Libertarianism and Conservatism vs. Liberalism and Progressivism

[Natebishop3]

I see little difference.

Between the people who designed this country and the people who run the country now? Are you kidding? Why don't you read a few books.

 

[Denny Crane]

So they don't favor the status quo, they want to radically change it into what it was in an earlier, less educated time. Ignore science and pretend we don't know we're polluting the Earth. Play dumb and pretend we can afford to fund wars with tax $ for the oil companies and Halliburton to profit from. That sounds more like the conservatives I know. Maybe they should be called Regressives? They never progress and they certainly don't conserve anything.

You describe neo-conservatives.

 

[MARIS61]

You describe neo-conservatives.

I guess I've never met, seen, or read about a real conservative. Probably are none.

Contrary to your assertion, Reagan certainly does not fit the description.

 

[MARIS61]

Between the people who designed this country and the people who run the country now? Are you kidding? Why don't you read a few books.

I've read many, even some that no longer exist. I've read the textbooks the government authored for public schools, and a myriad of library books authored by people from varied walks of life.

History is re-written constantly, so the books you read now may not tell the actual true story, and the ones I read may not either.

But you seem adamant about it so I'll ask you, in what way are they different?

 

[barfo]

The only quarrel I have with this very fine diagram is that "internet libertarians" is redundant.

barfo

 

[Entity]

The only quarrel I have with this very fine diagram is that "internet libertarians" is redundant.

barfo

Ah... you beat me to it.

 

[Denny Crane]

I guess I've never met, seen, or read about a real conservative. Probably are none.

Contrary to your assertion, Reagan certainly does not fit the description.

A quote from my first post:

People also confuse Conservatives with Neo-Conservatives. Ronald Reagan was an actual Conservative, but those republicans elected in 1994 that put Reagan on some sort of pedestal had little in common with him when it came to political philosophy. I look at public figures and I simply don't see many actual conservatives anymore, like William F. Buckley or Barry Goldwater or Reagan. All I see are Neocons. Or JFK, who was a rabid anti-communist, a laissez-faire economist, and favored lower taxes.

 

[MrJayremmie]

Problem is Denny, you say you are a libertarian, and while you obviously know your views better than I do, I always see you defend Republicans and oppose Democrats.

For example, the thread in which you kept giving statistics of support for Iraq and all that garbage.

There was no declared war, and it was very interventionist. Because of these two things alone (plus the money spent and lives lost and everything else), shouldn't you always be on the liberal side of this? Yet nearly everything, except gay marriage, you side with Big Government Republicans, which represents nearly every Republican in congress today.

Bumping my post, and wondering why Denny sides so much with Big Government Republicans while claiming to be Libertarian.

Denny, I hate to say it, but you may be Libertarian in name only. Either that, or your hate for the left makes you side with the right (against the left).

While you may say that you are Libertarian and you aren't for this and that, your post history seems to have your ideological leanings far closer to one of a republican than a libertarian.

I consider myself Liberal/Libertarian. I can argue my opinions on things all day, but at the end of the day, its my opinion and the government needs to stay out of it. For example, I'm against abortion past the first few weeks, I think it is wrong. At the same time, it isn't any of the government's business what a women does with her body. A majority of female congresspeople are for the woman's right to choose, while an old male bureaucrat sits there trying to tell them what they can and can't do with their bodies.

 

[Denny Crane]

Which republicans do I side with?

Ron Paul is a republican, I'll give you that one.

Tea party? They are some hope of dragging the republicans toward fiscal sanity and they talk about sticking to the constitution which is a Libertarian thing. The rest of the republicans seem like idiots.

I am against big govt., and the democrats were recently in control and making it bigger. I oppose all things authoritarian.

I've posted my views on abortion. I am pro choice - is that a republican point of view?

Iraq? I've posted I was in favor of ousting saddam and then leaving the Iraqis to sort out their own affairs. Only because we have to at least put right what we fouled up elsewhere before we can bring our troops home (from everywhere).

As for the statistics, they are what they are. I don't have any reason to believe 1M Iraqis were killed during our occupation. It's a different question than whether we should have occupied in the first place.

How about Afghanistan? I fully oppose all our actions there. I don't see revenge as a good reason to commit troops there for 10+ years. I've posted my view and that unlike the left during W's years, I won't whine about it because it doesn't help us win (better than losing) and the sooner we "win" the sooner we get out.

 

[MrJayremmie]

Iraq? I've posted I was in favor of ousting saddam and then leaving the Iraqis to sort out their own affairs.

Isn't this in itself interventionist and non-Libertarian? I suppose one can be Libertarian and not be 100% agreed with all the principles, but it seems that their belief on war is one of the most fundamental parts of Libertarianism.

 

[Denny Crane]

Isn't this in itself interventionist and non-Libertarian? I suppose one can be Libertarian and not be 100% agreed with all the principles, but it seems that their belief on war is one of the most fundamental parts of Libertarianism.

If we were truly Libertarian, we'd never have propped up dictators all over the place. Our choice could be to bring the troops home and leave Saddam there to torture his people or to take him out. The former fosters a lot of hatred against the US (dangerous to us) and there's nothing Libertarian about foisting a dictator on people. The people should determine their own fate.

Make sense?

 

[Entity]

Isn't this in itself interventionist and non-Libertarian? I suppose one can be Libertarian and not be 100% agreed with all the principles, but it seems that their belief on war is one of the most fundamental parts of Libertarianism.

I think it's a big part, but not as big as social and fiscal independence. It's like a Democrat that is pro-life or a Republican in today's congress who is selective about the parts of the budget they're cutting, like not cutting pro-life spending. The argument on reducing spending that adds exceptions that it's still okay to spend if it supports their vision of a perfect America unintendedly justifies the other half for spending in support of their own vision of a perfect America, because the entire argument is reduced to nothing but what you point at and call justified. The staunch idea of reduced spending is lost on an intellectual level, but can still be maintained if you convince enough people to keep it in. Then it becomes about which principle is more important to you.

To borrow from fiction: Asimov's Laws of Robotics were set up so that "not killing humans" was #1 and "doing anything a human asks" was #2, so that #2 wouldn't impede on #1. You couldn't say "kill that human", because the first law had priority. We see that some Republicans would say, "anti-abortion is #1, reduced spending is #2". So I would wonder, is Denny's position in this case, "higher priority: remove brutal dictators. High, but not as high priority: don't intervene in foreign countries"?

 

[MrJayremmie]

If we were truly Libertarian, we'd never have propped up dictators all over the place. Our choice could be to bring the troops home and leave Saddam there to torture his people or to take him out. The former fosters a lot of hatred against the US (dangerous to us) and there's nothing Libertarian about foisting a dictator on people. The people should determine their own fate.

Correct. But "we" are not libertarian. That is the problem.

Your views, I thought, were libertarian. So do you abandon Libertarian philosophy in order to clean up the mess of our government? Because you would have to do that an awful lot, because the last time our country was truly small government was pre-FDR.

I figured that the answer to cleaning up our government and problems WAS Libertarianism.

 

[Denny Crane]

My priority is to bring the troops home and not intervene in other countries' affairs. However, we owe the Iraqis (and many other nations) some sort of reparations for the damages done under Wilsonian Diplomacy for about a century. The question then becomes what form do those reparations take?

Like I wrote before, we could just bring the troops home. That would leave it up to the Iraqis to try to overthrow a brutal dictator armed with WMDs that he's known to have used against his own people. That would be blood on our hands.

The reparations clearly had to be our blood and treasure.

The nation building thing? Was never into it, though once the decision was made, my options were to oppose it or hope for the best. I chose the latter.

People tried to bring up ridiculous figures about how many Iraqis died since 2003. The true number is about 100K, 10K that were soldiers in Saddam's army that we killed in the first 3 weeks, and almost all the rest were arabs killing arabs. What I didn't write (this time) was that International Law does put the lives and safety of those others who were killed in our hands, and the 100K figure is indicative of significant failure on our part.

Clear?

 

[MrJayremmie]

So I would wonder, is Denny's position in this case, "higher priority: remove brutal dictators. High, but not as high priority: don't intervene in foreign countries"?

Correct. And I believe one of those two falls in line with Libertarian thinking, while the other is a neo-conservative way of thinking.

 

[MrJayremmie]

Denny, I was talking about your support of the war in the first place. Your position seemed to be to remove Saddam for power. You agreed with that (neo-con way of thinking). You continue to defend the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam (we know whats best for other countries too!!!), and then call yourself Libertarian.

 

[Denny Crane]

Correct. But "we" are not libertarian. That is the problem.

Your views, I thought, were libertarian. So do you abandon Libertarian philosophy in order to clean up the mess of our government? Because you would have to do that an awful lot, because the last time our country was truly small government was pre-FDR.

I figured that the answer to cleaning up our government and problems WAS Libertarianism.

What can we possibly do to undo all the bullshit we've done since those pre-FDR days? Give me a better solution than what I've proposed? In the mean time, big government should be dismantled at as appropriate a pace as possible. People who've come to rely on certain handouts will likely need to be grandfathered in. It took decades to build the monster, it will take decades to unwind it all.

Now you can prove me a Republican or Conservative or whatever:

1) I've argued with the likes of maxiep, BrianFromWA, and Maris (among others) about having open borders. I don't know of any republican who favors open borders.
2) I'm pro-choice - not many republicans that are. Pro-life is written into the GOP party platform. No thanks.
3) I'm pro-union under the right circumstances. My only two issues with them are that association with one needs to be free, and there should not be public sector unions. Collective bargaining is fine.
4) I'm for legalization of drugs. I don't know a republican who favors it.
5) I'm for legalization of prostitution. I don't know a republican who favors it.
6) I'm for affirmative action.
7) I've not once spoken out against any of Obama's appointees to the supreme court.
8) My posts have been consistently opposed to expanding government, for elimination or reduction of govt. services, and for fiscal sanity.

 

[Denny Crane]

Denny, I was talking about your support of the war in the first place. Your position seemed to be to remove Saddam for power. You agreed with that (neo-con way of thinking). You continue to defend the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam (we know whats best for other countries too!!!), and then call yourself Libertarian.

Mission accomplished, remember that? Bush made that speech after Saddam's military was defeated and his government taken out. That's the mission I supported. Three weeks, and we should have left the Iraqis to sort out their own affairs.

Big difference between supporting anything beyond that. The "sort out their own affairs" is Libertarian, or you tell me what it is.

 

[MrJayremmie]

Removing a dictator is interventionist. Ron Paul is 100% right on this. It is simply none of our business, and we should not have supported him in the first place. We did. Big mistake. Doesn't mean we go into their country and tell them what to do. We would not like it if people came in to remove Bush because his low approval rating and illegal government programs.

We would not treat them as liberators, just as we were not treated as such. Even though the Bush admin. said we would be.

"Sorting out their own affairs" IS Libertarian. But invading their country to remove their dictator and then taking off and letting them sort it out is not. context is big here.

 

[Denny Crane]

You express the quandary, but you don't acknowledge it.

Removing a dictator is indeed interventionist. We should not have supported him in the first place.

What do we do about the 2nd sentence above? Is it Libertarian to create dictators and empower them and then not intervene? The intervention was done a long time ago.

I presented the two options and explained my reasoning. The intervention was done a long time ago, we owe reparations, etc.

I've posted against GHW Bush quite a few times - that he encouraged the Iraqi people to revolt against Saddam (after Gulf War I) and they expected military support from us. When that military support did not appear, Saddam was free to slaughter 300,000 people. How do we make it up to the people there who lost family members to Saddam's brutality?

If you can come up with a better form of reparations than taking out the dictator we propped up and leaving the people to form their own government and society in their own vision, feel free.

 

[Entity]

This argument seems to be about whether you draw a line in the sand and say, "everything on that side was the past, and we're starting over" versus "we need to own up to what we did as a country and fix our mistake to some degree". From my point of view it looks like your priority is: "#1 try to undo the cascading effects of our errors, #2 don't intervene."

 

[Denny Crane]

This argument seems to be about whether you draw a line in the sand and say, "everything on that side was the past, and we're starting over" versus "we need to own up to what we did as a country and fix our mistake to some degree". From my point of view it looks like your priority is: "#1 try to undo the cascading effects of our errors, #2 don't intervene."

You can't "not intervene" if you already have.

Just because we draw this line in the sand doesn't mean the people we've harmed are going to forgive and forget.

 

[Entity]

You can't "not intervene" if you already have.

Just because we draw this line in the sand doesn't mean the people we've harmed are going to forgive and forget.

So the state of meddling continues because of the repercussions of the original deed and can only be considered over when the original deed is rectified. I think "state of meddling" is not the words I'm looking for. I don't know what the word would be.

 

[barfo]

You can't "not intervene" if you already have.

Just because we draw this line in the sand doesn't mean the people we've harmed are going to forgive and forget.

So according to the Denny Manifesto, we are committed to continue to intervene everywhere we ever have before - Kosovo, Nicaragua, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, all of Europe, Japan, Grenada, Southeast Asia, Korea, etc etc etc, until everything in those places is peaches and cream and all the children are smiling?

That's a heck of a non-interventionist policy you have there.

What makes you think future interventions in a given country are going to work out any better than past interventions in that country?

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

So according to the Denny Manifesto, we are committed to continue to intervene everywhere we ever have before - Kosovo, Nicaragua, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, all of Europe, Japan, Grenada, Southeast Asia, Korea, etc etc etc, until everything in those places is peaches and cream and all the children are smiling?

That's a heck of a non-interventionist policy you have there.

What makes you think future interventions in a given country are going to work out any better than past interventions in that country?

barfo

Previous interventions have been in the USA's interest at the expense of civilians of many countries. I propose undoing such interventions.

If Kosovo is run by a dictator we put in place who's murdering his people by the hundreds of thousands, then yes, we have a moral obligation to undo what we did. I don't see the issue in Nicaragua, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Europe, Japan, Grenada, Southeast Asia, Korea, etc.

I don't at all suggest we take out any despot anywhere. Nor did I say that we stay until all things are peaches and cream or whatever.

Interesting that you mention Iran. Jimmy Carter did the opposite of what I suggest, the people rebelled, they took US citizens hostage for 444 days, and what followed is 30+ years of hostile relations between the two countries.

I've already given one example of our intervention in Iraq (GHW Bush). We gave Saddam satellite intel that enabled him to defeat Iran in the Iraq-Iran war. When we had the chance to take him out in Gulf War I, we didn't. We instituted no-fly zones so Saddam could stay in power. We put sanctions on Iraq that allowed Saddam to spend revenue from oil sales to anything but food and medicine for his people, and he stayed in power. According to the Riegle report, we sold Saddam the material to create some terrible biological WMDs.

I had no expectation that we'd take out Saddam and all would be peaches and cream after 3 weeks when we should have left. Building a democracy or a communist state is a bloody and drawn out process, but at least the people would be vested by their own interests and enabled to sort it out.

 

[MARIS61]

My priority is to bring the troops home and not intervene in other countries' affairs. However, we owe the Iraqis (and many other nations) some sort of reparations for the damages done under Wilsonian Diplomacy for about a century. The question then becomes what form do those reparations take?

Like I wrote before, we could just bring the troops home. That would leave it up to the Iraqis to try to overthrow a brutal dictator armed with WMDs that he's known to have used against his own people. That would be blood on our hands.

The reparations clearly had to be our blood and treasure.

The nation building thing? Was never into it, though once the decision was made, my options were to oppose it or hope for the best. I chose the latter.

People tried to bring up ridiculous figures about how many Iraqis died since 2003. The true number is about 100K, 10K that were soldiers in Saddam's army that we killed in the first 3 weeks, and almost all the rest were arabs killing arabs. What I didn't write (this time) was that International Law does put the lives and safety of those others who were killed in our hands, and the 100K figure is indicative of significant failure on our part.

Clear?

First of all, your assertion of a "mere 100,000 deaths" is disputed by every credible estimate to date.

The most credible estimate, the only estimate not influenced by governmental pressure, and one of only 2 estimates to date that has ever been peer-reviewed, was compiled by The Lancet, one of the oldest scientific medical journals in the world, and puts the figure near a million by 2007.

As for "saving us from WMD in Iraq":

According to the Center for Public Integrity, the Bush administration allegedly made a total of 935 false statements between 2001 and 2003 about Iraq's alleged threat to the United States.

As for the Bush lies about "saving Iraq from a dictator", it's clear we've already installed another one.

from the NY Times:
A ruling in January by Iraq’s highest court — sought by Mr. Maliki — gave him control of once independent agencies responsible for running the country’s central bank, conducting elections and investigating corruption.

A month after that ruling, two leading human rights groups said that forces that reported directly to Mr. Maliki, in violation of the country’s Constitution, were running secret jails where detainees had been tortured.

And in July, Iraq’s high court ruled that members of Parliament no longer had the power to propose legislation. Instead, all new laws would have to be proposed by Mr. Maliki’s cabinet or the president and then passed to the Parliament for a vote.

 

[MARIS61]

So the state of meddling continues because of the repercussions of the original deed and can only be considered over when the original deed is rectified. I think "state of meddling" is not the words I'm looking for. I don't know what the word would be.

Maybe the words are "state-sponsored murder for corporate profit".

 

[Denny Crane]

Maris, you're simply wrong.


WikiLeaks Lances Lancet’s 2006 Pre-Midterm Elections Iraq Civilian Casualties Claim


And:

WikiLeaks Show WMD Hunt Continued in Iraq – With Surprising Results

By late 2003, even the Bush White House’s staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction.

An initial glance at the WikiLeaks war logs doesn’t reveal evidence of some massive WMD program by the Saddam Hussein regime — the Bush administration’s most (in)famous rationale for invading Iraq. But chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam’s toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict — and may have brewed up their own deadly agents.

In August 2004, for instance, American forces surreptitiously purchased what they believed to be containers of liquid sulfur mustard, a toxic “blister agent” used as a chemical weapon since World War I. The troops tested the liquid, and “reported two positive results for blister.” The chemical was then “triple-sealed and transported to a secure site” outside their base.

 

[barfo]

Previous interventions have been in the USA's interest at the expense of civilians of many countries. I propose undoing such interventions.

You can't undo such things without a time machine. You can only meddle more.

Interesting that you mention Iran. Jimmy Carter did the opposite of what I suggest, the people rebelled, they took US citizens hostage for 444 days, and what followed is 30+ years of hostile relations between the two countries.

Wow, that's an insanely biased view. Yes, Jimmy Carter (as a young naval officer) put the Shah in power in the early 50's and propped him up for 25 years before the revolution.

I had no expectation that we'd take out Saddam and all would be peaches and cream after 3 weeks when we should have left. Building a democracy or a communist state is a bloody and drawn out process, but at least the people would be vested by their own interests and enabled to sort it out.

That seems, shall we say, a little naive. Had we pulled out after 3 weeks it is very likely that forces other than "the people" would have sorted it out.

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

You can't undo such things without a time machine. You can only meddle more.



Wow, that's an insanely biased view. Yes, Jimmy Carter put the Shah in power in the early 50's (as a young naval officer) and propped him up for 25 years before the revolution.



That seems, shall we say, a little naive. Had we pulled out after 3 weeks it is very likely that forces other than "the people" would have sorted it out.

barfo

Now you're guessing about what would have happened. Whatever happened, the people would have been enabled to stand against whatever bogeyman you are dreaming up.

Saddam was captured in December. We could have captured him sooner if we weren't so focused on trying to control the whole country militarily.

We couldn't undo FDR's internment of 100,000+ Japanese Americans, but we could pay reparations - and did.

I'm not talking about undoing what we had done, but reparations.

Hey, how about that PBS!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/carter-hostage-crisis/

Fast forward to New Years Eve, 1977: President Carter toasted the Shah at a state dinner in Tehran, calling him "an island of stability" in the troubled Middle East. What the president also knew, but chose to ignore, was that the Shah was in serious trouble. As opposition to his government mounted, he had allowed his secret police, SAVAK, to crack down on dissenters, fueling still more resentment. Within weeks of Carter's visit, a series of protests broke out in the religious city of Qom, denouncing the Shah's regime as "anti-Islamic." The popular movement against the Shah grew until January 16, 1979, when he fled to Egypt. Two weeks later, thousands of Muslims cheered Khomeini's return to Iran after fourteen years in exile.

Did the Carter administration "lose" Iran, as some have suggested? Gaddis Smith might have put it best: "President Carter inherited an impossible situation -- and he and his advisers made the worst of it." Carter seemed to have a hard time deciding whether to heed the advice of his aggressive national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who wanted to encourage the Shah to brutally suppress the revolution, or that of his more cautious State Department, which suggested Carter reach out to opposition elements in order to smooth the transition to a new government. In the end he did neither, and suffered the consequences.

Even after it became known that the Shah was suffering from cancer, President Carter was reluctant to allow him entry to the United States, for fear of reprisal against Americans still in Iran. But in October, when the severity of the Shah's illness became known, Carter relented on humanitarian grounds. "He went around the room, and most of us said, 'Let him in.'" recalls Vice President Walter Mondale. "And he said, 'And if [the Iranians] take our employees in our embassy hostage, then what would be your advice?' And the room just fell dead. No one had an answer to that. Turns out, we never did."

When students overran the embassy and seized more than sixty Americans on November 4, it was not at all clear who they represented or what they hoped to achieve. In fact, a similar mob had briefly done the same thing nine months earlier, holding the American ambassador hostage for a few hours before members of Khomeini's retinue ordered him released. But this time, Khomeini saw a chance to consolidate his power around a potent symbol, and issued a statement in support of the action against the American "den of spies." The students vowed not to release the Americans until the U.S. returned the Shah for trial, along with billions of dollars they claimed he had stolen from the Iranian people.