Crusaders
A public, solemn nod and salute to Billy Beck. I wasn’t disappointed for a moment that he wasn’t actively engaged. I knew he was watching; every godammed detail. And then. Follow Billy’s links, or mine.
They ban me, and they get a half dozen in my place, all at least as capable, and some more so. Go see. And hats off to those who jumped in on my own say-so. You guys are terrific and I won’t forget it.
Thanks again, Beck. You lined up all the implications and you, above all, know the importance of this. This isn’t about winning a debate. That was 1995. This is about 10 years of a man’s one and only life. What you’ll see demonstrated, there, at those links, is the highest form of charity and goodwill you’ll ever witness. It’s in defense of Steven Rhett, a man none of us know, but he has a life.
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Free The Animal is an eclectic writing project about everything since November 2003. 23 years, 5,500 posts, 5 million words.
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Well now Dale's "fiddling".
While Rome burns.
Holy Christ, they're stupid. All but a few of them. Explaining things takes forever and a day, and they just ignore the best parts of what you say… I mean, goddamn. Debating with liberals isn't this monotonous.
Yeah. I wasn't quite understanding the confusion here myself… I mean that Democratic liberals can be naive and unthinking about critical philosophical ideas, but at least they don't constantly lie to themselves in the same way.
No question, conservative Republicans are dishonest. And every bit as savage as the left complains. A boot stamping on a human face, indeed… Jeff alone gives me the creeps in his blithe dismissal about what's going to happen to Mr. Rhett. Like "official" statistics are counted. Oi.
Jeff strikes me as having the ethical foundations of a cockroach, with the manual dexterity of a chimpanzee. No, that's not fair; cockroaches only eat their own as an act of direst necessity and chimpanzees are utterly mammalian in their concern for their children. His beastliness is positively reptilian.
I've known some positively charming reptiles. This is closer to demonic.
Brian,
Jeff is using a pretty common technique. He has found what he thinks is a reductio ad absurdum of the ancap position (which is a red herring in itself, since that is not what the argument revolves around, despite Henke's attempt to take the heat off Dale by casting it as such), and he's playing the role of embodying that absurdity.
The flaw in his logic is the assumption that one player can get completely overwhelming force. That is unobtainium, hence my unicorns comment. Even the US, in the anarchic relations between countries, does not have the kind of power to do what Jeff describes.
And, you're probably aware by now, there's a new post on this, which is why they closed the existing thread.
Well, silly me, I should have read the new comments *before* coming here. I would have seen that Jeff has moved on from his "Empire of Jeff" bit, and that the new thread is closed too. (It's so much easier than banning people).
Never mind…
Different Jeff here. Did anyone follow the links back to a-hole Jeff's blog? Guy doesn't like minorities, it seems; some of that stuff strikes me as worse than anything Lew Rockwell wrote in the Ron Paul newsletters.
At least he's not pretending to value liberty; he's just a run of the mill Republican. If Q and O isn't going to address this thing head on, maybe they could take the "Free Minds, Free People" tag off and change it to "Proud to be GOP" or something. Just for decency's sake. I don't think their current fanbase would even notice.
"Debating with liberals isn't this monotonous."
That is exactly right, and it has always been my experience.
Conservative republicans, in general, are the most dishonest of all groups. Lefties are far more honest about the principles they hold (collectivism), so at least there's that. Republicans are collectivists, but won't admit it, so it's worse than arguing with commie.
Every time. Over a period of 15 years.
Man, I haven't even checked that thread since last night. Just got back and still too busy to look. I really appreciate all you guys stepping up as you have.
…In case that wasn't clear, I'm taking your "liberals" comment to mean "conservative republican," as that's what most of them are over there, or they argue like it.
Law & order, "thin blue line" bullshit types. If it's liberal, it's certainly not classically liberal, which is a term I'd use to describe myself, somewhat.
Bastards closed the discussion again. And I was nothing if not polite, on topic and clear as I know how to be in my statements therein.
Umm, Richard, I think that Trevalyan was doing a "compare and contrast" between the experience of debating social liberals elsewhere on the Net and the pseudo-neo-libertarians at Q&O.
"Yeah. I wasn't quite understanding the confusion here myself… I mean that Democratic liberals can be naive and unthinking about critical philosophical ideas, but at least they don't constantly lie to themselves in the same way."
Yea, the vast majority of them are open and proud collectivist majoritarians.
Henke's thread has been re-opened, FWIW.