I have noticed that, since the election of Barack as the 44th President of the United States of America, the tone of this forum has shifted from educational debates in the economy to emotional bashing for the results of the will of the people, and a general state of pessimism that highly contrasts with the feasty and hopeful mood one can perceive elsewhere. Is this a temporary grief, or will the most valuable resources of this forum be permanently wasted toward attacking a political development agreed upon by the rest of the world as benefitial?
You absolutely do not get it. It boggles my mind.
Your mind should not be boggled on the expense of what I have the liberty to write. Remember that both of us have already been warned that it is pointless to fight each other on this forum unless we both wish to be banned.
Who is fighting? You talk about democracy, pose a question, take a sideways swipe at the forum membership, and then remind me if I have an opinion I’m looking for a ban?
My point is, this forum is very similar to how it was 6 months ago, 3 months ago, and 2 weeks ago.
The only person I have seen here who is so moved by the election of Obama, is you.
You are perhaps right when you say “here”. I am talking about both “here”+ elsewhere. Many other people elsewhere are also moved by this election, and many of those are part of the public that people “here” would like to reach.
Many people elsewhere commit murder, steal, lie. They worship false gods. They engage in bizarre sexual practices.
How much identity should we have to shed, to accommodate that which we seek to change?
The people who are “moved” by this election are not much help to us. We need more libertarians, not more statists. And engaging statists who are “true believers” is a waste of time and resources. Take you for example. Even though you have been refuted and challenged here numerous times, you still continue to hold irrational beliefs. All of the energy invested in trying to get you to think for yourself, rationally and honestly was wasted. Those resources could have been better used for personal development or communicating with people who have a genuine interest in truth, and the humility to admit they might be wrong.
You do not seem someone with a genuine interest in truth outside of your well-formed opinions, nor someone with the humility to admit you might also be wrong sometimes.
We don’t worship the false god of democracy here, in case you haven’t realised it by now.
This is a typical tactic. Start a discussion, and then when the “wrong people” reply, shift the discussion to them.
When I came here, I was in love with minarchism. I thought anarchists were crazy and radical. But i have the intellectual honesty to defend what I believed in, and the anarchists were able to show me where I was being irrational or could not formulate a consistent and rational answer.
I didn’t cut and run when confronted, I tested my preconceived ideas until they either turned to dust or made a hole to escape through. And they eroded because what I believed, was not the truth.
So I have been wrong, and I will be wrong again. But I do have the courage (or the stubbornness) to fight for what I believe in, and that will help me find my errors and my proofs.
If I may say so, people like you are very dangerous. You actually believe irrational things. You subscribe to political mysticism and the divine right of democracy. You write letters to Obama, at least secretly hoping he will reply to you. You can cause a lot of harm to others by putting state over the individual.
You very first reply to this post was to tell me that “You absolutely don’t get it. It boggles my mind”. Since moment 1 you shifted my question to me personally as one of those “wrong people” who should not even discuss here.
Anybody who don’t have an once of neuroplasticity are increasingly difficult and annoying to discuss and debate with. They make the same point again even after their points has been refuted. Most of all, they refuse to learn. That is why they don’t want to talk to you.
About Obama, I doubt any anarchists are particularly moved. There is no better statist than Obama who will lead the “republic” to doom. Due to their knowledge of history, anarchists knew that this is false hope. We have a president like him before and he is called FDR.
And so it continues…
You have been challenged on ideas by myself and others. Until you are honest with yourself and us, honest enough to answer those questions and challenges, we’re just spinning our wheels.
Lew Rockwell runs the Mises Institute. He is one of it’s founders. Here is a recent article he wrote about government and posted to his personal website.
I would suggest (again) that you take some time to read the Mises blog, and the LRC blog to better understand what this site and Institute are about. I know the tagline “Advancing the scholarship of liberty in the tradition of the Austrian School” is not precise enough, so by all means, avail yourself of these resources and then you will understand why no one here is feeling good about Obama, or the mass brainwashing he has accomplished.
Will you have the courage to confront your own opinions and contrast them with the Austrians’ and libertarians’? Or will you continue to criticize the community for having an opinion you will not challenge on merit?
So what? We’re the Winston Smiths of this world and you’re the ignorant Parson, don’t blame us becaus of your own foolishness.
I notice no such shift. And I consider Obama to be an emperor with no clothes. So I really don’t care whether people are respectful toward him or not. He’s a glorified criminal.
-Jon
The thing is obama supports war against civilians and welfare for the rich, like bush, mccain and the rest of the establishemt. I wonder why Ruben is totally blind to this fact.
Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this but since I started lurking this forum a month ago as unregistered, almost all the posts I’ve seen by Ruben have been ‘controversial’, something most sites would consider obvious trolling as he has consistently relied on emotional and blunt arguments with little clarity in his thought and beliefs. Why is something like that tolerated?
And as for the OP I haven’t sensed any change of tone and the few Obama topics that are there contain the flavor of comments you’d expect on a site like this- which is a good thing.
I do understand why people would be pessimistic. Bush had many, many, many faults and did much wreck the free market in this country. But Obama promises to be even worse. I think our best (or, if you prefer least dangerous) federal governments have been ones with split government. Where a president is of one party and the Congress is of another. That may happen in 2010 and I hope it does. Until then, I do fear what may happen in the next two years. We saw what happened with six (OK, five and a half if you want to be picky) years of Republican control of both the Presidency and the Congress. When there is no opposition to speak of in Congress it is the people who lose.
“…agreed upon by the rest of the world as beneficial.”
Exactly how is the opinion of the world valid in the way you make it out to be valid in such matters? If we elected The Devil and the rest of the world was ecstatic, would that validate it as good and proper?
The rest of the world would not be ecstatic if the Devil were elected. The rest of the world was fearful from day one when Hitler was elected. The fact that so many diverging cultures, including Asian cultures much more ancient than the Western, and opposing ways of life agree on the possibility of a change of the best speaks well about globalization and the future of humanity.
Because your " rest of world" is wrong.