GOP: Libertarians not wanted

[RavenSky]

So if the harm the majority causes is "strip this minority of all their rights" the majority will feel that harm. I see.

The idea of democracy is also tied to the idea of human rights.

Principles like the freedom of speech and religion and all the freedoms tied up into the Bill of Rights are also part of a democracy.

Right now we have a minority trying to take away things like the right to have an abortion and the right of homosexuals to marry. Giving a minority power is no great protection of rights.

How is the Bill of Rights enforced in a pure majority rule that decides to do away with the Bill of Rights?

I don't disagree with most of what you have written in this thread, but I do think there needs to be a check against abuse on "the majority" just as there needs to be a check against abuses by government and/or money/power.

 

[Harry Bosch]

We didn't know that people would be better off with democratic government than they were under dictatorships.

But morally we couldn't support the ability of some to have dictatorial power over others.

Even in a democracy, some have dictatorial power over others. The majority dictates what is done over the minority - even when what the majority wants is unethical or immoral.

For example, the majority sent law abiding citizens of the US to prison camps during WWII. The majority denied black citizens and women equal rights. The majority repeatedly went back on treaties with Native Americans. The majority are often jerks.

Being the majority doesn't grant moral authority. The majority is no less fallible than a single person. They're just much, much harder to assassinate when they lose their minds .



Sorry about that, that's the best I've got for humor.

Thanks Emily, that's a great post. Untermensche wants to replace a form of dictatorship with another form of dictatorship. Quite simply, I have no desire to be my own boss. And I'd rather have one boss rather than 500. I should have the freedom of choice to decide what I want to do. If Untermensche doesn't like someone having power over him, then allow him to start his own business! As a banker, I probably talk to three or four people per week who are in the process of starting their own business.

 

[Harry Bosch]

The idea of democracy is also tied to the idea of human rights.

Principles like the freedom of speech and religion and all the freedoms tied up into the Bill of Rights are also part of a democracy.

Right now we have a minority trying to take away things like the right to have an abortion and the right of homosexuals to marry. Giving a minority power is no great protection of rights.

How is the Bill of Rights enforced in a pure majority rule that decides to do away with the Bill of Rights?

I don't disagree with most of what you have written in this thread, but I do think there needs to be a check against abuse on "the majority" just as there needs to be a check against abuses by government and/or money/power.

Anarchists will use force to check and eliminate power and abuses by government. Once all force and dictatorship is eliminated, anarchists will give up their power. At least that is the theory!

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The idea of democracy is also tied to the idea of human rights.

Principles like the freedom of speech and religion and all the freedoms tied up into the Bill of Rights are also part of a democracy.

Right now we have a minority trying to take away things like the right to have an abortion and the right of homosexuals to marry. Giving a minority power is no great protection of rights.

How is the Bill of Rights enforced in a pure majority rule that decides to do away with the Bill of Rights?

I don't disagree with most of what you have written in this thread, but I do think there needs to be a check against abuse on "the majority" just as there needs to be a check against abuses by government and/or money/power.

His argument is that a real democracy always has protections like a bill of rights, and if the majority votes to strip away the rights of the minority then it also doesn't put sugar on its porridge.

 

[Harry Bosch]

His argument is that a real democracy always has protections like a bill of rights, and if the majority votes to strip away the rights of the minority then it also doesn't put sugar on its porridge.

I think that his position is more that once all dictatorship is crushed by anarchist central power, that all people will become good, poverty and crime will disappear, and all will live in harmony.

 

[lpetrich]

Quite simply, I have no desire to be my own boss.

That's your choice, and I hope that you are willing to live with the consequences of it.

And I'd rather have one boss rather than 500.

So President Obama should declare himself King Barack I and abolish elections?

I should have the freedom of choice to decide what I want to do. If Untermensche doesn't like someone having power over him, then allow him to start his own business!

So only business leaders deserve to have any rights?

 

[Emily Lake]

And I'd rather have one boss rather than 500.

So President Obama should declare himself King Barack I and abolish elections?

I should have the freedom of choice to decide what I want to do. If Untermensche doesn't like someone having power over him, then allow him to start his own business!

So only business leaders deserve to have any rights?

Those both seem like gratuitous strawmen to me.

 

[Bomb#20]

The idea of democracy is also tied to the idea of human rights.

Principles like the freedom of speech and religion and all the freedoms tied up into the Bill of Rights are also part of a democracy.

Right now we have a minority trying to take away things like the right to have an abortion and the right of homosexuals to marry. Giving a minority power is no great protection of rights.

How is the Bill of Rights enforced in a pure majority rule that decides to do away with the Bill of Rights?

I don't disagree with most of what you have written in this thread, but I do think there needs to be a check against abuse on "the majority" just as there needs to be a check against abuses by government and/or money/power.

Quite so.

There were no dictators in the parts of Spain controlled by the Anarchists.

In fact their slogan was "no bosses".

The dictatorships will vanish on their own once enough worker owned and controlled companies exist. They will not be able to find people so oppressed that they are willing to rent their labor to some dictator.

Here's the Spanish Anarchist position on freedom of religion:

"Catholicism must be swept away implacably. We demand not that every church be destroyed, but that no vestige of religion should remain in any of them and that the black spider of fanaticism should not be allowed to spin the viscous and dusty web in which our moral and material values have until now been caught like flies. In Spain, more than any other country, the Catholic church has been at the head of every retrograde aim, of every measure taken against the people, of every attack on liberty."

 

[untermensche]

Are you honestly dictating that anyone who doesn't share your beliefs is mentally unstable?

I await the arguments showing how dictatorship is legitimate, how it is needed.

But my statement stands. If you prefer a dictatorship that steals from you to a democracy where you have a measure of control, you are not rational.

The translation here is that anyone who doesn't accept your beliefs is irrational; only those who believe as you do are truly sane. This is be belief held by any other fundamentalist - the belief that only their belief is true, and any who disagrees is insane/ignorant/evil/sinful/etc.

Ridiculous.

It is not rational to desire to be part of a dictatorship. If you disagree, make an argument in support of dictatorship.

Untermensche, what if I disagree with your assessment that it is a dictatorship?
What makes it not rational?

So a company where all power ultimately exists in one person or a few persons, none of which were elected by the workers, is not a dictatorship?

So if you went to a country where all power existed in the hands of a few people or one person you wouldn't call that a dictatorship?

Even in a democracy, some have dictatorial power over others. The majority dictates what is done over the minority - even when what the majority wants is unethical or immoral.

This has been addressed.

All persons are granted certain rights by the government and these rights cannot be infringed upon by any majority. But presently we have a system of mass theft from workers by petty dictators that have the power to steal. All economic gains are going to the dictators and none are going to workers. We have a completely unjust system where a minority is screwing over the majority.

 

[untermensche]

This has nothing to do with any kind of paradise.

It's like when we went from monarchy (dictatorship) to democracy. It was more just, but no paradise.

No, but several systems have been attempted to give workers control over production, and have failed badly. So you can't just say, "Let's just try again"

What are you talking about?

This was attempted once. And it didn't fail, it was crushed with extreme prejudice by the the supporters of dictatorial economic systems. The last thing these dictators are going to do is let the workers run things free from their oppression.

 

[Emily Lake]

So if you went to a country where all power existed in the hands of a few people or one person you wouldn't call that a dictatorship?

The power in this country resides in the hands of a few; does that make it a dictatorship?

This has been addressed.

All persons are granted certain rights by the government and these rights cannot be infringed upon by any majority.

This hasn't stopped the majority from infringing on the rights of others in the past; african americans, women, japanese americans have all had their rights infringed upon by the majority - despite rights that are theoretically granted by the government and aren't supposed to be infringed upon. The majority does it anyway. At least now, there's a structure in place to seek redress.

Democracy doesn't guarantee moral authority, nor does it guarantee ethical behavior on the part of the majority.

 

[untermensche]

There were no dictators in the parts of Spain controlled by the Anarchists.

In fact their slogan was "no bosses".

And people's slogans are a reliable predictor of how they'll act once they're in power. Much of the modern left has an image of Anarchist Spain that's as unhistorical as their conviction that the Bolsheviks overthrew the Czar.

"...Lacking training in economic matters, the union leaders, with more good will than success, began to issue directives that spread confusion in the factory committees and enormous chaos in production. This was aggravated by the fact that each union... gave different and often contradictory instruction."​

In response to these problems, the Generalitat of Catalonia, backed by the CNT approved a decree on "Collectivization and Workers' Control" on 24 October 1936. Under this decree all firms with more than 100 workers were to be collectivized and those with less than 100 could be collectivized if a majority of workers agreed.[20] All collectivized enterprises were to join general industrial councils, which would be represented in a central planning agency, the Economic Council of Catalonia. Representatives of the Generalitat would be appointed by the CNT to these regional councils.[21] The goal of this new form of organization would be to allow central planning for civilian and military needs and stop the selfishness of more prosperous industries by using their profits to help others.​

(Source)

The parts of Spain controlled by the Anarchists were overflowing with dictators great and petty.

The dictatorships will vanish on their own once enough worker owned and controlled companies exist. They will not be able to find people so oppressed that they are willing to rent their labor to some dictator.

Everybody who says that, and who sincerely believes he's telling the truth, owes it to the workers he's trying to help to educate himself about what actually happens when Anarchists take power and turn enough companies over to worker ownership and control. If you choose not to read up on the historical facts, and you simply put your ideas into effect on blind faith, then you won't realize you've betrayed the workers until it's too late for you to stop the tragic events you've set in motion.

One reference does not an argument make.

The facts are the Anarchist factories and farms did as well or better than the capitalist enterprises. And they did it without all those deadwood petty dictators.

But the Anarchists were hampered by the supporters of dictatorship from the start. They never had the freedom to build the nation they envisioned.

And of course Spain is merely the first experiment with this increased level of freedom. It was crushed just as so many other experiments have been crushed by the supporters of dictatorial economics.

We can only imagine the systems that would have evolved from this great experiment, as flawed as it was, had it been permitted to freely exist.

You don't achieve perfection in your first experiment. Look at all the capitalist dictatorial experiments. So many of them are crap. Capitalist Haiti, capitalist Guatemala, capitalist Mexico, capitalist Indonesia, and the list goes on. Even the most successful capitalist experiments screw over millions at a constant rate.

I happen to think we can do a lot better than dictatorial capitalism.

But a great many people who are rational, in their right minds, and not idiots want to be part of some organization that is not a dictatorship and does not steal from them even though left-wing ideologues, ill-equipped with arguments but well-equipped with faith, incessantly repeat the holy mantra "It's a dictatorship that steals from you.".

It is a mantra. These dictators are stealing from workers. They control the economics of the companies and they funnel all gains to themselves and none to the people who actually create the wealth.

This is why the capitalists, in the US at least, went incredibly batshit crazy when the unions first started showing up and they started killing people. They were not about to give up their dictatorial position and actually negotiate with workers.

 

[untermensche]

The power in this country resides in the hands of a few; does that make it a dictatorship?

Yes, the power is in the hands of a few economic dictators. They control the government. They are corrupting the system.

Another reason to get rid of them.

This hasn't stopped the majority from infringing on the rights of others in the past; african americans, women, japanese americans have all had their rights infringed upon by the majority - despite rights that are theoretically granted by the government and aren't supposed to be infringed upon. The majority does it anyway. At least now, there's a structure in place to seek redress.

Democracy doesn't guarantee moral authority, nor does it guarantee ethical behavior on the part of the majority.

What was slavery?

It was a few economic dictators who owned slaves that corrupted an entire society for hundreds of years, not to mention the incalculable human harm of slavery itself, and we are still feeling the effects of their corruption.

American capitalism grew out of slavery and along side slavery. And it adopted the power structure of slavery. A few at the top controlling many.

We don't need these dictators. We need to get rid of them and begin to experiment with democracy.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The power in this country resides in the hands of a few; does that make it a dictatorship?

This has been addressed.

All persons are granted certain rights by the government and these rights cannot be infringed upon by any majority.

This hasn't stopped the majority from infringing on the rights of others in the past; african americans, women, japanese americans have all had their rights infringed upon by the majority - despite rights that are theoretically granted by the government and aren't supposed to be infringed upon. The majority does it anyway. At least now, there's a structure in place to seek redress.

Democracy doesn't guarantee moral authority, nor does it guarantee ethical behavior on the part of the majority.

From untermensche's point of view, any democracy that does abuse the minority doesn't put sugar on its porridge either.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

IL Republicans terrorize Libertarians with Guns at their Homes

August 22, 2014. Chicago. (ONN) Illinois Republican Party operatives may have gotten themselves in serious criminal trouble over the past two weeks. During a week-long battle at the IL Board of Elections over the validity of the Libertarian Party’s ballot access petitions, Republicans took the home addresses off those petitions and sent gun-toting thugs to the houses of voters who signed them. With guns displayed, they terrorized Libertarian petition-signers into signing affidavits recanting their original signatures. Now, the Illinois Governor has demanded a criminal investigation.

Illinois Republicans went way too far in their desperate attempt to keep the Illinois Libertarian Party off the November ballot. Imagine your doorbell rings and two giant, threatening thugs with guns tell you you’ve committed a crime by signing the Libertarian Party’s ballot access petition. They then force you against your will to sign a document recanting your original petition signature. It happened across Illinois and it’s a Class 4 felony. Illinois Republicans may go to prison. And they may just lose what was going to be a landslide General Election over it.

Remind me why idiots think there is friendship between the two parties...

It’s bad enough that in Illinois, Republican and Democratic Party Congressional candidates need to submit only 300 and 500 petition signatures respectively to appear on the ballot. Independents, Libertarians, Greens and all others running for the same office must submit an average of 20,000 signatures. This election, opposition parties needed to submit 25,000 valid signatures to get their candidate slates on the November ballot.

The Libertarians, Greens and Constitution Party all did. The Republicans kicked the Constitution Party off the coming ballot. The Democrats, in the form of the elected Cook County Recorder of Deeds, kicked the Greens off. But having collected and submitted 42,986 signatures, the Illinois Libertarians made it nearly impossible for state Republicans to knock them off. That’s why they’ve been sending armed thugs with guns to the homes of those who signed the LP’s petitions, terrorizing them into signing additional documents recanting their original signature.

Over the past two weeks, election officials, Republican Party operatives, and Libertarian Party supporters have been engaged in an effort to analyze every one of the LP’s 43k signatures, with the GOP challenging every signature they could and the LP’s volunteers steadfastly defending their validity. By the end of the process last week, the Republicans officially challenged 23,667 Libertarian signatures. But BOE officials only agreed with 12,789 of those challenges, leaving the Illinois Libertarians with 30,197 - 5,197 more than the 25k needed. The Libertarians had won their right to participate in the coming 2014 General Election, or so they thought.

 

[untermensche]

Remind me why idiots think there is friendship between the two parties...

I don't think anybody sees this as an issue of friendship.

What they claim is that the Libertarians are willing fools of the Republicans and help put many in office.

And on many issues their positions are indistinguishable.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Well, except for domestic policy, foreign policy, and economic policy, it is true there is a lot of similarity.

 

[untermensche]

Well, except for domestic policy, foreign policy, and economic policy, it is true there is a lot of similarity.

Foreign policy?

What is Rand Paul's position on Israel?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Well, except for domestic policy, foreign policy, and economic policy, it is true there is a lot of similarity.

Foreign policy?

What is Rand Paul's position on Israel?

Who says Rand Paul is one of us? Good grief. Even he denies being libertarian, and accuses the mainstream media of trying to "hang the albatross of libertarian around [his] neck."

So how about those Illinois Republicans?

 

[untermensche]

Foreign policy?

What is Rand Paul's position on Israel?

Who says Rand Paul is one of us? Good grief. Even he denies being libertarian, and accuses the mainstream media of trying to "hang the albatross of libertarian around [his] neck."

So how about those Illinois Republicans?

Oh, he's not one of the faith. So sorry. I guess the truly faithful are a small group.