Deconstructing "Progressive " thought

[Good2Golf]

...don't forget anarco-syndicalism! :nod:

 

[Journeyman]

...really pretty pointless .....

Some threads (and posters) draw more than their fair share of that observation.    :nod:

 

[biernini]

It's really pretty pointless to describe militaries in terms of political ideologies, especially ones primarily concerned with economic policy like libertarianism and socialism.

War, and I would say the preparedness for war, is the continuation of politics by other means. Of course militaries and can be described in terms of political ideologies, particularly those ostensibly concerned with economic policy. Do you think the military-congressional-industrial-complex of the USA is a fiction?

 

[Good2Golf]

Absolutely!

I wrote a paper on it years ago, and using numerous, respected academic writers, proved that Eisenhower was wrong about the existence of such a construct.  QED.

G2G

 

[Kilo_302]

Sadly, arguing with progressives is much like shooting at fish in a barrel. Take this small piece for example, which outlines how a "Conservative" Administration created a bubble through deregulation which contributed to economic inequality. Since the charge is constantly that "conservative" policies cause these disasters, I will accede and ensure that every administration or government which creates or implements policies like these are labeled conservative:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/228544/

The real problem is the ideological blinkers which blind people who keep trying to blame conservatism. The problem is big government and incentives which drive people towards bad choices. I will also note that the 2008 crash was caused by a "conservative" policy first enacted by the Carter Administration (the Community Reinvestment Act or CRA), which decoupled metrics like income and creditworthiness from mortgage lending. This was generally allowed to be ignored by the Liberal Reagan and Bush administrations, but revived by the "conservative" Clinton administration, which also heavily incentivized "Fannie Mae" and "Freddy Mac" to underwrite poor loans with the carrot of bonuses to bankers who pushed CRA loans, and penalties for bankers who insisted on credit and income as metrics to assess the ability to repay mortgages. The "conservative" Democrat house fought the second Bush administration's attempts to both reign in the developing mortgage credit bubble, and also prevented the deployment of a wide range of savings tools (the "Ownership Society"), much like our new "conservative" government is removing wealth generation tools like enhanced TFSA's.

The current "conservative" administration has deployed virtually every progressive economic nostrum, yet the predicted "recovery summers", economic growth and reduction in real (vice BLM numbers) unemployment have not happened during the entire eight years of this administration. You are correct: "Conservative" economic policies do not work whatsoever. One can only watch and wait to see if a Trump administration is going to be Liberal or Conservative (Trump used to be quite "conservative", even being a big supporter of the Clintons at one point).

As for the last sentence in the Instapundit article: But the stratospheric rise in stock prices and the debt-financed consumption and investment booms produced a mortgaged legacy, this and the resulting fallout are not explained or explainable in Keynesan economics, but described in great detail by F.A. Hayek.

You've said repeatedly in the past that the repeal of Glass-Steagall had nothing to do with 2008. So which is it? I'm starting to think you don't have a great handle on what neo-liberalism is.

Are you for de-regulation or against?

Do you still believe that trickle down works? These are tenets of conservative economic policy, which often overlaps with neo-liberalism.

It's hard to pin down what you really think, aside from nebulous ideas about  "big government" and  taxes. Your ideology is incoherent.

 

[Lumber]

You've said repeatedly in the past that the repeal of Glass-Steagall had nothing to do with 2008. So which is it? I'm starting to think you don't have a great handle on what neo-liberalism is.

Are you for de-regulation or against?

Do you still believe that trickle down works? These are tenets of conservative economic policy, which often overlaps with neo-liberalism.

It's hard to pin down what you really think, aside from nebulous ideas about  "big government" and  taxes. Your ideology is incoherent.

I'm confused too, I was under the assumption that Thucydides was anti-big government and anti-regulation, but that article he posted screams of a need FOR regulation.

Also, did I read that right? They enacted a law that made checking someone's income and credit rating was not required in determining if they were eligible for a mortgage? What the hell else would you use as a metric? The size of their Pokemon card collection?!

 

[big.guy.for.you]

I don't know what awful bank you use but my shiny Charizard knocked $10k off the down payment on my house.

 

[a_majoor]

Kilo was saying conservatives are responsible for deregulation, so I acceeded and showed an example of a conservative administration deregulating  >

The CRA provided penalties to banks which did not "invest" in mortgages to poor people (i.e. minorities) despite their lack of creditworthiness. The US government also incentivised the process of providing mortgages to unqualified buyers through the implicit USG backing of "Freddie Mac" and "Fannie May", which underwrote these worthless mortgages, and then turned a blind eye as the banks monetized them. The damage was already evident in the early 2000's, and I recall that warnings were already in the press in 2006, although Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said that he would "roll the dice" rather than allow the Bush administration to reign in Freddy and Fanny, with results that we all know now.

And here is another story of a conservative State giovernment's regulatory overreach driving business away:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tom-blumer/2016/03/10/carls-jr-headquarters-moving-calif-nashville-orange-county-register

Carl's Jr. HQ Moving From Calif. to Nashville; Press Avoids Saying Why
By Tom Blumer | March 10, 2016 | 9:12 AM EST

For years, Andrew F. Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's fast-food chains, has been telling the world that while the U.S. government makes life needlessly miserable for businesses, California, where it has been headquartered, is exponentially worse.

This week, CKE announced that it is moving its headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee. A story at the Orange County Register failed to go beyond the company's deliberately non-combative statement to explain why. As far as I can tell, the Los Angeles Times hasn't covered the move at all (I can't be absolutely sure because the paper's search engine is demonstrably horrible). Meanwhile, LA's CBS News affiliate appears to have intentionally omitted their reporter's attempt to cite "the unfavorable economic climate here in California" as a factor contributing to the move from its print coverage of the story.

In June 2013, Puzder told the Wall Street Journal that his chain would not expand in California because the state "is not interested in having businesses grow," noting among many other things that it takes 285 days to get a building permit after signing a lease. This means the chain has to pay rent for over nine months, plus the time needed to build, while not earning any revenues.

Puzder also wrote roughy 15 columns at Human Events in 2012, most of them bemoaning the sluggish U.S. economy and onerous U.S. government policies and regulations.

The OC Register only noted the company's citation of its desire to consolidate separate offices in two cities (HT Powerline; bolds are mine throughout this post):

The parent company of Carl’s Jr., founded in Anaheim 60 years ago, is relocating its California headquarters to Nashville, Tenn. (Actually, it's 70 years, going back to 1945. The paper's reporters and editors apparently could use some remedial math. — Ed.)

Carpinteria-based CKE Restaurants, which also owns St. Louis-based Hardee’s, is consolidating both offices in Tennessee, where it has several company-owned restaurants. All senior executives, including Chief Executive Andrew F. Puzder will be moving to Nashville, Chief Marketing Officer Brad Haley said.

... Officials did not provide a number of how many people will lose their jobs. The two corporate offices employ about 150 people.

... “Being highly franchised has also reduced our office space needs and, thus, made consolidating offices a more viable option,” the company said. “As such, early next year we will be consolidating our Carpinteria and St. Louis corporate offices in Nashville, which is centrally located and is one of the markets where we have retained company-owned restaurants.”

The company appears to have planned to move its headquarters to Nashville for years. This would explain why it has gone to the franchising model almost everywhere except Nashville. It can use its company-owned stores there to test new menu items and concepts before making them available to franchisees.

CKE could have chosen any large metro area for this strategy, including the area surrounding its current California headquarters. But it didn't. Nation's Restaurant News specifically notes that "Among the refranchised units are restaurants in Hardee’s headquarters city of St. Louis and in Santa Barbara County, Calif., where Carl’s Jr.’s home office in Carpinteria, Calif., is located."

Why did management clearly choose to go elsewhere? Among other things, Puzder told the Journal in 2013 that the Golden State's labor laws are intolerable:

... California's cumbersome labor regulations ... appear designed to encourage litigation. The company has spent $20 million in the state over the past eight years on damages and attorney fees related to class-action lawsuits.

Mr. Puzder's favorite California-bites-business story is a law that requires employers to pay general managers overtime if they spend 50% of their time on non-managerial tasks like working the register if they're short-staffed, "which is what we pay and bonus them to do in just about every other state." Since managers were filing class-action lawsuits against the company for not being paid overtime, "every retailer in the state basically has now taken their general managers and made them hourly employees."

The managers hated the change "because they worked all their careers to get off the base to become managers," he says, and paying themselves overtime could hurt their restaurants' bottom lines and chances of a bonus. Mr. Puzder adds that his company must now fire managers who don't report their work hours because they present a legal risk.

He tells the fired managers "to go to Tennessee or Texas, where we'll rehire them and they'll learn entrepreneurial skills." General managers for CKE restaurants earn on average $50,000, Mr. Puzder says, and can make 100% of their salary in bonuses.

... Like Texas, Tennessee doesn't have an income tax. But in any case, he says, "Who cares where our corporate offices are? Quite honestly, what difference does that make? . . . The important point is where are you building?"

A story at the Los Angeles TV affiliate of CBS News failed to include its reporter's wrap-up to her video story in its accompanying text. Readers will have no trouble figuring out why once they read what was omitted:

REPORTER SERENE BRANSON, KCAL9 NEWS: And we did ask a rep for CKE Restaurants if this has anything to do with what many people consider the unfavorable economic climate here in California. A rep said that "the statement simply speaks for itself."

It certainly does, if one is willing to grasp its meaning in full context.

Kudos to Branson for asking the question. Brickbats to CBS-LA for failing to print her question and the company's response.

 

[biernini]

For what I hope is the last time the CRA did not cause the crisis. If you want to refute the research linked to below be my guest, but this narrative has always been total hogwash. I invite you to familiarize yourself with the research regarding CRA's involvement in the crisis with the two most important points:

1) Only 6 percent of all subprime loans were extended by CRA-covered lenders to lower-income borrowers.
2) FICO scores on CRA mortgages dropped on average 7 percent to 707, as compared to the rest of subprime at below 640. Their delinquency/default rate bumped the overall rate between 0.1 to 0.4 percent, from 1.1 to 1.6 overall, compared to the rest of subprime which defaulted at over 25%.

Simply put CRA mortgages were profitable and had high standards.

And there is absolutely no way the CRA can be reasonably construed as "causing" the crisis.

 

[a_majoor]

There is a massive amount of research and commentary dating back to 2006 and possibly before that states otherwise, so your opinion is in the minority here.

As a checksum, you might want to research F.A. Hayek and how debt fuelled credit bubbles (which is what the CRA ended up creating) affect economies.

 

[biernini]

There is a massive amount of research and commentary dating back to 2006 and possibly before that states otherwise, so your opinion is in the minority here.

As a checksum, you might want to research F.A. Hayek and how debt fuelled credit bubbles (which is what the CRA ended up creating) affect economies.

Your bandwagon appeal to authority is not an argument. I'm not presenting an opinion, I'm presenting rigorously documented, statistically verified facts.  If you're so confident that CRA mortgages caused the crisis/fueled a credit bubble, please provide any proof that they comprised an order of magnitude more than 6% of all subprime mortgages during the crisis.  If your're so confident that CRA mortgages caused the crisis, please provide any proof that they were delinquent or defaulted at an order of magnitude greater rate than what I present putting them in similar territory to subprime mortgages originating from non-CRA lenders.

I'm not the one peddling opinions as facts. If you really want to "deconstruct" progressive thought, I should think facts would be more helpful to your cause.

 

[a_majoor]

More on how social meida is being used to manipulate users. If FaceBook or Twitter had been owned by the Koch borthers, I'm sure there would be a massive explosion of outrage...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/03/15/sunshine-week-transparency-private-sector-twitter-facebook-column/81743298/

Glenn Reynolds: Free market needs some 'Sunshine'
Glenn Harlan Reynolds 2:04 p.m. EDT March 15, 2016

Private sector businesses like Twitter and Facebook far from models of transparency.

This week is Sunshine Week, and lots of people are writing about government transparency, which is very important. From federal agencies stiff-arming Freedom of Information Act requests, to government agencies punishing whistleblowers, to the Obama Administration’s new record in withholding public information, there’s a lot to talk about.

But it’s not just the government that matters. Plenty of private companies that deal with the public could do better with transparency than they do, and they’d be a lot more trusted if they did. The question is whether they care more about being trusted, or about what they can get away with. At the moment, it’s looking as if they’re more concerned with the latter.

Twitter, for example, recently launched an “anti-harassment” campaign featuring, as Ed Morrissey described it, the rather Orwellian-sounding Trust & Safety Council. Almost immediately thereafter, Twitter banned — without much of an explanation — Robert Stacy McCain, a prominent critic of one of the council’s members, Anita Sarkeesian. Shortly before that, Twitter had also de-verified gay conservative Milo Yiannopoulos, also a Sarkeesian critic. (The blue “verified” check mark is supposed to simply demonstrate that celebrity tweeters are the real thing, not to connote any sort of official endorsement, but, without explanation, Twitter took away Yiannopoulos’s, though he remains, in fact, the real Milo Yiannopoulos.)

As Reason’s Robby Soave notes, it looks suspicious:

"Twitter is a private company, of course, and if it wants to outlaw strong language, it can. In fact, it’s well within its rights to have one set of rules for Robert Stacy McCain, and another set of rules for everyone else. It’s allowed to ban McCain for no reason other than its bosses don’t like him. If Twitter wants to take a side in the online culture war, it can. It can confiscate Milo Yiannopoulos’s blue checkmark. This is not about the First Amendment."

Soave continues, "But if that’s what Twitter is doing, it’s certainly not being honest about it — and its many, many customers who value the ethos of free speech would certainly object. In constructing its Trust and Safety Council, the social media platform explicitly claimed it was trying to strike a balance between allowing free speech and prohibiting harassment and abuse. But its selections for this committee were entirely one-sided — there’s not a single uncompromising anti-censorship figure or group on the list. It looks like Twitter gave control of its harassment policy to a bunch of ideologues, and now their enemies are being excluded from the platform."

Well, it looks like that because, basically, that’s what’s happening. Meanwhile, Twitter’s also moving toward the sort of “algorithmic timeline” — in which what you see depends on what it wants you to see, not just what’s been posted in chronological order — similar to what Facebook has been using for a while.

Meanwhile, Facebook hasadmitted that it manipulated user timelines in order to affect their emotions. Forbes reported, “As first noted by The New Scientist and Animal New York, Facebook’s data scientists manipulated the News Feeds of 689,003 users, removing either all of the positive posts or all of the negative posts to see how it affected their moods. If there was a week in January 2012 where you were only seeing photos of dead dogs or incredibly cute babies, you may have been part of the study.”

I don’t want somebody’s algorithm showing me what they think I want to see — or, more ominously, what they want me to see for their own purposes.

Facebook has claimed, somewhat implausibly, that its terms of service (you know, the click-through thing that nobody reads) constituted “informed consent” for purposes of experimenting on its users. But those legalities aside, social media users — and regulators, and in particular investors — need to be aware of the potential for abuse (and potentially, liability) that this sort of behavior raises.

We demand honesty and transparency from the government. We should expect the same from people we deal with in the free market.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors. To read more columns like this, go to the Opinion front page.

 

[biernini]

Since this tangential but still thread-relevant discussion about the role of the CRA in the financial crisis is apparently stalled I'm going to make a final statement and walk away as well.

Everyone I've read who wants to blame the CRA for the crisis says variations on the same thing; that the CRA somehow changed lending standards to all mortgage lending. Well guess what, that's exactly what it was supposed to do. Lost in all the finger-pointing after the crisis is the fact that "redlining" minorities and minority neighbourhoods from affordable credit was a real problem for a very long time. The CRA addressed this by reducing or eliminating "soft data" (read prejudice) from credit decisions and relying more on "hard data" (read credit scores and the like). The results were a resounding success. As I linked to above historical delinquency and defaults were bumped up insignificantly compared to mortgages based on traditional data: CRA mortgages were profitable, and had high standards. The problem is that every argument I've seen that blames the CRA for contributing to the failure of non-CRA mortgages is predicated on the belief that CRA mortgages had lower standards, and somehow induced the same standard in other lenders. They did not lower standards, and their FICO scores prove it (again, refer to my link above).

For example, one argument is that lenders which offered both CRA and non-CRA mortgages eventually stopped offering non-CRA mortgages for fear of anti-discriminatory lawsuits. How is it that banks were eventually only selling CRA mortgages if the total share of subprime for CRA is 6%? How is it that a well-resourced bank would be so afraid of litigation mounted by low-income types, particularly if they have hard data on their side? Doesn't occam's razor suggest that greed borne of skewed risk assessments is more likely a reason for selling low-standard, sub-640 FICO mortgages, than the vague threat of litigation? To access a mortgage that required a relatively higher standard?

Anti-CRA is filled with this kind of nonsense. I'm certain it's a kind of guilt by association, where if mortgages are extended to low-income minorities ipso facto they are low standard loans.  Because poor minorities are obviously stupid, lazy, and irresponsible and should've remained redlined in perpetuity.  Proven FICO scores, low delinquency and default rates be damned.

And lastly and probably most importantly if one is to really believe that the CRA caused the crisis, or fueled the credit boom one has downplay or basically ignore "low interest rates, the growth of securitization, a glut of foreign savings pouring into the US, a lack of yield from other asset classes, ratings agencies operating with minimal knowledge but lots of optimism, a faith in the ever-rising housing market, high oil prices, consumers looking to flip high-interest unsecured debt into lower-interest home-equity debt, a short-term federal budget surplus eating into the availability of Treasury debt, Fannie and Freddie’s mixed mission, the evaporation of profits from investment banking and brokerage, unrestrained shareholder demand for high profit margins, off-balance sheet financial innovations such as SIVs, unconvincing and non-influential risk managers, risk-pricing of MBS based on CDS pricing, a White House dedicated to expanding low-income and minority home ownership for partisan political reasons, economists touting the positive externalities of home-ownership, a poor understanding that heterogeneous populations have different responses to market movements and over-reliance on centralized and automated mortgage underwriting.". One has to completely "absolve the greedy and often corrupt lenders, the bubble-headed securitizers, the blundering ratings agencies [and] the careless MBS investors".

It's tunnel vision of the worst kind.

 

[a_majoor]

Just as "Libertarianism as a social movement" is a cultural as well as a political movement, this author tells us how "Leftism" is also a cultural as well as a political movement:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/262160/mind-left-insider-michael-faraday

THE MIND OF THE LEFT FROM AN INSIDER
What I witnessed inside a faith of lies -- and what it took to leave.
March 16, 2016  Michael Faraday

First of all, forget the ‘60s. This situation has been brewing for over 100 years. I was born into a working-class socialist family in New Zealand in 1960. Democratic socialism had been established by popular reforms in the 1930s. By the late ‘50s, almost every working-class child in New Zealand was raised socialist.

But we didn't call it socialism. We called it "workers' rights.” In my family, my older siblings and I were the third generation of socialists. We never chose socialism, we inherited it. In the late ‘60s, the younger middle-class joined us.

It is especially in the British Commonwealth that millions have been raised by leftists, who were raised by leftists, who were raised by leftists, and so on. Some leftist families have been so for more than a century. They consider themselves leftist royalty.

For the millions raised as leftists, it is not an ideology; it is a culture. Since childhood, they have lived and breathed it every day in the home. They know nothing else. Like any culture, it is a way of speaking, thinking and acting, with its own narratives and rituals. Narratives are held sacred, repeated, reinforced and, over time, added to. That which challenges sacred narratives, even reality itself, is met with confusion and hostility. As with any aggressive, intolerant culture, if you enter it, it enters you.

Contrary to opinion, leftism isn't just about hate. Leftists are more complex than that. From my time as a red diaper leftist, I can tell you that a whole range of emotions are involved. Hate, anger, fear, bitterness, jealousy, envy, rage, greed, pride, smugness and paranoia (not technically an emotion, but it is widespread among leftists).

With such a parade of negative emotions, it is no surprise that so many leftists suffer from chronic depression, often from a young age. Even if they lose the anger, they still retain the attitude: that the government must fix everyone’s problems, regardless of cost and that there is an enormous right-wing conspiracy that is just around the corner.

The victim narrative of the Left is very infectious. You are always the victim and you are always owed something. The wealthy are always evil, while you are always good and wholesome. Converts are often more intense than those born into it. My father, raised a leftist, eventually mellowed and began to question some leftist beliefs. My mother, not raised a leftist, but having become one, never mellowed.

The victim narrative was in every conversation.

The class struggle/oppressed victim narrative is part of daily life on the Left. As a child, I would listen to adults talking. With friends and co-workers, with mothers chatting over tea, it was part of every conversation. They would talk about the weather, their kids, television, but before parting, one of them would always say something relating to the greedy oppression of the rich -- and the other had to agree. To not agree was social suicide.

While there were differences between working-class and middle-class leftists, certain attitudes were universal:

When a leftist has never worked, they feel very generous toward anyone who claims to need help, who fits the narrative. They are generous with their emotions.

When they do get their first real job, they are often shocked by the amount of taxes withheld and have a moment of doubt. But this moment of doubt gives non-leftists an opening. So the young leftist, terrified he/she will be changed, quickly walls off this doubt in their mind and refuses to touch it, until it fades.

Economics are not usually considered part of a culture, but for red-diaper leftists, their attitude to economics is cultural. It is part of the core, sacred narrative. They usually have a child-like view of economics, which they often have inherited from their parents. This is probably why the doubt triggered by their first tax shock is so easily forgotten for leftists. The child-like view is comfortable and familiar. Once amnesia sets in and comfort returns, discussions of economic reality are seen as right-wing propaganda.

Leftists hear big numbers and picture Scrooge McDuck’s money bin, not infrastructure, maintenance, specialized equipment, transportation, training, payrolls, etc.

For leftists, industry has so much money. Businesses make huge profits. The price of everything is too high. The government has billions. They want to keep it all for themselves and their rich friends. So leftists believe that these evil people must be made to spend the money on things the leftists themselves choose.

Leftists combine child-like naïveté and paranoid aggression in all of their narratives. It is a remarkable and very damaging pairing. The child-like naïveté protects the narrative from facts while the paranoid aggression protects the mind from doubt. For red-diaper babies, this thinking competes with their normal emotional and intellectual development, causing an internal struggle that can go either way.

In the same family, one child may be a mellow, half-hearted leftist while another is a dedicated communist. The one who feels the greatest need to please the parents will probably be the dedicated communist. The Left, on the surface, may look to some like a movement of young misfits, but it is old, huge and culturally entrenched, not just in Europe, but also in most of the English-speaking nations. Leftism is a family history, a cultural mindset and a way of life for millions of households. It is a set of core sacred narratives and daily conversations.

Children inherit leftism as a belief system, knowing nothing else. By the time that they are old enough to hear other points of view, they are indoctrinated. It has become their moral compass.

Leftism encourages and is driven by the most negative, damaging emotions. It harnesses together childish emotions and paranoid thought processes. Its narratives are a filter that reality has to try to struggle through, often failing.

The child-like thinking solves all problems without pesky details and facts interfering, leading to delusions of intellectual brilliance.

It is actually very hard to give up being a leftist, even when you want to. I know people whose families have been murdered by communists and they are still leftists. It is not enough to see the problems. If you are a red-diaper baby, it’s all you know. You have been indoctrinated (with the media’s help) that the so-called Right is greedy and evil and the religious are hypocritical and delusional. Even if you have doubts, there is nowhere else to go, not without literally changing your mind.

I saw the cracks early. My parents had a fanatical hatred of the middle class and never spoke to them, if possible.  In my teens I realized my father hated the wealthy because he wasn’t one. That didn’t stop me being a leftist. It made me want to be a better leftist than my parents. I began to see that class struggle was becoming a scam to get more free stuff. I still sought a perfect form of communism. I met upper middle class leftists and was appalled by their arrogance and snobbery.  I traveled the world and did not find any form of communism that did not depend on capitalism to save it from collapse.

Returning home, I had daily conversations with a Jewish doctor who was pro-life. Every day we discussed morals and faith. I began to understand the concept of faith, moral absolutes and self-sacrifice; all new to me.  A few weeks later, God spoke to me.

I tried to be a Christian and a moderate leftist. I wasn’t alone. Moderate leftists do not think of themselves as leftists. They think of themselves as balanced and reasonable. I worked with refugees and they told me about the torture, slavery and mass murder of the communist “freedom fighters.” This killed any lingering sentiment regarding communism.

I married a refugee and she tried to stab me. I also found that the refugees had very dark secrets. My feel-good multiculturalism slowly died. I began to see the strength of Judeo-Christian civilization. I saw the dishonesty and viciousness of the Marxist-Feminists, who had taken over the Left. The feminism my mother had stuffed down my throat every day had died. When I argued with leftists, their near-psychotic rage shocked me. I felt I was talking to lunatics.

Despite all this, it is hard to totally leave leftist thinking because it surrounds you. It has become mainstream. It’s like trying to bail a boat with holes in the bottom. It takes a persistent intellectual effort to leave it behind.  But there is another reason why it takes time to dig out the leftist brain parasite. A powerful lie lives there.  It is the most powerful lie they have. It is that the Left “cares.” You must fully embrace the fact that this is a lie. All leftist “caring” has a hidden agenda.

Michael Faraday describes himself as a former useful idiot. He has worked as a refugee advocate and history teacher. He now teaches young people with Autism. He has spent three decades unlearning leftist thinking.

 

[Kilo_302]

Libertarianism has it's problems, but the most glaring is nicely laid out here:

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/libertarianism-white-men-ugly-truth-about-rights-favorite-movement

Why are libertarians so overwhelmingly white and male? This is a question that Jeet Heer of the New Republic explored last Friday, after a new CNN poll found that presidential hopeful Rand Paul, who happens to be the favorite among libertarians, is very competitive in the primaries amongst male voters, but almost completely rejected by females. This is a problem that has long haunted conservatism, but it is even more drastic for ultra-right wing libertarianism.

In a 2014 Pew poll, it was found that about one in 10 Americans describe themselves as libertarian, and men were more than twice as likely to be libertarians. In a 2013 Pew poll that Heer states in his article, it was found about two-thirds (68 percent) of Americans who identify as libertarians are men, and 94 percent are non-hispanic whites. Compare this to “steadfast conservatives,” who were found to be 59 percent male and 87 percent white, or “business conservatives,” found to be 62 percent male and 85 percent white, according to another survey done by Pew. Clearly, the entire conservative movement is dominated by white males, but libertarians are the most male-dominated.

Obviously this is a major problem for anyone who is hoping for libertarianism to take off in American politics. So why are libertarians mostly white guys? Heer points out a few different possibilities that some libertarian writers have offered. One of them being that libertarianism has attracted many male-dominated subcultures, like computer programming (think Silicon Valley), gaming, mens-rights activists, and organized humanism/atheism, and another, argued by Katherine Mangu-Ward, that libertarianism has long been a fringe movement, and fringe movements tend to be dominated by men.

Okay, so libertarianism attracts nerdy white males, but surely these are not the only ones making up the dedicated crowd? While looking at the larger conservative movement, it becomes a bit more clear that the hostility towards government and collective movements in general tends to attract white males who want to preserve their dominance in a society where they are quickly becoming minorities.

Take the following passage written by a young libertarian activist:

“[E]very piece of anti-discrimination legislation passed over the past few decades, ignores one of the basic, inalienable rights of man — the right to discriminate. [Though] eliminating racial and sexual prejudice [had] noble aspiration, [anti-discrimination laws] necessarily utilize the ignoble means of coercive force.”

That young activist? Rand Paul in 1982. Sure, that was more than three decades ago, and its not fair to go after someone for something they wrote back in those naive college days. But has Paul’s outlook changed at all? Not really. In his now infamous interview with Rachel Maddow, he admitted that he had a major problem with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, particularly the provisions that “harbor in on private businesses and their policies.” In other words, he didn’t like the government telling businesses that they had to serve black people. According to libertarians, this is a clear violation of one’s freedom to discriminate; that if a business owner does not want to serve a black person, that is their right. Of course this kind of philosophy is going to be very attractive to those racist business owners.

Libertarianism is inherently opposed to collective movements, and collective movements have long fought to achieve equal rights for women, minorities, workers, etc. Is it any surprise that libertarianism attracts white (and generally privileged) men? If we take a look at the larger conservative movement, a similar story presents itself.

Last year, a study at Northwestern University found that white, independent-minded Americans tended to shift towards conservatism when they found out that demographic changes would be making them minorities. “Perceived group-status threat, triggered by exposure to majority-minority shift, increases Whites’ endorsement of conservative political ideology and policy positions,” wrote the researchers, Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson. This study seems to confirm that conservatism, for many white Americans, is the last bastion of hope against the inevitable decline of white dominance.

Libertarianism is especially alluring to these individuals, though there are cutthroat strifes within the libertarian movement itself, between the more studious and tolerant factions, like the folks at Reason magazine, and the more reactionary and bigoted groups, like the “neo-Confederates,”  largely influenced by the libertarian writer Lew Rockwell. You may remember hearing about Rockwell because of his association with Ron Paul. Reason reported back in 2008 that Rockwell had ghostwritten Ron Paul’s newsletter, which had written some extremely distasteful and downright racist stuff, like the following comment on the L.A. Riots:

“Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks.”

So, while the libertarian movement as a whole is not inherently bigoted, and many believers despise intolerance, the ideology itself does attract many bigots who see the freedom-obsessed culture as a way to protect their “right” of intolerance, and crack down on collective movements that fight for equality. Many of these folks would like to return to the good old days, when robber barons and white men ruled. The free market ideology is particularly well-suited for the robber barons, while the freedom to discriminate comforts the neo-Confederates. Like the larger conservative movement, libertarianism is a sanctuary for nostalgic white males. Fortunately, nothing can prevent the white mans inevitable fall from dominance, and in the future, many white males may very well change their mind on the so-called “right to discriminate.”

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Perhaps, the author misses a glaring point. Maybe it's a white male majority, that are tired of working, only to have their wages taken away to give to those that refuse to work? Maybe that's why they identify as libertarians. They want government out of their lives so they can afford and enrich their own lives, with their own wages and not supporting people that don't feel the work ethic is for them.

 

[biernini]

Immigrants are better at job creation than Canadian born.

While immigrant business ownership rates are low immediately after entry, after four to eight years in Canada they surpass those of the comparison group (largely Canadian-born).[...] the per capita job creation rate via unincorporated self-employment was higher among immigrants than the Canadian-born. For almost one-half of the unincorporated self-employed immigrants, self-employment was a secondary activity; most of their earnings came from paid jobs.[...]Since the propensity to be primarily self-employed is higher among immigrants than among the Canadian-born population (the comparison group), job creation by self-employment is higher among immigrants.

 

[a_majoor]

Perhaps, the author misses a glaring point. Maybe it's a white male majority, that are tired of working, only to have their wages taken away to give to those that refuse to work? Maybe that's why they identify as libertarians. They want government out of their lives so they can afford and enrich their own lives, with their own wages and not supporting people that don't feel the work ethic is for them.

No the author didn't miss the point at all, but rather tried to use the SJW tactic of crying "racism" to shut down debate ("disqualifying" in their vernacular). The irony of the author using a racist statement in order to accuse others of racism should not be lost on readers, although in SJW land this is the normal mode of discourse.

The reality is this form of rhetoric has been used successfully for many years since it turns your natural instincts and good intentions against you. Most people find real racism abhorrent, so will try to modify their behaviour when being (falsely) accused of being racist. Shrill repeated accusations of racism can be made much more quickly than detailed dialectical explanations of why a position isn't racist or why race isn't even at issue in the discussion. Libertarianism is about defying the limits of the State and voluntary cooperation between consenting individuals, so race, gender etc. is irrelevant. I will voluntarily cooperate with anyone who offers value for value, I would not waste time trying to seek cooperation from the obviously racist author of that piece since they offer nothing of value for me.

Since silencing the opposition is the true intent of these Brownshirts, making people uncomfortable and being forced to limit the areas open to public discourse is a feature, not a bug. Coercion is forbidden under Libertarian thought, and Libertarians understand the concept of "You have not converted a man because you have silenced him".

Progressives might also consider "You have not converted a man because you have silenced him", since the rise of the TEA Party and later Donald Trump in the United States and nativist parties in Europe is partially a response by ordinary people to being silenced by coercion, "disqualifying" and other SJW tactics. People will be heard, and trying to put a lid on freedom of expression can be considered similar to fitting a lid over a pressure cooker. Clamp down harder and the pressure will continue to build. What comes after Donald Trump, the AdF or the National Front?

 

[Kilo_302]

A nice exercise that underlines the hypocrisy that Libertarianism is based on. It is most definitely a philosophy of the wealthy, for the wealthy.


http://www.alternet.org/economy/11-questions-you-should-ask-libertarians-see-if-theyre-hypocrites

ECONOMY
11 Questions You Should Ask Libertarians to See if They're Hypocrites
We aren’t suggesting every libertarian is a hypocrite, but there’s an easy way to find out.
By RJ Eskow / AlterNet September 11, 2013
Print
976 COMMENTS

Photo Credit: SenRandPaul YouTube channel

Libertarians have a problem. Their political philosophy all but died out in the mid- to late-20th century, but was revived by billionaires and corporations that found them politically useful. And yet libertarianism retains the qualities that led to its disappearance from the public stage, before its reanimation by people like the Koch brothers: It doesn’t make any sense.

They call themselves “realists” but rely on fanciful theories that have never predicted real-world behavior. They claim that selfishness makes things better for everybody, when history shows exactly the opposite is true. They claim that a mythical “free market” is better at everything than the government is, yet when they really need government protection, they’re the first to clamor for it.

That’s no reason not to work with them on areas where they’re in agreement with people like me. In fact, the unconventionality of their thought has led libertarians to be among this nation’s most forthright and outspoken advocates for civil liberties and against military interventions.

Merriam-Webster defines “hypocrisy” as “feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not.” We aren’t suggesting every libertarian is a hypocrite. But there’s an easy way to find out.

The Other Libertarianism

First, some background. There is a kind of libertarianism that’s nothing more or less than a strain in the American psyche, an emotional tendency toward individualism and personal liberty. That’s fine and even admirable.

We’re talking about the other libertarianism, the political philosophy whose avatar is the late writer Ayn Rand. It was once thought that this extreme brand of libertarianism, one that celebrates greed and even brutality, had died in the early 1980s with Rand herself. Many Rand acolytes had already gone underground, repressing or disavowing the more extreme statements of their youth and attempting to blend in with more mainstream schools of thought in respectable occupations.

There was a good reason for that. Randian libertarianism is an illogical, impractical, inhumane, unpopular set of Utopian ravings which lacks internal coherence and has never predicted real-world behavior anywhere. That’s why, reasonably enough, the libertarian movement evaporated in the late 20th century, its followers scattered like the wind.

Pay to Play

But the libertarian movement has seen a strong resurgence in recent years, and there’s a simple reason for that: money, and the personal interests of some people who have a lot of it. Once relegated to drug-fueled college-dorm bull sessions, political libertarianism suddenly had pretensions of legitimacy. This revival is Koch-fueled, not coke-fueled, and exists only because in political debate, as in so many other walks of life, cash is king.

The Koch brothers are principal funders of the Reason Foundation and Reason magazine. Exxon Mobil and other corporate and billionaire interests are behind the Cato Institute, the other public face of libertarianism. Financiers have also seeded a number of economics schools, think tanks, and other institutions with proponents of their brand of libertarianism. It’s easy to explain why some of these corporate interests do it. It serves the self-interest of the environmental polluters, for example, to promote a political philosophy which argues that regulation is bad and the market will correct itself. And every wealthy individual benefits from tax cuts for the rich. What better way to justify that than with a philosophy that says they’re rich because they’re better—and that those tax cuts help everybody?

The rise of the Silicon Valley economy has also contributed to the libertarian resurgence. A lot of Internet billionaires are nerds who suddenly find themselves rich and powerful, and they’re emotionally and intellectually inclined toward libertarianism’s geeky and unrealistic vision of a free market. In their minds its ideas are "heuristic," "autologous" and "cybernetic"—all of which has inherent attraction in their culture.

The only problem is: It’s only a dream. At no time or place in human history has there been a working libertarian society which provided its people with the kinds of outcomes libertarians claim it will provide. But libertarianism’s self-created mythos claims that it’s more realistic than other ideologies, which is the opposite of the truth. The slope from that contradiction to the deep well of hypocrisy is slippery, steep—and easy to identify.


The Libertarian Hypocrisy Test

That’s where the Libertarian Hypocrisy Test comes in. Let’s say we have a libertarian friend, and we want to know whether or not he’s hypocritical about his beliefs. How would we go about conducting such a test? The best way is to use the tenets of his philosophy to draw up a series of questions to explore his belief system.

The Cato Institute’s overview of key libertarian concepts mixes universally acceptable bromides like the "rule of law” and “individual rights” with principles that are more characteristically libertarian—and therefore more fantastical. Since virtually all people support the rule of law and individual rights, it is the other concepts which are uniquely libertarian and form the basis of our first few questions.

The Institute cites “spontaneous order,”  for example, as “the great insight of libertarian social analysis.” Cato defines that principle thusly:

“… (O)rder in society arises spontaneously, out of the actions of thousands or millions of individuals who coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their purposes.”

To which the discerning reader might be tempted to ask: Like where, exactly? Libertarians define “spontaneous order” in a very narrow way—one that excludes demonstrations like the Arab Spring, elections which install progressive governments, or union movements, to name three examples. And yet each of these things are undertaken by individuals who "coordinated their actions with those of others" to achieve our purposes.

So our first hypocrisy test question is, Are unions, political parties, elections, and social movements like Occupy examples of “spontaneous order”—and if not, why not?


Cato also trumpets what it calls “The Virtue of Production” without ever defining what production is. Economics defines the term, but libertarianism is looser with its terminology. That was easier to get away with in the Industrial Age, when “production” meant a car, or a shovel, or a widget.

Today nearly 50 percent of corporate profits come from the financial sector—that is, from the manipulation of money. It’s more difficult to define “production,” and even harder to find its “virtue,” when the creation of wealth no longer necessarily leads to the creation of jobs, or economic growth, or anything except the enrichment of a few.

Which seems to be the point. Cato says, “Modern libertarians defend the right of productive people to keep what they earn, against a new class of politicians and bureaucrats who would seize their earnings to transfer them to nonproducers.”


Which gets us to our next test question: Is a libertarian willing to admit that production is the result of many forces, each of which should be recognized and rewarded?

Retail stores like Walmart and fast-food corporations like McDonalds cannot produce wealth without employees. Don’t those employees have the right to “coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their purposes”—for example, in unions? You would think that free-market philosophers would encourage workers, as part of a free-market economy, to discover the market value for their services through negotiation.

Is our libertarian willing to acknowledge that workers who bargain for their services, individually and collectively, are also employing market forces?

The bankers who collude to deceive their customers, as US bankers did with the MERS mortgage system, were permitted to do so by the unwillingness of government to regulate them. The customers who were the victims of deception were essential to the production of Wall Street wealth. Why don’t libertarians recognize their role in the process, and their right to administer their own affairs?

That right includes the right to regulate the bankers who sell them mortgages. Libertarians say that the “free market” will help consumers. “Libertarians believe that people will be both freer and more prosperous if government intervention in people’s economic choices is minimized,” says Cato.

But victims of illegal foreclosure are neither “freer” nor “more prosperous” after the government deregulation which led to their exploitation. What’s more, deregulation has led to a series of documented banker crimes that include stockholder fraud and investor fraud. That leads us to our next test of libertarian hypocrisy: Is our libertarian willing to admit that a “free market” needs regulation?

Digital Libertarians

But few libertarians are as hypocritical as the billionaires who earned their fortunes in the tech world. Government created the Internet. Government financed the basic research that led to computing itself. And yet Internet libertarians are among the most politically extreme of them all.

Perhaps none is more extreme than Peter Thiel, who made his fortune with PayPal. In one infamous rant, Thiel complained about allowing women and people he describes as "welfare beneficiaries” (which might be reasonably interpreted as “minorities”) to vote. “Since 1920,” Thiel fulminated, “the extension of the franchise to (these two groups) have turned ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron."

With this remark, Thiel let something slip that extreme libertarians prefer to keep quiet: A lot of them don’t like democracy very much. In their world, democracy is a poor substitute for the iron-fisted rule of wealth, administered by those who hold the most of it. Our next test, therefore, is: Does our libertarian believe in democracy? If yes, explain what’s wrong with governments that regulate.


On this score, at least, Thiel is no hypocrite. He’s willing to freely say what others only think: Democracy should be replaced by the rule of wealthy people like himself.

But how did Peter Thiel and other Internet billionaires become wealthy? They hired government-educated employees to develop products protected by government copyrights. Those products used government-created computer technology and a government-created communications web to communicate with government-educated customers in order to generate wealth for themselves, which was then stored in government-protected banks—after which they began using that wealth to argue for the elimination of government.

By that standard, Thiel and his fellow “digital libertarians” are hypocrites of genuinely epic proportion. Which leads us to our next question: Does our libertarian use wealth that wouldn’t exist without government in order to preach against the role of government?

Many libertarians will counter by saying that government has only two valid functions: to protect the national security and enforce intellectual property laws. By why only these two? If the mythical free market can solve any problem, including protecting the environment, why can’t it also protect us from foreign invaders and defend the copyrights that make these libertarians wealthy?

For that matter, why should these libertarians be allowed to hold patents at all? If the free market can decide how best to use our national resources, why shouldn’t it also decide how best to use Peter Thiel’s ideas, and whether or not to reward him for them? After all, if Thiel were a true Randian libertarian he’d use his ideas in a more superior fashion than anyone else—and he would be more ruthless in enforcing his rights to them than anyone else. Does our libertarian reject any and all government protection for his intellectual property?

Size Matters

Our democratic process is highly flawed today, but that’s largely the result of corruption from corporate and billionaire money. And yet, libertarians celebrate the corrupting influence of big money. No wonder, since the same money is keeping their movement afloat and paying many of their salaries. But, aside from the naked self-interest, their position makes no sense. Why isn’t a democratically elected government the ultimate demonstration of “spontaneous order”? Does our libertarian recognize that democracy is a form of marketplace?

We’re told that “big government” is bad for many reasons, not the least of which is that it is too large to be responsive. But if big governments are bad, why are big corporations so acceptable? What’s more, these massive institutions have been conducting an assault on the individual and collective freedoms of the American people for decades. Why isn’t it important to avoid the creation of monopolies, duopolies and syndicates that interfere with the free market’s ability to function?

Libertarians are right about one thing: Unchecked and undemocratic force is totalitarian. A totalitarian corporation, or a totalitarian government acting in concert with corporations, is at least as effective at suppressing the “spontaneous order” as a non-corporate totalitarian government. Does our libertarian recognize that large corporations are a threat to our freedoms?

Extra Credit Questions

Most libertarians prefer not to take their philosophy to its logical conclusions. While that may make them better human beings, it also shadows them with the taint of hypocrisy. 

Ayn Rand was an adamant opponent of good works, writing that “The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves.” That raises another test for our libertarian: Does he think that Rand was off the mark on this one, or does he agree that historical figures like King and Gandhi were “parasites”?

There’s no reason not to form alliances with civil libertarians, or to shun them as human beings. Their erroneous thinking often arises from good impulses. But it is worth asking them one final question for our test.

Libertarianism would have died out as a philosophy if it weren’t for the funding that’s been lavished on the movement by billionaires like Thiel and the Kochs and corporations like ExxonMobil. So our final question is: If you believe in the free market, why weren’t you willing to accept as final the judgment against libertarianism rendered decades ago in the free and unfettered marketplace of ideas?

 

[a_majoor]

Progressivism and its proper response:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/229797

ROBBY SOAVE: At Emory University, Writing ‘Trump 2016′ on Sidewalk Is a Racist Microaggression, Unsafe: It’s enough to make you root for Trump. Well, almost.“No wonder so many non-liberal students are cheering for Trump—not because they like him, but because he represents glorious resistance to the noxious political correctness and censorship that has come to define the modern college experience.”

Congratulations, Emory Screaming Campus Garbage Babies. If you can make Reason writers think about voting for Trump, you’ll probably swing the election for him.

And the proper response of Emory’s President Wagner to complaining students was: Shut up, you’re idiots. If this bothers you that much, you don’t belong in college. Would you like me to call your mother to come get you?

We need many more college presidents to stand up for Liberal education (in the true sense).