antichrist

the Greek serfs are not happy at the moment;

Well Ax it is because they are a little bit too libertarian (the rich ones) and dont want to pay proper taxes so the workers are going to suffer badly - the rich will be okay as usual.

LIbertarians don't want to pay taxes to the state and Greek tragedy is the result - let it be upon their heads and upon their children

Axiom

no mate , its called an uninforming elite owned media not reporting on the lack of taxes paid by the rich , and the workers mislead by media indoctrinated serf sheeple socialism instead of freeing themselves with libertarianism .
I'm a libertarian who believes in small , accountable and transparent govt but strong and truly representative , not as they currently exist as puppets of elite wealth's bankers and corps .

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"Sometimes the obligation of the intelligent is to restate the obvious. None more important than emphatically stating that there is a : ' Naked Emperor Elephant in the Room' " Axiom

Iconoclast

I cannot be fkd reading the whole thread. May I just say something in response to the title per se. If you want to reject "collectivism," become a hermit and become a soon killed "libertarian."

Civilisation rules OK.

__________________
The individual is hopeless without the group.
The group is hopeless without its individuals.

Axiom

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." - Thomas Jefferson

__________________
"Sometimes the obligation of the intelligent is to restate the obvious. None more important than emphatically stating that there is a : ' Naked Emperor Elephant in the Room' " Axiom

Iconoclast

Are you saying that collectivists are ignorant?

__________________
The individual is hopeless without the group.
The group is hopeless without its individuals.

Axiom

Generally , .. sadly , ...yes .

Ignorant that their collective is not by ,from and for them ( brainwashed serf slave sheeple) , but by,from,and for them ( controlling banking establishment serf slave sheeple owners ).

__________________
"Sometimes the obligation of the intelligent is to restate the obvious. None more important than emphatically stating that there is a : ' Naked Emperor Elephant in the Room' " Axiom

Iconoclast

Your analysis is based on a mistake. Collectives have no controlling owners. If you want to talk about "sheeple," go right ahead, but do not confuse a voluntary collective of people with a collection of slaves.

So, I come back to my opening statement that if you want to reject "collectivism," become a hermit and become a soon killed "libertarian."

(Note: I am not attacking liberty, but the over-blown notion that freedom is the natural state of man.)

__________________
The individual is hopeless without the group.
The group is hopeless without its individuals.

Axiom

So all those elite globalist bankers and others at the capstone are wasting their time ??

"voluntary" is the key word here (ref: aldous huxley, bertrand russel and ed bernaise ,also please refer to my "Brainwashed" thread .

why you and fg7* make this into an argument of absolutes and not one of degrees is somewhat curious.
Otherwise ,i could take your position to its logical conclusion and propose that you would be in favour of the entire population being micro chipped and linked into a central data base computer, with cctvs in every home (except those of the controllers ! lol ) , because its " for everyone's safety" and for the good of the collective . Also do you love the chinese saying " Don't be the nail that sticks up from the floorboards" ?

It is obviously an argument of degrees .
And i think we need to swing quite a few degrees towards the libertarian side .

glad you clarified that

obviously humans are social animals and form groups , that is a given . I simply argue from the perspective that there is an imbalance and a growing one between individual freedoms and oppressive collectivism .






* ( apologies to fg , i used the term 'extreme' earlier ,i should have used 'absolute' )

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"Sometimes the obligation of the intelligent is to restate the obvious. None more important than emphatically stating that there is a : ' Naked Emperor Elephant in the Room' " Axiom

Axiom

Too Many Wars Waged


Gary Howard
Campaign For Liberty
May 29, 2010

The “War on Drugs,” like the “War on Terror,” ends up being an undertaking with no definable victory in sight. No matter how vigorously the federal government prosecutes its “war” on drugs, people will still use drugs. No matter how vigorously the federal government pursues the “war” on terror there will still be those who want to commit terrorist acts to get their points across.

Thus, we have two “wars” with infinite reach that use the threats engendered by their very own existence to justify their actions.

In the meantime, numerous lives are lost like so much “collateral” damage–a phrase that should be abhorred by anyone who wants to think and speak seriously about such things. I would wager that damage doesn’t seem so collateral when it’s your brother, or mother, or cousin, etc.

We have now, on display, the cost of the ongoing war on drugs.

In Mexico, the violence is disastrous and spilling over the border, but the cost of drug war-related violence has already been a reality for a lot of Americans who are unfortunate enough to live in neighborhoods where such violence is the norm. The only difference now is that Mexican violence is encroaching on popular spring break destinations as well as the U.S. southern border; hence many American lawmakers are apt to take notice.

Under pressure from the U.S. government, Mexico’s government decided to “crack down” on drug gangs in its country. This only resulted in Mexican law enforcement cracking down on the gangs that don’t pay them, in favor of the ones that do.



Well, you say, “of course, because drugs lead to corruption” — no, it’s the drug laws that lead to corruption. We saw this with prohibition, and we have been seeing it with the illegal drug trade, yet many refuse to admit the obvious.

The criminalization of drug use and sale does not halt such activity. It simply creates a black market aptly taken over by criminal elements that operate on a level they know best–violence and corruption.

Mexico has become the epicenter of the drug war, just like Columbia before it. Columbia lost its infamous title, not due to any particular competence by Mexico’s drug gangs but because of the U.S. government’s intervention-which helped to weaken the Columbians, and U.S. authorities congratulated themselves. But ultimately, this only moved the problem even closer to our own borders.

The price we pay is a situation that is proving deadly for both Mexican and American citizens alike.

Now that the Obama administration is deploying National Guard troops to the Mexican border, some are torn between welcoming the needed border enforcement and realizing that the intervention will likely just move across the border in due time. This will simply lead to more problems than it might solve, and probably won’t do anything to actually secure the border.

Another current illustration of this is happening in Jamaica, where a bloody riot has gone on for days, pitting law enforcement against an alleged local drug gang leader and his supporters. This battle was incited by Jamaican authorities’ attempt to extradite the gang leader to the United States.

The Jamaican government initially refused the U.S. government’s request, but after further pressure by the U.S. State Department (I do not doubt it involved a threat of some kind), Jamaican leaders relented. The drug ‘don’ and his supporters reacted with force to the force by authorities he’s likely been working with for years – it is well known that no one wins political office in Jamaica without support of local dons. Once again, corruption comes into play and the people pay the price.

The U.S. government uses its strength and position in the world to force other countries to do what it wants. Regardless of the situation, the U.S. government feels entitled to behave in such a way.

So here’s the run down:

Since some Americans have an appetite for narcotics, and the U.S. government believes such to be its business, the U.S. government has the right to violate individual rights like property and privacy, mandate lengthy prison terms for non-violent/non-larcenous activities, turn American neighborhoods into semi-police states, create a black market that creates criminal gangs more powerful than law enforcement in many countries-ultimately corrupting the legal and political process, then coerce those countries into trying to clamp down on their drug dealers, causing epidemic violence and record murders of that country’s citizens.

That’s the logic, and it is illogical.

__________________
"Sometimes the obligation of the intelligent is to restate the obvious. None more important than emphatically stating that there is a : ' Naked Emperor Elephant in the Room' " Axiom

Axiom

__________________
"Sometimes the obligation of the intelligent is to restate the obvious. None more important than emphatically stating that there is a : ' Naked Emperor Elephant in the Room' " Axiom

Axiom

__________________
"Sometimes the obligation of the intelligent is to restate the obvious. None more important than emphatically stating that there is a : ' Naked Emperor Elephant in the Room' " Axiom

Axiom

Statism Left, Right and Center


Murray Rothbard
Campaign For Liberty
Wednesday, September 8, 2010

[Reprinted from Libertarian Review, 1979.]

“Left,” “Right,” and “center” have increasingly become meaningless categories. Libertarians know that their creed can and does attract people from all parts of the old, obsolete ideological spectrum. As consistent adherents of individual liberty in all aspects of life, we can attract liberals by our devotion to civil liberty and a noninterventionist foreign policy, and conservatives by our adherence to property rights and the free market. But what about the other side of the coin? What about authoritarianism and statism across the board?

For a long while it has been clear that statists, right, left, and center, have been growing more and more alike — that their common devotion to the State has transcended their minor differences in style. In the last decade, all of them have been coagulating into the center, until the differences among “responsible” conservatives, right-wing Social Democrats, neoconservatives, and even such democratic socialists as John Kenneth Galbraith and Robert Heilbroner, have become increasingly difficult to fathom.

The common creed central to all these groupings is support for, and aggrandizement of, the American State, at home and abroad. Abroad, this means support for ever-greater military budgets, for FBI and CIA terrorism, for a foreign policy of global intervention, and absolute backing for the State of Israel. Domestically there are variations, but a general agreement holds that government should not undertake more than it can achieve: in short, a continued, but more efficiently streamlined welfare state. All this is bolstered by an antilibertarian policy on personal freedom, advancing the notion, for either religious or secular reasons, that the State is the proper vehicle for coercively imposing what these people believe to be correct moral principles.

This coalition of statists has been fusing for some years; but recently a new outburst of candor has let many cats out of the proverbial bag. It all began in the summer 1978 issue of the socialist magazine Dissent, edited by ex-Trotskyist Irving Howe. A lead article by the best-selling economist Robert Heilbroner says flat out that socialists should no longer try to peddle the nostrum that central planning in the socialist world of the future will be cojoined with personal freedom, with civil liberties and freedom of speech.



No, says Heilbroner, socialists must face the fact that socialism will have to be authoritarian in order to enforce the dictates of central planning, and will have to be grounded on a “collective morality” enforced upon the public. In short, we cannot, in Heilbroner’s words, have “a socialist cake with bourgeois icing,” — that is, with the preservation of personal freedom.

An intriguing reaction to the Heilbroner piece comes from the right wing. For years, a controversy once raged amidst the intellectual circles on the right between the “traditionalists,” who made no pretense about interest in liberty or individual rights; the libertarians, who have long since abandoned the right wing; and the “fusionists,” led by the late Frank Meyer, who tried to fuse the two positions into a unified amalgam. Both the “trads” and libertarians realized early that the two positions were not only inconsistent but diametrically opposed.

In recent years, the trads have been winning out over the fusionists in the conservative camp, as the conservatives have sidled up more eagerly to power. Now, Dale Vree, a regular columnist for National Review, takes the opportunity to hail the Heilbroner article and to call for a mighty right-left coalition on behalf of statism (“Against Socialist Fusionism,” National Review, December 8, 1978, p. 1547). He also slaps at the fusionists by pointing out that the “socialist fusionists,” those trying to fuse economic collectivism with cultural individualism, necessarily suffer from the same inconsistencies as their counterparts on the right wing, who have tried to join economic individualism with cultural collectivism.

Vree writes,

Heilbroner is also saying what many contributors to NR have said over the last quarter century: you can’t have both freedom and virtue. Take note, traditionalists. Despite his dissonant terminology, Heilbroner is interested in the same thing you’re interested in: virtue.”

But Vree’s enthusiasm for the authoritarian socialist does not stop there. He is also intrigued with the Heilbroner view that a socialist culture must “foster the primacy of the collectivity” rather than the “primacy of the individual.” Moreover, he is happy to applaud Heilbroner’s lauding of the alleged “moral” and “spiritual” focus of socialism as against “bourgeois materialism.” Vree quotes Heilbroner, “Bourgeois culture is focused on the material achievement of the individual. Socialist culture must focus on his or her moral or spiritual achievement.” Vree then adds, “There is a traditional ring to that statement.” And how!

He then applauds Heilbroner’s decrying capitalism because it has “no sense of ‘the good’” and permits “consenting adults” to do anything they please. Reacting in horror from this picture of freedom and diversity, Vree writes, “But, Heilbroner says alluringly, because a socialist society must have a sense of “‘the good’ not everything will be permitted.”

To Vree, it is impossible “to have economic collectivism along with cultural individualism” or vice versa, and so he is happy, like his left-wing counterpart Heilbroner, to opt for collectivism across the board. He concludes by noting the fusion of “right-wing” and “left-wing” libertarianism, and then he calls for a counterfusion on behalf of statism:

Several mavericks have been busy fusing right-wing libertarianism with left-wing libertarianism (anarchism). If the writings of such different socialists as Robert Heilbroner, Christopher Lasch, Morris Janowitz, Midge Decter, and Daniel Bell are indicative of a tendency, we may see the rise of a socialist traditionalist fusionism. One wonders if America contains any “Tory Socialists” on the right side of its aisle who will go out to embrace them.

The whopping error in that paragraph is that one doesn’t have to wonder for a moment.

The Buckleys, the Burnhams and their ilk have been scrambling for such an embrace for a long time — at least in practice. All that is left is the open and candid admission that this is what has been going on.

A new polarization, a new ideological spectrum, is fast taking shape. Big government, coercion, statism — or individual rights, liberty, and voluntarism, across the board, in every facet of American life.

The lines are getting drawn with increasing clarity. Statism vs. liberty. Us or them.

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"Sometimes the obligation of the intelligent is to restate the obvious. None more important than emphatically stating that there is a : ' Naked Emperor Elephant in the Room' " Axiom