Alright, the other day I popped off a piece referencing Perry de Havilland’s take on this idiotic post over at The Daily Kos. Now it turns out that Drizzten has done more of a point-by-point on the idea of "libertarian democrats." I’m half tempted to throw the whole thing up here, out of a sense of mercy to those who value their eyes (go and see what I mean), but I’ll just hit this, here:

[Kos:]

‘Traditional "libertarianism" holds that government is evil and thus must be minimized. Any and all government intrusion is bad.’

[Driz:]

"That’s because libertarianism is generally concerned with one thing: reducing the prevalence of aggression
(the initiation of physical force or the immediate threat of it) in
society. That’s the prime political principle and all else flows from
it. It isn’t a simple-minded hatred of government. It’s an integrated,
clear-minded hatred of what government does.

"And that is in turn based upon an understanding of reality and the
human condition, an understanding that says individuals have the
capability and the right to think and act for themselves.

"It isn’t about just flipping the bird at Uncle Sam."

[Emphasis in bold, mine.]

Indeed. Ah, yes. I know that with virtually every post, I risk being dismissed as someone who’s just enraged, acting out and thrashing about. And I get some of that, too, at times — even from family. It’s far easier than coming up with actual "integrated, clear-minded" arguments, I suppose. But mostly I think (well, hope, actually) that what I do here identifies very deep inconsistencies between the bromides people go about mindlessly spouting off ("Land of the Free," anyone?) and the actual factual reality of the matter — and people just don’t really know how to deal with it. Well, I don’t either, except to go about pointing it out — perhaps in some vein hope that people really can’t live a contradiction all their goddammed lives.

"Hope on, sucker," I say to myself.