performative contradiction? I think not.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
At the least, the tea party's well-managed populist anger does prove that the Kochs are fsking geniuses.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: At the least, the tea party's well-managed populist anger does prove that the Kochs are fsking geniuses.
A fair bit of the things that happen in politics in our country make a lot more sense to me if I assume that they are the result of the two old guys from Trading Places making bets about the the absurd things they can get people to do.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:"I think that you're misinterpreting those commercials," Angle told the students. "I'm not sure that those are Latinos in that commercial. What it is, is a fence, and there are people coming across that fence."
Ah, Canada too. Premium WTF.
quote:Sharron Angle to Asians: I'm you By Jeff Yang, Special to SF Gate ... Attempting to soft-pedal the impact of the ads to a clearly hostile audience, Angle suggested that the students had "misinterpreted" them -- that the images might not represent Latinos, and the border being discussed might not be the one between the U.S. and Mexico. "Our northern border is where the terrorists came through -- that's the most porous border that we have," she told them.
The students were obviously skeptical that Angle's primary immigration concern was the nonexistent boundary between Nevada and Canada, so the candidate chose to press the issue using a different tack -- stating that, in our diverse country, it's difficult to even tell races and ethnicities apart ...
quote:And that's the fundamental racial hypocrisy of the populist right. Like their rising star Angle, they espouse the notion of the "melting pot" -- of chocolate and caramel swirled into and subsumed within America's vast vanilla social fondue. But however much people of color assimilate, most of us still "look" Latino, "look" Asian, "look" black. And that means when we're pulled over by Arizona troopers, or we hang out in the wrong Detroit bar, or we force the jammed door of our own home in Cambridge, Mass. -- we instantly unmelt from the pot. ... The truth is, those who proclaim the virtues of the melting pot, who demand an end to the identification of humans by ethnicity and color, are often the first to dial 911 when they see a dark-skinned stranger, and the ones who pull their purses closer and roll up their windows when passing through a nonwhite neighborhood. They want to ignore race in the name of eliminating racism -- but only selectively, when it benefits an entrenched and unequal power structure.
i was surprised to wake up this morning and discover that the incident where a rand paul supporter up and curb-stomped someone was on the top of news.
Posted by PMH (Member # 12495) on :
quote:Originally posted by Parkour: Believing in objectivism to be the answer to how society should be is, pretty much, hoping for a utopia that ignores human nature. Jut as much, in fact, as any supposed narrative about how the american left wants to set up an impossible utopia.
Objectivism(*) was developed starting from a careful observation of human nature. (*: all except for Metaphysics, of course)
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by PMH: Objectivism(*) was developed starting from a careful observation of human nature.
I don't think I can classify what Ayn Rand did to observe human nature in order to develop her socioeconomic theory as very careful, or at least I could say it was too utterly confounded by internal emotional and irrational biases to have ended up tenable (and has a virtually guaranteed chance of never even being tried) given certain social and psychological realities inherent to the human condition.
This goes even beyond her whole cracked-out meth addict thing. I'd say even more important is the soviet angle. Ayn Rand saw her family destroyed by a supposedly Communist state and was reacting to a childlike sense of dispossession. If all you see is the worst parts of government action soon you learn to hate governments, and the end result on her philosophy was predictable, even understandable.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
also holy thread necro
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
New user. Has revived three threads, including this one.
Seems to be going after correcting every Rand mention on the forum. This might take a while.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka: New user. Has revived three threads, including this one.
Seems to be going after correcting every Rand mention on the forum. This might take a while.
True story.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka: New user. Has revived three threads, including this one.
Seems to be going after correcting every Rand mention on the forum. This might take a while.
Oh, wonderful. It's one of those. Posted by PMH (Member # 12495) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:Originally posted by rivka: New user. Has revived three threads, including this one.
Seems to be going after correcting every Rand mention on the forum. This might take a while.
True story.
Is there something wrong with that? (seriously, honestly, sincerely)
Posted by CT (Member # 8342) on :
On its own and in the right context, not really. Like if you were really interested in the Botannical Gardens, became a member, and showed up for a 3-day retreat there, you might be delighted to listen to an hour-and-a-half lecture on the primary species of rhododendron found in the US, and you might be avid at following along the accompanying pamphlet, footnotes included.
But if some guy [that you don't know***] wandered into your Wednesday evening pool party (or up to your dinner table, or what have you) and started going on in great detail about various types of rhododendron, it might get tedious.
That's what BlackBlade was saying about becoming a member of the community. You can talk about most everything here and from most any different perspective or platform, but it really should be talking with people rather than at them. Long diatribes with footnotes and little other communication is going to fall into the latter camp.
So, in context, kind of. But that can change.
---
Added: ***Of course, if it's a guy you know, it's different. It's just Uncle Phil, who's really into his rhododendrons, and boy, he knows a thing or two about soil mixtures. But, you know, he reviewed your noir detective novel and gave some awesome feedback, and remember that time he chipped in and made grasshopper pie when Elma's fridge was out. He's a stand-up guy. He puts up with you going on and on about your bunions, and so you humor him about the rhododendrons. It's all good. At least you know he isn't going to do the equivalent of whipping out a toxic plant-duster and spray you all with carcinogens screaming incoherently about "stem dieback, you suckers!!!"
Because those rhododendron fanatics ... man. They can flip on ya.
[ February 11, 2011, 12:14 PM: Message edited by: CT ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Listen to CT. She is wise.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
Yes...CT is wise. From her post we take away the most important advice today--don't trust the rhododendron fanatics. Something about learning how to spell rhododens...rohdowd...rhodododo...that big word drives people insane.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
quote:Originally posted by PMH:
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:Originally posted by rivka: New user. Has revived three threads, including this one.
Seems to be going after correcting every Rand mention on the forum. This might take a while.
True story.
Is there something wrong with that? (seriously, honestly, sincerely)
Yes, there is. Not everyone comes here to talk about Rand/Objectivism; if there's already an active thread discussing it, why bump others? A limited number of threads can be displayed on a single page, so it makes sense to avoid having multiple active threads on the same topic. Keeping the discussion to a single thread has the added benefit of ensuring that everyone is on the same page, as it were, since all of the current discussion of a given topic is in one place.
There there's also a "soft" argument against simultaneously reviving multiple dead threads that contain discussion of Rand/Objectivism: It makes you seem like you have an axe to grind.
You don't really participate here unless you're correcting what you perceive to be someone's misapprehension of an element of Rand's work or Objectivism in general. You're so dedicated to the cause that you even revive discussions that died out months ago in order to "correct" people. Some people don't mind this, but a lot of people find it kind of annoying. I think you'll find that the people whose months-old quotes you're addressing often won't reply to your thread resurrection posts. It's best summed up by this classic one-panel XKCD strip:
We've all been there at times, but a five-second glance over your posting history says to me that you aren't just that guy every so often, you're that guy all the time. If anyone says anything about Rand/Objectivism, there you are to correct any perceived errors.
I know where you're coming from. There's a specific topic that's very personal to me and in which I have a great deal of both emotional and intellectual investment. I'm quite knowledgeable on the subject and have formed conclusions that unfortunately make it difficult to discuss with people in the other "camp" or with people who are nominally in my "camp."
There was one fellow on this forum with whom I frequently butted heads on the topic, and we were both completely unable to even tolerate the other one's view. But we both engaged in discussions on plenty of other topics, and got along fine in other threads. I was saddened when we learned that he'd died of cancer, and helped his family rescue archived threads in which he'd participated -- including some where he and I had gotten into it quite heatedly.
I don't discuss that particular topic around here anymore, but it wasn't because of the poster I just told you about. The point is that neither of us was a one-dimensional poster -- because we were able to engage on other subjects and have perfectly normal interactions, neither of us came off as trying to lecture the community or axe-grinders.
Since you haven't engaged the community on any other subjects, at the moment it still seems like you're talking at people, not with them. There's lots of other discussion going on. If you're actually interested in the community and not just in make sure everyone is exposed to Objectivism, why not participate in some of it? You might even consider my approach and actively not participate in discussions on the topic in which you're the most emotionally invested, at least on a temporary basis. It's okay for people to be wrong on the internet, you know? Posted by PMH (Member # 12495) on :
These comments were helpful.. (I just went back & read them.) ...at least somewhat (I think I still don't get it fully -- which I'll try to explain, to the extent that I have the energy.)
quote:Originally posted by CT: On its own and in the right context, not really. Like if you were really interested in the Botannical Gardens, became a member, and showed up for a 3-day retreat there, you might be delighted to listen to an hour-and-a-half lecture on the primary species of rhododendron found in the US, and you might be avid at following along the accompanying pamphlet, footnotes included.
But if some guy [that you don't know***]
I'm not at all used to ... er, the ~sociology~ of forums.. ..but I take it that what's implicit here is that one is supposed to begin his participation in them by.. ..well, I was gonna say "talking /with/ people (instead of /at/ them)".. ..but isn't it really "asking questions, rather than offering opinions"?
...anyway, the theory seems to be that one thereby gets known by the others in the forum - and then is tolerated if he has an issue that he has studied for eons, has good reason to think he understands well, and thinks is incredibly important.
I could buy that.
But OTOH, I question whether any (reasonable) amount of introductory behavior would have changed substantially the reactions that I have gotten to my posts.
I do understand (now) that my jumping in and contradicting large-N posts at once - and as my introduction - was a strange thing to do.
Sadly, I don't even clearly remember why exactly I did it. I think it was just that I had enjoyed Ender so much that when I found these forums, I wanted to see what all was in there -- and since Objectivism is the most important thing I can imagine.. (Go ahead, shoot.)
..I searched for mentions of it.. ..and finding flames betraying the kind of misunderstanding that comes only from approaching a subject shallowly - and from a fixed ~ideology~ - I sorta went bat shit.
quote: wandered into your Wednesday evening pool party (or up to your dinner table, or what have you) and started going on in great detail about various types of rhododendron, it might get tedious.
What if (to be more like what actually happened) he wandered in, heard people badmouthing rhodos, & stood up for them?
(I guess that (even) I wouldn't do that - ~in the flesh~ -- bec it would be more obvious / immediate that everyone esle were friends, & I was an outsider.)
quote:
That's what BlackBlade was saying about becoming a member of the community.
I was surprised to not be able to find where he said that.
Maybe it was on another of my undeadified threads...
quote: You can talk about most everything here and from most any different perspective or platform, but it really should be talking with people rather than at them.
Yes.
The thing that I was trying to do.. (stand up for)
..was inherently an /at/ kind of thing.
I think that I have gotten at least a little more /with/ -- although maybe only over in Ornery.
quote: Long diatribes with footnotes and little other communication is going to fall into the latter camp.
So, in context, kind of. But that can change.
---
Added: ***Of course, if it's a guy you know, it's different. It's just Uncle Phil, who's really into his rhododendrons, and boy, he knows a thing or two about soil mixtures. But, you know, he reviewed your noir detective novel and gave some awesome feedback, and remember that time he chipped in and made grasshopper pie when Elma's fridge was out. He's a stand-up guy. He puts up with you going on and on about your bunions, and so you humor him about the rhododendrons. It's all good. At least you know he isn't going to do the equivalent of whipping out a toxic plant-duster and spray you all with carcinogens screaming incoherently about "stem dieback, you suckers!!!"
Because those rhododendron fanatics ... man. They can flip on ya.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by twinky:
quote:Originally posted by PMH:
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:Originally posted by rivka: New user. Has revived three threads, including this one.
Seems to be going after correcting every Rand mention on the forum. This might take a while.
True story.
Is there something wrong with that? (seriously, honestly, sincerely)
Yes, there is. Not everyone comes here to talk about Rand/Objectivism; if there's already an active thread discussing it, why bump others? A limited number of threads can be displayed on a single page, so it makes sense to avoid having multiple active threads on the same topic. Keeping the discussion to a single thread has the added benefit of ensuring that everyone is on the same page, as it were, since all of the current discussion of a given topic is in one place.
There there's also a "soft" argument against simultaneously reviving multiple dead threads that contain discussion of Rand/Objectivism: It makes you seem like you have an axe to grind.
You don't really participate here unless you're correcting what you perceive to be someone's misapprehension of an element of Rand's work or Objectivism in general. You're so dedicated to the cause that you even revive discussions that died out months ago in order to "correct" people. Some people don't mind this, but a lot of people find it kind of annoying. I think you'll find that the people whose months-old quotes you're addressing often won't reply to your thread resurrection posts. It's best summed up by this classic one-panel XKCD strip:
We've all been there at times, but a five-second glance over your posting history says to me that you aren't just that guy every so often, you're that guy all the time. If anyone says anything about Rand/Objectivism, there you are to correct any perceived errors.
I know where you're coming from. There's a specific topic that's very personal to me and in which I have a great deal of both emotional and intellectual investment. I'm quite knowledgeable on the subject and have formed conclusions that unfortunately make it difficult to discuss with people in the other "camp" or with people who are nominally in my "camp."
There was one fellow on this forum with whom I frequently butted heads on the topic, and we were both completely unable to even tolerate the other one's view. But we both engaged in discussions on plenty of other topics, and got along fine in other threads. I was saddened when we learned that he'd died of cancer, and helped his family rescue archived threads in which he'd participated -- including some where he and I had gotten into it quite heatedly.
I don't discuss that particular topic around here anymore, but it wasn't because of the poster I just told you about. The point is that neither of us was a one-dimensional poster -- because we were able to engage on other subjects and have perfectly normal interactions, neither of us came off as trying to lecture the community or axe-grinders.
Since you haven't engaged the community on any other subjects, at the moment it still seems like you're talking at people, not with them. There's lots of other discussion going on. If you're actually interested in the community and not just in make sure everyone is exposed to Objectivism, why not participate in some of it? You might even consider my approach and actively not participate in discussions on the topic in which you're the most emotionally invested, at least on a temporary basis. It's okay for people to be wrong on the internet, you know?
Like me and China!
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:What if (to be more like what actually happened) he wandered in, heard people badmouthing rhodos, & stood up for them?
(I guess that (even) I wouldn't do that - ~in the flesh~ -- bec it would be more obvious / immediate that everyone esle were friends, & I was an outsider.)
Given that you're reviving long since dead threads, I think the more apt analogy would be something like: What if you read the transcripts of the pool game and then interrupted their game to go over several conversations they'd had at that game over the previous weeks and months?
And how different would it be if that person played the game with them for awhile, got to know them, and then brought it up? Well, they'd probably still frown on bringing up long since dead issues, since it's sort of uncouth around here, but those originally interested in the topic would probably at least hear you out so long as you didn't spam them with it.
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