NO PORN FOR OLD MEN. Hidden in plain sight on page 5 of the #Project2025 plan is a thinly veiled reference to banning porn and imprisoning those who create and/or distribute it — if #Trump is elected. Considering porn consumption crosses partisan lines with both sides indulging, it's a curious concession to the worst offenders of all — #evangelicals. And so-called #Libertarians? This should be a non-starter for a Trump vote.
Why does EVERY discussion with someone who claims to be a "libertarian" quickly feel like you are trying to talk to a teenager who didn't learn the basics of what government even is? Or what "responsibility" is. Never mind basic terms like "rules".
And especially the idea that there are "other people' on the planet besides themselves?
I will never understand how so many people can call themselves "#libertarians", claiming they believe in freedom for all, and in the same breath claim that a person's rights ought to depend on which side of the magical-line-in-the-sand-drawn-by-dead-men they were born.
As much hate as #Libertarians and the #greenparty get, a presidential election featuring those two parties would end with us having a president who has "belief in fundamental civil and political rights" baked into their political DNA .
Aaaah. An #anarchist preemptively blocked me. I don't recall having interacted with them.
I appreciate that they got this one thing right. Even a stopped clock...lol.
I can't stand #libertarians (because they're generally extremely opinionated and extraordinarily poorly informed--they're like a bunch of freshmen who are probably smart but don't bother reading) and as anarchism is the extreme form of libertarianism, well, for goodness' sake block me.
Greg Olear and Tom Carter offer valuable commentary on the "Unholy Trinity" that has moved US political life towards overt fascism (more specifically, Christofascism) in the recent decades. The link below includes a link to a podcast conversation about this between Olear and Carter.
As Olear and Carter note, the Chrisofascist turn is rooted in and funded by libertarian gajillionaires like the Koch men to avoid paying taxes on their multi-billions, and to smash government controls re: what their corporations can do. These libertarian gajillionaires are one prong of the Unholy Trinity.
Another prong of the Unholy Trinity: white evangelicals who are now to a great extent white Christian nationalists. As Olear and Carter note, the white evangelical world was roiled by civil rights breakthroughs for people of color.
The Supreme Court's ruling in the Bob Jones University case in 1983 especially enraged white evangelicals. The Supremes told Bob Jones that it could not continue getting federal funds while discriminating on racial grounds.
At this point, right-wing Catholic Paul Weyrich built a Catholic-evangelical political alliance, a Republican vote-machine.
The alliance that Weyrich crafted between right-wing Catholics and white evangelicals ginned up anti-abortion fervor among the two groups, to substitute for (and hide) the racism in which the alliance was grounded. This alliance has been a huge factor in US political life from that time forward,
Third prong of the Unholy Trinity: right-wing Catholics like Leo, who wield extensive power behind the scenes, especially in DC and at the Supreme Court level, where Leo has been a kingmaker, placing Opus Dei Catholics like himself on the court. As Olear and Carter note, this prong has been mostly ignored by the media, though its power is enormous.
@jeffcliff
> 1 person complaining about elon musk being a libertarian
The DoubleThink of calling fascist-adjacent ultra-conservatives "libertarians" bakes my noodle. It's either;
a) parroting their self-justifying PR instead of calling them what they are
OR
b) slander by authoritarian leftists like Clintonites in the US or tankies everywhere, against actual libertarians (ie anarchists and other freedom-loving decentralists on the left)
It’s often the case that critics of anarchism will demand to know how we might obtain public goods without the state, because their entire frame of reference for public goods is in the context of state monopolies.
And I might reply that all sorts of public goods predate the state by thousands of years or more. Neolithic peoples were building trackway roads and monumental architecture and all kinds of neat things.
And critics of anarchism will often gleefully seize upon this as if it presents some clever gotcha. They think this means that the best we can hope to achieve without the state is a Neolithic-level of technology and cooperation.
And I find that response to be…so immensely sad. They see a dead-end; I see incredible achievements with only the barest of technologies and available knowledge, and can only wonder at the marvels we’d be able to achieve together now.
@interfluidity@HeavenlyPossum@passenger#libertarians of every sort act from an assumption that they can earn the right to more than they need, and see no reason to do right by others unless it benefits themselves more than others. They are just #capitalists and nothing in their interpretation of things is accurate or ethical.
Tittar på en vanlig gatlykta och tänker på hur mycket logistik och infrastruktur som krävs för att få den på plats och att fungera. Visa mig en "entreprenör" som fixar det ensam.
@andreaslindholm Your notional #entrepreneur is a straw man fallacy. Those that actually exist know they can't do everything themselves and welcome working voluntarily with others, whether they’re fixing a streetlight or building an electrical supply grid.
Society organizes itself. It just does. There is NO circumstance where there is no "government" even if it means the strongest thug telling everyone what to do. Anyone trying to tell you government is bad wants to BE the government.
EVERYTHING done in society is organized by government. The rules for markets are government. The rules for weights are government. Money is government.
Government COULD just do everything in society. /1
The fun thing about the last six years, though, is it taught everyone what many of us knew about them for decades: whatever venomous bigoted sack of shit fascists win and wind up oppressing the shit out of people, they will have #libertarians' full and unqualified support. For liberty.
Poor #libertarians, you got your own prospective American Pinochet and shot your wad all sweaty and breathlessly except you didn't do it in the basement this time and now everybody knows you're just standard neo-Nazi scum. S'gotta suck but I can't say you didn't earn it so enjoy that personal responsibility, Chad.
Most of the folks styling themselves as #libertarians are in fact just parasites and free riders.
They’re essentially like the 1920s bank robbers who discovered they could rob banks with impunity but rather than just hide from the cops and enjoy the loot the tech bros delude themselves that ignoring the law is a political philosophy despite that fact that it is other people obeying the law that makes the things they steal valuable.