You should read the congratulatory telegrams Hitler and Roosevelt used to send each other before they broke off their relationship. Mutual masturbation.

What I’ve said (perhaps you had to read between the lines just a little) is that living in a community isn’t always easy and that certain accommodations with one’s neighbors are often required. Is that scary to you? If you want to listen to loud music at 2:00 in the morning and I want to sleep, are your precious rights violated when I ask you to turn the volume down? If I shovel snow to clear my driveway by dumping it in your driveway, are you okay with that?

Like I wrote in an earlier comment, there is no frontier left to move beyond — getting “away from it all” is next to impossible.

Out here in Arizona, I used to read occasionally of people who lived in the desert to be away from city rules. Okay by me. But eventually development inched its way out to them and — poof! — they had neighbors. Young, upscale neighbors who winced at the inappropriateness of junked cars, weeds, and chickens in their midst; they worried about their own property values and the offense to their delicate sensibilities. The existing law enabled these newcomers to create community guidelines for property maintenance, with no grandfather clauses. You can imagine what happened next: a guy who lives for decades, own his own property, in his own way, is suddenly faced with legal action if he continues to live that way for one more day.

Is this just? I don’t think so; you probably don’t think so, either. But it’s legal. So what do you propose? Decrying “moralistic agendas”, or working with like-minded citizens to change the law?

If you want to be truly left alone, away from those who might give you unwanted wave as you pass by, You might want to check out Antarctica before it melts.

Aw shucks, you made me lose my temper.

Why do you feel just in forcing a moralist agenda onto others? Why can’t you just live your life with others who agree with you and leave the rest of us alone?

We don’t all agree on what our rights are — abortion is the most obvious example. Some people who really want “government of their backs” might feel a right to all sorts of things that are currently restricted: making a right turn on a red light; animal sacrifice to appease the gods; smoking marijuana; looking at hand-drawn pictures of children having sex; eating unpasteurized runny French cheeses; owning a grenade launcher.

You might think some or all of these are legitimate entitled rights (I certainly do), but do you think that every single one rises to the right of free speech and assembly, the right to own a sidearm, the right to not be tortured to extract a false confession?

I find it easy to prioritize my rights — in order to fight hardest for the ones I fear losing the most. To say that they are all equal and the infringement on one is an infringement on all ignores real-life consequences: the loss of our Sixth Amendment rights just might do a little more damage to society (and thereby to you) than the loss of a right to make roosters fight each other.

In the abstract, all rights are equal — but on the ground, where we risk losing them, some are more equal than others.

I believe all freedoms are equal. Saying that some freedoms are more equal than others just reeks of Animal Farm. That kind of thinking is why people are so angry and violent towards competing political thought.

I just don’t understand why those who favor high taxes for the greater good can’t just pay for and provide those services amongst themselves and leave the rest of alone to deal with our problems as individuals. Why is that never an option?

What made me gravitate to the Libertarian model is that it allows people to do whatever communal activities they want without forcing others to abide by the same policies. It just seems that everyone believes “it’s my way for everyone. No one gets to opt out.” It’s that kind of totalitarianism that drives people away from the left and the right. Why do you feel just in forcing a moralist agenda onto others? Why can’t you just live your life with others who agree with you and leave the rest of us alone?

I believe all freedoms are equal. Saying that some freedoms are more equal than others just reeks of Animal Farm. That kind of thinking is why people are so angry and violent towards competing political thought.

I just don’t understand why those who favor high taxes for the greater good can’t just pay for and provide those services amongst themselves and leave the rest of alone to deal with our problems as individuals. Why is that never an option?

What made me gravitate to the Libertarian model is that it allows people to do whatever communal activities they want without forcing others to abide by the same policies. It just seems that everyone believes “it’s my way for everyone. No one gets to opt out.” It’s that kind of totalitarianism that drives people away from the left and the right. Why do you feel just in forcing a moralist agenda onto others? Why can’t you just live your life with others who agree with you and leave the rest of us alone?

(Sorry — accidentally hit the submit button. And I wasn’t even sure whether I was going to submit it or scrap it!)

#125 old

I am fucking sicks of people comparing Americans to Nazis.

I don’t think the Germans got together one day and suddenly decided, by popular vote, to become a bunch hate-mongering ego-supremacists.

Fascism, schmashism. I call it a mob mentality. It’s human nature and Germany doesn’t have a monopoly on it. I think people, yes Republicans and Democrats, love to persecute other people. I think it’s become so institutionalized that no one even gives it a second thought. No one ever calls it persecution when they’re the ones doing it, but we have no affection for those who are different from us, especially when they congregate in groups and make us fearful. We hang them and we burn them and we throw them in prison.

The idea that we can’t compare the U.S. to Germany until we’ve killed 6 million people is hogwash. A major socioeconomic crisis turned a civilized western democracy into a one-party militaristic totalitarian monster that was ultimately responsible for millions of deaths and the utter destruction of much of Europe.

Germany is a perfect example simply because it was so extreme, it happened so quickly, and it’s so well known. The morons aren’t the ones who worry prematurely. The morons are the ones who don’t worry until

You insult all veterans by denying that they are living a country that is resembling very thing they once fought against.

Godwin rules!

You are a fucking moran, and I am sure aware of all internet traditions.

I am fucking sicks of people comparing Americans to Nazis. Wether on the left or the right of American politics, the one thing we have in common is that we are anti-fascists. Many people on the left and on the right of the political spectrum gave their lives in a great endeavor to free people subjected to fascism. For you to moronically imply that we are all just one step away from fascism is an insult to Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and Independents. Fuck you, and fuck your grand pronouncement.

I hope you actually get to live under a real fascist government, chicken little, then you can cry about fascism.

Reading through some of the comments on your posts, it seems that many libertarians choose not to vote. If so, I think that’s a shame. These people may tend to be cynical, but they’re thoughtful and informed—exactly the kind of people we need to go to the polls more often. [emphasis added]

Citizen Jane, that some people are thoughtful and informed is precisely the reason they choose not to vote.

It’s like saying, “you seem like a thoughtful and informed music lover – exactly the type of person who needs to buy more Nickleback and Hannah Montana CDs”.

Obama’s definition of “Constitutional law” is “figuring out how to construct vaguely-plausible arguments that the Constitution says what he wants it to say.”

What’s needed to fix this country, actually, is not some mysterious expertise, but rather for there to be a wide enough understanding of some simple principles of economics and law that the “experts” who use smoke and mirrors to peddle B.S. can be called on it. The simple principles taught in Econ 101 predict that many government programs will have side-effects that will render them counter-productive. Such predictions are consistently right. Too bad most people don’t have even the most rudimentary understanding of economics to see that.

I think many people object to gay “marriage” because its proponents seek to FORCE OTHERS to treat gay “marriages” the same as the precisely-one-husband marriages that have been accepted as THE standard in 99.9% of human societies. If two guys, or five guys, two women, and an Apple Macintosh, want to declare themselves themselves to be a “couple”, that’s fine provided they don’t try to make anyone else act upon that declaration. I see no reason to believe that the proponents of gay marriage would find that sufficient.

Thanks for the provocative questions you posted and for sending some of your readers my way. Now that I’ve found your blog, I’ll be visiting often. I’d much rather dialogue with people who may be wrong for intelligent reasons than those who may occasionally be right by accident (which is to say most of the nuts on the extreme right).

Labels can be useful at times, and if so, I guess I can be correctly characterized as a “lefty,” as you put it. But just for the record, I don’t assume that politicians “always, or even mostly, act in the interest of the public.” Far from it. (A few do, many don’t.) Nor do I think that the skills required to get elected are the same as those required to govern effectively. (But I think it’s nice that, for once, we have a president who has both types of skills.)

Reading through some of the comments on your posts, it seems that many libertarians choose not to vote. If so, I think that’s a shame. These people may tend to be cynical, but they’re thoughtful and informed—exactly the kind of people we need to go to the polls more often.

Thanks for your work. I think it’s important.
Citizen Jane

“why did you gratuitously bring in violence?”

First, my apologies for interjecting myself into your discussion with Mr. DNA. I usually don’t stand in for others, but sometimes I just can’t resist.

As for conflating violence and evil, well, I may be off-base but I was under the impression that violence and evil were either fairly synonymous or one a subspecies of the other. I suppose I could be wrong. Do you think it’s a good thing when violence happens to you? I sure don’t. And things that are not good can be considered evil, or bad, or some other word that has similar meaning.

“You are an idealist of the … whatever.”

You’re darn tootin’ I’m an idealist of the whatever! That’s perfect! I’m going to use that with your permission. My band is looking for a new name — “Ladies and gentlemen, the Idealists of the Whatever!!!” Because I sure as shit don’t fall on the traditional political spectrum of left and right, which is to make a distinction without a difference as our host proves day after day after day. There are statist idealists and anarchist idealists. You may absolutely count me on the “whatever” side.

“Pretty much everyone defines everything to their own liking …”

Well, I’m glad you left some wiggle room there — as a matter of fact, I try to define everything by objective truth, my own liking be damned, much to my own consternation sometimes.

“I love it when you’re right, too!”

See, that was easy! I wasn’t sure about you at first, Karl, but I’m starting to like you. Abandon all that statist nonsense and come over to the non-violent side!

I don’t see these as being on the same moral level, no. To be honest I see*Excessive* taxation as much more morally repugnant. I know that there are tax benefits to being married (like how I tied that to the tax rate? :P) but love can do its own thing most of the time and the rest of the world be damned. Money can keep you alive when nothing else will, it feeds your children and it keeps me from sleeping out in the cold night. It can also bribe someone who doesn’t want you to visit your dying lover you don’t happen to be married to. I believe taxation is necessary for societies to exist, but excessive taxation without consideration for who gets the stick is right up there with denying health care to a cancer patient because it makes your bottom line look better. We’re not at a point of excessive taxation now. It’s more than I like but it’s less than I would accept for a successful gov’t (unlike the current version of the last 20yrs or so).

Marriage is important and I want the government out of it completely. But taxes can get damned close to murder if you don’t watch it and I’m much more concerned about them right now.
Oh, btw, I’m glad you answered the “oozing contempt” statement…I suppose you’ve all noted that I dislike general statements of that sort by now.

#99: My #41 comment was a response to Mister DNA (#28, which later turned into #30 — what gives?) who mentioned evil, not violence; so why did you gratuitously bring in violence?

“I argue that the State is not a fact of life, although presently it is. I argue that the State need not exist if humans were capable of resisting superstition and fear and not caving in at the first sign of danger. But I can see how someone could have such a hopeless view of humanity that they view the State as inevitable.”

Generally, the “sure, in a perfect world” critique is usually reserved for idealists on the left. You are an idealist of the … whatever. Your Utopian yearnings are understandable, but didn’t require a comment.

#104: Pretty much everyone defines everything to their own liking, so why shouldn’t you? Another “no comment necessary.”

I love it when you’re right, too!

I love it when I’m right!