i turned from a leftist greeny when i was bout 13.one of my friends turned from the green party here in new zealand last year ‘his friends are actualy the co leaders and founders of the green party here one of them is nandor.all it took was to get him to read rothbard’.
I’m with you Frederique Bastiao, I just don’t think there is much hope in the Left. Their ideas are based almost entirely on egalitarianism, which is fundamentally opposed the inherent discriminatory nature of private property. Even the anti-war people are motivated largely by a desire to “spend the money helping the poor instead.”
I think that most “leftists” are just young folks who want war to end, and drugs to be legalized. I know when I was a young leftist, that was my biggest focus, and it still is important to me now. I think the socialist part of it is there just because it’s been orthodox radical (lawlz) ideology for so long, it easy to take in addition.
I used to be a communist. Then I became a neoconservative secularist. Then, a municipal fascist with strong fiscally conservative leanings (it took surprisingly little to go from neocon to fascist. Only thing that changed is that I became more culturally conservative and less obsessed with “global democracy”). Now, I’m something, but it’s none of these things. The best way I suppose I could describe my worldview, not only political but philosophical and religious, would be halfway between Byzantine and Ricky James Moore II. I’ve still somewhat of a Ameriphilic complex contrasted with a Europhobic one, chiefly because I perceive the US to, for all its faults and growing federalism, be far closer to my political and cultural views than most of Western Europe, especially on certain issues I place a higher personal priority on. In the same breath, I quite like Eastern Europe and would definitely be considered a Sinophile, and more broadly an Asiaphile. My views on foreign policy and immigration are probably closest to Paul Gottfried’s and I hold what may be a relatively unique position on natural rights.
So, I guess that makes me a former leftist, though on a relatively distant scale. I’d be rather skeptical as to whether the left is any better than the right on civil liberties. Many positions considered “socially” left require large scale social engineering, such as forcing religious people to associate with homosexuals, abrogating or, in many cases, completely eliminating the right to keep and bear arms (even Roderick Long remarked on this as the one civil liberty he thought the left was weak on), forcing parents to send their children to schools where they will be taught “sex ed” and other cultural Marxist indoctrination, and jailing people for making remarks blasphemous to PC (thankfully, your First Amendment seems to have halted this in the US of A). It’s not like Clinton or Obama were any better than Bush on most civil liberties anyhow. Clinton was actually far worse on guns, Obama’s expanded the TSA to new heights and, going back to the heady days of Truman, it was a Democrat, not a Republican, who introduced the Fairness Doctrine. So, regardless of their rhetoric, I’m not sure whether the left is any better than the right on civil liberty.
Yeah, but also the lefts anti-war stance is a holdover from the 60s when being anti-war in the US meant surrendering to communism. Take this anti-war stance (which they project back onto history), add their support of gay marriage and drug legalization, add their desire to ‘liberate’ the poor from having to pay for health care, and many on the left live in this narrative where they see themselves as societal liberators, successfully fighting back the “conservatives” step by step for the last 250 years. All the failures of left-wing ideology that we are aware of is just not part of their education, and in a way they simply coopted the history of classical liberalism while handing their to the right.
I became interested in politics very early age, around 11 or 12 years old, because the Iraq War. I found the idea of mass murder and torture to be disgusting and evil at a fundamental level. Because most of the anti-war stuff was coming from people like Micheal Moore and Noam Chomsky I naturally became a leftist. I remember when I first heard of Rothbard I was quite drawn to the idea of ancap; but I rejected it because I thought it was impractical. Over the years a lot of leftist prejudice against free markets and individualism built up inside me (damn you Chomsky!). It wasn’t until I started talking to a Rothbardian over the net that I was convinced. The idea of a private law society scared the heck out of me at first though, it took me a couple of months to understand how such a society would function peacefully. Then I realised ancap is the most harmonious and peaceful form of social order, and here I am.
Make no mistake, they’re violent and authoritarian.
They’re also hiding under your bed.
Make no mistake, they’re violent and authoritarian.
They’re also hiding under your bed.
Zing!