Do you feel that conesrvatives discredit us?

Miscellaneous General
261

By literal definition, perhaps not.

But the slippery slope argument & a different perspective of the political spectrum can easily make neo-cons, progressives & socialists more or less the same thing, or at least Fascistic.

For instance, currently in the U.S, we are not full on into Fascism, yet there are many Fascist qualities relating to the tightening government control of over private enterprise & the economy.

In any mixed economy, for that matter, there can be varying degrees of such qualities, depending on who has political power, & how they use it.

Even minarchism would necessitate some degree of control or interventionism into private enterprise, & given the opportunity, a politician elected into office can bring about latent fascist qualities of the state out into the opening if it suits their agenda.

Progressives, Socialists, & Neo-Cons play their part in enabling Fascism, as are statists are quite capable of in general.

262

ROFLMAO! He knows the context of my reply and why I said something? That is new.

You are way off tangent. I never said I was “just stating party affiliations” but was replying to him. My explanation for using those words (combined) was party affiliation. A better explanation of what I meant to imply was that Churchill was a quasi classical liberal/conservative, I have since redefined him as a neo-conservative.

Regardless I replied with TWO words not the one like he lied about. It is now fully documented that he is a liar.

263

This may be the problem as I (and billions of others) can only communicate using the definition of words. The more people freely misuse words and their definitions the more nonsensical their replies become.

264

Not even grammatically correct…

265

This coming from someone who does not know how to use a dictionary and consistently misuses words? Fascinating.

266

You’re not one for subtlety, are you?

This assumption that everyone uses & interprets words the same way you do is unprovable, so let’s not pretend it’s true for the sake of clarity.

To sum up why people continue to disagree with you on what constitutes Fascism: they see the shades of Fascism, you only see black & white.

Nazi Germany didn’t just pop up randomly one day; they were democratically elected (google for the swiss study for evidence, if you are still being literal).

Enough people rationalized that they seemed to be the lesser of evils , versus other parties, & the Nazi’s somehow managed to get the political leverage required to institute their version of Fascism.

Fascism emerges from the political process, usually from politicians going by different labels, such as Progressive, Socialist, & Neo-Conservative. Just because you do not agree with other’s interpretations of the words Fascism, does not make them not exist.

It’s that same mistake people constantly make when they ignore that Marx, whether they like him or not, had a huge effect in obfuscating & changing enough people’s perceptions & usage of the word capitalism, & while they can insist on using more literal or original or more correct definitions, other people may simply not give a damn, & end up disagreeing with you on self-conjured strawmen which skew your actual positions.

If there was only one literal meaning for every one word on earth, how do you explain metaphors? Comparisons? Similes? Poetry? Art? Culture?

Think about it.

267

Re-read what I said.

Why would your reply be in a context other than the one he was using? Your using two words and referencing to a party (retroactively meaning such anyhow) makes no difference to the point he was making which was that Churchill was a Fascist. As him simply being a member of either party doesn’t make him not a fascist. Now if you elaborated in your original reply maybe you wouldn’t be in this corner. So again, either your reply was meaningless or you were just wrong. Its still respectable to admit you were wrong, or made a mistake.

268

No it is a combination of classical liberalism and conservatism (not neo-conservatism) which is more clearly defined as neo-conservatism. Such as cutting taxes but not reducing spending.

Total nonsense, I have never presented the “Austrian” perspective since I cannot get established what that is! Is it the Mises, Hayek or Rothbard perspective? Because they are not all identical. You seem to keep declaring that your perspective is the only one and “official”.

I don’t believe I have ever brought up Glenn Beck once. I actually approach everything from a limited government libertarian perspective, which has not changed.

269

It is not about interpreting something my way, it is about fabricating definitions for words.

Do you support freely defining words? How would anyone communicate if any word can mean whatever you want it to?

If the definition of the word they are using exists, show me the dictionary that defines it as such. What I am asking for should have been learned in elementary school.

Saying something can lead to fascism is not the same as saying something is fascism. My problem is with the continued misuse of clearly defined words.

270

http://www.amazon.com/As-We-Go-Marching-Indictment/dp/0914156004
As We Go Marching: A Biting Indictment of the Coming of Domestic Fascism in America
The classic work by John T. Flynn: As We Go Marching (1944).
http://mises.org/books/aswegomarching.pdf

271

I was replying to him that he is not a fascist but a quasi classical liberal/conservative, the reason I used those two words was based on his party affiliation. This isn’t complicated. You keep going off on tangents. I am not wrong as he was not a fascist. If you believe Churchill was a fascist, define fascist for me from a dictionary and prove he was.

272

Like I said.

273

That is not the definition of neo-conservatism. Neo-Conservatism is the polar opposite of classic liberalism. Like I said, they don’t belong together. Conservatism and neo-conservatism could be associated with one another, but conservatism is not classic liberalism, and neoconservatism is straussian radical fascism.

Why not ask for sources? We would show you Rockwell, DiLorenzo and Woods. You know Tom Woods.

Them, and more. It is also Hoppe, Long, Block, Kinsella, GAP etc. It is also Menger and Bohm Baewerk. Jeffrey Tucker (iirc) mentioned that you could spend your entire life on Mises.org and not be able to get through all of the scholarship here.

But you don’t know what my perspective is. I consider myself an Austro-Libertarian, in that my positions don’t conflict with Austrian canon, but more accurately define myself as an anarcho-capitalist, as I also sympathize with non-Austrian anarchists like David Friedman. This is such a rich tradition of ideas, that continues to expand daily.

I never said you did. But your libertarianism is Glenn Beck libertarianism. Small government libertarianism is LP libertarianism. What we call BIG L libertarianism. We’re small L libertarians.

I don’t want you to leave, but this isn’t really a site for Big L libertarians. Ron Paul Forums, C4L, maybe the LP has a forum, those are sites that cater to minarchist libertarianism. Political activism, voting, fund raising, party affiliation etc.

We typically discuss free market economics and philosophy here. Not politics and certainly not partisan politics.

274

Not at all. Angurse understood the ‘context’ perfectly. And churchill and roosevelt were fascists.

275

At exactly what objective point does “something leading to fascism” become “fascism?” How is the distinction any less arbitrary than considering certain ideologies to be fascist, even if not in name?

276

You see, you didn’t say hes a quasi-classical/conservative, you said:

You took no time at all to distinguish between Churchill’s own ideologies and how hes wasn’t actually a classical-liberal or an actual conservative, or a fascist for that matter. Yes, you were wrong. Don’t expect people to read “Churchill was a classical liberal/conservative” and then think " Churchill wasn’t a classical-liberal or a conservative." Just admit to your error, its not difficult.

We’ve had “the dictionary as a higher authority” chat already and you disappeared.

277

I think you are still missing a lot by ignoring the political superposition of all total outcomes of The State, but whatever.

What would you prefer instead?

I could use Corporatism, if you’d like, which is a pre-cursor to Fascism. We can at least agree to that, methinks.

278

Really. Then using a dictionary define “neo-conservative”. I have only asked hundreds of times, yet NO ONE can do it

Is the Austrian perspective, Menger, Mises, Hayek or Rothbard?

If it is all of them, then anarcho-capitalist views are NOT the “correct” or “only” perspective.

Who defines what the correct perspective is?

Actually I did.

Wait I am allowed to use the word “libertarian” now? I thought I was a neo-con socialist?

Anyway I was aware of the Big L vs little l nonsense. Which is why I consistently labeled myself a limited government libertarian.

Did the word “libertarian” exist before “anarcho-capitalism”?

Yes you do. Look in the forums.

279

Using a dictionary, define “fascist” and explain how they both were.

280

If you don’t read Ron Paul, and you don’t read Tom Woods, and you don’t read Lew Rockwell, and you don’t read antiwar.com and you don’t know what a Straussian is, and you don’t know the work of Irving Kristol, then I just can’t help you. People don’t go to school, and get handed a dictionary, and when they have read A to Z, they leave. Words have context, and they evolve from usage. You’re either being dishonest (you know what neoconservatism is, and are playing a childish game to score meaningless points) or you’re very poorly read on the topics you discuss. You know them to argue them online, but I suspect you don’t actually know them well enough to discuss them with other people who know them.

I thought it was the latter, but you seem addicted to the same behaviour that lead to your removal at HotAir. You’re strictly here to troll and argue, and you’re not interested in Austrian theory or libertarianism at all. Which is a shame, because you’re squandering a lot more goodwill than most people get.

At LvMI, the management does. If you want to see what the management thinks and does, then dig into Lew Rockwell’s articles here, and start reading his blog. He gave a great speech on heroism in the Austrian tradition that is on the misesmedia YT channel. While Rockwell is not an economist, he is most certainly one of a handful of names synonymous with modern libertarian thought.

To small L libertarians, big L libertarians are simply statists. There’s no way around that. All state is socialism, and your foreign policy views are imperialist. Despite what you claim about bringing troops home, I’ve read your posts on your own forum. Your foreign policy positions are very different from Ron Paul, who plays a libertarian minarchist to the hilt.

You label yourself with an oxymoron.

You don’t want to go into etymology. It won’t make you happy. Rothbard was a key figure in the establishment of American political and philosophical libertarianism. Have you read Ethics of Liberty or For a New Liberty yet?

If we eliminate your posts, it’s barely a fraction of the discussion. Start a thread on natural rights theory, and there will be more posts in a week, than we get on politics in a month. Go read the Mises Daily Articles or the Mises Blog. Policy and politics are marginal topics at best. If you want to talk libertarian politics, you’ll have to try LewRockwell.com and antiwar.com. The Independent Institute blog occasionally. I’m sure you’re a big Bob Higgs fan, right?

Anyway, drop the dictionary bit. Start reading. Ask some insightful questions. Get up to speed.