2y ago

Republicans are enemies of liberty

122 comments

Libertarians are just Republicans who don't understand how taxes work.
- Some of the funniest shit in the world to me is watching a libertarian talk to pretty much anyone remotely competent in discussing policy and watching in real time as the libertarian reinvents things like taxes and liberal democracy trying to make their policy prescriptions make sense.
  
  I had a "debate" with a libertarian once. It's annoying because they reply with: "it's the government's fault" or "free market can do it better" and citing examples just leans to their boring hypotheticals.
  Workers rights, healthcare, regulations, public transit, public healthcare, mail, etc, it's boring how uninterested they are in how things actually work.
  
  The argument is generally to favor non-coercive solutions to avoid centralized power breeding corruption (admittedly with a caveat that wealth can also create centralized power). I'm not clear how that would entail more taxes. Or exactly what you mean by "liberal democracy", which in the conventional use isn't something they disagree with?
- Republicans don't even know how taxes work.
- I always thought a Libertarian is a Republican who is trying to sleep with a Democrat - or vice versa.
  
  I was a libertarian until I vacationed in a country where taxes were used on its people instead of it military.
  (Gross over simplification for comedy before anyone comes at me for my political beliefs)
  
  Pretty much. It doesn't take a whole lot of brains to figure out that if you are spewing out all these policies that are going to hurt people that cute coed isn't going to want to hang out with you. So, you lie about what you believe. You aren't mean nasty gop you are cool enlightened libertarian. You don't respect her intelligence enough to expect her to figure out what you really believe.
  Quite a few years ago I came to the decision that if I had any opinion that I was embarrassed about, it was a sign that I should reevaluate it. That doesn't mean always going with the herd. It means that I was only going to defend embarrassing ideas that I am so sure about I am willing to take whatever society will throw at me for holding them.
- I wouldn't say Democrat takes on libertarianism have ever been very good. Especially in recent years with the alt-right trying to occupy the middle space between "libertarian" and "Republican" and adding to the confusion.
  You have a problem on two ends - corporate interests can get out of hand, pollute, monopolize, etc., and you want to rein that in somehow. This can be done via the market, since corps do need money to survive, but a lot of people don't care enough to make it happen. On the flip side, if you rely on government to just control everything and hope they'll act benevolently, there are huge risks - a government agency could be benign or beneficial, or it can turn into a machine for oppression and monopolization.
  I feel like the Democrat takes never acknowledge the negatives of state control (at least unless it's something Republican-associated) and also never acknowledge there's a valid way to accomplish anything outside of the state. It seems like their answer is always to just throw state programs at everything. Well, we did try having the state run everything once...
  
  Democrats constantly complain about government control. Defund the police ring a bell? How about all the wars over school district control? Or wasting money on the military?
  Just because you lean towards moving power and resources from private to public sector doesn't mean you always always agree with the public sector.
  If I support NASA does that mean I agree with every decision ever made by the Fed?
  
  I think it's because, as you laid out, the only 2 current options are market led control which isn't viable, and govt based which is viable but risky. Since it's the only viable option it gets the risks downplayed.
  
  Democrats in the US are not as left-leaning as they make themselves out to be. I'd argue they moved further right economically a couple of decades ago, which pushed the Republicans even further right to the point of absurdity. What to you seem like the Democratic Party's attempt at "state controlling" things aren't actually that extreme, or that left-wing for that matter. Both parties are right-leaning. There's no center or center left in the US. Bernie tried to be center-left, but he was seen as too extreme.
- Libertarians are just not ready to admit to daddy that they too are a Conservative/Republican.
- No they're not. That's an American Republican appropriation of an otherwise complex ideology. Do you think Chomsky is a Republican who doesn't understand taxes?

Republicans don't want small government, they want a fascist police state and a corrupt military industrial complex to oppress people around the world to steal their shit while funding profitable wars for their contractors.
I think the last 2 people who wanted small government and balanced budgets were like John McCain (dead) and John Kasich (retired, but endorsed Joe Biden in 2020) and they're no longer relevant.
Honestly, as a party, they need to go. I want an opposition party to the Democrats, but they're not it. Hell, America really needs ranked choice voting and more open primaries, and probably 4 major political parties.
- Hence the meme where the Republican party kills the Libertarians
- username go brrrrrr
- and probably 4 major political parties.
  George Washington was generally against political parties, but especially opposed to bicameralism.
- Interesting, the only thing that sets apart the US from being another Russia is the fact that the GOP has to switch with the democratic party every few years
  
  Look I know that's a hyperbolic statement because you're dissatisfied with the USA's political landscape, I am and I'm not American because their politics bleeds heavily internationally through culture.
  But the US is FAR FAR away from being like Russia. It's so different in many ways that to compare the two is like saying Chalk is almost like Cheese because their chemical formulas both have Carbon in them. It's completely nonsensical. Anything organic has carbon in it.
  Just like how all countries have common problems: corruption, malfunctioning subsystems within the government machine, wealth inequality, etc, the list is endless.
  The difference is the whole the parts make up.
  Let's take a left-field example: smiling and saying hello to strangers.
  Americans (with some exceptions like NYC residents) are stereotyped as being friendly and willing to smile and make small talk with strangers as a form of public politeness. Almost to the point of being over familiar and can come across as superficial.
  Russians (again this is stereotyped) would think any stranger smiling at them is someone not to be trusted because they want something from you. But if you spend a lot of time around one, get to know them, I've been told they are very welcoming.
  The reasons why? Vastly different cultural values and societies that reflect those values.
  I could go on with more examples but this comment is long enough.
  
  Хаха, нет, даже не близко

Don't let them fool you, libertarians are just Republicans who are too chicken shit to admit it and be open about it. They still side together on every issue, small government or not. I don't see a difference between the two in their actions
- Hey now, be fair, not all self described libertarians are just being dishonest about their political affiliations.
  Some don't know how anything works and call themselves libertarian because they think it sounds cool.
- They still side together on every issue
  So you think that Libertarians believe drugs should be illegal, the government should ban abortion, books, and gay rights, and tons of money should be spent on military budgets and corporate subsidies? That's like the opposite of Libertarianism. But you're right, there are a lot of Republicans who incorrectly call themselves libertarian.

Libertarians are enemies of everyone else's liberty, when it contradicts with theirs personally.
- How so
  
  They're almost always corporate libertarians, putting business before individual freedoms.

I don't respect conservatives. Someone who votes Republican is either ignorant of what their party is doing, is willing to look the other way, or is actively encouraging it. None of these traits are admirable, or respectable.

Republicans run on the campaign that government doesn't work, and once they are in power they prove it.

Libertarianism is the ideology of the childish and selfish, it is the ideology of putting oneself and one's own interests before everything else, just dressed up in pretty words about "liberty".
- A nice word that Rothbart stole from Anarchists to use for his capital-Feudalism
  It makes me a sad left a libertarian/anarchist.
  
  Anarchism has the same individualist liberal basis as "regular" capitalism. An anarchist commune will always transform either to regular capitalism (pre-imperialist capitalism) or socialism.

It’s weird seeing American “libertarians”. In Australia, the Liberal Democrat Party were the first to support same sex marriage and drug decriminalisation (even before the far-left Greens) and have long supported peoples right to decide for themselves on euthanasia and abortion. They’ve been the only voice against the governments overreach on internet filtering and their power to secretly force companies to write backdoors into their software. So basically the opposite of American “libertarians”.
After winning some seats about 8-10 years ago, the major parties realised they could marginalise the LDP on issues like gun control, which most Australians know nothing about but support with blind enthusiasm anyway. So we’re back to the stats-quo of 4 parties, Lib/Nat vs Labor/Greens.
- Libertarianism in the US is all about personal liberty, basically about being able to do whatever they want and fuck anyone else's needs or desires.
  
  So they're just Republicans by a different name then
- Similar thing with the Lib Dems here in the UK. More socially progressive than Labour, and in theory "centrist" on economics but were also arguably more progressive than even Corbyns Labour. Then as soon as they won a decent amount of seats both the right and left wing media dragged them through the mud to stop them being a threat to the 2 party system that theve invested tons of money into controlling.
- American libertarians will say they support things like gay rights and drug decriminalization but they will never actually vote in a way that creates change. They will vote for the Republican that claims to want small government but does nothing to further that ideology. Even if that politician is actively fighting against other causes that libertarians claim to give a damn about.

Used to call myself Libertarian at one point. Then I grew up and realized most "Libertarians" are a group of morons who would get eaten by the wealthy if the world suddenly switched over to their ideal "Libertarian" society. You think the gap is bad between the rich and poor now? Let "Libertarian" ideals run amok for a decade....

I kept misreading it as librarians which really confused me xD

I do think libertarianism has some principles and concepts that are valuable, I would have even called myself libertarian-ish at certain points, but over the years it's fallen into a similar bucket as communism from my perspective.
It's an attractive system until you start introducing the people.
- Things aren't just black and white and I wish people didn't feel like they had to pick teams. I lean towards liberalism/socialism when it comes to social issues but I lean more libertarian when it comes to economic issues.
- And unfortunately it has been co-opted by the right, like so many other things. They claimed the banner, and fly the flag, while embodying none of the beliefs. If you say you're a libertarian in America, people automatically assume you're Alt-Right, despite the fact that Noam Chomsky is a libertarian, or more accurately a libertarian socialist, or an anarcho-syndicalist.
  
  What's chomsky's solution for bears?

The funniest part of this is the part where we assume libertarians are being honest and acting in good faith
- Libertarians are just Republicans who are embarrassed to admit it.

I'm just going to post this article every time a libertarian post makes it to the front page now. Yes, libertarian taking over a New Hampshire town only to get overrun by feral bears will never stop being funny.
https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project

Libertarians are just Republicans wearing silly hats.

The mental illness is strong

The panda-rabbit should be a leopard.

elites rather

If anyone here lives in KS hit me up and you can meet the locals. It's a lot different than it was 15 years ago.

It's funny because capital created big governments.

This is my prediction. After the GOP crashes and burns, the Chris Christie/Mike Pence wing will do a hostile takeover of the Libertarian Party. They are already on the ballot in every state, so that would be easier than building a new party from scratch.
- Your optimism is unwarranted. 😥

US American Democrats aren't much better. I mean, sure, pro-choice, environmental policies, etc, but their economic policies? Haven't been great for the working class at least since Bill Clinton's era.
*It seems like I have to explain myself, I'm a socialist. I'm very left leaning, very pro regulations, it doesn't trickle down. Bill Clinton signed NAFTA, he was very openly Neoliberal. (And, btw, Don't Ask Don't Tell was also from his era). Obama, however charming, did little to bring the dignity of work back to the US, he instead played the respectability politics, pull yourself up by the bootstraps through higher education (which was not available for everyone).
- Our progressives still have to be fairly conservative to pull in the swing voters we need to keep batshit Republicans at bay. The Overton window has some fucking miles on it here in the US
  
  It's often a push and pull. The US "progressives" was pulled to the right, which pushed the "conservatives" further to the right. From the outside looking in, it seems that the new anti-abortion laws are proving to be unpopular, which might just pull conservatives back to the centre of this particular issue, and then the progressives can go further left again.
  For activism, whichever side you're on, they must always ask for a lot right now, to get a little very soon. It goes both ways.
- It's their firearms policy for me, the economic stuff is just the icing on the cake. I'm literally in the industry, so I know a thing or two about firearms and the laws regarding them, and watching the democrat party be so wrong about the basic functionality of a semi auto rifle or the current laws we already have, or what the one they're proposing will do (spoiler alert: it'll disproportionately affect minorities just like drug laws and stop and frisk) that they're either intentionally misleading the public or have no business making decisions on the matter as they are woefully uninformed has made it so now I can't trust anything they say. It'd be like if you know a lot about cars and then I come on talking about how a catback makes your car faster and more deadly should you try to Charlestown someone so we need to ban them, immediately you'd know I'm a moron and disregard everything I say, same for the entire dem party and firearms.
  
  Firearms usage in the US is dysfunctional anyway. It causes heightened tensions in every situation. I don't know how it can ever be better.
  
  Politicians are idiots, but there are plenty of gun lovers on the left. Sweeping bans will be massively unpopular and won't happen. Nobody left wants to push effective legislation and the right will fight absolutely everything tooth and nail.

All political parties eat the common man. Republican Democrats all fucking bastards
- Many people say this but then you have a party that's trying to get students out of debt and another that's trying to fuck students over when they find the time to take a break from their hollocaust against anything LGBTQ+. It's bullshit. One side is so very clearly worse here.
  
  "fuck students over" lol the same students who championed lockdowns, the same students who took out a loan for a liberal arts degree in the first place. Let me ask you this - are the students going to pay for the construction workers Osha training? Are they going to pay for the cement workers personal tools?
  Paying back debt is a part of being a fiscally responsible adult. They should learn to leverage their tools to get a job instead of expecting everyone else to take care of shit for them.

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