I think it is a common misconception that “anarchism” is about “being against government.” Communists are also against the government, that is, they are “against the government” to the extent that they advocate revolution against the government to achieve a Communist system.
We also use “anarchy” to denote absence of government, lawlessness, and a Road Warrior style civic system. But again, I believe this is based on misunderstanding Anarchism.
I think the closest thing to 19th century anarchism is the Green Party platform, which favors the local over the central, a kind of commune form of society as opposed to a strong Federal system. But there is a strong Socialist aspect to anarchism. It isn’t being “against government”, it is “against the government” (we have) to be replaced with a system of local communes?
Speaking of the socialist aspect to anarchism, what about Noam Chomsky’s position? He calls himself an anarchist, yet he teaches at a state institution (MIT). How does he explain this hypocrisy? Does he have his own definition of anarchy?
Exactly.
The Communists want the State to wither away too, and they are against the government if it is not a Communist government, but I wouldn’t exactly call them Libertarians. When Professor Chomsky calls himself an anarchist, I think he is using one of the definitions I had offered.
I am thinking historical anarchism is along the lines of we will all live in self-sufficient communes powered by windmills and animal gas, and some self-appointed member of the commune will direct us as to which TV programs we are allowed to watch, that is, when we are permitted to watch TV at all.
I see anarchism as a very authoritarian system, but at a very local level. And if you don’t think local government can be authoritarian, you haven’t encountered some town councils.
There is also Libertarian Fascism where instead of a prissy commune you have a prissy gated community, conventant/contract, and community board telling you what your lawn has to look like.
If you’re libertarian, that is if you claim to care about individual liberty, Hamas should be one of the top most hated regimes in the world. You should be celebrating that they are being destroyed and that the Palestinian people might have a chance to be freed from such a totalitarian evil regime like Hamas is.
That’s a point well made, (though I think he may be spectacularly underrating Hamas’s support within Gaza) why do so many of the people commenting on this forum who think they’re libertarians think that “libertarianism” means “exterminating”, or subjugating Palestinians and other Muslims?
I’ve been labeled a leftist because I support libertarian principles for everyone, not just some, which is why I’m getting a bit annoyed with some of the clowns commenting here who don’t get that they’re Marxists by the definition Rand advanced a couple of days ago.
What does a libertarian do to protect folks from those who are committed to an evil belief system, committed even unto death?
I’ve said on this forum before that a pure form of libertarianism is probably not practical, some of my reasons are mentioned by Dick below (well done Dick).
Where Dick and I are, to an almost bizarre extent, in disagreement is how much of a threat typical Muslims are to everyone else.
He argues that Muslims are dedicated to wiping out or subjugating the rest of Humanity, so I point out that there are about a hundred countries that have significant populations of Muslims and non-Muslims, and that in the vast majority of those countries there isn’t the religious violence that, reading Dick’s comments, you’d think that there must be.
Dick to me is no different in his attitude to Islam than Nazi’s were in their attitudes towards Jews, I find Dick’s reasoning no different to that of the Nazi’s, which amounted to “Jews are Evil, they’ve exploited us for too long, we should kill them”.
So to me, your “Those who are committed to an evil belief system, committed even unto death” applies to the Nazis who orchestrated the Holocaust, it applies to the fanatical Islamists, it may even apply to Dick, but not to WW2 Germans in general, or to Muslims in general, or to those adopting a “decidedly minority form of conservatism” in general.
People are individuals, I’m no fan of using stereotypes to justify bigotry.
Getting back to you’re question, being a libertarian doesn’t mean you have to be a pacifist.
Seems to me that libertarians, for the most part, are unwilling to take a stance against evil, because that would require a moral judgment they are unwilling to make.
The only “evil” I’ve ever seen is people exercising too much unconstrained power.
Andrew,
I’m not Dick and do not proportion to speak for him. However, I can read his comment below and see that it doesn’t come to the conclusions you make of it. To get to your statement, you have to believe it was the US desire to kill every last Japanese during WWII. That is not historically accurate. Further, it is historically accurate that The Nazis did want to kill every last Jew as part of the final solution. Never does Dick suggest to do this in regards to Muslim aggression.
I do agree that Dick wrote an excellent comment and find it remarkable for anticipating your response.
Ugh….iOS autocomplete… Double edged sword it is.
To get to your statement, you have to believe it was the US desire to kill every last Japanese during WWII.
I don’t get how you reach that conclusion, you’re saying I’m comparing the US to the Nazis?
Absolutely No, throughout this entire and very long debate I’ve had with Dick my point has been that you don’t slaughter huge populations because of the actions of small minorities within those population.
He’s saying that’s an OK approach, the Japan example he advances isn’t relevant because no one is accusing a small minority of the WW2 Japanese of acting in a way that was independent of the vast majority.
His detour to Japan makes no sense in the context of whats been discussed.
you’re saying I’m comparing the US to the Nazis?
Andrew, you compared Dick’s opinion to being like Nazis. I’ll quote you:
Dick to me is no different in his attitude to Islam than Nazi’s were in their attitudes towards Jews
Now, I’ll quote Dick:
As to exterminating or subjugating Muslims, that is hardly my desire, but I am okay with doing either or both if that is what it takes to blunt Islam’s thus-far ceaseless aggression against the entire non-Muslim world. During WW2, virtually the entirety of the Japanese population were willing, at least in principle, to die for the Emperor and the greater glory of the Japanese nation. Many actually proved willing to do so in practice as well. Fortunately, many more decided to abjure fighting-to-the-last-man extinction when it became brutally apparent that the United States was actually possessed of military technology that enabled societal extinction as a real-world option in dealing with Japanese aggression. Not to put too fine a point on it, but when fighting to the last man, woman and child became an undeniable near-term physical possibility instead of merely an intellectual abstraction, the Japanese – sensibly – blinked.
Dick’s opinion is apparently doing to Muslim as the US did to Japan in WWII. If you say Dick’s opinion is “being like Nazis”, then it appears to me you believe, (I’ll quote myself): it was the US desire to kill every last Japanese during WWII.
I could possibly accept your argument that Japan is out of context to your sense of the matter, but I’m weary of accepting your argument when you distort Dick’s comment as being akin to the Nazi’s attitude of Jews. He explicitly did not make that argument.
if that is what it takes to blunt Islam’s thus-far ceaseless aggression against the entire non-Muslim world.
Just as there was no Jewish conspiracy to control the world, there is no “ceaseless Islamic aggression against the entire non-Muslim world”.
It’s nothing but the ravings of a deranged conspiracy theory fantasist, if there was such “ceaseless Islamic aggression” it would be easily seen in the statistics for violence across a hundred countries, it isn’t. What does Dick offer? A few conflicts involving Muslims but ignoring a far larger number of conflicts over the last century that didn’t involve Muslims, he suggests that Muslim countries don’t apply for enough US patents(!?!), but ignores that non Muslim countries with similar levels of wealth (the example I gave was Latin America) have similar levels of US patent applications.
He mentions the attack on a soldier in Britain, this, in his mind, is somehow proof that the other 2.8 million Muslims in the UK are waging “ceaseless Islamic aggression” against the rest of the British population, he mentions Australia as another hot bed of this “ceaseless Islamic aggression”, but you’re not going to find aggression from each of Australia’s half million Muslims, just a few isolated incidents, many of which were initiated by anti Muslim hate mongers like Dick.
Europe is also, according to Dick, suffering from this domestic “ceaseless Islamic aggression”, what do you imagine the annual death rate is from this conflict, 10 million? 1 million? 100,000? 10,000? 1,000? 100? 10?
Dick is nothing but a hate monger looking for people to hate, what do you suppose the level of annual causalities would be if Dicks wet dreams actually came to pass, no doubt instigated by other hate mongers (Western and Islamic) like Dick?
10 million? 50 million? 100 million?
What is the percentage of muslims in the UK compared to the rest of that nations non-muslims?
What is the percentage of muslims in the UK compared to the rest of that nations non-muslims?
At a wild guess I’ll hazard that you’re about to argue that it’s only demographics that stop the non Muslim British population from being the victim of “ceaseless Islamic aggression”
There are a lot of countries with large or majority Muslim populations in which non Muslims aren’t persecuted and there’s very little religious conflict.
The media always focuses on the hot spots doesn’t it?
Actually, my point was going to be that there were 2 Muslims involved in the beheading of the UK soldier. That’s close to one in a million people that had no problem walking into the heart of London, wielding a machete, and hacking off the head of an unarmed soldier.
London itself has 8 million people. If the percentage held, we would find 8 people with no problems whacking people heads off in broad daylight.
Now London has crime and murders. But if you study crime, you learn that most violent crime involves people who know each other. Their are few deadly crimes against people that don’t know each other. Even fewer that involve the passion necessary to dismember and mutilate a person you don’t even know. Alas, in a population of just 2.8 million muslims, 2 were found with this passion.
You claim Dick’s a hatemonger. I doubt Dick has motivated even 1 person to find an innocent person and hack their head off.
Two people is not a statistically significant sample, and neither is one Norwegian.
Like Andrew, I would like to see libertarian principles apply worldwide. But one of those principles is the non-initiation of force or fraud. Both are explicitly incompatible with the dictates of Islam. The Koran and the Hadiths call in many places for mandatory jihad against infidels until all are either killed or subdued into obeisance to Allah and the worldwide Caliphate is achieved.
As to how much of a threat the average Muslim is to the rest of humanity, Andrew might profit by looking at opinion polls taken in the Muslim populations of countries with Muslim majorities as well as those with Muslim minorities. Very large percentages in both kinds of countries support the extermination of Jews, the destruction of Israel, the imposition of Sharia by force on non-Muslims, approval of Islamist attacks against Western targets, the death penalty for apostasy and, in general, the whole Islam-uber-alles Muslim supremacist agenda. Malignant, aggressive Islam is hardly a fringe phenomenon.
As for the alleged lack of significant religiously-motivated violence by Muslims against non-Muslims, Andrew is once again either thoroughly ignorant of, or a deliberate denier, of the facts. The Pew Institute keeps track of such things and notes that what it calls “social hostilities based on religion” were at a six-year high in 2012, the most recent full year for which figures are provided. As one can see, the ranks of the “Very High” and “High” categories are top-heavy with the names of Muslim-majority countries, but many countries with notably fractious Muslim minorities are also represented such as Nigeria, Kenya, Thailand, Uganda, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Sweden and Netherlands.
Despite Andrew’s rampant Godwinism in attempted defense of the indefensible, there is no parallel between the very real threat posed by Islam to the non-Islamic world in the present day and the fictional threat by Jews against German “Aryans” invented by Nazis to make their transition from parliamentary democracy to totalitarian tyranny easier to accomplish.
An actual libertarian, as opposed to an erstwhile leftist who has preserved many of his former ideological spots unchanged, should have no sympathy whatsoever for aggressive Islam, a belief system that is as close as any to being the polar opposite of libertarianism.
Palestinians are not victims, they are tireless aggressors. They not only deserve no sympathy from real or alleged lovers of liberty, they deserve to be slapped around much more generally and much more viciously than has, up to now, been done. The Israelis treat them far too gently and, thus, the Palestinians persist in their armed hostilities.
Andrew might profit by looking at opinion polls taken in the Muslim populations of countries with Muslim majorities as well as those with Muslim minorities.
You might profit even more, as an example the first claim is that “20% of British Muslims sympathize with 7/7 bombers”
The actual article includes:
The ICM opinion poll also indicates that a fifth have sympathy with the “feelings and motives” of the suicide bombers who attacked London last July 7, killing 52 people, although 99 per cent thought the bombers were wrong to carry out the atrocity.
I read some of a few of the surveys (ones I looked at are very lengthy) and I’ll certainly be going back, you should do the same, the surveys very much reveal that Muslims are a very diverse bunch just like the rest of us, a small minority of whom are hostile towards people of other religions, they appear not much more religious that Christians in the US.
TheReligionofPeace.com page is just BS, it misrepresents what’s in the surveys eg. “61% of Egyptians approve of attacks on Americans”, while in the actual survey: “Attacks on Civilians in US: 8% of Egyptians approve, 84% disapprove.”
“Attacks on US Civilians Working in Islamic countries: 7% of Egyptians approve, 85% disapprove.”
The real life evidence is that a lot of Americans approve of US attacks on civilians in Muslim countries (Dick certainly does, he’s a Muslim exterminationist).
Slightly O/T, I was surprised that 40% of Christians in American think the Bible is the literal word of God, given how inconsistent the Bible is throughout, these people must suffer terribly when they read it.
Palestinians are not victims, they are tireless aggressors. They not only deserve no sympathy from real or alleged lovers of liberty, they deserve to be slapped around much more generally and much more viciously than has, up to now, been done.
Spoken like a true totalitarian.
You see every group you want to hate as monolithic, all (fill in the gap) are the same.
I will never accept that attitude, large groups are diverse, you make as much sense as an idiot who claims that Obama is a Democrat, therefore all Americans are Democrat’s.
I strongly urge you to read the surveys you imagine support your hatred, they don’t.
An actual libertarian, as opposed to an erstwhile leftist who has preserved many of his former ideological spots unchanged, should have no sympathy whatsoever for aggressive Islam, a belief system that is as close as any to being the polar opposite of libertarianism.
I’ve never been anything other than in the “small government, individual self determination” camp.
Where we differ is (again) I see them as people, you see them as a monolithic religion.
To add to my previous comment:
Dick has sympathy with the “feelings and motives” of Anders Behring Breivik whose attacks in Norway on 22 July 2011, claiming a total of 77 lives, although he thinks Breivik was wrong to carry out the atrocity.
(well I hope he thinks Breivik was wrong to carry out the atrocity, though I’m not so sure now).
Dick has sympathy with the “feelings and motives” of Anders Behring Breivik whose attacks in Norway on 22 July 2011, claiming a total of 77 lives, although he thinks Breivik was wrong to carry out the atrocity.
This is nothing but an ad hominem attack backed up with absolutely nothing.
This is nothing but an ad hominem attack backed up with absolutely nothing.
Nothing but Dick’s own words, He’s made it very clear that he shares Anders Behring Breivik’s attitudes towards Muslims.
Anyway, the point I’m making isn’t that I think Dick is about to embark on a mass killing spree, but rather what constitutes Breivik’s “feelings and motives” which I interpret as nothing other that his political philosophy and animosity towards people at odds with his own views. Similarly those fifth of British Muslims having sympathy with the “feelings and motives” of the suicide bombers who attacked London, which if I recall correctly, was about Britain getting involved in warfare in Muslim countries, which a fair chunk of Britain’s non-Muslim population also were against.
Being a self-described libertarian, but with an obviously left-wing brain, it seems Andrew cannot resist the temptation to ascribe any randomly selected bit of bloody-mindedness that crosses his mind to me in his ceaseless quest to excuse Muslim psychopaths and make me the bad guy in all this.
Difficult though it may be to believe, I do not have any posters of Anders Behring Breivik up on my walls. While he might otherwise have been a fan crush if Stormfront ever decided to publish a white-supremacist version of Tiger Beat, (“10 Things ABB thinks are sexy!”) I’m not sure their potential readership would be likely to overlook that bit about him being a Zionist.
Now I’m a bit of a Zionist myself and an Islamophobe as well. Unlike Andrew, I don’t lack the capacity to recognize actual danger when it appears. It is rational to be afraid of things which are both dangerous and real. That’s what the evolution of fear is for, to alert us to danger and prepare us to flee from it or to actively oppose it as seems best.
Andrew is fortunate to live in what is, by historical standards, quite a gentle and pacific period in human history. In most other times, a person so oblivious to danger as he would have been some predator’s lunch well before reaching an age at which passing along his dubious genes would be possible.
Call me a simpleton if you will, but when millions of people repeatedly take to the streets to wish me a violent and gruesome death, I’m inclined to take them at their word. Andrew, in contrast, can always find some threadbare rationalization for why they don’t really mean any such thing.
My biggest difference with ABB, however, is his execrable judgement. He is certainly correct that left-wing government has had a malign effect on his native Norway, especially their support of extensive immigration by unreconstructed, unassimilated and unassimilible Muslim tribal barbarians.
The Left in Europe wants these people there for the same reason American Democrats want more Hispanics here – their persistent failure to convince the extant American public to support their stupid and retrograde ideas has impelled them to bring in more people who can be bum’s-rushed through to citizenship status and who will politically support their benefactors thereafter. As an old jape would have it, the Democrats, having failed repeatedly to convince The People, are now attempting to dissolve The People and elect a new one.
Where ABB went seriously wrong, however, was in resorting to violence first, something much more characteristic of the Muslims he despises than of sensible Westerners.
Continued significant Muslim immigration is not popular in any European country where it has been permitted. Nor is the doctrine of multiculturalism which allows and even encourages immigrants to cling tightly to the same repellant and dysfunctional social and personal habits that made their former countries of residence the psychotic hellholes they are and which impelled efforts to escape in the first place. You rape and genitally mutilate your female children? You bugger your tween boys? You kill children who get out of line? Why come on down! Norway wants you!
No, actually, it doesn’t. Political movements opposed to further Muslim immigration, even some in favor of deportation of most of those already resident, are increasingly popular in all Western European countries. Given the failings of the European Left in pursuing its strategy of demographic transformation, this can hardly be a big surprise. ABB would have gotten a lot further if he’d left his rifle at home and stood for election to parliament.
This is one reason why both Europe and America are probably further away from a time when violence aimed at changing the government and/or society is likely to emanate from the Right. The Right is doing better all the time without recourse to violence.
There is nothing so likely to improve the Right’s prospects as a few progressives getting elected to high offices and making their inevitable hash of things. Barack Obama has done his bit for right-wing recruitment among those too young to remember Jimmy Carter’s epic four year orgy of progressive pooch-screwing. Now Bill De Blasio, with his attack on stop-and-frisk policing and the immediate spike in gun murders in New York is beginning to remind residents of Gotham about why things were so much better under erstwhile Republican administrations.
In short, why shoot Lefties and needlessly muddy the waters when your side is winning on the issues and making good political progress? Putting a Lefty out of office is probably a more severe punishment than just shooting him in most cases anyway.
And even if one were, for the sake of argument, to conclude that shooting Lefties was a sound strategy, shooting their minor children certainly is not. If the message of the shootings was to be even implicitly anti-Islamic, it was hopelessly muddled by choosing white non-Islamic minors as victims. As countless school massacres in the Muslim world attest, shooting the women and children first is an old Islamic custom and not one, therefore, which serves a would-be anti-Islamic messenger well in the repetition.
Call me a simpleton if you will, but when millions of people repeatedly take to the streets to wish me a violent and gruesome death, I’m inclined to take them at their word.
Well really Dick! Given your advocacy of the violent and gruesome death of hundreds of millions of Muslims, is it that surprising that they should be calling for your violent and gruesome death in return? If you don’t want them to be mean to you, don’t be mean to them.
As for your concern for my welfare, thanks, but I’ve traveled through several Muslim countries and not had any problems.
Given your advocacy of the violent and gruesome death of hundreds of millions of Muslims, is it that surprising that they should be calling for your violent and gruesome death in return?
As the majority of Muslims are illiterate rustics, I doubt most know about my opinions of them. In any event, the bilious hatred publicly expressed on countless occasions by millions of Muslims for me and mine long precedes my latter-day equanimity at the thought of their mass passing to the afterlife. As is typical of apologists of your stripe, the precedence order of events seems unimportant to you, at least when it invalidates your case. It’s all my fault that Muslims are crazy because I hate them and want them dead! Pay no attention to the fact that Muslims have been exhibiting pervasive individual and mass psychopathy for centuries. Nothing to see here; move along.
If you don’t want them to be mean to you, don’t be mean to them.
Yeah, not really an option. Being nice to Muslims doesn’t seem to get those who do it anything but their throats cut. We were nice to the Muslims in the Balkans back in the 1990’s. Any brief flash of goodwill this might have engendered seems long since to have flickered out. Ditto the Kuwaitis whose bacon we saved – if I may indulge a decidedly non-halal metaphor – back in 1990-91. Our reward for doing that was repeated deadly attacks on American troops by Kuwaiti Islamist nutcases during both the run-up to and after our second invasion of the erstwhile Saddam’s Iraq. Massive U.S. relief efforts in Banda Aceh Indonesia in the wake of a killer tsunami seems to have left no lasting reservoir of Muslim goodwill there either. We barely need to mention the Israeli “reward” for giving the wretched Palestinians their precious Gaza back. No, Andrew, the record of history shows Muslims, in general, to be entitled types with a pervasive, “Yeah, but what have you done for me lately?” attitude.
As for your concern for my welfare, thanks, but I’ve traveled through several Muslim countries and not had any problems.
Permit me to doubt you have done so while ravening mobs were in the streets during any of the Muslim world’s frequent hostility festivals. During quieter times I can well believe that you could travel freely in Muslim lands. First of all, you are male. Second, you support their epically cracked view of things. Why wouldn’t they like you? Still, as I presume you are an obvious Westerner in appearance, I wouldn’t advise going out when the street mobs have their blood up.
As the majority of Muslims are illiterate rustics,
Can’t you even get 8 words out without talking nonsense?!
Literacy throughout most of the Muslim world is over 80%.
In any event, the bilious hatred publicly expressed on countless occasions by millions of Muslims for me and mine . . .
I can’t imagine what you mean, unless you’re referring to the Iranian chant “Death to America” which doesn’t actually have any religious references in it, try to remember Dick that at one time or another half the planet has wished death on America, you guys just seem to attract this attention from time to time, take solace that it’s very rare for Arabs and other Muslims outside of Iran to take up that chant.
Pay no attention to the fact that Muslims have been exhibiting pervasive individual and mass psychopathy for centuries. Nothing to see here; move along.
You keep referring to this “pervasive individual and mass psychopathy for centuries” maybe you could actually find some scientific evidence to support your belief of it. No? You can’t find a single reference to it in reputable scientific publications?
Here’s a thought: Projection.
Yeah, not really an option. Being nice to Muslims doesn’t seem to get those who do it anything but their throats cut. We were nice to the Muslims in the Balkans back in the 1990′s. Any brief flash of goodwill this might have engendered seems long since to have flickered out. Ditto the Kuwaitis whose bacon we saved – if I may indulge a decidedly non-halal metaphor – back in 1990-91. Our reward for doing that was repeated deadly attacks on American troops by Kuwaiti Islamist nutcases . . .
Relations between the US and Kuwait, Islamic countries in the Balkans, and Indonesia are pretty good with the majority of the populations having positive attitudes towards the US (though the people in most Muslim countries remain “concerned that the US could become a military threat”
Maybe you could cover how many thousands of Americans have been murdered by all the America haters in those 3 places since the US had positive involvement with them.
during both the run-up to and after our second invasion of the erstwhile Saddam’s Iraq.
That would be the invasion of a sovereign country with the excuse that that country had WMD’s, even though a thorough investigation on the ground in that country (done with that countries co-operation) failed to find any WMD’s and that the invasion revealed that there were no WMD’s.
I wouldn’t advise going out when the street mobs have their blood up.
Ditto in lots of other places around the world. I strongly suspect most Westerners would be safer quietly watching one of those mobs from the footpath than watching the LA riots or other Western riots eg Brixton, from a similar vantage point.
PS.
Have you gotten around to actually reading through the survey’s in your TheReligionofPeace.com link yet? As I’ve said, the evidence in those surveys is far different to that which that BS site tries to portray.
Literacy throughout most of the Muslim world is over 80%.
No it isn’t. From the Wikipedia article on literacy rates by country:
“According to the CIA World Factbook, almost 75% of the world’s 775 million illiterate adults are concentrated in ten countries (in descending order: India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Brazil, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo). Women represent two-thirds of all illiterate adults globally. Extremely low literacy rates are focused in three regions: South Asia, West Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The global literacy rate for all people aged 15 and over is 84.1%. The global literacy rate for all males is 88.6% and the rate for all females is 79.7%.”
Note that four of the 10 cited countries have mostly Muslim populations. In fact they are the four most populous Muslim countries on the planet. Four others have significant Muslim minorities. Only China and Brazil have relatively insignificant Muslim minorities. As China’s Muslims are pretty much entirely Uighur nomads, it seems a safe bet they are overrepresented among China’s illiterates.
As the average world literacy rate is just over 84%, the Muslim world, even if you were right about your 80% assertion – which you are not – would still be sub-par.
I can’t imagine what you mean, unless you’re referring to the Iranian chant “Death to America” which doesn’t actually have any religious references in it,… it’s very rare for Arabs and other Muslims outside of Iran to take up that chant.
The Egyptians in Tahrir Square who were outraged about Obama’s support of Morsi would disagree with you. So would the crowds in most Muslim countries who have made Sept. 11 another in the Muslim world’s already overgenerous calendar of annual hostility festivals. Then there were the pervasive riots about the Danish Cartoons that portrayed Mohammed. There’s really no end to this stuff.
…try to remember Dick that at one time or another half the planet has wished death on America, you guys just seem to attract this attention from time to time…
Yeah we do. Of course for a long time, over half the planet was run by communist totalitarians and other noisome practitioners of autocracy. Funny how that works out. We’ve always prided ourselves, as Americans, on the world-class quality of the scumbags who hated us most.
Of course most of them would have, or still do, hate New Zealand too, once anybody reminded them you are actually out there. We’re just the biggest target, not the only target. That’s mostly because we’re also the ones most obviously actively in the way of the world’s bad actors who, these days, tend to be lopsidedly Muslim. Comes with the territory.
You keep referring to this “pervasive individual and mass psychopathy for centuries” maybe you could actually find some scientific evidence to support your belief of it. No? You can’t find a single reference to it in reputable scientific publications? Here’s a thought: Projection.
Projection? Right. Nice try. Can’t say I’m surprised though. Crazed denial that their favored pets are in any way less than exemplary is an old Lefty trope.
I wouldn’t look in “reputable scientific publications” for such evidence because the relevant journals would all be in Anthropology or Psychology, two fields of “science” at least as thoroughly dominated by Left-wing political orthodoxy as is so-called “climate science” and for far longer. Leftist idealogues in these fields have been covering for the unpleasant beliefs and personal habits of tribal peoples for decades, when they aren’t busily extolling habits and beliefs they find exemplary, even if fictional, as with the late Margaret Meade’s credulous fabulations about the alleged sex lives of Pacific Islanders.
So, let’s look at my allegations shall we?
The overwhelming prevalence of female genital mutilation in the Muslim world is a well-established fact.
So is the prevalence of approval for so-called “honor killings” in which a daughter who strays in any way from the claustrophobic norms of female behavior mandated in Muslim tribal cultures is summarily dispatched by her father or brothers to assuage “dishonor” to the family.
The near-universality of arranged marriages, especially, among Arabs, and to close relatives – many of them between pre- or barely-pubescent girls and much older men – is also well-established. Hey, Mohammed himself married a 9-year-old. What’s the big deal?
As to the prevalence of boy-buggery in Arab and other tribal Islamic social orders, that is also a matter of record if one knows where to look. There is a whole genre of classic Arabic literature and poetry, for example, devoted to the erotic delights of tween boys. Arabs and other Muslim tribalists see these liaisons as entirely legitimate – though they won’t say so when talking to Westerners – and hold them to be entirely unlike homosexual relationships between mature men. These latter are anathema, though hardly unknown.
Given the pervasive Muslim practice of plural marriage, which reserves nearly all women as wives for a decided minority of men, the sexual recourse of the “surplus” males to their younger cohorts is unsurprising. Homosexual activity, if not actual orientation, always increases in male-only or female-limited settings even in Western social orders – e.g., prisons, the military, boys-only boarding schools, all-male colleges, college fraternities, even – alas – the Boy Scouts. This activity tends to be dominance behavior more than sexual behavior, per se, but is often both. That also seems to be the case in Muslim tribal cultures.
The most straightforward and honest descriptions of these social phenomena tend to be found in the writings of Westerners who had immersive experience of these cultures before the age of Political Correctness – usually 19th-Century Europeans. Try perusing the writings of Sir Richard Burton, for example.
Relations between the US and Kuwait, Islamic countries in the Balkans, and Indonesia are pretty good with the majority of the populations having positive attitudes towards the US
Poll results about Muslim attitudes toward America are volatile. When we haven’t done anything high-profile against Muslim nutbaggery or predation for awhile, the numbers tend to go up. When something high-profile crops up – such as the shooting of the Somali pirates holding the American ship’s Captain hostage or the killing of Bin Laden, both by Navy SEALs – the numbers plunge. A lot of Muslims hate us. A lot of Muslims want to emigrate here. It’s a love-hate thing. Where America is concerned the Muslim world is more than a wee tad bi-polar.
Maybe you could cover how many thousands of Americans have been murdered by all the America haters in those 3 places since the US had positive involvement with them.
It isn’t thousands. There aren’t thousands of American military personnel in either the Balkans or Indonesia now and even our presence in Kuwait is much-diminished since Obama’s Iraq bug-out. But it isn’t zero either, especially in Kuwait.
And then there’s Iraq.
That would be the invasion of a sovereign country with the excuse that that country had WMD’s, even though a thorough investigation on the ground in that country (done with that countries co-operation) failed to find any WMD’s and that the invasion revealed that there were no WMD’s.
WMD’s were far from the only reason the U.S. invaded Iraq a second time, but it’s the reason those who opposed that intervention like to emphasize. Saddam wasn’t exactly bashful about claiming he had WMD’s and the evidence available at the time certainly tended to support the idea. If U.S. intelligence services were wrong about this, they had a lot of company.
But it’s not even certain that they were wrong. There are often things about particular wars that aren’t known until long after they are over. Britain still has a lot of WW2-era “Official Secrets” that won’t see the light of day until 2020 or even later. The role of Allied code and cipher breaking in WW2 and the role of Navaho and Comanche “code talkers” were not public knowledge until the 1970’s.
It is known that a number of big truck convoys left Iraq for Syria just before Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched. It is also known that Syria was building nuclear weapons at a secret desert facility with North Korean help shortly afterward. This facility was blown up by an Israeli air strike in 2007. Where, exactly, did Syria get enough nuclear material to support such a clandestine effort? Iraq seems the obvious answer.
The subsequent civil war in Syria has also revealed the presence of sizable stocks of chemical weapons there, the provenance of which is obscure to say the least.
Anyone who thinks they know everything of importance about what has gone on recently in the Middle East is fooling themselves. New stuff about both Gulf Wars, the Syrian Civil War and a lot else besides is going to be dribbling out for decades. Some of it will be about things as consequential as the WW2 code and cipher wars.
I strongly suspect most Westerners would be safer quietly watching one of those mobs from the footpath than watching the LA riots or other Western riots eg Brixton, from a similar vantage point.
Well, I don’t. I don’t favor any experiments to settle the issue either. For one thing, there are way fewer opportunities to test the Western part of your hypothesis than there are in the Muslim world where violent rallies and street demonstrations are common occurrences. The L.A. riots were in 1992. Brixton has had riots four times over a 30-year period from 1981 to 2011. Most Muslim countries have, over the last five years or so, had multiple single months, or even weeks, with more riots than that.
Have you gotten around to actually reading through the survey’s in your TheReligionofPeace.com link yet? As I’ve said, the evidence in those surveys is far different to that which that BS site tries to portray.
Yes I have. Other than the one cherry-picked stat you quoted from the very first survey linked to in my linked article, the cited surveys convey exactly what I said. Depending on the specific issue addressed and the country in which a poll is taken, majorities or sizable minorities of Muslims hold preposterously illiberal and hostile views. The site is not B.S. and I have exaggerated nothing.
why do so many of the people commenting on this forum who think they’re libertarians think that “libertarianism” means “exterminating”, or subjugating Palestinians and other Muslims?
Geez, Andy, I used to be a Libertarian, but I was never a Galombosian. You can use my name without paying me a nickel for the privilege.
Specifically, I was a Libertarian Party activist in the early 80’s. LP members had all kinds of backgrounds, politically. So did people in those parts of the libertarian movement who were non-LP or anti-LP. A significant fraction of both came from a leftist-60’s anti-war background. Pacifism was also a significant minority tendency among non-LP libertarians. I had many acquaintances in all these factions.
Socialism/communism/Leftism-in-general famously has the “knowledge problem” that prevents it from ever working as a practical matter. It’s an intrinsically fatal problem baked deeply into the DNA of the entire political philosophy that renders it non-viable as a real-world implementable governing architecture.
I left libertarianism after concluding that an overwhelming majority of its adherents were such because their primary commitment was to philosophical consistency rather than to liberty. Libertarianism is just such a “pretty” ideological framework. It is nearly as seductive to those of an intellectual bent as is socialism in that respect.
But, like socialism, it has a fatal genetic flaw, what I have come to call, in homage to Hayek, the “defense problem” – a form of the more general “public goods” problem defined by economists. Briefly, no libertarian theorist has ever propounded a convincing formula for a durable institutional framework via which a significant standing military establishment can be supported in a way entirely consistent with the non-coercion first principle of libertarianism.
As preserving libertarianism’s pretty consistency forbids exceptions to first principles, many libertarians, instead of rationally confronting the problem, simply choose to ignore it. This is usually manifested by various forms of denial. One of these forms is denial that an organized, standing military is even necessary. Call this the “Minuteman tendency.” It invokes the famous Revolutionary War-era militia as well as volunteer fire departments as models for libertarian military organization.
While engagingly goofy, this viewpoint is almost rational compared to the far more common form of denial that there is even any existential threat to liberty from any locus except Washington, DC. It is the aggression and crypto-imperialist interventions of the United States that have earned us so many enemies according to this view. Unsurprisingly, many of the libertarians who hold this view are former Leftists who simply brought their already well-established hate-America baggage along when they switched ideological horses.
But what about the Objectivists, or “Randians” as some call them? Objectivism also has a genetic birth defect; one that I call the “parenthood problem.” A doctrinaire Objectivist denies any claims by others upon their productive output. This collides pretty squarely with the necessity of supporting children. A social order whose foundational principle abjures parenthood will, as has been seen in the notable case of the Shaker religion, go effectively extinct even if a handful of converts can be made among those not so committed in each successive generation. Rand’s failure to grapple with this conundrum is a product of both her lifelong childlessness and to her being possibly the least psychologically self-aware major intellectual figure of the 20th Century.
It is, in short, the baked-in flaws of the various flavors of libertarianism that impelled my conversion to a decidedly minority form of conservatism. It is libertarian where that works best – most places – but non-doctrinaire practical in places where libertarianism fails. That is chiefly in the arena of national defense. I believe the U.S. needs a standing military to defend its liberty and that a modest level of taxation is morally justified to support it.
So, no, I do not think I’m a libertarian. I did at one time, but I got over it.
As to exterminating or subjugating Muslims, that is hardly my desire, but I am okay with doing either or both if that is what it takes to blunt Islam’s thus-far ceaseless aggression against the entire non-Muslim world. During WW2, virtually the entirety of the Japanese population were willing, at least in principle, to die for the Emperor and the greater glory of the Japanese nation. Many actually proved willing to do so in practice as well. Fortunately, many more decided to abjure fighting-to-the-last-man extinction when it became brutally apparent that the United States was actually possessed of military technology that enabled societal extinction as a real-world option in dealing with Japanese aggression. Not to put too fine a point on it, but when fighting to the last man, woman and child became an undeniable near-term physical possibility instead of merely an intellectual abstraction, the Japanese – sensibly – blinked.
I simply suggest that, given that Islam seems an even more fanatical death-oriented worldview than was wartime Japanese Shinto/Bushido/Emperor worship that the U.S. may have to employ similar means to halt Muslim aggression. Just as with Japan, it will require the deaths of many to convince those Muslims remaining to avoid the deaths of all.
You, being entirely unable to confront this stark reality, adopt the usual approach of denial and ad hominem calumny.
Your depiction of Objectivism is wholly ignorant and incorrect.
“A doctrinaire Objectivist denies any involuntary claims by others upon their productive output.” FIFY – btw have you ever heard of contracts?
Becoming a parent is a voluntary act, and children can be values we act to gain and keep. Parents, who become so voluntarily, absolutely are obligated to raise their children to adult independence. There is no “parenthood” problem with Objectivism; plenty of objectivists have children, just like Yaron Brook does (the man quoted in the linked article).
Interesting that you think Objectivism is going extinct, when it is clearly being seen more frequently in news, opinion pieces, and popular culture than it ever was in the past.
I agree with your opinion of voluntary acceptance of contract by accepting parenthood.
I think the issue is what are the conditions of the contract? Who sets them? The child and the parent? A democracy of the adults for all parents? How are the conditions of the contract enforced? I don’t think Ayn Rand ever addressed this, at least not in any of her writings and discussions I’ve read. None of her ideal men dealt with parenthood.
In my own life, I’ve seen very various opinions of parental contracts. I’ve met parents who discarded their born children immediately. I’ve sat on a jury involving a foster child, whose mother never married and then died shortly after child birth, how would Objectivitist handle this child? I’ve met parents who expelled their child as an early teenager for failure to live up to their part of the contract. I’ve met many parents who nullify the contract at the child’s 18th birthday. I don’t see where Objectivist have answers for these variations.
I think your questions are mostly legal questions. Ayn Rand was generally concerned with the moral philosophical questions, and deferred the derivative legal questions to experts in law, much like on foreign policy matters she deferred questions regarding the execution of war to military strategists/tacticians. Explicit contracts between parent and children aren’t really necessary, our current legal environment seems to handle it with a sort of implicit contract defined by the law. That doesn’t mean the relationship should be subjectively defined though.
Her main characters in her novels didn’t have children, but she did write about and express thoughts on parenthood in multiple instances. Here are some examples that refute Dick’s claim.
For me, in your 1st case, if you mean “discarded” = “thrown into trash/abandoned in an inhospitable environment” that is a pretty clear rights violation (replace the infant with an adult quadriplegic) even if there wasn’t a mother/child relationship, I’d call it attempted murder, absent mitigating context. 2nd case, the child should be adopted out to willing parents or go to a willing relative, be it the father or any other relation, or to an organization willing to take on parental responsibilities. 3rd and 4th cases are a bit more context dependent… but all of the choices to be taken in these cases can be informed by reason and objectivist philosophy. If all such questions in all their multitudes of contexts have already been answered we wouldn’t need more than a capable computer for a legal system, input your particulars and the decision would be algorithmically generated, no further human judgment needed. To expect a philosophy to have all answers to all possible questions already explicitly decided is a bit unreasonable 😉
To expect a philosophy to have all answers to all possible questions already explicitly decided is a bit unreasonable
I think you are correct. If I read Dick correctly, that the Objectivist he associated with decided to stick to the philosophy and not develop answer in the law drove him away from that faction of the Libertarian Party, and among other reasons from the Party itself.
BTW, in the 2nd case, the court case was the willing foster parents raped the child. The unfortunate thing was they lied to the child about the condition of the mom, claiming the mother abandoned the child due to a drug addiction that ultimately took her life. If any drug addiction, it was the chemo-therapy. The mother’s mother was already in a nursing home, and apparently the father was never identified, which means he was never a volunteer to the contract. I learned a bit about “attachment disorder” as a juror in the case. From that education, I agree with you about my scenario 1. Even if the child survives being abandoned, the psychological damage can be horrible.
Scenario 3 was carried out by an extended family member. Their 14 year old teenage daughter decided to no longer follow their rules of conduct. After attempting typical domestic punishments (grounding, yelling, spanking), they were pretty much left with higher levels of physical abuse (certainly illegal) or disowning the child. I’m still not sure about the decision made here, but I have no doubt the parents tried numerous times to get the child to follow what we might consider a reasonable contract. In fact the contract was more liberal than I had with my children.
Scenario 4 was what many of my childhood friends faced. Their parents believed at age 18, they were old enough to take care of themselves, and they literally forced their children to move out before their next birthday. I’ve noticed a somewhat generational disparity on the success of this method.
With the exception of Scenarios 1 and 2, I do not have hard opinions on the variations of contracts to be anymore specific on the laws myself.
I’m sure there are a lot of Objectivists with children. There are a lot of libertarians of all stripes with children.
But, as Leland noted, parenthood was hardly part of the Objectivist ideal Rand portrayed in her fiction, her personal life or her works on philosophy. With respect to her personal life, Rand probably did any potential children she might have had a big favor by failing to have them. The primacy of the the self is unobjectionable as a philosophical foundation, but it is easily possible, in the case of individuals, for one to wander across the psychological border into narcissism and self-importance. As a mother, one suspects that Rand would have resembled Joan Crawford much more than any of the iconic sitcom moms of the 50’s and early 60’s. Another reason the matter of children likely didn’t occupy much of Rand’s mental bandwidth was the very high percentage of closeted gay men in her inner circle, both when she was resident in L.A. and after moving to New York.
Excellent link, the problem will always be that those with power will almost always use that power to the maximum extent that they can get away with.
Since someone mentioned libertarianism, I thought I’d paste in a comment I made about seven years ago on a New Zealand site When I was trying to come up with a structural political mechanism that would push a society towards more libertarian policies, I’m not convinced though that it would be stable long term (or even not-so-long-term):
I’m going to fly a concept here that, as far as I know, is original.
Within New Zealand, and every other Western democracy, the government has a monopoly, the result is a tyranny of the majority. However New Zealander’s do have an alternative to submission to the NZ government, they can move and be submissive to the Australian government instead (or for some the British, or American governments.
In this respect, in principle, the New Zealand government is in competition with other western governments for its citizens, especially its most productive citizens. Unfortunately, this can hardly be considered laissez faire competition as the cost and dislocation involved in the move, for many people, is considerable. Even so, it is enough for business, economists, and the population in general, to take note of what the relative tax rates and other laws between the two nations are.
Imagine a situation (think of the confederates winning in the US civil war) in which the effort to people to switch states within a nation is minor, and in which federal tax, and other legislation was also minor compared to the individual state taxes and legislation. In this situation, in principle, we could hope for there to be enough competition between the states to result in much more substantial efforts by individual states to attract those people that make a positive contribution to society, and also to discourage these people leaving. Assume that borders remain open, and that an agent, something like the Commerce Commission (also, ironically, known as the Communist Commission by some free market advocates) acts to prevent the establishment of interstate government cartels to reduce this competition.
The result is governments actually competing in a free market.
Now, we can actually take this scenario much further, and go outside the square in terms of how we view the boundaries of governance. There are several market situations, Free market, Oligopoly, Natural monopoly.
“A natural monopoly occurs when an industry in which advantages of large-scale production make it possible for a single firm to produce the entire output of the market at lower average cost than a number of firms each producing a smaller quantity.”
Examples of natural monopolies are reticulation systems, physical networks. In our society these are often managed by local government (in effect it becomes a co-operative of ratepayers/residents) to minimize the exploitation that would occur if it were privately owned.
Most of the services provided by central and state governments are not natural monopolies THEY ARE NOT GEOGRAPHICALLY BASED so once we recognize the separate roles of state and local government there is no logical reason for states within a confederation to be contiguous!
Effectively you could in switch your membership, assets and income from one state to another without physically changing address! As easily as Maori can move from between the Maori and General roles.
So we have a democratic system that frees people from the tyranny of the majority in the same way as the free market frees us from the tyranny of a market monopoly.
People, from both the left, and conservative right, who believe governments need the power to tell us what is best for us would not like such a system.
What you’ve described is a rough approximation of what has been happening in the United States throughout its history. There have always been states or territories that have achieved net positive population influx from other parts of the country that, correspondingly, experience net population outflows. In recent decades, these migrations have been impelled, in large measure, by the persistent dysfunction of left/progressive governments in the emptying places and growth-oriented, business-friendly governments in the places experiencing population influx. For quite some time, for example, New York, Illinois and – somewhat more recently – California, have been experiencing population stagnation or decline while places like Texas are inundated with what amount to economic refugees. “Reverse Okies” I have taken to calling them.
Imagine a situation (think of the confederates winning in the US civil war) in which the effort to people to switch states within a nation is minor, and in which federal tax, and other legislation was also minor compared to the individual state taxes and legislation. In this situation, in principle, we could hope for there to be enough competition between the states to result in much more substantial efforts by individual states to attract those people that make a positive contribution to society, and also to discourage these people leaving. Assume that borders remain open, and that an agent, something like the Commerce Commission (also, ironically, known as the Communist Commission by some free market advocates) acts to prevent the establishment of interstate government cartels to reduce this competition.
You’ve just described Federalism and its principles are in the Constitution.
I’m suggesting a system way beyond federalism.
You’ve described abstract ideals without any concrete examples. As far as your writing is concerned, if we keep government limited, then services will be picked up by the free market, which would mean that a particular service may or may not be geographically based.
Perhaps you want a government service, such as RomneyCare that would take in people from outside the State of Massachusetts?
This is the money quote:
Most of the services provided by central and state governments are not natural monopolies THEY ARE NOT GEOGRAPHICALLY BASED so once we recognize the separate roles of state and local government there is no logical reason for states within a confederation to be contiguous!
Effectively you could in switch your membership, assets and income from one state to another without physically changing address!
You could switch states without moving house.
Each state needs to finance the policies it implements.
But states are geographic monopolies, on the use of force. Example, police stations and police officers, being concrete objects, have a geographic location, and to the extent they can influence the world, the do so in their immediate geographic vicinity.
In addition, the ephemeral governmental jurisdiction you propose would have an insurmountable knowledge problem, and make the protection of our rights by the government improbable to impossible, to the extent that ephemeral quality is exercised.
Not only that, but what would define and enable a state in your proposal?
Ok, I get it now. But I fail to see the advantage of organizing under a non-geographical entity rather than a geographical one. If there are advantages, you would need precedence for laws. Geography would be supreme in some cases and a human confederation in others.
Neal Stephenson explored the possibilities in The Diamond Age. The world was broken down into tribes that were not tied down to geographical location. But the tribes were also able to create new lands with nanotechnology. Geography ended up triumphing over a human confederation.
police stations and police officers
Aren’t these often employed by local government in the US?
Not only that, but what would define and enable a state in your proposal
Enough people getting together to form a state, like a lot of things, how many that is would I guess have to be an agreed but arbitrary figure.
But I fail to see the advantage of organizing under a non-geographical entity rather than a geographical one.
The social impact would be huge, any state that imposed for example, a progressive tax, would over-night lose most of its tax base, no cost of moving, not need to settle in at a different city. Think about the consequences of that, it would be like retail wars with states all struggling to attract the right people.
Which is why I’m skeptical of such a systems long term stability.
I think it is a common misconception that “anarchism” is about “being against government.” Communists are also against the government, that is, they are “against the government” to the extent that they advocate revolution against the government to achieve a Communist system.
We also use “anarchy” to denote absence of government, lawlessness, and a Road Warrior style civic system. But again, I believe this is based on misunderstanding Anarchism.
I think the closest thing to 19th century anarchism is the Green Party platform, which favors the local over the central, a kind of commune form of society as opposed to a strong Federal system. But there is a strong Socialist aspect to anarchism. It isn’t being “against government”, it is “against the government” (we have) to be replaced with a system of local communes?
Speaking of the socialist aspect to anarchism, what about Noam Chomsky’s position? He calls himself an anarchist, yet he teaches at a state institution (MIT). How does he explain this hypocrisy? Does he have his own definition of anarchy?
Exactly.
The Communists want the State to wither away too, and they are against the government if it is not a Communist government, but I wouldn’t exactly call them Libertarians. When Professor Chomsky calls himself an anarchist, I think he is using one of the definitions I had offered.
I am thinking historical anarchism is along the lines of we will all live in self-sufficient communes powered by windmills and animal gas, and some self-appointed member of the commune will direct us as to which TV programs we are allowed to watch, that is, when we are permitted to watch TV at all.
I see anarchism as a very authoritarian system, but at a very local level. And if you don’t think local government can be authoritarian, you haven’t encountered some town councils.
There is also Libertarian Fascism where instead of a prissy commune you have a prissy gated community, conventant/contract, and community board telling you what your lawn has to look like.
If you’re libertarian, that is if you claim to care about individual liberty, Hamas should be one of the top most hated regimes in the world. You should be celebrating that they are being destroyed and that the Palestinian people might have a chance to be freed from such a totalitarian evil regime like Hamas is.
That’s a point well made, (though I think he may be spectacularly underrating Hamas’s support within Gaza) why do so many of the people commenting on this forum who think they’re libertarians think that “libertarianism” means “exterminating”, or subjugating Palestinians and other Muslims?
I’ve been labeled a leftist because I support libertarian principles for everyone, not just some, which is why I’m getting a bit annoyed with some of the clowns commenting here who don’t get that they’re Marxists by the definition Rand advanced a couple of days ago.
What does a libertarian do to protect folks from those who are committed to an evil belief system, committed even unto death?
I’ve said on this forum before that a pure form of libertarianism is probably not practical, some of my reasons are mentioned by Dick below (well done Dick).
Where Dick and I are, to an almost bizarre extent, in disagreement is how much of a threat typical Muslims are to everyone else.
He argues that Muslims are dedicated to wiping out or subjugating the rest of Humanity, so I point out that there are about a hundred countries that have significant populations of Muslims and non-Muslims, and that in the vast majority of those countries there isn’t the religious violence that, reading Dick’s comments, you’d think that there must be.
Dick to me is no different in his attitude to Islam than Nazi’s were in their attitudes towards Jews, I find Dick’s reasoning no different to that of the Nazi’s, which amounted to “Jews are Evil, they’ve exploited us for too long, we should kill them”.
So to me, your “Those who are committed to an evil belief system, committed even unto death” applies to the Nazis who orchestrated the Holocaust, it applies to the fanatical Islamists, it may even apply to Dick, but not to WW2 Germans in general, or to Muslims in general, or to those adopting a “decidedly minority form of conservatism” in general.
People are individuals, I’m no fan of using stereotypes to justify bigotry.
Getting back to you’re question, being a libertarian doesn’t mean you have to be a pacifist.
Seems to me that libertarians, for the most part, are unwilling to take a stance against evil, because that would require a moral judgment they are unwilling to make.
The only “evil” I’ve ever seen is people exercising too much unconstrained power.
Andrew,
I’m not Dick and do not proportion to speak for him. However, I can read his comment below and see that it doesn’t come to the conclusions you make of it. To get to your statement, you have to believe it was the US desire to kill every last Japanese during WWII. That is not historically accurate. Further, it is historically accurate that The Nazis did want to kill every last Jew as part of the final solution. Never does Dick suggest to do this in regards to Muslim aggression.
I do agree that Dick wrote an excellent comment and find it remarkable for anticipating your response.
Ugh….iOS autocomplete… Double edged sword it is.
To get to your statement, you have to believe it was the US desire to kill every last Japanese during WWII.
I don’t get how you reach that conclusion, you’re saying I’m comparing the US to the Nazis?
Absolutely No, throughout this entire and very long debate I’ve had with Dick my point has been that you don’t slaughter huge populations because of the actions of small minorities within those population.
He’s saying that’s an OK approach, the Japan example he advances isn’t relevant because no one is accusing a small minority of the WW2 Japanese of acting in a way that was independent of the vast majority.
His detour to Japan makes no sense in the context of whats been discussed.
you’re saying I’m comparing the US to the Nazis?
Andrew, you compared Dick’s opinion to being like Nazis. I’ll quote you:
Dick to me is no different in his attitude to Islam than Nazi’s were in their attitudes towards Jews
Now, I’ll quote Dick:
As to exterminating or subjugating Muslims, that is hardly my desire, but I am okay with doing either or both if that is what it takes to blunt Islam’s thus-far ceaseless aggression against the entire non-Muslim world. During WW2, virtually the entirety of the Japanese population were willing, at least in principle, to die for the Emperor and the greater glory of the Japanese nation. Many actually proved willing to do so in practice as well. Fortunately, many more decided to abjure fighting-to-the-last-man extinction when it became brutally apparent that the United States was actually possessed of military technology that enabled societal extinction as a real-world option in dealing with Japanese aggression. Not to put too fine a point on it, but when fighting to the last man, woman and child became an undeniable near-term physical possibility instead of merely an intellectual abstraction, the Japanese – sensibly – blinked.
Dick’s opinion is apparently doing to Muslim as the US did to Japan in WWII. If you say Dick’s opinion is “being like Nazis”, then it appears to me you believe, (I’ll quote myself): it was the US desire to kill every last Japanese during WWII.
I could possibly accept your argument that Japan is out of context to your sense of the matter, but I’m weary of accepting your argument when you distort Dick’s comment as being akin to the Nazi’s attitude of Jews. He explicitly did not make that argument.
if that is what it takes to blunt Islam’s thus-far ceaseless aggression against the entire non-Muslim world.
Just as there was no Jewish conspiracy to control the world, there is no “ceaseless Islamic aggression against the entire non-Muslim world”.
It’s nothing but the ravings of a deranged conspiracy theory fantasist, if there was such “ceaseless Islamic aggression” it would be easily seen in the statistics for violence across a hundred countries, it isn’t. What does Dick offer? A few conflicts involving Muslims but ignoring a far larger number of conflicts over the last century that didn’t involve Muslims, he suggests that Muslim countries don’t apply for enough US patents(!?!), but ignores that non Muslim countries with similar levels of wealth (the example I gave was Latin America) have similar levels of US patent applications.
He mentions the attack on a soldier in Britain, this, in his mind, is somehow proof that the other 2.8 million Muslims in the UK are waging “ceaseless Islamic aggression” against the rest of the British population, he mentions Australia as another hot bed of this “ceaseless Islamic aggression”, but you’re not going to find aggression from each of Australia’s half million Muslims, just a few isolated incidents, many of which were initiated by anti Muslim hate mongers like Dick.
Europe is also, according to Dick, suffering from this domestic “ceaseless Islamic aggression”, what do you imagine the annual death rate is from this conflict, 10 million? 1 million? 100,000? 10,000? 1,000? 100? 10?
Dick is nothing but a hate monger looking for people to hate, what do you suppose the level of annual causalities would be if Dicks wet dreams actually came to pass, no doubt instigated by other hate mongers (Western and Islamic) like Dick?
10 million? 50 million? 100 million?
What is the percentage of muslims in the UK compared to the rest of that nations non-muslims?
What is the percentage of muslims in the UK compared to the rest of that nations non-muslims?
At a wild guess I’ll hazard that you’re about to argue that it’s only demographics that stop the non Muslim British population from being the victim of “ceaseless Islamic aggression”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religions_by_country
There are a lot of countries with large or majority Muslim populations in which non Muslims aren’t persecuted and there’s very little religious conflict.
The media always focuses on the hot spots doesn’t it?
Actually, my point was going to be that there were 2 Muslims involved in the beheading of the UK soldier. That’s close to one in a million people that had no problem walking into the heart of London, wielding a machete, and hacking off the head of an unarmed soldier.
London itself has 8 million people. If the percentage held, we would find 8 people with no problems whacking people heads off in broad daylight.
Now London has crime and murders. But if you study crime, you learn that most violent crime involves people who know each other. Their are few deadly crimes against people that don’t know each other. Even fewer that involve the passion necessary to dismember and mutilate a person you don’t even know. Alas, in a population of just 2.8 million muslims, 2 were found with this passion.
You claim Dick’s a hatemonger. I doubt Dick has motivated even 1 person to find an innocent person and hack their head off.
Two people is not a statistically significant sample, and neither is one Norwegian.
Like Andrew, I would like to see libertarian principles apply worldwide. But one of those principles is the non-initiation of force or fraud. Both are explicitly incompatible with the dictates of Islam. The Koran and the Hadiths call in many places for mandatory jihad against infidels until all are either killed or subdued into obeisance to Allah and the worldwide Caliphate is achieved.
As to how much of a threat the average Muslim is to the rest of humanity, Andrew might profit by looking at opinion polls taken in the Muslim populations of countries with Muslim majorities as well as those with Muslim minorities. Very large percentages in both kinds of countries support the extermination of Jews, the destruction of Israel, the imposition of Sharia by force on non-Muslims, approval of Islamist attacks against Western targets, the death penalty for apostasy and, in general, the whole Islam-uber-alles Muslim supremacist agenda. Malignant, aggressive Islam is hardly a fringe phenomenon.
As for the alleged lack of significant religiously-motivated violence by Muslims against non-Muslims, Andrew is once again either thoroughly ignorant of, or a deliberate denier, of the facts. The Pew Institute keeps track of such things and notes that what it calls “social hostilities based on religion” were at a six-year high in 2012, the most recent full year for which figures are provided. As one can see, the ranks of the “Very High” and “High” categories are top-heavy with the names of Muslim-majority countries, but many countries with notably fractious Muslim minorities are also represented such as Nigeria, Kenya, Thailand, Uganda, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Sweden and Netherlands.
Despite Andrew’s rampant Godwinism in attempted defense of the indefensible, there is no parallel between the very real threat posed by Islam to the non-Islamic world in the present day and the fictional threat by Jews against German “Aryans” invented by Nazis to make their transition from parliamentary democracy to totalitarian tyranny easier to accomplish.
An actual libertarian, as opposed to an erstwhile leftist who has preserved many of his former ideological spots unchanged, should have no sympathy whatsoever for aggressive Islam, a belief system that is as close as any to being the polar opposite of libertarianism.
Palestinians are not victims, they are tireless aggressors. They not only deserve no sympathy from real or alleged lovers of liberty, they deserve to be slapped around much more generally and much more viciously than has, up to now, been done. The Israelis treat them far too gently and, thus, the Palestinians persist in their armed hostilities.
Andrew might profit by looking at opinion polls taken in the Muslim populations of countries with Muslim majorities as well as those with Muslim minorities.
You might profit even more, as an example the first claim is that “20% of British Muslims sympathize with 7/7 bombers”
The actual article includes:
The ICM opinion poll also indicates that a fifth have sympathy with the “feelings and motives” of the suicide bombers who attacked London last July 7, killing 52 people, although 99 per cent thought the bombers were wrong to carry out the atrocity.
I read some of a few of the surveys (ones I looked at are very lengthy) and I’ll certainly be going back, you should do the same, the surveys very much reveal that Muslims are a very diverse bunch just like the rest of us, a small minority of whom are hostile towards people of other religions, they appear not much more religious that Christians in the US.
TheReligionofPeace.com page is just BS, it misrepresents what’s in the surveys eg. “61% of Egyptians approve of attacks on Americans”, while in the actual survey: “Attacks on Civilians in US: 8% of Egyptians approve, 84% disapprove.”
“Attacks on US Civilians Working in Islamic countries: 7% of Egyptians approve, 85% disapprove.”
The real life evidence is that a lot of Americans approve of US attacks on civilians in Muslim countries (Dick certainly does, he’s a Muslim exterminationist).
Slightly O/T, I was surprised that 40% of Christians in American think the Bible is the literal word of God, given how inconsistent the Bible is throughout, these people must suffer terribly when they read it.
Palestinians are not victims, they are tireless aggressors. They not only deserve no sympathy from real or alleged lovers of liberty, they deserve to be slapped around much more generally and much more viciously than has, up to now, been done.
Spoken like a true totalitarian.
You see every group you want to hate as monolithic, all (fill in the gap) are the same.
I will never accept that attitude, large groups are diverse, you make as much sense as an idiot who claims that Obama is a Democrat, therefore all Americans are Democrat’s.
I strongly urge you to read the surveys you imagine support your hatred, they don’t.
An actual libertarian, as opposed to an erstwhile leftist who has preserved many of his former ideological spots unchanged, should have no sympathy whatsoever for aggressive Islam, a belief system that is as close as any to being the polar opposite of libertarianism.
I’ve never been anything other than in the “small government, individual self determination” camp.
Where we differ is (again) I see them as people, you see them as a monolithic religion.
To add to my previous comment:
Dick has sympathy with the “feelings and motives” of Anders Behring Breivik whose attacks in Norway on 22 July 2011, claiming a total of 77 lives, although he thinks Breivik was wrong to carry out the atrocity.
(well I hope he thinks Breivik was wrong to carry out the atrocity, though I’m not so sure now).
Dick has sympathy with the “feelings and motives” of Anders Behring Breivik whose attacks in Norway on 22 July 2011, claiming a total of 77 lives, although he thinks Breivik was wrong to carry out the atrocity.
This is nothing but an ad hominem attack backed up with absolutely nothing.
This is nothing but an ad hominem attack backed up with absolutely nothing.
Nothing but Dick’s own words, He’s made it very clear that he shares Anders Behring Breivik’s attitudes towards Muslims.
Anyway, the point I’m making isn’t that I think Dick is about to embark on a mass killing spree, but rather what constitutes Breivik’s “feelings and motives” which I interpret as nothing other that his political philosophy and animosity towards people at odds with his own views. Similarly those fifth of British Muslims having sympathy with the “feelings and motives” of the suicide bombers who attacked London, which if I recall correctly, was about Britain getting involved in warfare in Muslim countries, which a fair chunk of Britain’s non-Muslim population also were against.
Being a self-described libertarian, but with an obviously left-wing brain, it seems Andrew cannot resist the temptation to ascribe any randomly selected bit of bloody-mindedness that crosses his mind to me in his ceaseless quest to excuse Muslim psychopaths and make me the bad guy in all this.
Difficult though it may be to believe, I do not have any posters of Anders Behring Breivik up on my walls. While he might otherwise have been a fan crush if Stormfront ever decided to publish a white-supremacist version of Tiger Beat, (“10 Things ABB thinks are sexy!”) I’m not sure their potential readership would be likely to overlook that bit about him being a Zionist.
Now I’m a bit of a Zionist myself and an Islamophobe as well. Unlike Andrew, I don’t lack the capacity to recognize actual danger when it appears. It is rational to be afraid of things which are both dangerous and real. That’s what the evolution of fear is for, to alert us to danger and prepare us to flee from it or to actively oppose it as seems best.
Andrew is fortunate to live in what is, by historical standards, quite a gentle and pacific period in human history. In most other times, a person so oblivious to danger as he would have been some predator’s lunch well before reaching an age at which passing along his dubious genes would be possible.
Call me a simpleton if you will, but when millions of people repeatedly take to the streets to wish me a violent and gruesome death, I’m inclined to take them at their word. Andrew, in contrast, can always find some threadbare rationalization for why they don’t really mean any such thing.
My biggest difference with ABB, however, is his execrable judgement. He is certainly correct that left-wing government has had a malign effect on his native Norway, especially their support of extensive immigration by unreconstructed, unassimilated and unassimilible Muslim tribal barbarians.
The Left in Europe wants these people there for the same reason American Democrats want more Hispanics here – their persistent failure to convince the extant American public to support their stupid and retrograde ideas has impelled them to bring in more people who can be bum’s-rushed through to citizenship status and who will politically support their benefactors thereafter. As an old jape would have it, the Democrats, having failed repeatedly to convince The People, are now attempting to dissolve The People and elect a new one.
Where ABB went seriously wrong, however, was in resorting to violence first, something much more characteristic of the Muslims he despises than of sensible Westerners.
Continued significant Muslim immigration is not popular in any European country where it has been permitted. Nor is the doctrine of multiculturalism which allows and even encourages immigrants to cling tightly to the same repellant and dysfunctional social and personal habits that made their former countries of residence the psychotic hellholes they are and which impelled efforts to escape in the first place. You rape and genitally mutilate your female children? You bugger your tween boys? You kill children who get out of line? Why come on down! Norway wants you!
No, actually, it doesn’t. Political movements opposed to further Muslim immigration, even some in favor of deportation of most of those already resident, are increasingly popular in all Western European countries. Given the failings of the European Left in pursuing its strategy of demographic transformation, this can hardly be a big surprise. ABB would have gotten a lot further if he’d left his rifle at home and stood for election to parliament.
This is one reason why both Europe and America are probably further away from a time when violence aimed at changing the government and/or society is likely to emanate from the Right. The Right is doing better all the time without recourse to violence.
There is nothing so likely to improve the Right’s prospects as a few progressives getting elected to high offices and making their inevitable hash of things. Barack Obama has done his bit for right-wing recruitment among those too young to remember Jimmy Carter’s epic four year orgy of progressive pooch-screwing. Now Bill De Blasio, with his attack on stop-and-frisk policing and the immediate spike in gun murders in New York is beginning to remind residents of Gotham about why things were so much better under erstwhile Republican administrations.
In short, why shoot Lefties and needlessly muddy the waters when your side is winning on the issues and making good political progress? Putting a Lefty out of office is probably a more severe punishment than just shooting him in most cases anyway.
And even if one were, for the sake of argument, to conclude that shooting Lefties was a sound strategy, shooting their minor children certainly is not. If the message of the shootings was to be even implicitly anti-Islamic, it was hopelessly muddled by choosing white non-Islamic minors as victims. As countless school massacres in the Muslim world attest, shooting the women and children first is an old Islamic custom and not one, therefore, which serves a would-be anti-Islamic messenger well in the repetition.
Call me a simpleton if you will, but when millions of people repeatedly take to the streets to wish me a violent and gruesome death, I’m inclined to take them at their word.
Well really Dick! Given your advocacy of the violent and gruesome death of hundreds of millions of Muslims, is it that surprising that they should be calling for your violent and gruesome death in return? If you don’t want them to be mean to you, don’t be mean to them.
As for your concern for my welfare, thanks, but I’ve traveled through several Muslim countries and not had any problems.
Given your advocacy of the violent and gruesome death of hundreds of millions of Muslims, is it that surprising that they should be calling for your violent and gruesome death in return?
As the majority of Muslims are illiterate rustics, I doubt most know about my opinions of them. In any event, the bilious hatred publicly expressed on countless occasions by millions of Muslims for me and mine long precedes my latter-day equanimity at the thought of their mass passing to the afterlife. As is typical of apologists of your stripe, the precedence order of events seems unimportant to you, at least when it invalidates your case. It’s all my fault that Muslims are crazy because I hate them and want them dead! Pay no attention to the fact that Muslims have been exhibiting pervasive individual and mass psychopathy for centuries. Nothing to see here; move along.
If you don’t want them to be mean to you, don’t be mean to them.
Yeah, not really an option. Being nice to Muslims doesn’t seem to get those who do it anything but their throats cut. We were nice to the Muslims in the Balkans back in the 1990’s. Any brief flash of goodwill this might have engendered seems long since to have flickered out. Ditto the Kuwaitis whose bacon we saved – if I may indulge a decidedly non-halal metaphor – back in 1990-91. Our reward for doing that was repeated deadly attacks on American troops by Kuwaiti Islamist nutcases during both the run-up to and after our second invasion of the erstwhile Saddam’s Iraq. Massive U.S. relief efforts in Banda Aceh Indonesia in the wake of a killer tsunami seems to have left no lasting reservoir of Muslim goodwill there either. We barely need to mention the Israeli “reward” for giving the wretched Palestinians their precious Gaza back. No, Andrew, the record of history shows Muslims, in general, to be entitled types with a pervasive, “Yeah, but what have you done for me lately?” attitude.
As for your concern for my welfare, thanks, but I’ve traveled through several Muslim countries and not had any problems.
Permit me to doubt you have done so while ravening mobs were in the streets during any of the Muslim world’s frequent hostility festivals. During quieter times I can well believe that you could travel freely in Muslim lands. First of all, you are male. Second, you support their epically cracked view of things. Why wouldn’t they like you? Still, as I presume you are an obvious Westerner in appearance, I wouldn’t advise going out when the street mobs have their blood up.
As the majority of Muslims are illiterate rustics,
Can’t you even get 8 words out without talking nonsense?!
Literacy throughout most of the Muslim world is over 80%.
In any event, the bilious hatred publicly expressed on countless occasions by millions of Muslims for me and mine . . .
I can’t imagine what you mean, unless you’re referring to the Iranian chant “Death to America” which doesn’t actually have any religious references in it, try to remember Dick that at one time or another half the planet has wished death on America, you guys just seem to attract this attention from time to time, take solace that it’s very rare for Arabs and other Muslims outside of Iran to take up that chant.
Pay no attention to the fact that Muslims have been exhibiting pervasive individual and mass psychopathy for centuries. Nothing to see here; move along.
You keep referring to this “pervasive individual and mass psychopathy for centuries” maybe you could actually find some scientific evidence to support your belief of it. No? You can’t find a single reference to it in reputable scientific publications?
Here’s a thought: Projection.
Yeah, not really an option. Being nice to Muslims doesn’t seem to get those who do it anything but their throats cut. We were nice to the Muslims in the Balkans back in the 1990′s. Any brief flash of goodwill this might have engendered seems long since to have flickered out. Ditto the Kuwaitis whose bacon we saved – if I may indulge a decidedly non-halal metaphor – back in 1990-91. Our reward for doing that was repeated deadly attacks on American troops by Kuwaiti Islamist nutcases . . .
Relations between the US and Kuwait, Islamic countries in the Balkans, and Indonesia are pretty good with the majority of the populations having positive attitudes towards the US (though the people in most Muslim countries remain “concerned that the US could become a military threat”
Maybe you could cover how many thousands of Americans have been murdered by all the America haters in those 3 places since the US had positive involvement with them.
during both the run-up to and after our second invasion of the erstwhile Saddam’s Iraq.
That would be the invasion of a sovereign country with the excuse that that country had WMD’s, even though a thorough investigation on the ground in that country (done with that countries co-operation) failed to find any WMD’s and that the invasion revealed that there were no WMD’s.
I wouldn’t advise going out when the street mobs have their blood up.
Ditto in lots of other places around the world. I strongly suspect most Westerners would be safer quietly watching one of those mobs from the footpath than watching the LA riots or other Western riots eg Brixton, from a similar vantage point.
PS.
Have you gotten around to actually reading through the survey’s in your TheReligionofPeace.com link yet? As I’ve said, the evidence in those surveys is far different to that which that BS site tries to portray.
Literacy throughout most of the Muslim world is over 80%.
No it isn’t. From the Wikipedia article on literacy rates by country:
“According to the CIA World Factbook, almost 75% of the world’s 775 million illiterate adults are concentrated in ten countries (in descending order: India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Brazil, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo). Women represent two-thirds of all illiterate adults globally. Extremely low literacy rates are focused in three regions: South Asia, West Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The global literacy rate for all people aged 15 and over is 84.1%. The global literacy rate for all males is 88.6% and the rate for all females is 79.7%.”
Note that four of the 10 cited countries have mostly Muslim populations. In fact they are the four most populous Muslim countries on the planet. Four others have significant Muslim minorities. Only China and Brazil have relatively insignificant Muslim minorities. As China’s Muslims are pretty much entirely Uighur nomads, it seems a safe bet they are overrepresented among China’s illiterates.
As the average world literacy rate is just over 84%, the Muslim world, even if you were right about your 80% assertion – which you are not – would still be sub-par.
I can’t imagine what you mean, unless you’re referring to the Iranian chant “Death to America” which doesn’t actually have any religious references in it,… it’s very rare for Arabs and other Muslims outside of Iran to take up that chant.
The Egyptians in Tahrir Square who were outraged about Obama’s support of Morsi would disagree with you. So would the crowds in most Muslim countries who have made Sept. 11 another in the Muslim world’s already overgenerous calendar of annual hostility festivals. Then there were the pervasive riots about the Danish Cartoons that portrayed Mohammed. There’s really no end to this stuff.
…try to remember Dick that at one time or another half the planet has wished death on America, you guys just seem to attract this attention from time to time…
Yeah we do. Of course for a long time, over half the planet was run by communist totalitarians and other noisome practitioners of autocracy. Funny how that works out. We’ve always prided ourselves, as Americans, on the world-class quality of the scumbags who hated us most.
Of course most of them would have, or still do, hate New Zealand too, once anybody reminded them you are actually out there. We’re just the biggest target, not the only target. That’s mostly because we’re also the ones most obviously actively in the way of the world’s bad actors who, these days, tend to be lopsidedly Muslim. Comes with the territory.
You keep referring to this “pervasive individual and mass psychopathy for centuries” maybe you could actually find some scientific evidence to support your belief of it. No? You can’t find a single reference to it in reputable scientific publications? Here’s a thought: Projection.
Projection? Right. Nice try. Can’t say I’m surprised though. Crazed denial that their favored pets are in any way less than exemplary is an old Lefty trope.
I wouldn’t look in “reputable scientific publications” for such evidence because the relevant journals would all be in Anthropology or Psychology, two fields of “science” at least as thoroughly dominated by Left-wing political orthodoxy as is so-called “climate science” and for far longer. Leftist idealogues in these fields have been covering for the unpleasant beliefs and personal habits of tribal peoples for decades, when they aren’t busily extolling habits and beliefs they find exemplary, even if fictional, as with the late Margaret Meade’s credulous fabulations about the alleged sex lives of Pacific Islanders.
So, let’s look at my allegations shall we?
The overwhelming prevalence of female genital mutilation in the Muslim world is a well-established fact.
So is the prevalence of approval for so-called “honor killings” in which a daughter who strays in any way from the claustrophobic norms of female behavior mandated in Muslim tribal cultures is summarily dispatched by her father or brothers to assuage “dishonor” to the family.
The near-universality of arranged marriages, especially, among Arabs, and to close relatives – many of them between pre- or barely-pubescent girls and much older men – is also well-established. Hey, Mohammed himself married a 9-year-old. What’s the big deal?
As to the prevalence of boy-buggery in Arab and other tribal Islamic social orders, that is also a matter of record if one knows where to look. There is a whole genre of classic Arabic literature and poetry, for example, devoted to the erotic delights of tween boys. Arabs and other Muslim tribalists see these liaisons as entirely legitimate – though they won’t say so when talking to Westerners – and hold them to be entirely unlike homosexual relationships between mature men. These latter are anathema, though hardly unknown.
Given the pervasive Muslim practice of plural marriage, which reserves nearly all women as wives for a decided minority of men, the sexual recourse of the “surplus” males to their younger cohorts is unsurprising. Homosexual activity, if not actual orientation, always increases in male-only or female-limited settings even in Western social orders – e.g., prisons, the military, boys-only boarding schools, all-male colleges, college fraternities, even – alas – the Boy Scouts. This activity tends to be dominance behavior more than sexual behavior, per se, but is often both. That also seems to be the case in Muslim tribal cultures.
The most straightforward and honest descriptions of these social phenomena tend to be found in the writings of Westerners who had immersive experience of these cultures before the age of Political Correctness – usually 19th-Century Europeans. Try perusing the writings of Sir Richard Burton, for example.
Relations between the US and Kuwait, Islamic countries in the Balkans, and Indonesia are pretty good with the majority of the populations having positive attitudes towards the US
Poll results about Muslim attitudes toward America are volatile. When we haven’t done anything high-profile against Muslim nutbaggery or predation for awhile, the numbers tend to go up. When something high-profile crops up – such as the shooting of the Somali pirates holding the American ship’s Captain hostage or the killing of Bin Laden, both by Navy SEALs – the numbers plunge. A lot of Muslims hate us. A lot of Muslims want to emigrate here. It’s a love-hate thing. Where America is concerned the Muslim world is more than a wee tad bi-polar.
Maybe you could cover how many thousands of Americans have been murdered by all the America haters in those 3 places since the US had positive involvement with them.
It isn’t thousands. There aren’t thousands of American military personnel in either the Balkans or Indonesia now and even our presence in Kuwait is much-diminished since Obama’s Iraq bug-out. But it isn’t zero either, especially in Kuwait.
And then there’s Iraq.
That would be the invasion of a sovereign country with the excuse that that country had WMD’s, even though a thorough investigation on the ground in that country (done with that countries co-operation) failed to find any WMD’s and that the invasion revealed that there were no WMD’s.
WMD’s were far from the only reason the U.S. invaded Iraq a second time, but it’s the reason those who opposed that intervention like to emphasize. Saddam wasn’t exactly bashful about claiming he had WMD’s and the evidence available at the time certainly tended to support the idea. If U.S. intelligence services were wrong about this, they had a lot of company.
But it’s not even certain that they were wrong. There are often things about particular wars that aren’t known until long after they are over. Britain still has a lot of WW2-era “Official Secrets” that won’t see the light of day until 2020 or even later. The role of Allied code and cipher breaking in WW2 and the role of Navaho and Comanche “code talkers” were not public knowledge until the 1970’s.
It is known that a number of big truck convoys left Iraq for Syria just before Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched. It is also known that Syria was building nuclear weapons at a secret desert facility with North Korean help shortly afterward. This facility was blown up by an Israeli air strike in 2007. Where, exactly, did Syria get enough nuclear material to support such a clandestine effort? Iraq seems the obvious answer.
The subsequent civil war in Syria has also revealed the presence of sizable stocks of chemical weapons there, the provenance of which is obscure to say the least.
Anyone who thinks they know everything of importance about what has gone on recently in the Middle East is fooling themselves. New stuff about both Gulf Wars, the Syrian Civil War and a lot else besides is going to be dribbling out for decades. Some of it will be about things as consequential as the WW2 code and cipher wars.
I strongly suspect most Westerners would be safer quietly watching one of those mobs from the footpath than watching the LA riots or other Western riots eg Brixton, from a similar vantage point.
Well, I don’t. I don’t favor any experiments to settle the issue either. For one thing, there are way fewer opportunities to test the Western part of your hypothesis than there are in the Muslim world where violent rallies and street demonstrations are common occurrences. The L.A. riots were in 1992. Brixton has had riots four times over a 30-year period from 1981 to 2011. Most Muslim countries have, over the last five years or so, had multiple single months, or even weeks, with more riots than that.
Have you gotten around to actually reading through the survey’s in your TheReligionofPeace.com link yet? As I’ve said, the evidence in those surveys is far different to that which that BS site tries to portray.
Yes I have. Other than the one cherry-picked stat you quoted from the very first survey linked to in my linked article, the cited surveys convey exactly what I said. Depending on the specific issue addressed and the country in which a poll is taken, majorities or sizable minorities of Muslims hold preposterously illiberal and hostile views. The site is not B.S. and I have exaggerated nothing.
why do so many of the people commenting on this forum who think they’re libertarians think that “libertarianism” means “exterminating”, or subjugating Palestinians and other Muslims?
Geez, Andy, I used to be a Libertarian, but I was never a Galombosian. You can use my name without paying me a nickel for the privilege.
Specifically, I was a Libertarian Party activist in the early 80’s. LP members had all kinds of backgrounds, politically. So did people in those parts of the libertarian movement who were non-LP or anti-LP. A significant fraction of both came from a leftist-60’s anti-war background. Pacifism was also a significant minority tendency among non-LP libertarians. I had many acquaintances in all these factions.
Socialism/communism/Leftism-in-general famously has the “knowledge problem” that prevents it from ever working as a practical matter. It’s an intrinsically fatal problem baked deeply into the DNA of the entire political philosophy that renders it non-viable as a real-world implementable governing architecture.
I left libertarianism after concluding that an overwhelming majority of its adherents were such because their primary commitment was to philosophical consistency rather than to liberty. Libertarianism is just such a “pretty” ideological framework. It is nearly as seductive to those of an intellectual bent as is socialism in that respect.
But, like socialism, it has a fatal genetic flaw, what I have come to call, in homage to Hayek, the “defense problem” – a form of the more general “public goods” problem defined by economists. Briefly, no libertarian theorist has ever propounded a convincing formula for a durable institutional framework via which a significant standing military establishment can be supported in a way entirely consistent with the non-coercion first principle of libertarianism.
As preserving libertarianism’s pretty consistency forbids exceptions to first principles, many libertarians, instead of rationally confronting the problem, simply choose to ignore it. This is usually manifested by various forms of denial. One of these forms is denial that an organized, standing military is even necessary. Call this the “Minuteman tendency.” It invokes the famous Revolutionary War-era militia as well as volunteer fire departments as models for libertarian military organization.
While engagingly goofy, this viewpoint is almost rational compared to the far more common form of denial that there is even any existential threat to liberty from any locus except Washington, DC. It is the aggression and crypto-imperialist interventions of the United States that have earned us so many enemies according to this view. Unsurprisingly, many of the libertarians who hold this view are former Leftists who simply brought their already well-established hate-America baggage along when they switched ideological horses.
But what about the Objectivists, or “Randians” as some call them? Objectivism also has a genetic birth defect; one that I call the “parenthood problem.” A doctrinaire Objectivist denies any claims by others upon their productive output. This collides pretty squarely with the necessity of supporting children. A social order whose foundational principle abjures parenthood will, as has been seen in the notable case of the Shaker religion, go effectively extinct even if a handful of converts can be made among those not so committed in each successive generation. Rand’s failure to grapple with this conundrum is a product of both her lifelong childlessness and to her being possibly the least psychologically self-aware major intellectual figure of the 20th Century.
It is, in short, the baked-in flaws of the various flavors of libertarianism that impelled my conversion to a decidedly minority form of conservatism. It is libertarian where that works best – most places – but non-doctrinaire practical in places where libertarianism fails. That is chiefly in the arena of national defense. I believe the U.S. needs a standing military to defend its liberty and that a modest level of taxation is morally justified to support it.
So, no, I do not think I’m a libertarian. I did at one time, but I got over it.
As to exterminating or subjugating Muslims, that is hardly my desire, but I am okay with doing either or both if that is what it takes to blunt Islam’s thus-far ceaseless aggression against the entire non-Muslim world. During WW2, virtually the entirety of the Japanese population were willing, at least in principle, to die for the Emperor and the greater glory of the Japanese nation. Many actually proved willing to do so in practice as well. Fortunately, many more decided to abjure fighting-to-the-last-man extinction when it became brutally apparent that the United States was actually possessed of military technology that enabled societal extinction as a real-world option in dealing with Japanese aggression. Not to put too fine a point on it, but when fighting to the last man, woman and child became an undeniable near-term physical possibility instead of merely an intellectual abstraction, the Japanese – sensibly – blinked.
I simply suggest that, given that Islam seems an even more fanatical death-oriented worldview than was wartime Japanese Shinto/Bushido/Emperor worship that the U.S. may have to employ similar means to halt Muslim aggression. Just as with Japan, it will require the deaths of many to convince those Muslims remaining to avoid the deaths of all.
You, being entirely unable to confront this stark reality, adopt the usual approach of denial and ad hominem calumny.
Your depiction of Objectivism is wholly ignorant and incorrect.
“A doctrinaire Objectivist denies any involuntary claims by others upon their productive output.”
FIFY – btw have you ever heard of contracts?
Becoming a parent is a voluntary act, and children can be values we act to gain and keep. Parents, who become so voluntarily, absolutely are obligated to raise their children to adult independence. There is no “parenthood” problem with Objectivism; plenty of objectivists have children, just like Yaron Brook does (the man quoted in the linked article).
Interesting that you think Objectivism is going extinct, when it is clearly being seen more frequently in news, opinion pieces, and popular culture than it ever was in the past.
And as for dealing with oppressive islam, objectivists have made a similar point and have a more focused recommendation that would be more effective.
Ryan,
I agree with your opinion of voluntary acceptance of contract by accepting parenthood.
I think the issue is what are the conditions of the contract? Who sets them? The child and the parent? A democracy of the adults for all parents? How are the conditions of the contract enforced? I don’t think Ayn Rand ever addressed this, at least not in any of her writings and discussions I’ve read. None of her ideal men dealt with parenthood.
In my own life, I’ve seen very various opinions of parental contracts. I’ve met parents who discarded their born children immediately. I’ve sat on a jury involving a foster child, whose mother never married and then died shortly after child birth, how would Objectivitist handle this child? I’ve met parents who expelled their child as an early teenager for failure to live up to their part of the contract. I’ve met many parents who nullify the contract at the child’s 18th birthday. I don’t see where Objectivist have answers for these variations.
I think your questions are mostly legal questions. Ayn Rand was generally concerned with the moral philosophical questions, and deferred the derivative legal questions to experts in law, much like on foreign policy matters she deferred questions regarding the execution of war to military strategists/tacticians. Explicit contracts between parent and children aren’t really necessary, our current legal environment seems to handle it with a sort of implicit contract defined by the law. That doesn’t mean the relationship should be subjectively defined though.
Her main characters in her novels didn’t have children, but she did write about and express thoughts on parenthood in multiple instances. Here are some examples that refute Dick’s claim.
For me, in your 1st case, if you mean “discarded” = “thrown into trash/abandoned in an inhospitable environment” that is a pretty clear rights violation (replace the infant with an adult quadriplegic) even if there wasn’t a mother/child relationship, I’d call it attempted murder, absent mitigating context. 2nd case, the child should be adopted out to willing parents or go to a willing relative, be it the father or any other relation, or to an organization willing to take on parental responsibilities. 3rd and 4th cases are a bit more context dependent… but all of the choices to be taken in these cases can be informed by reason and objectivist philosophy. If all such questions in all their multitudes of contexts have already been answered we wouldn’t need more than a capable computer for a legal system, input your particulars and the decision would be algorithmically generated, no further human judgment needed. To expect a philosophy to have all answers to all possible questions already explicitly decided is a bit unreasonable 😉
To expect a philosophy to have all answers to all possible questions already explicitly decided is a bit unreasonable
I think you are correct. If I read Dick correctly, that the Objectivist he associated with decided to stick to the philosophy and not develop answer in the law drove him away from that faction of the Libertarian Party, and among other reasons from the Party itself.
BTW, in the 2nd case, the court case was the willing foster parents raped the child. The unfortunate thing was they lied to the child about the condition of the mom, claiming the mother abandoned the child due to a drug addiction that ultimately took her life. If any drug addiction, it was the chemo-therapy. The mother’s mother was already in a nursing home, and apparently the father was never identified, which means he was never a volunteer to the contract. I learned a bit about “attachment disorder” as a juror in the case. From that education, I agree with you about my scenario 1. Even if the child survives being abandoned, the psychological damage can be horrible.
Scenario 3 was carried out by an extended family member. Their 14 year old teenage daughter decided to no longer follow their rules of conduct. After attempting typical domestic punishments (grounding, yelling, spanking), they were pretty much left with higher levels of physical abuse (certainly illegal) or disowning the child. I’m still not sure about the decision made here, but I have no doubt the parents tried numerous times to get the child to follow what we might consider a reasonable contract. In fact the contract was more liberal than I had with my children.
Scenario 4 was what many of my childhood friends faced. Their parents believed at age 18, they were old enough to take care of themselves, and they literally forced their children to move out before their next birthday. I’ve noticed a somewhat generational disparity on the success of this method.
With the exception of Scenarios 1 and 2, I do not have hard opinions on the variations of contracts to be anymore specific on the laws myself.
I’m sure there are a lot of Objectivists with children. There are a lot of libertarians of all stripes with children.
But, as Leland noted, parenthood was hardly part of the Objectivist ideal Rand portrayed in her fiction, her personal life or her works on philosophy. With respect to her personal life, Rand probably did any potential children she might have had a big favor by failing to have them. The primacy of the the self is unobjectionable as a philosophical foundation, but it is easily possible, in the case of individuals, for one to wander across the psychological border into narcissism and self-importance. As a mother, one suspects that Rand would have resembled Joan Crawford much more than any of the iconic sitcom moms of the 50’s and early 60’s. Another reason the matter of children likely didn’t occupy much of Rand’s mental bandwidth was the very high percentage of closeted gay men in her inner circle, both when she was resident in L.A. and after moving to New York.
Slightly off-topic, but since I was called a “racist” here by a commenter for my views on Israel, I thought I’d share a viewpoint. Roger Cohen in the New York Times nicely describes the Zionism that I believe in:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/30/opinion/roger-cohen-zionism-and-israels-war-with-hamas-in-gaza.html?_r=0
Excellent link, the problem will always be that those with power will almost always use that power to the maximum extent that they can get away with.
Since someone mentioned libertarianism, I thought I’d paste in a comment I made about seven years ago on a New Zealand site When I was trying to come up with a structural political mechanism that would push a society towards more libertarian policies, I’m not convinced though that it would be stable long term (or even not-so-long-term):
I’m going to fly a concept here that, as far as I know, is original.
Within New Zealand, and every other Western democracy, the government has a monopoly, the result is a tyranny of the majority. However New Zealander’s do have an alternative to submission to the NZ government, they can move and be submissive to the Australian government instead (or for some the British, or American governments.
In this respect, in principle, the New Zealand government is in competition with other western governments for its citizens, especially its most productive citizens. Unfortunately, this can hardly be considered laissez faire competition as the cost and dislocation involved in the move, for many people, is considerable. Even so, it is enough for business, economists, and the population in general, to take note of what the relative tax rates and other laws between the two nations are.
Imagine a situation (think of the confederates winning in the US civil war) in which the effort to people to switch states within a nation is minor, and in which federal tax, and other legislation was also minor compared to the individual state taxes and legislation. In this situation, in principle, we could hope for there to be enough competition between the states to result in much more substantial efforts by individual states to attract those people that make a positive contribution to society, and also to discourage these people leaving. Assume that borders remain open, and that an agent, something like the Commerce Commission (also, ironically, known as the Communist Commission by some free market advocates) acts to prevent the establishment of interstate government cartels to reduce this competition.
The result is governments actually competing in a free market.
Now, we can actually take this scenario much further, and go outside the square in terms of how we view the boundaries of governance. There are several market situations, Free market, Oligopoly, Natural monopoly.
“A natural monopoly occurs when an industry in which advantages of large-scale production make it possible for a single firm to produce the entire output of the market at lower average cost than a number of firms each producing a smaller quantity.”
Examples of natural monopolies are reticulation systems, physical networks. In our society these are often managed by local government (in effect it becomes a co-operative of ratepayers/residents) to minimize the exploitation that would occur if it were privately owned.
Most of the services provided by central and state governments are not natural monopolies THEY ARE NOT GEOGRAPHICALLY BASED so once we recognize the separate roles of state and local government there is no logical reason for states within a confederation to be contiguous!
Effectively you could in switch your membership, assets and income from one state to another without physically changing address! As easily as Maori can move from between the Maori and General roles.
So we have a democratic system that frees people from the tyranny of the majority in the same way as the free market frees us from the tyranny of a market monopoly.
People, from both the left, and conservative right, who believe governments need the power to tell us what is best for us would not like such a system.
What you’ve described is a rough approximation of what has been happening in the United States throughout its history. There have always been states or territories that have achieved net positive population influx from other parts of the country that, correspondingly, experience net population outflows. In recent decades, these migrations have been impelled, in large measure, by the persistent dysfunction of left/progressive governments in the emptying places and growth-oriented, business-friendly governments in the places experiencing population influx. For quite some time, for example, New York, Illinois and – somewhat more recently – California, have been experiencing population stagnation or decline while places like Texas are inundated with what amount to economic refugees. “Reverse Okies” I have taken to calling them.
Imagine a situation (think of the confederates winning in the US civil war) in which the effort to people to switch states within a nation is minor, and in which federal tax, and other legislation was also minor compared to the individual state taxes and legislation. In this situation, in principle, we could hope for there to be enough competition between the states to result in much more substantial efforts by individual states to attract those people that make a positive contribution to society, and also to discourage these people leaving. Assume that borders remain open, and that an agent, something like the Commerce Commission (also, ironically, known as the Communist Commission by some free market advocates) acts to prevent the establishment of interstate government cartels to reduce this competition.
You’ve just described Federalism and its principles are in the Constitution.
I’m suggesting a system way beyond federalism.
You’ve described abstract ideals without any concrete examples. As far as your writing is concerned, if we keep government limited, then services will be picked up by the free market, which would mean that a particular service may or may not be geographically based.
Perhaps you want a government service, such as RomneyCare that would take in people from outside the State of Massachusetts?
This is the money quote:
Most of the services provided by central and state governments are not natural monopolies THEY ARE NOT GEOGRAPHICALLY BASED so once we recognize the separate roles of state and local government there is no logical reason for states within a confederation to be contiguous!
Effectively you could in switch your membership, assets and income from one state to another without physically changing address!
You could switch states without moving house.
Each state needs to finance the policies it implements.
But states are geographic monopolies, on the use of force. Example, police stations and police officers, being concrete objects, have a geographic location, and to the extent they can influence the world, the do so in their immediate geographic vicinity.
In addition, the ephemeral governmental jurisdiction you propose would have an insurmountable knowledge problem, and make the protection of our rights by the government improbable to impossible, to the extent that ephemeral quality is exercised.
Not only that, but what would define and enable a state in your proposal?
Ok, I get it now. But I fail to see the advantage of organizing under a non-geographical entity rather than a geographical one. If there are advantages, you would need precedence for laws. Geography would be supreme in some cases and a human confederation in others.
Neal Stephenson explored the possibilities in The Diamond Age. The world was broken down into tribes that were not tied down to geographical location. But the tribes were also able to create new lands with nanotechnology. Geography ended up triumphing over a human confederation.
police stations and police officers
Aren’t these often employed by local government in the US?
Not only that, but what would define and enable a state in your proposal
Enough people getting together to form a state, like a lot of things, how many that is would I guess have to be an agreed but arbitrary figure.
But I fail to see the advantage of organizing under a non-geographical entity rather than a geographical one.
The social impact would be huge, any state that imposed for example, a progressive tax, would over-night lose most of its tax base, no cost of moving, not need to settle in at a different city. Think about the consequences of that, it would be like retail wars with states all struggling to attract the right people.
Which is why I’m skeptical of such a systems long term stability.