Kucinich moves for Cheney Impeachment
 

You think this is just a stunt to get votes?

No, it's not a stunt to get votes. The candidates with cynical vote strategies wouldn't touch this for fear of Republicans calling them names.

It'd be a great way to lose my vote, even though it's well known I wouldn't vote for a Democratic candidate anyway.

I think it's great. Let them try it. :D

Dennis is right on the money. For the life of me I can't see why people still support this administration. Let's run through the list of excuses for preemptive war. Sadaam = Al Q oops we didn't mean to pretend that. mmm... yellow cake is yummy but also fabricated. Aluminum tubes!!! Holy shit aluminum tubes! It's really about democracy except in Pakilandistan then its about the love between a man and a man he'd love to see removing his uniform. Oh and let's make sure we torture like a bunch of eastern block bitches and suspend the Bill of Rights because they only matter when its convenient. /rant o'da day

Griff, why can't you accept it's about pulling a nation away from an ultra-statist antilibertarian political order into a more libertarian one? -- stipulating that it isn't completely libertarian. That is the chiefest point I see in the entire affair, myself. Indeed, I think it eclipses any other consideration. And that looks to be about what this Administration has as a goal, rather than this conspiracist stuff about how it's all for the benefit of the oil companies. That's too lame for me to believe -- it's been alleged over and over and over, without supporting evidence, just the standard conspiracy-peddlers' suggestion that the reader connect the dots. Which in its turn relieves the conspiracist of the necessity of coming up with the provable connections himself.

Anyway, that is why this libertarian likes what some Republicans are doing. Conspicuously in contrast, the Democrats haven't.

Oh come on UG. Hilter used far longer phrases in Mein Kampf. You can do better.

I can't accept it because the nation that matters is being pulled in a decidedly statist anti-libertarian direction. George was elected President of the United States of America, not the United States of the mid-East or East Asia or the world. I see little comittment to free markets and free people in the US, so allow me to doubt that his overseas agenda is free of insider deals.

I'm sure you can doubt as you see fit; I however continue to applaud our campaigns in the overall War as steps in a more libertarian direction for social orders that frankly haven't had any libertarianism yet -- which state of affairs I abominate beyond all abomination. I've never heard why you don't share that view. Switching straight from an autocracy to full-on libertarianism, in no time, nor with any systematic transitional steps -- what do you think the likely outcome of trying that one would be?

I think it would mean instant civil war until one side or the other was pretty much shot out. Awfully chancy, not to mention the waste and destruction. As it is, with the more modest political change we're trying to help grow, we've still got civil war and alarming developments. And, well, we've got to expect waste and destruction and to decide how much we're willing to accept en route to a great liberation. You know how much value I set on liberty, and how much I think it would benefit foreign folks whose ways are different from our own.

A certain fellow whose books I like sums it up as "the engine can't move any faster than the caboose."

Meanwhile, there's the question of what it's going to take to spread libertarianism and libertarian social orders across the globe. I don't think very many Libertarian Party members have thought about this. Certain of them, seeing me thinking about it, are moved to complain, and advocate a wimping out instead of a propagation. This is commitment??

You often reference your time in the military when considering totalitarianism, yet you desire that America become more militaristic. I can't quite follow your logic. We are to become Prussians to promote liberalism abroad? I'm sorry but your logic is confusing to my scotch saturated brain.

I'm considering the matter of using force to install a government not of a populations choosing and calling it democracy. There were more than enough rifles in Iraq to remove the nut Hussein, if the people there decided he was worse than mob rule. They chose otherwise yet you call your parties imposition democracy.

Libertarianism is a belief system developed in the West and appealing to about 2% of Westerners. Stop selling totalitarianism and calling it libertarianism. It is a marketing ploy aimed at gaining 2% of voters for a debased GOP. It isn't worth your time.

Not to mention that 'Spreading libertarianism' is oxymoronic. Libertarianism has at it's very core non-involvement. It's a ridiculous concept, and it borders on double think.

That's a defect, and should not be allowed to enter into believers' hearts or minds. If it is to succeed, which I for one think is a good idea, it must spread -- actively.

"They chose otherwise...?" They were browbeaten by ultra-statists into acquiescence and were kept browbeaten by the severest measures of oppression. No, I cannot believe "chose." Too much like fascist-sympathizing for this libertarian, I'll tell ya. Particularly in the case of the Ba'ath Party; its direct Fascist antecedents are well known. (Are you trying to do that piss-me-off thing again?)

It's time to make it appealing to at least twice two percent -- to start. Well? Do you really want a better society, or do you want a debate club??

I guess it's a bit of the college student in me, but I think those are reciprocal entities.

/me hums 'Love and Marriage'

I would rather your party, the GOP, considered the virtues of non-intervention instead of submitting to the ultra-statist views of your fellow neo-cons. Brother, I only count one facist sympathizer in this discussion. Only one person here is actively opposed to observing the Bill of Rights. Only one person here gives aid and comfort to petty terrorists by supporting their recruiting efforts by his support of putting my fellow citizens in harms way.

Well, he isn't me, if that's what you wrongly insist on believing: the fascists must vanish and libertarian democracy must prevail. This is doing something about fascism, which you for one are conspicuously unwilling to undertake -- how is this not fascist sympathizing? Too many Libertarians right here don't acknowledge that, trapping themselves in a specious logic -- specious because it's based in utter inaction. You can't have libertarianism if you don't get out there and make it happen, and libertarianism is good for human beings, so anyone caught denying human beings this good must be made to stop, and he doesn't have to survive the experience, does he? If you want libertarianism to happen anywhere on the planet, expect to intervene, or the Stygian less-than-libertarian undemocracy will only persist, because states and political do work towards their own perpetuation, do they not? How is this then to be remedied? Sooner or later, you remedy it by chaining or destroying the fascist elements. Why should libertarians not believe in this? I've never heard any substantive reasons, just excuses and feeble rationalization. That isn't active libertarianism, is it?

My preferred party is the Libertarian Party, and sure, a good second choice for me would be the GOP, because the Democratic Party is such a batch of socialistoid, foreign-policy-feeble idiots: look at their record of gross incompetence at foreign policy for the past two generations. You simply can't tell me I'm not a Libertarian -- you just have to remember I'm not your particular variety of Libertarian, but something much more active, with a longer and wider and greater view. I'm endeavoring to fix what's wrong with the LP that keeps libertarianism from actually occurring anywhere.

Who cares how many fascists die before conversion to true democrats? Those fascists are the dumb ones anyway, fixated upon retaining a license for oppression -- to perform aggressions of the exact nature libertarianism condemns, and ought therefor to justify the destruction of the perpetrators. No matter how democracy's pestiferous foes recruit, it's really solely a matter of bringing up enough bullets to deal with those we can't educate to the point of conversion -- it's bad for mankind if that unteachable lot are let to run about and practice their oppressions. It is helpful for conversions if there are substantial examples of what happens to the ones who couldn't convert because they preferred to be shitheads about it.

To expand on it: Libertarianism isn't going to prevail anywhere on this mortal Earth unless and until it beats out the other competing ideologies. Ideologies that embrace force and violence to achieve their ends will take a lot of beating. Beating them includes lethal force -- and can you imagine a death less to be mourned than that of undemocratic autocracy? If you could, you'd hardly be a libertarian, now would you?

Those ideologies wedded to force and violence attempt to practice them efficiently. Our virtuous conduct as libertarians is not going to shield our persons or our prospects from those ideologies' attempts at neutralizing us. Instead, we must be efficient at force and violence ourselves, to render their force impotent, which of course was what we wanted all along. Not only that, we must fight more efficiently than they do, and we must diligently undermine their cause to fight against our way. We don't have to prefer force and violence, not at all. But of course we should not submit to murder and thuggery either, and dead thugs menace only the public health, and that but briefly -- until burial.

The reason I say these things is that I understand the nastier side of human nature -- and I desire that it not defeat our ideology. I think you do also.

I care not a fig for "who's the purer Libertarian" in either action or thought -- this timewasting hobby of purer-than-thou-ism is the besetting sin of small third parties. What I see is a want of action, and a want of the thought that embraces action to reify it. I'm not crippled by want of that kind of thought. What I care for is the action of defeating competing ideologies along all possible paths.

wow

All possible paths?

Is this intended literally?

An interesting conceit
 

There is a line of thought running all through UG's writings. There is this idea that the individual cannot take care of himself and his. He doesn't seem to understand that all of us are fully capable of violence. If we keep that capability for ourselves, it is governed by our ethical considerations. If we hand our capabilities over to others with their own set of goals, we have divorced morality and action. That is why soldiers fight for each other in government's wars rather than for government policy. They are putting their actions on a moral footing by fighting for someone they know.

Your fundemental contempt for the individual is what separates you from libertarian thought. This is not some high brow argument for wonks. This is about viewing the world as a place where each individuals choices matter and have impact rather than a world where ant armies battle for their queen. In psychological terms, I want a society where people have an internal locus of control not external. That is the thing that used to make Americans different. We really believed in our own abilities. Now we shift that belief to the State, that is not libertarian.

More than one group tried and were always infiltrated and executed. Clinton actively supported a attempt to overthrow him as well and had prepositioned active duty special forces in country as well as undercover agents on the weapons inspection teams. They pulled out at the last minute and the operation fell apart, those involved were identified and many were jailed, tortured, and executed. After OIF 1 we were suppose to back a shia uprising in the south of the country with military support, instead hundreds if not thousands were slaughtered. The military action to attack Iraq had nothing to do with attempting to exert democracy IMHO.

I don't have that idea, and wonder where you ever got that notion. Prove it if you think you can.

Another notion unsupported by the evidence of my writing. I understand this fully.

I think this part makes sense.

As a libertarian, I do not have a fundamental contempt for the individual. That is why I'm a libertarian. I also am freethinking enough not to trust lockstepping philosophically with any political group -- which is what annoyed Radar so much, I think. He became angriest with me on that score. I do not treat political attachments as a form of religion -- I don't have to sign off on all thirty-nine Articles of Faith, and I will shred the man who insists I do.

These points are well made. I pin my hope of a better world on my faith in our own ability to swing the pendulum of this trend back the other way. The individual's choice not to permit any queen's ant armies to kill him, by destroying that ant army and that queen, is to my view highly libertarian and ought therefore not to be disparaged by libertarians, small L or large.

For libertarianism to grow up sufficiently to take its place among the major players, it will need the ability to destroy its bitterest enemies. This isn't really even in dispute between us, being I think self-evident.

So far, Griff, you're not doing a very good job of rebutting my essays this thread. Come to it, you're not doing any sort of job of it at all. You can't show I'm wrong.

You've been trying with notable absence of success to persuade me I'm something other than a libertarian. The reasons for your failure are manifold: first, I believe in libertarianism's value to the global body politic and in its goodness. I prefer libertarianism to any other variety of political opinion. While I never vote a straight ticket for any party whatsoever, I pick my other-party favorites by how nearly they approach libertarian-type thinking. Some parties have a more or less libertarian cast of thought and others do not -- any guesses which ones don't get my support? This is an active practice of libertarianism.

That there is a considerable strain of neoconservatism -- even unto PNAC -- in my thinking is not an impediment to my libertarianism, but is recruited in reinforcement of it. To the degree that neoconservatism is statist, I dislike it, but statism is not the only thing neocons are about, as doing some reading of neocons will soon show. To the degree that it supports individual liberty and intiative, I support neoconservatism. As I said elsewhere in this forum:

Do these things in governance and you've covered a lot of the essentials.

In view of this, I come to a second point: there's no argument you can make to show me I'm not a libertarian. The only something you can make from nothing is a fantasy. That I don't happen to be your exact sort of Libertarian I won't dispute, but libertarian I am nonetheless. Mere repeated insistence that I'm not a libertarian when the truth of the matter is I'm not a clone of you isn't going to carry the day in debate.

A party is created in considerable part to address questions and problems, by making or influencing policy for those problems that may be addressed by policymaking. Put more briefly, people congregate in parties to make a better world. However, success at making a better world through officeholding comes only when a party's adherents actually hold an office. So then, the vexed question remains before the Libertarian Party: are you going to have a debate club or are you going to have libertarianism abroad in the land and the law of the land? If the latter -- where the fuck are you?? If you want to win for your party in a representative democracy, you've got to win elections. The LP has been around since 1975. The LP should at least be campaigning for policymaking positions in the more economic corners of officialdom, like harbor commissioners, business/local government interfaces, and such -- anything to do with helping the people make livings, while keeping the balance that prevents abuse of any other portion of the electorate. Again, this is mostly in upholding the rights of a minority, and in respect for the importance of property rights, which is the single most important thing a government can do to promote the people's prosperity.

Turning to ZenGum while I'm scrolling this thread: yes, it is intended quite literally. Ascendancy over competing ideologies should be approached holistically, as it were: by all paths, in every way, eschewing no option whatsoever.

I'll close with this: Griff, I really don't think you have any direct understanding of neocon thinking. If you have any understanding of neocon philosophy from the neocons' pens themselves, I wish you would display it. Don't go by reputation; do your own reading.

Genocide? Chemical, biological, nuclear weapons? acts that are unarguably torture? Suspension of all civil rights (both inside and outside the US?)
No doubt you see my drift: what is the point of defeating fascists if we become fascists to do so?

I do indeed, but I'm not frightened of it. We've succeeded at it before, and with nuclear weapons at that. Bear in mind too just how enthusiastic the opposition is about nuclear weaponry...

While it's theoretically a righteous enough question, the action of fighting and defeating fascists does not, on the record, fascists make -- cf. WW2. I think somebody hopes to create a boogeyman with arguments of this kind. It may possibly indicate the subconsciously fascistic, undemocratic mindset so often found among the Left. Being not so far from undemocrats themselves at bottom, they don't understand that for conservatives it's a far longer step from where their heads are currently at to something totalitarian.

What the raving anti-Republicans never seem to think of is that all their arguments are rationalizations for one thing: their contention that you must leave dictatorships alone, fascists untroubled, and oppression and poverty in their fullest effect, to remain a virtuous person.

This is so ridiculous on its face all its adherents should die laughing. That they fail to do so is evidence of a vast mental disconnect. These poor leftist morons actually expect to be taken seriously by people of too much intelligence to be on the Left. Tsk.

Sooner or later I'm going to have to tell somebody around here right to his face that that's a pretty fair way to be a good Fascist, but it's not the way to be a good Human.

If the bad guys are violent, that is no reason for us good guys to be less efficient at violence. After all, what has "settled more issues in history than any other factor?" And what settlement of the issue do we want again?

Some edifying reading -- while this article errs on some points of detail readily spotted by Heinlein fans, it has some perspicacious remarks too about how Heinlein seems to make libertarians. Makes me go hmmm...

Add in John Stuart Mill while we're improving our minds and the shining hour by good reading:

But back to topic: how much do you want democracy, rather than excess of government, to prevail? Humanity is rather good at rebuilding, regardless of the size, depth or extent of the ash heap. Even Troy was reconstructed at least seven times.

This was going to be really easy until I realized it was HLJ who posted the nonsense article in the 11/11 thread not you. :)

(I didn't read your previous link yet so if this is the same ground bear with me.) I think our views on Heinlen probably illuminate our differences. In terms of philosophy, I think The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was his best work, but would expect you to be a Starship Troopers guy. My problem with Troopers is that we have this worst case scenario where one species is going to wipe out the other. This justifies a lot of government action.

Let's look at the two stupidest cases in US history. Was the Kaiser really going to destroy democracy? This seems unlikely. The war was a stalemate. What democratic movement that was afoot was in opposition to dying for the old order, while democracy developed. In the States, going on a war footing trained the people to respond to bugaboos with submission to government. This was an awful precedent which continues to be abused by left and right alike. The Kaiser did not pass the alien insect test.

The second bit of nonsense is Iraq now. The bugaboo is terrorism. Bin Laden is invading the US when? Our control seeking government's response to terror is a much bigger threat to the Republic than any backward looking Islamist. Bin Laden, while a belly crawler, does not pass the alien insect test.

The right continues to pretend that we came into this war with clean enough hands to assert some moral authority in the mid-East. Our historic opposition to democratic movements, due to their easy infiltration by totalitarians, in the region undermines our authority. Neutrality would have been a good idea before and is a good idea now. Iraq may yet choose democracy, as our ancestors did, but it won't be on our timetable and the results will not be pretty. The only sure thing is that our government will try to grow and attempt to control more aspects of our lives. The question is whether the development of ideas and technologies which enhance or preserve freedom will outpace the governments attempts to subvert them. Militarism has undermined the foundation of American conservatism by creating the illusion of necessary government action. The optimism of the American Right has been replaced by fear-mongering.

To answer Mill:War in defense of the Republic and its people is justified. Offensive war brought on by fear-mongering and corrosive of the Bill of Rights is not justified.

I have not claimed to have any great love for democracy. Organizing the world such that the many have a claim on the one, not already in place through community, just doesn't appeal to me. I prefer change to be brought on in a more organic fashion as communities evolve towards increased openess. Individual rights should be defended with tenacity in the face of democracy. To me democracy is by definition an excess of government. As far as ash heaps go, they are wonderful places for all manner of rodentia to lurk.

Non-conformity
 

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Thought for the day:

Just remember, the only thing a non-conformist hates,
worst that a conformist is another non-conformist
who does not subscribe to her or his beliefs of
non-conformity.

Are you trying to pith in my corn flakes?

Yeah, that pith is only good if it's out of a sago palm or something.

Oh, er. I'm sure that was awkward! :blush: There's not much to disagree with in HLJ's exerpt, though. It's essentially a martial-artist's viewpoint, or a policeman's, not merely a soldier's, and it is often cited by gun-rights people discussing the philosophical and moral bases of civilians practicing concealed carry, inasmuch as there's hardly a gun-rights advocate who'd disapprove. I've had that sheepdog mindset internalized for more years than I care to count. I see a powerful pro-libertarian, pro-democracy (in a broader sense than I reckon you're using it) effect in encouraging the sheepdog's values throughout the entire populace.

Turning in charity from that towards literary tastes -- for me, Starship Troopers was unmistakeably seminal, but I think the best thing RAH ever wrote was Time Enough For Love. Libertarians love that crack about strong drink.

I can accept the many can have a claim on the one with the proviso that the one has a reciprocal claim on the many. The social contract, in a word. Otherwise you end up with a rationalization for the damnedest degree of selfishness you ever saw, and it's the sort of thing a half-bright sociopath would come up with.

Communism failed in giving the individual's reciprocal claim sufficient weight, and this imbalanced condition helps to wreck Communist social orders.

I'm not persuaded politics evolves, nor that sociopolitical orders simply evolve -- these being human constructs both fleshly and abstract, they are highly influenced by the actions, the exertions, of humans involved in them and in their making. People make these things happen and exist, and people's efforts are the one reason they do.

The basic fact is that this administration has been clear on one thing, they hate freedom and have a total disregard for the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The president has stated this word for word, "just a piece of paper" and "don't bother me with it".
When they pass bills they place addendums onto them so they are not applicable to themselves.
No Libertarian supports this regime, and it is a regime and a regime alone.

Rkzen, come to your senses -- I know they are there, for I read your posts.

Your civil rights and liberties have not been infringed by Bush & Neocons, Inc. & (TM). Their political instincts run against that. You still raise hell on any website you like, without a political minder. You still buy the pistol you like. Nobody's searched and seized your property. Et cetera.

Clearly, his actions show he is indeed bothering about and with the Constitution in a way his immediate predecessor never did. That corrupt possum-headed son of a bitch was beholden to illegal foreign campaign contributors, vulnerable to scandal, and tried to hammer Smith & Wesson right out of business, and treated the Constitution not as a guide to his behavior but as a stumbling block to his ambitions. GWB does not have those particular ambitions, I should point out to certain people who can't see straight for prejudices I do not share and regard as very stupid.

There's been a helluva lot of yelling by people of no evident depth of thought about how those awful Republicans are putting everybody in shackles, but the evidence on the ground never supported the contention and never shall. Which is why I am sick unto doing the Linda Blair of it. You heard it here first: the guy who tells you "they hate freedom and have a total disregard for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights" is a lying untrustworthy bastard example of a chimp brain in a human body. Or he's a Fascist trying to lie his way into power. Either way, the back of our collective hand to him, either for subnormal intelligence or doubledyed villainy featuring wannabe oppressor-ness. You know -- the sort of thing I perennially score the Left about.

You can't get freedom when you have less-than-democracy. A Libertarian knows that already. The Bush Administration has done more to eliminate less-than-democracy from troubled foreign parts than ANY Democratic Administration after FDR's. Repeat, any. All the progress made in that direction was made by Republicans. Repeat, all of it.

On consideration, maybe somebody can convince me some progress was made in that direction in the Balkans -- but it's been so quiet I'd hardly know where to look, and at best there the Clinton Administration only began the task. It has had to be continued, insofar as our government is doing anything in the Balkans, by Republicans. The record tells me the Republicans, when they actually get the chance to do something about it, are the ones to trust. The Democrats spend the same times belying their party's name, under the undue influence of the socialist wing of their party and of the Left generally.

There is much to agree with in your post. I am, however, offended by the sheepdog mentality when it assumes that the people are unable to defend themselves. I think we too often minimize the capacity of citizens. That assumption lead to a standing army and eventually to this offensive war. That is the part the devout leftist doesn't get. Disarming the populace requires an escalation of armaments for the police and army. Weapons good enough for self-defense spread over a vast population are vastly superior at maintaining the Republic to offensive weapons prepositioned all over the globe.

I think it's less an assumption that "the people are unable to defend themselves," than a skewering of those anti-self-defense loudmouths who have done so much to screw up gun rights and grease the ways for a genocide. Otherwise, yes, quite.

I agree that Clinton did a lot of fucked-up stuff and most never heard about it. He was one of the worst Republican presidents we ever had.
But that does not have squat to do with the two anti patriot acts, data mining, wire tapping, finance tracking, etc, without warrants. Finally, the final, illegal/immoral war with Iraq.
Illegal and wrong is just wrong and what he did was as bad as Wilson, post-stroke/influenza any day.
Clinton may have seen it as a stumbling block, however Bush treats it with total disregard, and has said so on more than one occasion.

Whaaaaaaaa????????????

rkzenrage - Do you disregard laws that you feel unjust or do not apply to you? You seem to be very critical of everyone and everything that does not conform to your opinion. I know I'm relatively new around here, but it seems very hypocritical of you to attack, challenge, blame - whatever you want to call it - every politician, poster and human if/when they don't agree with you.

A simple disagreement is none of the things you listed sock.

define unjust

Rkzen, Bill Clinton would be purely astonished at your description.

I cannot fit the Iraq campaign or the Afghan campaign into a definition of illegal or immoral that actually does not do violence to the concepts of both, simultaneously.

The breaking of nondemocracy is necessary and in the end beautiful. It puts away nondemocracy's anti-prosperity effects and allows human beings en masse to quit living like cattle. It did that for us as far back as the late eighteenth century, and it will work for any set of human beings anywhere. Who cares how many fascists die in the process? You're not that solicitous of fascists' health yourself, Rkzen. I am merely explicit about it.