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Post by Tamrin on Jan 9, 2013 14:35:34 GMT 10
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Post by Tamrin on Jan 9, 2013 14:46:07 GMT 10
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Post by Tamrin on Jan 14, 2013 14:24:20 GMT 10
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Post by Tamrin on Jan 14, 2013 14:30:59 GMT 10
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Post by Dr. Cheese on Jan 30, 2013 0:27:45 GMT 10
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Post by Solomon on Jan 30, 2013 5:56:34 GMT 10
Very apt. For those unfamiliar with the original cartoon (bearing in mind this forum is not based in the US): (Perhaps more than a touch of paronid sociopathology implied) BTW, Welcome Dr. Cheese.
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Post by Smithee on Feb 8, 2013 13:29:52 GMT 10
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Post by Smithee on Feb 8, 2013 13:40:15 GMT 10
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Post by Tamrin on Jan 4, 2014 7:44:19 GMT 10
A libertarian is just a Republican who takes drugs
Silly doctrinaire theories which regard the state as a parasitic excrescence on society cannot explain its centuries-long persistence, its ongoing encroachment upon what was previously market terrain, or its acceptance by the overwhelming majority of people including its demonstrable victims
You might object that what I’ve said may apply to the minarchist majority of libertarians, but not to the self-styled anarchists among them. Not so. To my mind a right-wing anarchist is just a minarchist who’d abolish the state to his own satisfaction by calling it something else. But this incestuous family squabble is no affair of mine
Both camps call for partial or complete privatization of state functions but neither questions the functions themselves. They don’t denounce what the state does, they just object to who’s doing it.This is why the people most victimized by the state display the least interest in liber- tarianism. Those on the receiving end of coercion don’t quibble over their coercers’ credentials. If you can’t pay or don’t want to, you don’t much care if your deprivation is called larceny or taxation or restitution or rent. If you like to control your own time, you distinguish employment from enslavement only in degree and duration
My target is what most libertarians have in common — with each other, and with their ostensible enemies. Libertarians serve the state all the better because they declaim against it. At bottom, they want what it wants. But you can’t want what the state wants without wanting the state, for what the state wants is the conditions in which it flourishes
Libertarians complain that the state is parasitic, an excrescence on society. They think it’s like a tumor you could cut out, leaving the patient just as he was, only healthier. They’ve been mystified by their own metaphors. Like the market, the state is an activity, not an entity. The only way to abolish the state is to change the way of life it forms a part of. That way of life, if you call that living, revolves around work and takes in bureaucracy, moralism, schooling, money, and more
Libertarians are conservatives because they avowedly want to maintain most of this mess and so unwittingly perpetuate the rest of the racket. But they’re bad conservatives because they’ve forgotten the reality of institutional and ideological interconnection which was the original insight of the historical conservatives. Entirely out of touch with the real currents of contemporary resistance, they denounce practical opposition to the system as “nihilism,” “Luddism,” and other big words they don’t understand. A glance at the world confirms that their utopian capitalism just can’t compete with the state. With enemies like libertarians, the state doesn’t need friendsBob BlackAmerican anarchist writer ( Anarchy after Leftism) (Born this day 1951) To demonize state authoritarianism while ignoring identical albeit contract-consecrated subservient arrangements in the large-scale corporations which control the world economy is fetishism at its worst
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Post by Tamrin on Sept 14, 2014 11:12:54 GMT 10
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