Timeless "oldie but a goodie" from Canned Heat in the video below; some nice early use of distortion and slide in this blues number.
I'll nominate this one for the anti-libertarian national anthem.
Note though if you pay attention to the video as the song plays thru, the small logo image of the Record Label that appears on the images of the old vinyl covers... there she is... always corrupting the scene... she can't even leave us alone long enough for us to be able to enjoy ourselves undisturbed for 3 minutes 15 seconds here.
Enjoy the music anyway! (Close your eyes if you have to)
"Together we'll stand,
divided we'll fall,
come on now people
let's get on the ball... "
)
44 comments:
copy and paste comment:
Once again, I'm not opposed to liberty or genuine libertarians*.
What I'm opposed to is the extreme right-wing ideology of propertarianism and the various narcissists, egotists, solipsists, compulsively selfish shits, sociopaths, compulsive liars and dissemblers that populate its ranks.
*Tom Hickey refers to himself as a libertarian for example.
Matt - Imagine my chagrin to learn of your disdain for Lady Liberty. Oh and FYI... libertarians are WORKING TOGETHER to make the most of the 2014 elections
Ed,
We didnt build that thing Ed it was foisted upon us by France...
should have said 'thanks but NO THANKS! monsieur... you can keep it over there...'
'Sandy' took a Cat 3 swing at her a couple of years ago but couldnt knock her down so she is obviously pretty resilient...
y, I dont see either Tom or Ed as libertarians at all... despite how they may view themselves currently...
rsp,
Matt - You are starting to sound like Senator Joe McCarthy who conducted the witch hunt against communists lurking behind every tree. I hope you don't come up with a list of 205 libertarians known to be working in the State Department...... ;-)
Matt Franko,
I don't think you should allow "American Libertarianism" to own the term Libertarian.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPUvQZ3rcQ
straw man Ed.... rsp,
I think Tom Hickey calls himself libertarian based on his place in the quadrant on that political test Bill Mitchell has linked to. I fell in the left libertarian range near Bill Mitchell as well but I don't call myself a libertarian.
I usually find one of three things about people who call them selves libertarians today;
1) They are republicans too embarrassed by todays republicans to admit it
2) They are playing a political version of neither side has the answers, so the answer must be in the
neither column
3) They are antisocial assholes and would just as soon live in a compound
The Political Compass vertical axis is authoritarian-libertarian. Authoritarians believe that some people are naturally better than others and should therefore be in positions of authority as the elite, while libertarians believe people are capable of making their own choices intelligently. This is the traditional conservative-liberal distinction aka Tory-Whig.
The extreme of authoritarianism is fascism and the extreme of libertarianism is anarchism. It's a preference for hierarchical organization on the military model on one hand and flat organization on the model of the tribal council that sat on the same level in a circle on the other.
The Political Compass horizontal axis is left-right, or interdependence versus independence. The extreme is communalism on one hand and laissez-faire capitalism on the other. The model of the left is the tribe functioning collectively in coordination and the model of the right is the jungle aka social Darwinism in which individuals are free to choose and act as they wish and are completely responsible for themselves.
The challenge for left-libertarians, with whom I identify, is to balance and harmonize independence and interdependence while acknowledging egality as absence of privilege.
Suppose there are 10 people and they VOLUNTARILY agree to see the same movie together. That is libertarianism.
Suppose there are 10 people and six want to see movie X and four want to see movie Z. They can't agree on which movie to see so the 6 pull guns on the 4 and force them to see movie X. That is social democracy.
This may be the absolutely dumbest post ever on this website.
There is no point to draw from that because in the real world 100% of a population almost never agrees on anything, and the point of personal independence is that they don't have to. They are free to think, speak and do what they want, in principle.
However, societies don't work very well on independence alone, since a sufficiently complex group faces existential challenges (survival) in addition to satisfying individual preferences and group goals (progress). This requires institutions and institutions are defined by institutional arrangements.
These arrangements are rules and some of the rules are "laws" involving obligation, like providing security if the society is attacked.
Humanity as developed various organizational systems for coordination through institutions. The those incorporating the most freedom provide participation in making the rules to all subject to the rules.
In most cases, in the interest of efficiency a majority vote is deemed sufficient. In some cases a greater percentage of agreement is sometimes agreed upon as called for. Very seldom does the institution lend itself to unanimous consent.
The challenge of liberalism is integrating individual independence with interdependence based on equality of persons in making the rules and being subject to them. That is to say, absence of privilege.
Ideally, no one would be forced to participate either, but the group could also exclude individuals who choose to opt out from enjoying the benefits resulting from coordination.
A silly little man called bob decides one day to live in a country called bigland. Every day he drives up and down the big road from one side of bigland to the other side of bigland. At the end of the year the government of bigland tells bob that he has to pay some money for living in bigland and driving up and down the big road. The silly little man called bob starts screaming like a silly little child that it's not fair and how dare the government of bigland force him to pay any money and he doesn't understand and wah wah wah. Then bobby's mum comes along and slaps some sense into his teeny weeny little brain and bobby stops screaming like a little child. Based on a true story.
"3) They are antisocial assholes and would just as soon live in a compound"
No Greg, libertarians just want to be free. Oh and BTW... thank you for elevating the conversation with your insightful comments.
Ed, do you consider yourself a 'libertarian'? You've previously mentioned you would like the government to impose a gold standard-type monetary system, so I'm not sure how that fits in with it.
I personally find the DemoRepub attempt to disparage and redefine what libertarian means to be laughable. I've been watching the back and forth with sad amusement as your government has kept Gitmo open, spied on you with the largest dragnets in human history, suppressed popular demands for change by the tea party and occupy, both with noble intent for a troubled nation. I could go on for quite awhile but you get the point. When you claim libertarians to be a powerful menace, are y'all on a different planet? Libertarians are NOT the elite that are oppressing you, no matter how hard you try to claim they are. This is the motley face of someone working for a libertarian cause from the left. While this is what it looks like from the right It is neither the Koch brothers or some conspiracy to end your social safety net programs. Sure if you dig around you can find examples of craziness in all parties, but at moderation, the basic rights and laws that are the cornerstone of democracy are what libertarians fight for not some goofy mission to destroy world. Pathetic how viciously y'all attack these folks.
There's a bit of confusion about what the word 'libertarian' means. I have no problem with the sort of people you are referring to, Ryan.
The problem is that there is a group of extreme right-wing individuals - die-hard followers of the repugnant Murray Rothbard and the like - who deceptively refer to themselves as libertarians. They do share some things in common with genuine libertarians, but the core of their ideology is profoundly anti-liberty. However these people tend to be either delusional or deeply dishonest, or a combination of the two, so their self-descriptions shouldn't be taken too seriously. I generally refer to these types as "so-called libertarians" or propertarians. Bob Roddis is an obvious example.
What Matt sometimes refers to as 'libertarian' is just conservative or centre-right economic thinking, which has also been embraced by the centre-left.
Ryan Harris: Have you seen this discussion regarding Reason magazine etc.?
http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2014/03/mark-ames-found-libertarians-lying-to.html
in the interest of efficiency a majority vote is deemed sufficient.
By whom? On what topics? Eating the losing minority? Killing them? Taking all of their property?
Of course, majority rule in multi-ethnic social democratic states leads to ethnic strife and ethnic slaughter:
http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Plural-Societies-Democratic-Instability/dp/0205617611/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394809765&sr=1-1&keywords=rabushka
Iraq, Yugoslavia, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Rwanda to name but a few.
Heck, the Nazis were elected in a social democracy. That went well.
It's preposterous to claim that a society-wide acknowledgement and meticulous respect for the property and person of all other people (regardless of what hated minority or ethnic group they may belong to) is not the epitome of social cooperation while claiming that the majority siccing their SWAT teams on the defeated minority is an example of "social cooperation".
"majority rule in multi-ethnic social democratic states leads to ethnic strife and ethnic slaughter"
Another lie by a compulsive liar. The paper linked to makes no such claim.
Is the resolution of intense but conflicting preferences in the plural society manageable in a democratic framework? We think not.
Alvin Rabushka and Kenneth Shepsle, “Politics in Plural Societies”
Apparently, the style of y's "scholarship" is to deny the actual contents of books he has never read on topics he has never thought about.
I have read the paper and educated you about it previously when you made a similar patently false claim.
At no point anywhere in that paper do the authors claim that "majority rule in multi-ethnic social democratic states leads to ethnic strife and ethnic slaughter".
Liar.
y: I just quoted the final conclusion of the book which is nice and passive way of saying exactly what I'm saying. The entire book is a case-by-case study of exactly that point.
You are lying.
More joys from The Miracle of Democracy and how majorities love to torment minorities. And how the possibilities of economic regulation provide the functionality:
“In many ways the imagery doesn’t sit right,” said Michelle Alexander, associate professor of law at Ohio State University and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness in a public conversation on March 6 with Asha Bandele of the Drug Policy Alliance. “Here are white men poised to run big marijuana businesses, dreaming of cashing in big—big money, big businesses selling weed—after 40 years of impoverished black kids getting prison time for selling weed, and their families and futures destroyed. Now, white men are planning to get rich doing precisely the same thing?”
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/14/legal_weeds_race_problem_white_men_get_rich_black_men_stay_in_prison_partner/?source=newsletter
The reason that majority rule has been adopted as normal parliamentary procedure is efficiency. In certain cases, as I said, it has been agreed upon to require greater agreement, but seldom unanimity in that this has been found to be inefficient in decision-making under time-constraint.
These rules are not natural. They were developed over time through trial and error. They don't function perfectly all the time. This was addressed by adding right to protect minorities, and those rights spell out specific freedoms such as are set forth in the Bill of Rights.
Governing is a complex affair and as you have admitted NAP is not sufficient. One of the first things a group must decide is how to govern itself. This involves creation of institutions either informally by custom or formally by rules.
Generally, these customs and rules show similarities and differences among like groups, depending on specific differences such as culture and history.
Because conditions change over time, this is an evolving process. Historically, it has exhibited a liberal bias with freedom generally increasing. However, nowhere in the world today is there yet a government of the people, by the people and for the people that is actually functioning other than in name only.
This is generally for two reasons. First, the existing power structure is invested in preventing or controlling it, and secondly, the level of collective consciousness has not risen to the level of being able to implement it in form that is more efficient and effective than the current systems of governance.
Generally speaking, as the level of collective consciousness rises, usually as a result of broadening and deepening education, then the system responds in terms of institutional change.
From the paper:
"The hallmark of the plural society, and the feature that distinguishes it from its pluralistic counterpart, is the practice of politics almost exclusively along ethnic lines. To put the emphasis differently, in the plural society — but not in the pluralistic society — the overwhelming preponderance of political conflicts is perceived in ethnic terms. Permanent ethnic communities acting cohesively on nearly all political issues determine a plural society and distinguish it from a culturally heterogeneous, nonplural society. In pluralistic countries, where coalitions often vary from issue to issue, the cultural categories tend neither to be carefully demarcated nor always politically salient. Italian-Americans,
for example, though they may vote cohesively on some issues, often
divide on a great many others. And, in the United States, Italian and Irish highway contractors view themselves as businessmen, not ethnic representatives, in competition."
http://www.stanford.edu/~rabushka/politics%20in%20plural%20societies.pdf
At no point anywhere in the paper do the authors claim that "majority rule in multi-ethnic social democratic states leads to ethnic strife and ethnic slaughter". This is a complete fabrication of your own making.
You're quite a skilled liar, but I'm quite good at spotting lies.
I generally find that to catch a Rothbardian inevitably trying to trick you with a lie or a sleight of hand, you just have to be patient and vigilant. They always lie in the end, the question is simply when.
Here is a link to the entire Shepsle and Rabushka book about which "y" keeps lying.
http://www.stanford.edu/~rabushka/politics%20in%20plural%20societies.pdf
Of course, IF ethnicity becomes less salient in society, it becomes less salient in elections. But see the reference to blacks and marijuana above.
The new Ukrainian parliament just revoked Russian language rights as one the first things on its "to do" list.
Americans don't see 2nd generation Germans, Dutch or Italians as "the other" anymore. They sure see poor blacks and "illegal" Mexicans as "the other".
The key point about the US and Italian Americans is that the US HAS NOT BEEN A SOCIAL DEMOCRACY until recently. Therefore, ethnicity will tend to play a much smaller role than places where the "level of public goods" up for grabs in elections is much much higher.
Flemish and Walloons: Why can't they just get along?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/05/belgium-no-government-2011_n_949284.html
Look at item 4 on page 216, "Restrictions on the scope of government".
page 216:
"Public goods in the plural society often become the preserve of the advantaged political community and tend to be viewed as public bads by those communities excluded
from power."
p.21:
"The hallmark of the plural society, and the feature that distinguishes it from its pluralistic counterpart, is the practice of politics almost exclusively along ethnic lines."
The paper is about countries where politics is divided "almost exclusively" along ethic lines. i.e. in which each ethnic group has their own separate political party which tries to benefit them exclusively.
That is not "social democracy", it is racist politics. The paper is not about "social democracy" and doesn't even mention it.
The claims made in the paper are not about "multi-ethnic social democratic states". They are about specific countries in which the politics is based "almost exclusively" on ethnicity, where the different ethnic groups are almost completely separated, and in conflict with each other.
Idiot.
The basis of ethnicity, closely related to tribalism and nationalism, is genetic. "Nation" is from the Latin root nasci to be born, past particle natus. "Genetic" is from Latin gens, gentis, meaning a people.
Biology trumps reason evolutionarily. It was a positive trait for survival in ages when different genetic strains were in competition, so the "other" is equate with potential enemy and viewed with suspicious if not an urge to eliminate the competitor.
Unfortunately, ethnic distrust and hatred, tribalism. and nationalism persist in the age of reason, when we know that humanity is a single species. It takes time to overcome these cognitive biases that no longer have the same applicability as previously. In order to deal with the challenge, the concept of rights was developed based on the universality of humanity as a species, downplaying ethnic and cultural differences.
"Right" is a legal concept that likely from arose in custom and was subsequently codified. In other words, it's institutional. Law is an institution involving governance and legal systems are operated governmentally.
Governments are subject to influence and capture, owing to class and power structure inherent in human societies historically.
The challenge is to overcome these limitations but the way forward is not necessarily through less government but rather better government. Striking the right balance is the challenge that societies face.
What is "social democracy" but socialist democracy. You start an ex-colony off in the 60s and 70s as a socialist democracy and the winner of the election (which just happens to be an ethnic group) wins control of the entire economy. Elections break down on ethnic lines thereafter (if there is a second election).
The book suggests cutting down on the level of "public goods" to solve the problem. Thus, a higher level of "public goods" is the problem.
Thus: High levels of "public goods" + sharp ethnic differences = Big problems
Recall that the theme for the day was that violatary cooperation was deemed not "working together" but that compulsory "cooperation" via SWAT teams was deemded "working together".
E pluirbus unum is just a motto, or slogan, until realized, just like "government of the people, for the people and by the people." Saying it doesn't make it so.
The challenge is experiential realization of universality in addition to merely intellectual.
In the meanwhile, a doctrine of rights and their enforcement is required. Unfortunately, this can also be perverted.
Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, and also freedom is only won and preserved by the blood of martyrs. On the other hand, many causes not actually based on freedom are advanced on the basis of freedom.
Government can be a friend or enemy of freedom, sometime simultaneously in different ways. Lack of government or good government can also result in loss of freedom.
The natural bias is toward rule of the stronger. However, the human spirit is essentially freedom. This result in the dialectic of history having a liberal bias, but only with difficulty and at often at great cost.
Note also on page 215, item 2, is the proposal for more decentralized decision making, such as in Switzerland. There, the various ethnic groups make many decisions at the ethnic Canton level and not at a multi-ethnic national level.
I'm not going to bother responding to any more of your stupid comments today after this one.
1. You initially lied by stating that the paper claims "majority rule in multi-ethnic social democratic states leads to ethnic strife and ethnic slaughter". The paper makes no such claim at all.
2. You now claim that: "The book suggests cutting down on the level of "public goods" to solve the problem. Thus, a higher level of "public goods" is the problem."
The paper does not claim that the provision of a high level of public goods in a multi-ethnic society leads to inter-ethnic conflict.
The paper claims that in the societies it looks at (where politics is based almost exclusively on ethnicity, and where there is inter-ethnic conflict), reducing the level of public goods supplied by the central government might reduce some tension between the hostile ethnic groups. It also suggests other ways of reducing tension between the hostile groups, such as devolving political power to local government, as is the case in Switzerland where a high level of public goods is supplied by cantonal governments.
For purposes of a one or two sentence blog comment (along with a link to the entire book), I stand by my original assessment. A high level of "public goods" and high levels of ethnic (and I would add cultural, linguistic and religious) identity in a democratic setting is a recipe for conflict. This was a lesson for those who thought installing democracy in Iraq would solve its problems. I was aware of the issue before the Iraq invasion and things have turned out as I feared.
Social democrats (and Neo-Cons as well) are oblivious to these dangers and, to the extent they've been explained, they deny them, although they are quite real.
"Americans don't see 2nd generation Germans, Dutch or Italians as "the other" anymore. They sure see poor blacks and "illegal" Mexicans as "the other".
"Poor blacks" are Americans.
y's comment about Switzerland implies that secession of hostile regions of a nation can be a workable solution in some cases.
Wow! this donnybrook has gone on for 43 rounds, not including this post. Impressive! In connection with this, I'm gonna throw in my 2 shekels with a link to an article that struck me as relevant to the discussion. The article is written by a libertarian of some strip or another named Jeffrey Tucker who I think was fired from the Mises Institute. The title is: Against Libertarian Brutalism with a subtitle: Will libertarianism be brutalist or humanitarian?
http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/against-libertarian-brutalism
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