How can anyone say this political game is unimportant?
I will say IMHO the ultimate end here should be the spread of ideas. Like it or not, a lot of people pay attention to these hearings. Shouldn’t we be trying to spread economics to whomever we can?
I think some here don’t understand the importance of this, and how ideas can affect people when they least expect it. Obviously someone can watch this video and be totally unconvinced of the Austrian explanation for the crisis. People don’t usually change their ideology on a dime. These ideas will be in their head however, and at any moment something they see on TV or read can help confirm our theories and give them a reason to look into them. Planting those seeds is so important. Just look at the way you ended up here on this website. I bet most here weren’t raised with this stuff.
This character assassination is a very dishonest tactic on Clay’s part. But a smart tactic really, ad hominem arguments are convincing to many people. I can just visualize peoples brains turning off as soon as they heard things like “neo-confederate,” “you work for … a [southern] hate group.” The time it would take DiLorenzo to correct and clarify all these claims would be an uphill battle, it takes a little longer to make a reasoned argument and most people will just latch on to the catch words of the initial accusations. (Much of the things Clay said were true right?)
If Paul would have taken different people as suggested above, yes there would have still been a whole lot of sophistry (this is congress after all!) But there is no question in my mind many more people at least would have heard our arguments. Now the only thing that will come of this hearing will be talk about DiLorenzo bashing on Lincoln forever more. Paul gets a big WTF from me - nothing but negative PR and this was easily foreseeable.
How can anyone say this political game is unimportant?
Because we will always lose it and people are hard-wired anti-libertarians. Sorry, but it doesn’t work. We’re screwed, you may as well just stop harboring illusions of ‘liberty in our time’. We’re surrounded by six billion plus slobbering jungle animals who can’t imagine a society more advanced than a wife-beating family. If we get any more freedom it will be through luck, not political campaigning or conferences.
I would love to hear a proof that “people are hard-wired anti-libertarians,” like political ideology is in our biological makeup or something. I haven’t been a libertarian my whole life, but I’ve definitely been anti-authoritarian as long as I can remember, never could stand it, even at a very young age.
“you may as well just stop harboring illusions of ‘liberty in our time’”
Well I never said that, things look pretty bleak on my end pal. With that in mind I’m more concerned with the future, like what people build with the aftermath. The more liberty minded people that make it there the better the future of humanity. My point is we’ve got to reach out to where the people are - I don’t really care if this requires political involvement or just talking over dinner, I guess I like a shotgun approach. See if anything sticks.
Just staying holed up on our little radical websites (although very useful for people who already agree) doesn’t really bring many people into the movement. I sincerely hope everyone would agree we need more people!
The truth is that most folks do not pay attention to hearings such as these. It´s just that we´re in an echo chamber.
To repeat, there would have been another ad hominem attack had someone other than DiLorenzo shown up. Today´s specials are being called a kook, a racist, kook, a discredited kook, somebody who hates poor people, a racist kook who hates poor people, and neo-Confederate racist kook that hates poor people and whose work has been discredited. I´m not going to say how, but trust me; it´s been discredited.
Tom DiLorenzo was a bad decision, but it seems as if some folks on this board are naive enough to believe that if you had managed to find someone with no questionable, as defined by Congress, affiliations the committee would have gone down well. No, these people are lying sacks of expletive who will use any smear tactic to undermine their opponents credibility because they have the debating skills of a chimpanzee. Dot your is and cross your ts but don´t expect the folks on the other side to play nice.
Demagogues like Clay would have done the same with anybody from the Mises Institute or from the Austrian School of thought in general. He would have accused Bob Murphy of belonging to an organization that has a favorable view of secession, same with Garrison. Even someone like Peter Schiff would have gotten the smear treatment because he gave a speech at the Mises Institute. ¨ Peter Schiff is a man who has ties with the von Mises Institute, a radical right organization. Some of its members have ties to groups that have been labeled by the SPLC as hate group.¨
Once again, some of you people are really naive believing that the outcome would have been different. You need someone who can be an asshole back… That or the Mises people should stay out of committee meetings. Read up on the personal and political shortcomings of each committee member. Use it against them. Call into question what´s motivating them, drag their family´s name through the mud. Or stick to writing articles and releasing podcasts that begin with nice classical music. You aren´t going to win with the ¨find the representative of the Austrian School with the most spotless record and be polite¨ so the ¨ find the representative of the Austrian School with a reasonably clean record who can brawl and shut committee members up¨ approach seems to be the best.
I wonder if people in Southern Sudan had/have to put up with this sort of intimidation from some of the insane guys in the north of that country. They had a civil war followed by secession. They called a president a mass murderer, too. And the government a criminal organization. Granted more people died there, but call it like you see it. And death is death. But in Sudan, the opposite is true: the people in the North were considered racist. However, the people in the south were considered divisive and breaking up some holy union.
“You belong to a Southern Sudanese organization! You said bad things about President Omar Al-Bashir! How can you know about economics if you don’t even like him? What? You’ve been writing articles against him, instead of simply minding to your scientific work? Next you’ll be telling us that women should be allowed to wear pants or be Christian or animists! I have no questions for you!”
Anyone else laugh when Vedder said that he liked Lincoln and that he went to the Lincoln memorial that morning and read the Gettisburg Address? It sounded to me as if he was mocking the Lincolnlovers.
I would love to hear a proof that "people are hard-wired anti-libertarians,
Like, every piece of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology we have?
I haven’t been a libertarian my whole life, but I’ve definitely been anti-authoritarian as long as I can remember, never could stand it, even at a very young age.
Which only goes to prove my point - the only people interested in libertarianism are those whose biological and psychological makeup is abnormal to begin with. Most people are herdish, not very bright, and not all that interested in being right as compared to being popular.
Just staying holed up on our little radical websites (although very useful for people who already agree) doesn’t really bring many people into the movement.
No, it doesn’t. But neither does anything else! They just don’t care, man.
I sincerely hope everyone would agree we need more people!
To repeat, there would have been another ad hominem attack had someone other than DiLorenzo shown up. Today´s specials are being called a kook, a racist, kook, a discredited kook, somebody who hates poor people, a racist kook who hates poor people, and neo-Confederate racist kook that hates poor people and whose work has been discredited. I´m not going to say how, but trust me; it´s been discredited.
I agree.
Once again, some of you people are really naive believing that the outcome would have been different. You need someone who can be an asshole back… That or the Mises people should stay out of committee meetings. Read up on the personal and political shortcomings of each committee member. Use it against them. Call into question what´s motivating them, drag their family´s name through the mud. Or stick to writing articles and releasing podcasts that begin with nice classical music.
This made me LOL.
@Muffinburg
If the statists were going to send two African Americans to do their dirty work, then Ron Paul should have brought Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell.
Williams might have done it, but Sowell is rich and old as dirt. I imagine it would be a pain to get him to go anywhere.
See here. Also, see Bryan Caplan on folk economics and Robin Hanson on signaling (both can be found on Econtalk/Econlog). Somewhat prescient was Nietzsche who talked about morality (that is, ordinary moral feelings) as ‘herd instinct in the individual’. People have evolved for egalitarian, communal, jungle life. Those of us who aren’t are sort of nature’s crapshoot.
I don’t know the rules of this circus, but Ron Paul as chairman, could not give Tom a chance to reply to that lowlife scumbag who took cheap shots at him and the Austrian school? I don’t get it. Who is Ron Paul saving it for?
And who is that whore on the guest panel pretending to be intelligent giving these long lectures about how wonderful the Fed is. Nobody is actually challenging his nonsense. This is a mockery. Anybody who respects himself should not lay one foot in that place unless he’s a politician like Ron Paul.
At the beginning of the hearing Ron asked someone to “Behave”. I wonder now if he was referring to Clay? I don’t know how this whole thing is suppose to work either.
People often blunder when facing this typical anti-science criticism against the Austrians. But all one has to do is inform the critic that there is such a thing as the formal sciences, such as mathematics, geometry, logic, and we claim also parxeology (austrian economics), and that it is actually a more fundamental science then the empircal sciences and the scientific method, whcih themselves are founded on such fomal sciences and cannot exist without.