No, they don’t want your liberation. Let them starve themselves! Unless they attack.
A short interview with Charles Armstrong about the Korean incident and the circumstances surrounding it.
Sometimes I don’t understand how Ron Paul makes these connections.
Sometimes I don’t understand how Ron Paul makes these connections.
Because he’s a bit loony.
Do you not like him?
Do you not like him?
I wouldn’t say I dislike him, or disagree with him on everything, but I think he’s a pretty lame face for libertarianism and that the combination of a fantasy view of the American revolution, Christian mores and kooky quasi-white nationalist conspiracy theories makes him say plain stupid stuff sometimes.
I made a youtube video on the Korean incident and N. Korea generally:
Anyone remembers the South Korean sunk ship blamed on North Korea? Chinese and Russians didn’t believed it and when the torpedo and the hit was analyzed it was proven to be fake (as always). If I remember correctly, the new Japanese government was about to kick out the americans just before tensions appear again with that new incident.
He’s trying to spread the message from the inside, so I’m sure he has to do some things he doesn’t want to in order to play the politics game sometimes. But he’s easily been the best advocate for the masses regarding Austrian economics and libertarianism in general.
He’s trying to spread the message from the inside, so I’m sure he has to do some things he doesn’t want to in order to play the politics game sometimes. But he’s easily been the best advocate for the masses regarding Austrian economics and libertarianism in general.
Which is exactly what I deny: that political action works and that the inconsistent constitutionalist/republicanism is a good thing to associate with libertarianism.
Okay, we just differ in that aspect then. I see it as a good thing because even if the Constitutionalist/Republicanism ideology isn’t always consistent, it’s what got me into seeing what libertarianism was all about because I wouldn’t have even been able to imagine a stateless society a few years ago, but I was able to after first feeling a kind of reassurance from the Constitution that it once was that way.
I am all for starving them into submission, if the ROK has the will to do it…This is why war is better in this case…Every North Korean government official, down to the last pencil-pushing parasite, must be executed in the most public and disgusting manner possible. Otherwise war will last years, when it could be over in days.
I say lets liberate North Korea!
Their socialist nightmare has endured long enough.
Why do so many libertarians prove to be giant, fucking fakes when it comes to applying their anti-state ideas to war (“the health of the state”)? This is a sincere question, and I as a leftist am sincerely curious.
Why do so many libertarians prove to be giant, fucking fakes when it comes to applying their anti-state ideas to war (“the health of the state”)? This is a sincere question, and I as a leftist am sincerely curious.
How exactly would not supporting robbing your own people to finance a bloody regime abroad be considered exposing a libertarian as a ‘fake’? Whoever prefers north koreans living in poverty and socialism (but I repeat myself) instead of having to wake up and tear their regime down, can freely send his own money to the northeners.
If you forget these labels of libertarian or leftist and really look at people as unique invididuals then your questions should fade away- because I don’t know anyone that is consistent enough on all their views to really own up to any of these labels.
How exactly would not supporting robbing your own people to finance a bloody regime abroad be considered exposing a libertarian as a ‘fake’?
Please don’t be an idiot. Go read my post again, and then respond to it appropriately, or not at all. You are just jabbering about something unrelated. I was addressing two quotes in which “libertarians” urge war against North Korea. The quotes I responded to were not about withdrawing U.S. “aid” to North Korea, but about actively waging war against North Korea. How is that simple concept too difficult for you to comprehend? Or is there something ambiguous or difficult to interpret in your mind about the statements “war is better in this case” and “lets liberate North Korea!”?
If you forget these labels of libertarian or leftist and really look at people as unique invididuals then your questions should fade away- because I don’t know anyone that is consistent enough on all their views to really own up to any of these labels.
Well, in a sense, I agree. The problem is that the only way I can be politically effective is to join with like-minded others and participate in common action with them, so it is as part of that endeavor that labels become important: I can’t take action with like-minded people if I can’t identify them. Even if you are an ardent individualist, you won’t bring about a more individualist society unless you cooperate with like-minded others to that end.
But in my attempt to find like minded people, who are anti-war, anti-interventionist, anti-imperialist, or what have you, I find that most groups which show some promise at first turn out to have a significant number of people in their ranks who use the ideology as a cover for support of imperialism/interventions/war. Amongst the left-liberals, you’ll find some opposition to war and intervention, but then you’ve got a rather significant contingent of humanitarian imperialists like Bernard Kouchner fucking it all up. Amongst the far left you’ve got a refusal to be consistent by condemning Soviet imperialism in Afghanistan and elsewhere. And amongst libertarians and so-called anti-statists, you’ve got some genuine and consistent anti-war folks, like Rothbard was, and like Ron Paul seems to be, but then you’ve got the uber-hawks like Richard Pipes and his imbecile son Daniel, or our good friend FleetCenturion here, who call themselves “propertarians” and “libertarians” with every bit the conviction that Rothbard and Paul do. So what am I to make of it?
What can you make of it? That’s the nature of this reality. Everyone is different- but that doesn’t mean at all that everyone stays the same. It can take time for somebody to have complete conviction of certain beliefs. I used to believe government intervention was always a good thing, it was a process to figure out why that wasn’t the case.
An attempt to find like-minded individuals that you can identify with is something that isn’t permanent. You can identify with one group one day, then dis-identify yourself with them the other as they change and you change so why struggle to hold onto something that will slip away by its very nature?
When you yourself can talk about some people so aggressively, how can you blame them when they have aggressive comments about other topics? The labels just add to frustration because they’re supposed to give you an idea of what people believe- and all the time its found out that this isn’t the case and people are more dynamic than the label they’ve taken.
Just work with everything the best you can, no reason to frustrate yourself if someone is hypocritical at a certain point. Maybe they’ll come around sooner or later.
Just work with everything the best you can, no reason to frustrate yourself if someone is hypocritical at a certain point. Maybe they’ll come around sooner or later.
And maybe by the time they “come around” they will already have gotten their way and successfully agitated for another war. Many people vocally turned against the Iraq War after having loudly agitated for an invasion in the first place.
If libertarians expect to get any respect, they will have to excise the pro-war, closet neocons from their midst. That’s all I’m saying. No one takes you people seriously when you call yourselves anti-statists and then have people arguing for war against North Korea on your website without really getting called out for it at all.
Then again, maybe being hawkish about foreign policy is the strategy that some libertarians have devised for worming their way into the political mainstream. Who knows. If so, that could actually work.
When you yourself can talk about some people so aggressively, how can you blame them when they have aggressive comments about other topics?
I am only aggressive to idiots and people with no reading comprehension. This goes for people of all political persuasions, whether they agree with me or not.
Or maybe they’ll come around sooner then you think. But even if those same people weren’t supportive of the Iraq war, would that have made a difference in whether or not the invasion would have taken place? I don’t think so, so why not welcome the fact that those that agitated for an invasion are now vocally against it.
Its fine to mention the hypocrisy, but how can anyone stop someone else from claiming to be libertarian or anything else? Its an impossible dream and pointless to get worked up over. If anything it helps since you can see who is a hypocrite in plain sight.
And those people will always give you a justification as to why they’re aggressive to whoever they’re aggressive with. This doesn’t solve anything.
how can anyone stop someone else from claiming to be libertarian or anything else?
It is really not that hard. If libertarians were as anti-war as they are anti-tax and anti-welfare and anti-entitlements, then no pro-war person would still be posting on this site. Because they’d realize they are out of place.
An atheist doesn’t go to church each week. A socialist doesn’t argue for a flat tax. There are things that people with certain labels just don’t do.
This doesn’t solve anything.
We will just have to agree to disagree on this point, because I believe I’m providing idiots with a valuable service when I tell them they’re idiots.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100925192846AAqpkVR
http://leftoutside.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/socialists-for-a-flat-tax/
This is common, there are things that people with certain labels still do even if it doesn’t agree with what they chose as their identity.
Its really not that crazy to find someone with a different view on a certain topic on this forum. This is the internet- its easy to land here, set up an account, learn some things and post with your opinion.
Are you more upset that not everyone is jumping to call out fleetcenturion on his call for war on north korea? You’re doing it so that’s enough. Keep on calling out the hypocrites. I’m just saying why waste your energy getting upset because things aren’t the way you want it. You just do what you can.
Are you more upset that not everyone is jumping to call out fleetcenturion on his call for war on north korea?
Lol, I’m not upset. I don’t care if libertarians want to discredit themselves by letting someone share their label and argue for more wars; I’m not a libertarian, so I could not care less about the label. Personally, I already think that Austrians are pretty stupid, with or without the pro-war stuff, but I did have at least some illusion that the posters on this site would at least, if nothing else, be strongly anti-war. But I was wrong.