Libertarianism and Conservatism vs. Liberalism and Progressivism

[MARIS61]

Maris, you're simply wrong.

LOL.

You'll need more than 2 right-wing blog opinion pieces with unsupported claims to debunk one of the oldest scientific medical journals in the history of the world.

 

[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.

Oh, yes, immediately after we took out Saddam, the Iraqi people could have withstood anything, especially given how united they are as a people. It's weird that Saddam was the one thing they couldn't handle. You'd think, if they could be "enabled" so easily, they could have taken out Saddam themselves.

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.

Yep, that sure makes it sound like it is all Carter's fault, all right. It's almost like he let the Iranian people decide for themselves, the bastard. Apparently "the people" being "enabled" isn't a good thing when it comes to Iran, just Iraq.

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

Next you'll tell me HuffingtonPost is right wing. I already posted the abcnews.com link discrediting the Lancet report. Another right wing organization.

Anyone with modest math skills would realize that 650,000 dead would mean ~200 died every day for 10 years, which flies in the face of that common sense. However, Lancet claims it all happened from 2003 to 2006, which would be 600 a day. Preposterous.

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/aapor_censures_lancet_iraq_cas.php?nr=1

AAPOR Censures Lancet Iraq Casualty Survey

My colleagues at the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) announced yesterday that an eight month investigation found that Dr. Gilbert Burnham violated AAPOR's Code of Professional Ethics and Practices.

At issue is the controversial study (pdf) of civilian deaths in Iraq conducted by Burhnam, a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and published in the journal Lancet in 2006. The study was the subject of considerable criticism because it produced a significantly higher estimate of Iraqi deaths than those of the Iraq Body Count project, the United Nations and the Iraqi Ministry of Health (for more details see the reporting by my National Journal colleagues, Slate's Fred Kaplan and the review on Wikipedia).

 

[Denny Crane]

Oh, yes, immediately after we took out Saddam, the Iraqi people could have withstood anything, especially given how united they are as a people. It's weird that Saddam was the one thing they couldn't handle. You'd think, if they could be "enabled" so easily, they could have taken out Saddam themselves.



Yep, that sure makes it sound like it is all Carter's fault, all right. It's almost like he let the Iranian people decide for themselves, the bastard. Apparently "the people" being "enabled" isn't a good thing when it comes to Iran, just Iraq.

barfo

Are you pretending to be ignorant, or is it real?

Saddam murdered his political opponents over the years, starting with day 1. Or had them taken from their homes in the middle of the night and locked up in Abu Grahib or worse.

And when the people did rebel, he murdered 300,000 of his own people using WMDs. I don't fault them for not being able to overthrow a brutal dictator who spent $billions of oil money on one of the largest militaries in the world.

 

[MrJayremmie]

Yes Denny, it is hard to deny that Saddam is bad. But isn't that fella over in Africa bad also? Why don't we go invade there and help the people he is killing daily (Uganda was it?)? Of course not because they don't hook up our oil supply.

Where does this end. The answer is certainly not war. War just makes it worse. It always makes it worse.

No WMDs found also makes it bad. Not declaring war also makes it illegal.

 

[Denny Crane]

Yes Denny, it is hard to deny that Saddam is bad. But isn't that fella over in Africa bad also? Why don't we go invade there and help the people he is killing daily (Uganda was it?)? Of course not because they don't hook up our oil supply.

Where does this end. The answer is certainly not war. War just makes it worse. It always makes it worse.

No WMDs found also makes it bad. Not declaring war also makes it illegal.

Did we prop up the dictator in Africa? To what extent? How many of his countrymen died because of our intervention there?

The answers to these questions do dictate what kind of reparations we are morally obligated to provide.

We do have obligations to live up to treaties. It's in the constitution:

Article IV

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

 

[barfo]

I don't fault them for not being able to overthrow a brutal dictator who spent $billions of oil money on one of the largest militaries in the world.

A military made up of... those exact same Iraqi people who you think could not have toppled Saddam but could have defended themselves against all comers if we'd pulled out.

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

A military made up of... those exact same Iraqi people who you think could not have toppled Saddam but could have defended themselves against all comers if we'd pulled out.

barfo

Who are these "all comers?"

Like any left-wing authoritarian society, he really paid those soldiers well and they had all the best weapons (even WMDs). They managed to fight to a draw with Iran before, and there's no guarantee Iran had the stomach to try and give it a go again.

And us removing our troops doesn't preclude us trading with the Iraqis and even providing weapons.

I'd point out that favorable trade conditions are another way to provide reparations.

 

[barfo]

Like any left-wing authoritarian society

Yes, Saddam was such a left-winger. And Gaddafi is a Libertarian.

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

Yes, Saddam was such a left-winger. And Gaddafi is a Libertarian.

barfo

Yep, left wing. When you have a command economy, it's left wing.

Bin Laden would be the right winger, eh?

 

[Entity]

Left-wing economy: North Korea
Right-wing economy: Somalia
In between: Nazis

We can produce evil people in any system. I live in a country where even the right-wingers want to pay the troops well, since defense is supposed to be one of the few justifiable spending areas.

On the other hand, I'm not the kind of person that believes that the ends justify the means. I don't want to prop up oppressors to further our foreign policy agenda. I don't even necessarily support the foreign policy agenda that requests that kind of support. I don't think it's wrong to want to correct past errors. Would the people have been able to overthrow Saddam in 2011? I don't know. I'm sure they would have tried. We didn't know they were eight years away from mass uprisings over there. He probably would have made Gaddafi look like a saint. I will say that going into Iraq for the stated reason by the administration at the time was not correct. On the other hand, a country does bear the burden of what it's done in the past regardless of which side had control. But if there is one thing I do believe it's that people ultimately have to win their own revolutions. It might not have happened this year. It might have taken 20 or 100 years, but I think it would have eventually come. Yes, that sucks for the people that have to live under that thumb, but it's their choice to live with it and do nothing. There's nothing fair about that. It's easy for me to say it from my comfortable vantage point. But I think these days it's harder and harder to keep information hidden. The world is getting smaller. People are starting to become wise to the truth and to what is possible. It's their perception of hopelessness that is holding them back. I think if Saddam was still around, and Iraqis were in revolt, and we offered them help to correct our mistakes and they accept it, then maybe that's fine. But suddenly springing it on them before they're mentally prepared as a people to take the reigns might not lead to as effective a transition for them. It's easy to say that with 20/20 hindsight, but in the future I think that the course I'm going to support.

 

[Denny Crane]

You do realize that one of the promises made was that by creating an arab democracy in Iraq, there'd be a domino effect like we're seeing (the uprisings).

I already posted this, but GHW Bush made the kinds of promises you mentioned - they did have an uprising and thought they were going to get support that never came, and were crushed. I don't see why they'd believe us a second time if we made that same promise.

The guy murdered over 2M Kurds in the Al Anfal campaign in the mid-to-late 1980s and another 300,000+ after Bush urged the uprising. I think we all wish the people could have taken out Saddam on their own.

There was a convergence of events that made taking out Saddam an immediate priority.

He had WMDs and used them, and there was every reason to expect him to use them again.

We had to institute no fly zones to keep Saddam from gassing his people even more. Our planes were fired upon routinely.

The sanctions put on Iraq through the UN were a miserable failure. The UN has been proven corrupt throughout the whole thing, Saddam raised $billions in cash and built palaces with the money intended to feed and provide medicine for his people. Children died en masse for lack of food and medicine.

At least three nations on the Security Counsel (France, Russia, China) were ready to end sanctions and inspections and resume ordinary relations with Iraq.

 

[Entity]

I do realize that the promise was that a domino effect would occur, but the current revolts in the middle-east aren't a result of Iraq. Iraqis are doing the same thing right now that the rest of them are. Iraq was never publicized as the success story we hoped it would be after Saddam was removed. I don't think anyone in the Arab world was wishing they could be like Iraq. We're seeing young people who are connected to the rest of the world in a way they've never been able to be before, and passing along ideas to each other from without and within. The domino effect didn't go Iraq and then eight years later everybody else at once. It was one country (Tunisia) and then one after another in close succession. I think this happened despite us.

I agree that the UN is practically useless in these kinds of things. Sanctions do nothing. The most effective game changers seem to be the ones creating the means to pass free info around, and not just Twitter and such, but things like Ultrasurf and GTunnel. If I had to make a bill of rights I would make Freedom to Access Public Information the number one item on that list, because I think all freedoms hang on that right.

 

[Denny Crane]

The timing wouldn't be 8 years after Iraq, but shortly after we pulled out 50,000 troops and declared the military conflict over. Not that this is causal to the rebellions in other countries.

From a strategic POV, consider Iraq is due west of Iran and Afghanistan is due east of it. A sandwich of sorts. Toppling the leadership in Iran seems to me to be the intent of the two wars.

Mubarak was quite involved between the US and Saddam all along. We've been giving Egypt $billions in military aid since the 1970s, which would be propping him up. However, Egypt is not known as a place where tens of thousands of people are mass murdered.

Tunisia is less than half the size of Iraq (population) and has a military of 27,000 men and 84 tanks. Iraq had a military of 500,000+ with the kind of materiel to fight a sustained war with Iran.

 

[MrJayremmie]

So its settled then, Denny, that you are Libertarian only when it suits you, and right-wing the rest of the time?

 

[Denny Crane]

So its settled then, Denny, that you are Libertarian only when it suits you, and right-wing the rest of the time?

Nope. Libertarian all the time.

If right-wing means "anarchy" then I'm not all the way right-wing.

 

[maxiep]

I think this thread has shown that labels are pretty much useless. They're supposed to be used as short-hand to let someone know where you generally stand, but instead they're used like nails to pin you to the most ridiculous positions of the fringe of those that would share the same label as you.

 

[Stevenson]

It's hard to take this thread, or your take, seriously, when you begin with this:

"The modern usage of the term Liberal makes it a synonym for Progressivism. Progressives never met a govt. program they didn't like, nor a tax they didn't like. They see government as the solution to all of society's ills."

First, it's not true. Second, this thread wants to have an air of objectivity, but again, this quote defeats that from the get-go and thus makes the whole thing inauthentic. Third, personally, I am liberal and progressive and my political views are a just a tad more sophisticated that what you ascribe to folk like me.

Other than that, it's a fine thread.

 

[Denny Crane]

It's hard to take this thread, or your take, seriously, when you begin with this:

"The modern usage of the term Liberal makes it a synonym for Progressivism. Progressives never met a govt. program they didn't like, nor a tax they didn't like. They see government as the solution to all of society's ills."

First, it's not true. Second, this thread wants to have an air of objectivity, but again, this quote defeats that from the get-go and thus makes the whole thing inauthentic. Third, personally, I am liberal and progressive and my political views are a just a tad more sophisticated that what you ascribe to folk like me.

Other than that, it's a fine thread.

Which part do you quibble with?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

The early liberal thinker John Locke, who is often credited for the creation of liberalism as a distinct philosophical tradition, employed the concept of natural rights and the social contract to argue that the rule of law should replace absolutism in government, that rulers were subject to the consent of the governed, and that private individuals had a fundamental right to life, liberty, and property.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism#Liberalism

The term "progressive" is today often used in place of "liberal." Although the two are related in some ways, they are separate and distinct political ideologies and should not be used interchangeably. The reason for this confusion might partly be rooted in the political spectrum being two-dimensional; social liberalism is a tenet of modern progressivism, whereas economic liberalism (and its associated deregulation) is not.

 

[barfo]

Which part do you quibble with?

I'm going to guess this part:

Progressives never met a govt. program they didn't like, nor a tax they didn't like. They see government as the solution to all of society's ills.

That's (a) not true, and (b) biased.

For example, one social problem we have today is that many people do all their socializing on the net, and so they are disconnected from reality and believe in black-and-white solutions to complex real-world problems. Unfortunately, there is no known government program that will cure libertarianism.

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

I'm going to guess this part:



That's (a) not true, and (b) biased.

barfo

Name a government program you don't like.

Better yet, name three.

 

[Denny Crane]

That'll probably take you a few days to answer. No biggie.

In the meantime, I have a serious question that nobody seems to be able to answer:

What are we supposedly progressing toward? In other words, when is it a finished work.

As near as I can tell, it's spending more and more money on bigger and bigger government. Over the last 10 years, the feds have gone from spending 20% of GDP to spending 33% of it - at some point you can't spend 101% of it for very long.

 

[barfo]

Name a government program you don't like.

Better yet, name three.

That aint hard to do. Not crazy about farm subsidies. Not crazy about multi-zillion dollar airplanes for the pentagon (that's actually several programs right there). Not crazy about the war in Iraq.

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

That aint hard to do. Not crazy about farm subsidies. Not crazy about multi-zillion dollar airplanes for the pentagon (that's actually several programs right there). Not crazy about the war in Iraq.

barfo

I think you named two (military, farm subsidies) - which is why I asked you to name 3.

 

[barfo]

I think you named two (military, farm subsidies) - which is why I asked you to name 3.

the military is more than one program. There are parts of the military I support. There are parts I don't.

I don't approve of giving away mineral rights on public lands. Does that count as a program? There is certainly a government bureaucracy in charge of it.

I don't approve of the border fence.

I don't approve of the way we handle immigration generally.

I don't approve of the entire tax code, by any means.

I'm sure I could come up with more if I thought about it hard enough - but you know what? I don't sit around thinking about what I hate about the government all the time, because I'm not obsessed with the government the way you are.

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

the military is more than one program. There are parts of the military I support. There are parts I don't.

I don't approve of giving away mineral rights on public lands. Does that count as a program? There is certainly a government bureaucracy in charge of it.

I don't approve of the border fence.

I don't approve of the way we handle immigration generally.

I don't approve of the entire tax code, by any means.

I'm sure I could come up with more if I thought about it hard enough - but you know what? I don't sit around thinking about what I hate about the government all the time, because I'm not obsessed with the government the way you are.

barfo

Border fence isn't a program, it's INS or whoever (that's the program).

Tax code isn't a govt. program, either.

Think 3 letter agencies. Like EPA, CDC, IRS, INS, FDR, etc.

 

[Minstrel]

Second, this thread wants to have an air of objectivity

Really? I never got a sense that Denny strove for objectivity. He has a couple of main theses ("Everyone good and intelligent in world history was a libertarian" and "Democrats and Republicans both suck but Democrats are vaguely evil") and those inform all of his posts. I've never thought he tried to pretend otherwise.

 

[Denny Crane]

I'll come up with at least 3 things I like that government does.

VHA, GI Bill, Military, the mint, post office, patent office, courts system, highway system (many libertarians think those should be private toll roads), etc. Basically things that are actually listed in the constitution, or consistent with those things (infrastructure).

 

[barfo]

Border fence isn't a program, it's INS or whoever (that's the program).

Tax code isn't a govt. program, either.

Think 3 letter agencies. Like EPA, CDC, IRS, INS, FDR, etc.

I'm sorry, next time make your question more clear. Different people mean different things by the phrase "government program".

Am I in favor of abolishing any three-letter government agency? I'll have to go look at the list to see.

What's FDR? Was he president so long that he turned into a federal agency?

barfo

 

[barfo]

I'll come up with at least 3 things I like that government does.

VHA, GI Bill, Military, the mint, post office, patent office, courts system, highway system (many libertarians think those should be private toll roads), etc. Basically things that are actually listed in the constitution, or consistent with those things (infrastructure).

Oh, I'm sorry, but some of those aren't "programs", so they don't count.

barfo