The Republican Crack-Up Revisited
Very interesting analysis of the struggles within the GOP to stay as a meaningful party. From the article: "Put another way, there has been no basis for Republican unity in principle, except perhaps for a strong national defense. However, on matters of domestic policy, constitutional limitations on government power, economics, immigration, trade, civil liberties, individual rights...on just about everything you can name, Republicans are all over the map. There's no single principle, let alone broader political philosophy, that holds the party factions together."
I doubt that politics and it's parties can ever exist in the same room as individualist Objectivists, free market capitalism, and certainly not with individual natural rights and freedom.
Do not get the wrong Idea, I am big proponent of the individual and free agency. However I think that people also have to come together to make things happen in a republic, or any self rule form of government. How would you propose to do so if a collective cannot exist and individualists at the same time? or perhaps I am reading to much into your statement.
A "collective exists" only as an abstraction referring to a number of individuals in some relationship. It has no priority of any kind -- metaphysical, epistemological, ethical or political -- over the individual thinking and acting himself. Only individuals exist as entities, think, choose, and through immediate self defense and through law protect their rights.
Zenphamy's original comments confused me. This added the needed clarity and I can see from his comment that he is thinking the same.
In a laissez faire capitalist market, to make things happen people and business make things happen or more importantly don't, based on true need or economics through individuals, benevolence associations, partnerships, contracts, and corporations--not political favors or influence.
The shadow govt in their cunning created two parties to give the illusion that your vote means something . So you think you have a choice ,
One party bends us over and the other provides
The lube , and they slap hands and change rolls like a tag team wrestling match.
Glennon, Michael J. (2014-09-10). National Security and Double Government . Oxford University Press.
I think it provides a very good academic study of the history and implications of "The Double Government", its inevitability arising from the failure of the Madisonians to account for the lack of civic virtue and responsibility in the American populace and the desire of the bureaucracy for efficiency.
For as long as I've been alive, there have always been two groups that "control" the Republican Party -- its small-government base, and those politicians and lobbyists who see it as a vehicle to use to exchange money for political favors. Unfortunately, the inevitable incentive trap means that the latter, corrupt group is always going to have more money, and so is going to control the party unless and until the members can combine to elect an RNC which has higher priorities than raising money. (The Kochs are an exception, big contributors that don't favor the Trump types -- but they've helped the LP before and will again.)
I believe it is high time to pick this fight right now, winner take all, even though it will probably mean the money interests win. Because the GOP without its base will no longer be a major party. The hard part is getting most of the base to leave it in the same, worthwhile direction; I see the LP as the best of a bad set of choices.
Face it, whether we do this or not, Hillary Clinton is going to be the next president. But with a Republican Congress she won't be able to do much more harm than Obamination already has. And meanwhile we're going to be building the juggernaut that can move the Overton Window the right way, for the first time in 80+ years.
Three objectivists walk into a bar. Can they collectively decide to sit at the same table?
Conversations over the little things like what table to sit at are required if you wish to have a relationship long term
Maybe the republican party will collapse and something more small government oriented will come into its place, but I really doubt it. A unified republican party is likely the only option to start to move things back towards smaller government.
However this is difficult even here in the gulch.
A good source for overviews of these philosophers without getting bogged down in the details are youtubes, often by philosophy professors. You have to search for the good ones, but the goods ones get to the point quickly usually about a specific issue such as Hume on causation. I put together a list of some good youtubes on philosophy while Pirate was here. I can pass along these if you want.
Then academic/serious papers are my next source. I usually know what I am looking for once I have gotten to this step. Also there are a number of online philosopy wikis that are good. Generally one of these wikis will have a well laid out readable article on the philosopher or the issue, such as causation.
It is the same reason state governments do not form their own laws but simply comply with federal regulation. Texas being a commendable exception. The checks and balances between the branches were primary upon ratification. The Federalists and Anti-Federalist differed in their interpretation of the Constitution. Now we have issue politics with parties as primary with the Constitution as the flickering light in the background.
A lot of Americans want to return to the Constitution but are tumbled around by wave after wave of issues that easily distract us. We are in effect taught that abortion law is more fundamental than Constitutional separation of powers. We have pragmatists. We have "realists".
Imagine a party to take over Washington and then divest it. Is it possible? There are buildings, people, processes, rules, regulations, laws, ways of life, all centered around our issue politics. With our fundamental issue, the Constitution, taking a back seat. It is regrettable.
So what drives issue politics? Lobbyists. Cronies. Etc. Who do not trust the consumers to make the best decision or who boldly defraud people into a favorable position.
constitutional objectivist party
With Jennifer Grossman as the leader.
does their future configuration arise from the inside
or the outside. . if someone good like Gary Johnson
can ride up on a white charger ....... -- j
.
No. The way to win those voters now is as an LP candidate, or maybe an independent. The GOP has ceased to be useful. It just needs to be put out of our misery, the sooner the better.
The question that has to be asked is whether or not there should be a law against the existence of political parties. Chaos would undoubtedly ensue, for a time, as well as challenges under the 1st amendment, which I think would fail if justices adhered to the original intent. The defense is that people would not have been denied the right to peacefully assemble. There is no constitutional right to form political parties.
After such an act, candidates for election would still have to have the backing of either a few powerful parties, or a large mass of the people. By depriving the candidate of a mass market label, the reality of their campaign positions would have to stand closer scrutiny.
While I know many here do not have any love of the bible, in 1 Samuel 8 there is a very good example of exactly what is hipping today.
The people ask for a king, the prophet says no, dumb and provides a long list of all the terrible things that will come about from a king. Paraphrasing the response, it is we want a king, we want to be like other nations and we want someone to think for us.
It amazes me that we see it today, and that it has gone on for likely as long as humans have lived.
Give people freedom and prosperity and in enough time they will choose slavery and poverty again in order to not use there own mind.
Here is a dictionary definition of stupid along with synonyms. Maybe dull would work best.
stu·pid (st›“p¹d, sty›“-) adj. stu·pid·er, stu·pid·est. 1. Slow to learn or understand; obtuse. 2. Lacking or marked by a lack of intelligence. 3. In a stupor; stupefied. 4. In a dazed or stunned state. 5. Pointless; worthless: a stupid job. --stu·pid n. A person regarded as stupid. [Latin stupidus, from stup¶re, to be stunned.] --stu“pid·ly adv. --stu“pid·ness n.
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SYNONYMS: stupid, slow, dumb, dull, obtuse, dense. These adjectives mean lacking or marked by a lack of intellectual acuity. Stupid, the most inclusive, means wanting in intelligence: Despite a lack of formal education, she was far from stupid. Slow and dumb imply chronic sluggishness of perception, reaction, or understanding: The school offers special tutorials for slow learners. It was dumb of him to say yes. Dull suggests a lack of keenness of intellect: “It is the dull man who is always sure” (H.L. Mencken). Obtuse implies a lack of quickness, sensitivity, or perceptiveness: At the time, I was too obtuse to grasp the true implications of her behavior. Dense suggests impenetrability of mind: The woman kept signaling that it was time to leave, but her escort was so dense that he just kept sitting there.
Maybe the '10-80s' for the 10% who act without thought and the 80% who haven't a clue so wait for others to tell them what to do.
What passes for a Democratic philosophy is a hodgepodge of little problems that the gov't can help you with. They are not united under a single philosophy-- a strong federal gov't as an instrument of change. Many of them are deeply distrustful of the federal gov't for the military, drug war / prison-industrial complex, and law enforcement spying on and trying to discredit groups and demonstrations.
It's odd to hear him say Republicans are united behind military spending right after saying the Democrats are the ones who believe in big gov't. If you exclude Social Security and Medicare (based on the fiction that they're separate insurance programs) and include health and education programs for veterans, war is what the gov't spends most money on. There's a bipartisan consensus in support of huge military spending.
I agree with the stuff toward the end of the article, esp that it's contradictory to expect individualism to flow from the party to the individual. I agree if individualism becomes more widespread, politicians will respond.
Somewhere toward the end he says words the effect of "our society is in grave peril." People commenting on gov't, social problems, etc usually feel the need to say things are horrible. I don't know if that view drives them into writing, if that's what gets readers, or that's how their readers see the world. Whatever the reason, I agree with him the need for more individualism and less statism. I don't see we're in immediate peril.
Democrats do not oppose government, they deny and evade their coercion and spread false 'narratives' like "the government is us" or is "We the People" -- the standard collectivist dictatorship line. We are the country, not the government, and we are being ruled by government.
The warped notion of 'only solving problems' as an evasion of acknowledging ideological statism-collectivism is Pragmatism denying principles on principle and as ideology in the name of non-ideology. Pragmatism openly embraces statist methods by adopting the unprincipled "do whatever works": When government coercion is always regarded as a "pragmatic tool" for any end in the name of solving a problem, with no principles allowed to ban the coercion on principle, you have statism as a philosophy of government.
Pragmatism is a parasitic philosophy relying on unadmitted principles of unacknowledged philosophy to decide the criteria of what works by what standard for whose purposes and how anyone can know if it does "work". Pragmatism itself does not work. It is serving as an evasion of the indefensible altruist and collectivist and statist principles of progressive government, always progressively imposing and promoting more and more statist controls and taxes with no end in sight and no statement of how much would ever satisfy them -- because nothing ever could .
The military is by far the smallest segment of Federal spending compared with the social programs in the rest of it, and is not "spending on war" -- as national defense it tries to prevent war beyond what we are already suffering. It is wasteful and often misguided for bad foreign policy, but most of the money does not go to active "war". That does not change by artificially excluding most of the social spending in a false comparison. The declining value to Democrat multi-culturalists of the need for national defense of this country is not a compliment.
This 'Pragmatism as cover' is the meaning of Obama's latest line: "I think for your generation you should be practical and just choose from what works. You don't have to worry about whether it neatly fits into socialist theory or capitalist theory, you just decide what works."
The Pragmatism with altruist-collectivist unacknowledged ideology is how he and his supporters are "fundamentally changing" the country into neo-Marxist collectivist tyranny and balkanization in the name of non-ideology -- and is why the Republicans, who have swallowed the same century-old Pragmatism with an underlying ideology that amounts to "me too but slower" are ineffective in challenging him. This is where the epistemologically pragmatist "open capitalism" of the "mixed economy" has led.
Yes the country is in "immediate peril". The country is headed into fascism with communist slogans in the name of "solving practical problems". Only anti-intellectual pragmatism allows the evasion of that. People who are watching what is happening and trying to warn against it are not subjectively motivated by "usually feeling the need to say things are horrible", which accusation is anti-intellectual and gratuitously insulting.
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1. You reiterate the point I made about a bipartisan consensus for high levels of war spending.
2. You hit on something related to my point-- the bipartisan consensus is for expensive gov't.
3,4,6 - I know villains use pragmatism and being practical as an excsue for their actions, but I do not believe all cases of being practical and using what works are part of the evil philosphy of the villains in the book.
5. I consider it Orwellian sophistry to argue maintaining a huge armaments industry is actually peace spending. The part about it being invalid to consider Social Security and Medicare separate just because they come from separate types of taxes make sense. Note that I called it a "fiction". None of this changes the fact the bipartisan consisent considers it beyond the pale to cut military spending to be equal to that of all current and potential enemies. Spending on military is so enormous reducing it to just a high level of spending is considered radical.
7.It either hyperbole or going off the deep end with this "neo-Marxist collectivist tyranny".
8. If things turn to worms, the doom predicitors will be vendicated. I'm confident they're wrong. You're right that there's no point in my guessing the motivations of doomsayers.
Pragmatism does not mean being practical, and rejecting it does not mean rejecting being practical. Being practical requires acting in accordance with valid principles. Violating principles results in injustice and destruction. Pragmatism does not work. Democrat political philosophy is in fact progressive statism, not a "hodgepodge of little problems" to solve.
Accounting gimmicks and a phony, non-existent "trust fund" for social security and medicare do not make spending on national defense most of the Federal budget. The government spent our social security taxes long ago under the ruse of borrowing from itself. All taxes go into the general fund. Most spending and taxes, even spending on defense, is not "war spending", and defense is not a conspiracy for the "armaments industry". Your leftist rhetoric sneering at national defense betrays you.
Whatever you liked about Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's novels and philosophy that you don't read have nothing to do with leftist 'narratives' and evasions of what their statism and collectivism, including their misanthropic anti-private property rights eco-fascism, is doing to us.
Those who, like Ayn Rand for entire life, are warning against the destruction and violation of the rights of the individual by the progression into neo-Marxist collectivist tyrants, like Obama and Clinton, are not "doomsayers", contrary to your continuing smear. The "fundamental change" imposed by the left away from the founding principles of freedom and individualism under constitutional government in this country is not leading to "more individualism and less statism", and like Pragmatism, leftist rhetoric pretending otherwise does not "work".
I think GOP. Will hold onto one of the houses but prob not the Senate.
If trump gets in , I think the wall will get delayed because illegal immigration slowed on its own, taxes will go down on us, companies will get either no taxes or lower taxes on overseas earnings, corporate taxes will decrease, and there will be some increases in economic activity due not to trump himself but the "make America great again" psychological boost. I do think he would cut back on foreign aid and fighting nonproductive wars.
Most of what you fear from trump would never happen because the GOP. hates him and they will have only one chamber of congress
What that has done is left much of the rest of the country looking for representation. Instead of focusing on their core constituency (conservatives), however, the Republicans have attempted to mold an ideological message which appeals to many ideologically separate groups. And this has utterly failed. In marketing, focusing one's message is key to driving both retention of existing customers and the development of new ones. If one wants to attract a new market, one creates a new product line (see for example Toyota and Lexus).
Take the appellation "RINO" for instance. That term only started to appear after Bill Clinton assumed office and began driving the Democratic Party towards the Progressive/Socialist mantra, disenfranchising the socially liberal but fiscally conservative base which used to form the backbone of the Democratic Party. Because there was still a sizeable contingent of voters with these values, prospective representatives of these districts adopted these same values. Because they weren't Progressive enough for the Democrats, however, they couldn't get funding in these areas from the Democratic Party so they appealed to the Republicans, who saw only a chance to finally compete in areas they had not been able to get a foothold in previously. The problem is that the Republicans failed to see the common marketing problem of "brand dilution" which results when a company tries to be everything to everyone (see Microsoft) and the resulting product problems which result. I would also point out that in times when the conservative base of the Republican Party has risen up (Contract with America, Paul Ryan's budget proposals, etc.) that they have been tremendously popular and been supported by an energetic base.
This still, however, only accounts for between 30-40% of Americans today, with a similar quotient on the Progressive side, which leaves a not-insubstantial "moderate" or "independent" middle ground that are largely the ones who determine election outcomes. What I'd like to see is the Republican Party split and either assume the mantle of the Libertarians or take back up the mantle now largely seen as the Tea Party movement. If the Republican Party does not focus on a platform, however, they will merely continue to hemorrhage voter support because of their lack of consistent core principles.
They vote them in because the alternative is even worse.
This quote from John Maynard Keynes of all people explains it.
“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist (philosopher).”
I see this in the gulch everyday. People think they are coming up with an original position, when in fact they are just repeating a (long dead) philosopher's position and usually not as well as it was originally stated.
Keynes was way off base on this quote, as he was with most of his philosophy and economics. The world is largely ruled by dictators and demagogues, rather than the ideas of economists and political philosophers. If the world were largely ruled by economists and political philosophers, it might be a better place, depending on the economist and/or political philosopher.
What allowed Lenin to start a revolution in Russia? Marx. What allowed Marx to get away with his philosophy? Kant. Who provided the ideas that allowed a Kant? Hume.
You are also the product of ideas (philosophy) at least at work. You are the direct product of Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and Locke. Of course that is not to say that you have not accomplished amazing things in engineering (not philosophy), but a Newton could never have existed if he had be born and grew up in China or Africa.
Dictators and Demagogues are not leaders, they are followers. They require a world in which many people have accepted the underlying ideas even if they have never hear of Kant, Hume, Aristotle or Locke.
If John Galt ran for president today, he would be soundly defeated as the people are not ready for him and probably wont be during our lifetimes (at least mine).
Ayn Rand, who wrote what Galt was to say, emphasized that there can be no political solution -- with a futile "Objectivist Party" or anything else -- without a major shift in explicit philosophy to reason and individualism in the culture:
'We cannot fight against collectivism, unless we fight against its moral base: altruism. We cannot fight against altruism, unless we fight against its epistemological base: irrationalism. We cannot fight against anything, unless we fight for something—and what we must fight for is the supremacy of reason, and a view of man as a rational being."
Politically, the best that can be expected are political candidates able to draw popular support with an articulate defense more in favor of freedom in some way than the current crop: "Will he protect freedom or destroy the last of it? Will he accelerate, delay or stop the march toward statism?"
Today we are running off the end of even that possibility. It requires an appeal to the American sense of life that used to prevail despite the contradictions of the altruist-collectivist ideology widely paid lip service to, and that is running out as the explicit ideology progressively takes over across the culture. It is still not at the level of the European statist mentality, but is more acquiescent and larger portions of the population are explicitly collectivist, mindless, and being stoked.
It will take a lot of education of a LOT of people before that would could happen. BUT, in the meantime all we can do is use our votes to pick the least bad politicians, and perhaps ones who would cut down the use of government to further the aims of the misguided socialist types
http://patch.com/new-hampshire/concor...
In every presidential election, people are told that they are “wasting their vote” if they vote for the Libertarian candidate.
As one who has voted for every Libertarian presidential candidate since 1972, I think the exact opposite is true. By voting for my principles, my votes over the years have had far more impact than if I had allowed the two “establishment” parties to dictate my choices.
No matter how you have voted for President in the past, your vote has never made a difference in the outcome. Nor will it do so in the future. Even if you live in a “swing state” that could go either way, your lone vote will not spell the difference between victory and defeat for either establishment party candidate.
So if you can’t change the election outcome, why vote at all? The answer is that by voting Libertarian, you will be adding to the vote totals of the only party that consistently supports individual freedom. And those vote totals matter – the establishment parties pay close attention when a significant number of voters break with the two-party system, and they will often modify their stands on certain issues to protect their base and prevent further defections.
On the other hand, if you vote for the “lesser of two evils,” you are saying in effect, “I support the political status quo. I have faith in the two-party system, and I’m not interested in supporting candidates from other parties, even if they have fresh ideas that I agree with. I don’t like either of the two establishment party candidates, but I will vote for Establishment Party Candidate X because he or she is not quite as bad as Establishment Party Candidate Y.” This truly is a waste of your vote, and does nothing to advance the cause of freedom.
explanation of our votes
value . It does show we
are committed to
our unalienable right to
Liberty and the pursuit
of happiness , using the
tool afforded us as
Citizens.
There are a few things that might change my vote. What if the repubs are stupid and force trump out and the dems do the same with sanders- and they both go independent?. That might end our two party stranglehold !!!. I would abandon the repubs party and vote independent to force nebulizer pick the president.,(bye bye evil witch woman Hillary,). Gary Johnson still would have no chance of winning but he might enough electoral college votes to keep Hillary from winning
In our system of two major parties, there are 2 candidates who win by just a few percent of votes however. Independents have little chance to get the 270 electoral college credits required for election, so the best an independent can do is throw the election into the house of representatives where one of the major party candidates would be picked anyway.
In this election trump is THE anti establishment, shake em up, and speak your mind presidential candidate that has a chance to get those 270 electoral college votes from actual voters, not cronies.,4 years of blowing apart cronyism can't be bad for us. I don't expect objectivist principles to magically be popular and make their way into politics instantly. The cultural thinking is just too statist right now. But it's a bankrupt culture and forcing its faults out into the light of day is an essential part of changing it.
That's why I think a vote for trump is a good thing this election, where 100,000 votes or less could mean keeping the evil witch woman from doing her wall street crony thing on us
(^sarcasm^)
That is not Donald Trump. A strong-arm, self-proclaimed "man on the white horse" Pragmatist promising to use "magnificent" and "wonderful" government power to make statist "Deals", with no concern for freedom and the rights of the individual, is the wrong direction. Please don't repeat the mantra of the idolatry claiming that Pied Piper Trump the Great is the only one who can save us. He cannot and will not, does not want to, and by present indications is so self-destructive that he can't even beat Hillary.
(cue the mantra)
I will grant you that if Sanders and Trump go independent after getting ignominiously dumped by their respective parties, we might get rid of Hillary after all, since she wouldnt get 270 electoral votes with 4 candidates sharing votes and the republican house would have to pick a president.
Newton couldn't have existed in China or Africa. That is correct. As it was, both he and Galileo were persecuted. Galileo's persecution is infamous. Rand was correct in saying that the one commonality of new ideas is that they are ... opposed.
Interestingly, Newton's persecution still happens to this day, particularly here in the Gulch over his "mysticism". He called it science, or at least discovery. Now it is derided as "alchemy".
I do not deny the power of ideas. Ideas resulting in positive reality changes only occur in cultures that are prepared for them. You yourself have asked, db, "Why has inventing been concentrated in the last two centuries in relatively small populations of the U.S. and western countries?"
Rand was right, and you were in a different thread. As you say in your own blog:
http://hallingblog.com/2011/07/30/atl...
"51) Loc 22594 “…when I worked in your world, I was an inventor. I was one of a profession that came last in human history and will be first to vanish on the way back to the sub-human. An inventor is a man who asks ‘Why?’ of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.”
It is interesting that Rand points out that being an “inventor” was one of the last professions in human history. Perhaps the first person to take on the profession of a being an inventor was Galileo, who lived in Venice. Venice passed the first modern patent laws in 1474. The U.S. has been the preeminent producer of people who made their living as inventors. The America Invents Act is another step along the path of ensuring that no one will make a living as an inventor in the U.S. anymore.
In fact, whenever you see great periods of prosperity, you see large numbers of new inventions. Whenever you see a lack of inventors inventing, you can be assured we are stagnating economically."
We will continue to disagree about dictators and demagogues. They ARE leaders, but only in places DEVOID of ideas and full of ANTI-IDEAS.
What allowed Lenin to start a revolution in Russia?
1) Financial backing of JP Morgan et al, the Rothschild heirs, etc., all of whom were heavily invested in the perpetuation of war;
2) the "ideas" of Karl Marx, which should properly be characterized as "anti-ideas" because they REQUIRE envy of achievement and subjugation of would be inventors; and
3) the presence of an existing war (WW1) that the Russian serfs cared nothing about.
You and many in the Gulch underestimate the power of those who use force to accomplish their objectives. While I am not endorsing a Star Wars philosophy, you and others underestimate "the power of the Dark Side".
The fact that so many of us are here is testimony to the fact that I have "vanished" from the world of invention and that the world has once again become "subhuman".
Know that I am working on inventions, but that they will not be seen by the outside world until that world is once again fit for me to exist.
http://hallingblog.com/2011/07/30/atl...
Dictators and demagogues arise in societies devoid of ideas, and in places where force trumps ideas. That would be everywhere in the world at this time. The world has once again become subhuman.
Guess it depends which professor is the campus darling this month.