The left doesn’t have a monopoly on collectivism. It is as simple as that.
Read Thomas Carlyle, Edmund Burke, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (sp?), de Maistre, Max Stirner and about Cato the Younger; then put it on top of the Rothbardian (or, preferably, Misesian) ice cream you’ve already got on your plate.
In essence, I am an amoral constitutionally anti-leftist; and libertarianism is, at its heart, still a Progressive, left wing ideology full of the same exploded Enlightenment nonsense that Humanist Republicanism was.
Oohh, how impressive. Your positions are still, for the most part, incoherent and belligerent.
The fact of the matter is that you’re just another socialist who’s waiting for Plato’s philosopher king to come and implement the system you desire.
The fact is you have no comprehension of what I mean by ‘egoist’ or that ‘political philosophy is a parlor game’. I think you’re all a bunch of loonies for getting so excited over this moralistic clap-trap.
The ideal situation is one in which everyone is my slave. That’s my ‘political philosophy’. I also don’t think it’s very likely to occur.
I would experience everyone as my slave as a living hell.
What about a slave to your moral code?
Lolz.
I’ll arm wrestle you over who is who’s slave. Of course I think I’ll win and then be able to decide nobody is anybody’s slave.
Same. I don’t want to be a god. I want people to be gods themselves.
Maybe you can help me here:
I’m getting this anti-Enlightenment vibe from a lot of people who would classify themselves as cultural/political reactionaries, especially those who are into Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Dávila et al.
Why is that?
The Enlightenment was a social movement that had heavy elements of egalitarianism, scientistic statism and ‘rightsism’. It inherited many of these traits from Renaissance Humanism and Humanistic Republicanism. All of these movements placed a heavy emphasis on developing individuals by mass-education, using democratic and quasi-democratic government forms to create ‘people’s states’ where ‘rights’ were enforced by the State ( rights wasa word that was previously meaningless outside of contractual relations, and in my opinion, remains so). The anti-Enlightenment and anti-Humanist ‘liberal reactionaries’ emphasize the customary and contingent elements of human social organization which are the products of the interplay of individual human ideological factors (to use it in the Misesian sense, I.E., complex of ideas). They also emphasize the ineradicable or superdominant elements of all human beings and human societies. Contrary to the Progressive/Enlightenment views, reactionaries (as a rule) are not anti-science or people who reject philosophy - quite to the contrary the developed reactionary position is that Enlightenment ideology is a perverse imitation of science and philosophy; and superficial in its analysis and solutions. The notion of ‘natural, universal rights’ and a law apart from private law which actually embodies the interest of real human beings is just as spurious and deluded as the idea of an economy without prices. Reactionaries do not believe in ‘tabula rasa’ man (blank slate), but instead in actual men who have a wide variety of inborn and acquired traits, many of which are beyond either the understanding or the control of those involved.
If you read Goebbels you find that his pursuit was actually less authoritarian and more collectivist than what passes for all political parties today. He saw using propaganda to convince people to do charity as the highest achievement of the state. He saw Bolshevism as the same as liberalism and both as individualist. These words have credibility as there was probably the largest amount of donation to state run aid programs in history, in Nazi Germany.
Though I am new to this board and admit that I know nothing about everything – I still have the right to say this; the petty insults and personal attacks in this thread are embarrassing. I would think that such intelligent people would not need to result to such childish tactics.
It is amusing that obviously intelligent people are tricked into knee jerk reactions to ambiguous posts.
Most of the people on here are not intelligent. If anything, they’re educated beyond their ability to reason. This is, for the most part, a board full of goofballs.
But, you’re right, their behavior is ridiculous.
What insults? I don’t see any.
Glenn Beck’s logic goes as far as to say “OH LOOK NAZI GERMANY HAD HEALTH CARE, SOCIALIST!” Oh look “NAZI = National SOCIALIST Workers Party” His arguments are ridiculous. His own definition of leftism is ridiculous. Hitler never advocated worker ownership over the means of productions.
“I want everyone to keep what he has earned, subject to the principle that the good of the community takes priority over that of the individual. But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself to be an agent of the State … The Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners” - Adolf Hitler “
Our adopted term ‘Socialist’ has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not”."
The video does make several false statements. The commenter says that the the Communist’s slogan was “First brown, then red”, trying to portray the communists as Hitler’s ally. I searched and could not find a single source on that.
This is totally false depiction. The communists were Hitler’s largest opponents. They regularly held anti-Nazi rallies and voted against Hitler. The Communist Party of Germany’s (KPD) slogan was actually “A vote for Hindenburg is a vote for Hitler; a vote for Hitler is a vote for war.”
Look up the 1932 elections.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_July_1932
Socialist newspapers also published much anti-Nazi writings. Communists were the first group of people to be sent to Hitler’s concentration camps. As many as 100,000-200,000 were killed by Hitler. The KPD was suppressed and communists were classified as “enemies of the state”
The relevant chapters in Mises’s Omnipotent Government are also a good source on this. He explains what was behind the cross-membership between Socialist and Nazi organisations (which to the demagogue Beck is a proof that they were working hand in hand) for example.
Coercion is coercion.
That doesn’t tell us whether Hitler subscribed to leftist or rightist ideals…
“That doesn’t tell us whether Hitler subscribed to leftist or rightist ideals…”
In the end it doesn’t matter. Leftist or rightist coercive ideals are still socialism.