For a few weeks now I’ve been following the The Skeptical Libertarian page (official site here). They seem to be rather anti-conspiracy theory (for example; 9/11, vaccines, moon landing, FEMA, etc.) They also enjoy breaking down LRC, and as of late Gary North.
They posted this link with the update: “More libertarian greatness from the Lew Rockwell crowd . Sorry that we have been so “pompous” and “hateful” when it comes to Lew Rockwell . We are obviously “pseudo” libertarians who care not for the advancement of liberty and should be more tolerant of the stoning of homosexuals and speaking at neo nazi events . We have concluded that CLEARLY it is us who are the divisive assholes in the liberty movement and we apologize”
As well as something posted last night:
It doesn’t take much to provoke an outpouring of crazy from some people in this “movement.” These tend to be the people who most loudly proclaim “Think for yourself! Don’t appeal to tradition or authority! Tolerate diversity!”
But we criticize a sacred cow, and in mere seconds… “TREASON! PHONY! LIAR! STATIST! UNLIKE! Lew Rockwell is a HERO!!! Bush did 9/11! HIV-AIDS is a FAKE! Vaccines are POISON! FEMA CAMPS!!” It doesn’t help that they always have Ron Paul profile pictures, either. Somewhat frustrating.
I know the LRC blog wrote an article on them a few weeks ago, and of course The Sketpical Libertarian retaliated. I don’t actually got to LRC anymore, so I haven’t kept up if they are still having a blog war against one another.
I don’t know who Daniel Bier is, but he obviously thinks himself more important than he is. He certainly doesn’t have the political experience or libertarian credentials of the people he’s going after. Does he really think he’s going to topple their credibility, when their credibility is practically the sole reason he and his site would even have a reason to exist?
And linking to Tom Palmer hardly makes a reliable point, as he has one of the most ridiculous axes to grind I’ve ever seen (despite the fact that he is a very intelligent and valuable resource to Libertarianism).
I haven’t kept up with LRC as I had in the past, and, while the site is very accepting of people with opposing viewpoints when they have common ground, they aren’t as tolerant as they let on. But Bier and his ‘The Skeptical Libertarian’ site appears to be highly intolerant to the point of informally enforcing “pure hygiene” upon Libertarianism. What, exactly, does Bier hope to accomplish through this?
If LRC’s methods would serve to alienate the few from Libertarianism, Bier’s methods will serve to alienate the many. Not a smart move.
TSL seems to be very “alienating” when it comes to religion. Openly atheist with that sort of condescending charm that Sagan has when he writes down on religion. So far I’ve enjoyed their FB posts, though. I think their agenda is to make libertarianism more “serious,” or at least trimming off a lot of it’s attractors to only an agenda of policy (for example, removing the aspect of “conspiracy theorists” or any other skeptic that does not fit in their line of skepticism).
I’ve read many things written by Carl Sagan, and I don’t believe anything I read by him about religion ever sounded condescending to me. Do you have any particular passages in mind?
Sadly I cannot think of a direct source for anything, and it’s been some time since I read anything by Sagan. Mainly random quotes online. I remember there were a few that pissed me off, but that was a year ago.
Well it seems that I’ve found the article that lays out the ideas of the Biers and the smallest comment section I’ve ever seen that completely takes those ideas down.
While LRC and company could waste their time fighting with them, it’s easy to see why they don’t need to. What the Biers are really saying strains (if not flies in the face of) what it means to be Libertarian, and those ideas will shoot them down faster than any LRC associate will.
I don’t think the WHOIS numbers have a reason to lie; the Biers are an extremely small fish, killing themselves in a very big pond:
I just read a couple of their articles. I actually agree with them more than I thought I would. For example I agree with them that Alex Jones blows things massively out of proportion. Like most so called skeptics however they are still too quick to defend the status quo, where the status quo doesn’t deserve defending, a example being 9/11. We can’t be absolutely certain if it was a inside job or not, seeing as how the evidence was destroyed (which was suspicious), but that doesn’t mean the official story is true. In fact the evidence supports the conclusion that the official story is false, unlike some of Alex Jones’ grand conspiracies, 9/11 could have been a inside job, but again I don’t think we can ever be certain on if it was or not. They also appear to defend Big Pharma more than they should, in that they assume that more often than not Big Pharma is a good thing, when it really is in Big Pharma’s interest to keep people sick so they can sell even more meds. Their argument against this is that the people involved even give their own children the same medication. Overlooking the fact that they may not even be aware of the dangers, many intelligent people have accepted absurd views before, it doesn’t stretch one’s imagination to think that the doctors may be ignorant of the harm they cause as a result of indoctrination and cognitive biases.
As someone else in this thread mentioned, they want to make Libertarianism more “serious”, which I don’t have a problem with. (Even though I disagree with some of their positions.) They are going about it in the wrong way however. I’ll continue to read their blog for now.
I’ve been following the TSL page for a few months now and consider it one of the best libertarian pages on Facebook. Keep the libertarianism, but maintain caution all-around (hence the use of the term skepticism) with regard to any claim, whether it be from Lew Rockwell and the things posted on his site, or any other well-known libertarian, but also scientific claims as well (hence the vitriolic posts regarding the anti-vax and global warming-denying crowds).
Wait, so TSL are skeptical about the skeptics? After all, LRC is skeptical about vaccines, nutrition, global cooling/warming/change, assasinations, etc.
Here’s the root problem with TSL and others of their ilk.
Compare to this. If the State is naught but a gang of thugs writ large, then the entire apparatus of government is a cabal whose actions - whether public or secret - can best be described as plots. Of course, this is leaving aside the entire question of the power elite analysis and revisionist history which is clearly outside the comfort zone of TSL, Reason, Skeptic, The Economist, the Libertarian Party, et. al.
Revisionist history is the application of thymological analysis to purported history. Naive history frequently overlooks the abundant reasons that people have to lie, especially when they are connected to major historical events. Thymology is simply the method that arises from asking simple questions: What was each actor’s goal/end/purpose? What where they aiming at? Why did they choose these rather than those means to attain their ends? What motives did they have to conceal the truth, fabricate stories and destroy evidence? Supposing they told the truth, what did they stand to gain from that, rather than lying?
The LvMI covers the polite or charitable arguments that give the “benefit-of-the-doubt” to the government. Supposing they do have such wonderful, noble intentions, then what of their ridiculous plans? One could argue that the entire discipline of economics is superfluous but for the need to rebut the manufactured nonsense spewing out of the State’s kept academics. “If only we had a better plan, things would be so much better in society.” Sure, answering statist drivel on its own terms is one aspect of the debate. But it is a fatal handicap to restrict oneself only to answering statism on its own terms, giving the polite benefit-of-the-doubt. The fact is that the State is the parasite par excellence - ever-ready to employ any and all means at its disposal to maintain its sustenance, no matter how brutal, anti-human and grotesque - and closing one’s eyes to this fact is not a mark of reasonableness and level-headedness. It’s a mark of acquiescence to the State’s propaganda and - when combined with the full knowledge of the nature of the State - can only be understood as willful acquiescence to its propaganda.
It seems a bit naive to suggest the government is not a set of secret cabals, but actually people with the best intentions who simply can not calculate and plan the best method of achieving the best means and ends. To them it’s not a moral case, but appears to just be a scientific case, that simply, they just are not the best computer to solve the equation, and that all negative side effects, whether economic, political, or any other spectrum, was simply on bad policy, and not that those who work in the government may have their own agenda that’s not so well known.
Thing is, I know of other people in other political spectrums (from conservative to liberal and whatever else) who are also skeptical of conspiracy theorists, that the title itself is something to be weary of. Why do people prefer organic food over non-organic? Why do people question 9/11? Why do people question Big Pharma and vaccines? Why would people question anything?
Their anti-“conspiracy theory” stance mimics the mainstream media’s attempts at whitewashing any government activity. It’s like they say the government’s bad, but this new thing they’re doing? Don’t worry about that.
And a porcupine with a hat and pipe is hardly taking libertarianism more seriously…
The problem, Blueline976, is that the Biers have no standing on which to judge LRC or any other “well-known libertarians”.
Daniel Bier has no significant Libertarian credentials (or political credentials at all for that matter) beyond his involvement in the Campaign for Liberty and the Young Americans for Liberty; I can imagine that his brother has about that much experience or less. The combined political experience of those involved with TSL may not even equal that of Lew Rockwell alone, much less Ron Paul, and yet somehow they presume that they should be able to tell others with far more political experience and historical knowledge in this world what’s what?
I appreciate their ambition, but they completely lack the historical background and perspective that informs a Libertarian worldview. That is painfully evident when reading their moderator(s) discussing issues with others on FB; they don’t want an intelligent discussion, they want their version of things to be the way things are. Say what you will about LRC, but they are at least willing to put up viewpoints that may or may not be true or agreeable to all Libertarians and let them decide for themselves.
Unfortunately for TSL, LRC and all their other Libertarian targets don’t need to do any work to undo them; they’re going to undo themselves.
myhumangetsme: Credentials don’t appear to be relevant in this conversation. If you’re teaching a class at school, for instance, and one of your students corrects you in some way (let’s say you’re teaching math and slipped up somewhere), would you put him down and ignore him on the basis that he doesn’t have his bachelor’s or master’s degree in elementary education or mathematics?
Or maybe that’s too extreme an example, I’m not sure. But either way, if a person can be shown to be wrong on something, does it matter if the person doing the criticizing has the necessary “credentials?” To me, no it does not; if the other person is wrong, then he’s wrong. A kindergartener can show that the teacher is wrong just like how the Biers and the people following the TSL page can show that Lew and the things in the articles he hosts on his website are wrong.
Your point is what’s not relevant, because history is not like math. The “conspiracy theories” that tend to inform the skeptical perspective of Libertarianism require an understanding of the history and inner workings of the U.S. government and politics that the folks at TSL, quite frankly, don’t have. That kind of historical ignorance is not bad per se, but they also don’t want to know that knowledge and history. And yet, they presume to judge others based on what they don’t know and don’t want to know.
That in itself is ironic given their distinctly atheist bent. Were a religious believer to dismiss their atheist point of view without knowing or even wanting to know what atheism is, they would rightly cast barbs at that person. And yet they cast barbs and dismissals at others in full recognition of their own ignorance at what those people are talking about.
Sorry, but that mindset is far worse than any bad conspiracy theory one might believe.
So to correct your example: If you’re teaching a class and one of your students attempts to correct you in some way, and it is clear they don’t know what they’re talking about and are going to make no attempt to be informed or understand, would you put him down and/or ignore him?
Since you’re playing both sides of the fence Blueline976, it is only fair that your bent is put up for scrutiny here:
So let’s point out the one very obvious thing here. When you were directly challenged on what conspiracies Tom Woods has been spreading, you completely sidestepped the question and resorted to sloppy recollections (as did the mod, in effect, even though his response came before the question). This sidestepping was a convenience for you, since a simple web search would’ve turned up that Woods said nothing at all about “regime libertarians”; Rockwell alone said it in reference to Woods’ blog post.
Woods’s blog post pointed out the silly, pleonastic nature of the phrase “skeptical libertarians”, and that the users of this phrase, in trying to mean something that was exactly the opposite, were completely oblivious to this fact. No conspiracies were involved, and yet there’s this feigned outrage at Woods and his yet unnamed conspiracy theories for it? Looks more to me like TSL threw a temper tantrum because Woods got them so easily.
I appreciate the passion for this idea, but the youth and inexperience that belies it is obvious, and Libertarians and Libertarian sympathizers are not the type of crowd you are just going to be pulling shallow, witty “a-ha” moments on. The Libertarian deck is stacked with the upper echelon of intellectuals in many fields, and if you haven’t done your homework (and don’t intend to) you’re going to lose one way or another.
It’s probably because it is a political label they are dealing with. Labels deal more with tone, style, mood, and texture than anything really of substance. in essence all political labels will seek to consolidate some type of power play to crush eventually, it’s their nature. None of them are any different than Fascisim or Marxism if one takes them too seriously - and this includes anarchism, “science” (how often do you see stupid scientific jargon where it doesn’t need to be?), or 90% of the people in universities or “non political” politcal groups who say they aren’t political - and yet have a hard on for burying your corpse under all these meaningless buzzwords and boogy men.
It’s all tones, textures, and chincy sentimental psychologisms. Politics is a sham.