Free Subscription! 
iTunes 
Our podcast will keep you up to date...
The mindset of progressives
Listening carefully to "progressives" (heretofore to be referred to as regressives) over the past few months has lead me to some observations concerning their mindset or psychology. All of them are at least partially wrong or illogical.
1. The unfettered free market will lead to exploitation by Big Business.
2. Conservatives support the free market.
3. Since high marginal tax rates coincided with economic growth, high marginal tax rates caused economic growth.
4. Since Reagan, there has been massive deregulation.
5. A free market means the use of force and fraud is permissible.
6. NAFTA and GATT represent free trade. As a corallary, free trade destroys jobs.
7. Privatization, as currently understood, is a free market policy.
8. Fascism or Corporatism is the merger of Economics and State. Libertarians, who favor separating Economics and State, are Fascists.
9. Libertarianism is just a brand of conservatism.
10. FDR was a man of the people. He was a traitor to his class. He was looking out for the little guy.
11. The Progressive Era came about as a grassroots movement to stop Big Business.
__________________
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it
Learned Hand
In the past men created witches: now they create mental patients.
Thomas Szasz
Relinquish liberty for the purposes of defense in an emergency?
Why? It would seem that in an emergency, of all times, one needs
his greatest strength. So if liberty is strength and slavery is weakness,
liberty is a necessity rather than a luxury, and we can ill afford
to be without it—least of all during an emergency.
F.A. Harper
Lysander,
You are spot-on with these observations. So many of these assertions reveal complete ignorance about what libertarianism really represents. A great many of them confuse our current fascist system with a free market, and then point to all failures as failures of the market or deregulation, despite the fact that there really was not deregulation.
Regressives are essentially fascists who are guilty of a great deal of projection. To them, the solution to every problem involves the use of violence, yet they consider themselves "the good guys". They suffer from severe cognitive dissonance, IMHO.
If you've had any enlightening debates, give me a link. I'd love to see the arguments, and I'd love to chime in.
Regressives are essentially fascists who are guilty of a great deal of projection. To them, the solution to every problem involves the use of violence, yet they consider themselves "the good guys". They suffer from severe cognitive dissonance, IMHO.
This observation is spot on. Essentially, regressives favor using fascism to combat fascism, real, perceived or potential.
If you've had any enlightening debates, give me a link. I'd love to see the arguments, and I'd love to chime in.
I've had none. I have one further observation. Many of the debaters at ThomHartmann.com like to move the goalposts. I'll argue a point using one set of definitions. When they respond, they base their response on another set of definitions to the same terms!!!
I'm actually having a farily interesting debate over on my blog. I've got a guy who claims that the federal reserve is an exercise of Congress' power to borrow money.
I invite any fellow conspirators who advocate free market money to stop over and check it out. I could use some heavy artillery on this one...
Steve_Dubc
Good stuff. It never ceases to amaze me how statists of the left and right have to contort themselves to support some of their positions. I'm not a big fan of the Constitution but it is crystal clear about prohibiting paper money. The Federal Gov't is prohibited by lack of enumeration and the State goverments are prohibited by the legal tender clause as well as the prohibition against emitting bills of credit.
Lysander - If you get a chance, take a look at this comment. At first he is saying that hoarding (God I hate that term) money will reduce one's purchasing power. But then he says without an increase in money supply money will INCREASE in purchasing power.
I'm not an economist, but what of his argument that money must increase with population increases? It stinks to me, but I can't come up with a refutation. Any ideas?
Stevo
"Money is different from all other commodities: other things being equal, more shoes, or more discoveries of oil or copper benefit society, since they help alleviate natural scarcity. But once a commodity is established as a money on the market, no more money at all is needed. Since the only use of money is for exchange and reckoning, more dollars or pounds or marks in circulation cannot confer a social benefit: they will simply dilute the exchange value of every existing dollar or pound or mark. So it is a great boon that gold or silver are scarce and are costly to increase in supply."
Murray Rothbard
Further reading:
http://mises.org/Books/mysteryofbanking.pdf
http://mises.org/books/Rothbard_What_Has_Government_Done.pdf
So the effect of an increase in production would be a gradual rise in the price level over time. Oh the horrors!!! :)
Of course, the statists' arguments may focus on their desired outcome, but of course their plan requires the use of guns pointed at the rest of us. That's a non-starter for me.
Though you politics might be somewhat extremist for my liking, Lysander you seem a pretty thoughtful & diplomatic kind of guy & so you’d likely admit there’s just as much ignorance & stereotyping from conservative/libertarians upon the left of the political spectrum.
An instance I’d give is the manner which typical libertarians consider geolibertarians or anybody who believes in the redistribution of wealth. Snarling socialist or statist is pretty much the typical treatment a geolibertarian or non libertarian is likely to get & it shows a very black & white type thinking which smacks of a lack of understanding of the perspective of others.
http://twitter.com/sophiabotha
Sophia, (It took me a while to figure out who you were)
I think the difference between me and many other anarchists is the lack of self-righteousness. I have my beliefs and I don't compromise them . But as long as someone is honest, I try to treat them with respect. I don't think that someone who is a minarchist instead of an anarchist is on the same level as a Stalin, a Mao or a Hitler.
Here's an interesting "quote of the day" I saw on Thom Hartmann's website. I am assuming that he approves of the quote.
"The foundation of every state is the education of its youth. -- Diogenes Laertius
This a very revealing glimpse into the mindset of Hartmann. The key words are "state" and "its". This is no surprise. Here's some choice quotes from Hartmann:
1. There is no such thing as a "free market."
2. The "middle class" is the creation of government intervention in the marketplace, and won't exist without it (as millions of Americans and Europeans are discovering).....
In actual fact, there is no such thing as a "free market." Markets are the creation of government.
Governments provide a stable currency to make markets possible.[Is he kidding?] They provide a legal infrastructure and court systems to enforce the contracts that make markets possible. [A progressive for contracts. Does that extend to all commercial transactions?]They provide educated workforces through public education [Is he kidding? Even if that were true, isn't that a little fascistic?], and those workers show up at their places of business after traveling on public roads, rails, or airways provided by government. Businesses that use the "free market" are protected by police and fire departments provided by government, and send their communications - from phone to fax to internet - over lines that follow public rights-of-way maintained and protected by government.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0312-08.htm
Interesting. So if I come throw up a barbed wire perimeter around his house to trap him in, and then come throw a bundle of food scraps over the fence once a week, can I then declare that his living is only made possible by my hand???
"Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe."
Frank Zappa