But, Dr. Jones, that wasn't actually meant to take away from your point. Mine isn't to criticize the opinions. Many have a good basis of reasoning for their opinions. My point is with regards to the perception of the other side. I, for one, don't even have to offer an opinion on any of the issues that have been raised, only so much as to portray the poster's idea of what their political enemies ideas and reasons are, and then it is assumed that I am part of that group whether I hold those opinions or not and regardless of whether the suggestion is even valid. And it doesn't seem that anyone cares.

Ah. Well then, yes, I can see how your interactions with Jon & Antony could frustrate you. But...



Now that we're all a bit older, most of us don't have time to put in the effort to be constructive, UNLESS there's a good chance we'll learn something valuable in the process.

As a rule, I don't bother trying to bridge any gaps in understanding with another poster unless this poster has demonstrated that I'll learn something when he proves me wrong.

That's not to insinuate that I couldn't learn something by debating Wookie06, but the competition seems a little stiff. And yes, look back at the archives--there are plenty of disagreements between members that exist within your so-called circle-jerk.

P.S.: Apologies in advance for the condescending voice, it's not what I intended.

Perhaps it would be better if your opinions were explicitly stated. Then people wouldn't have to be presumptuous.

It seems you are reluctant to take a definite stance on contentious issues. Is it because you don't want to get drawn into a protracted debate?

Wookie shies away from discussing issues that he knows will make him unpopular by saying he doesn't have time to talk about it right now. This is a common conservative tactic.

We treat him like a conservative stereotype because he acts like one.

It's a little different than this. I shy away from specific debates on issues because most of us already have our well founded positions (some hold positions that are more well founded than others). Debating specific issues here is kind of like beating a dead horse so I intentionally refrain from starting them and usually don't join them. Two exceptions somewhat recently were gun debates and voter ID. I believe I made rationale arguments and I don't fault anyone for holding differing views.

In this thread there are lots of generalizations about Republicans, those that vote for them, and their views. Given past experience, debating the specific issues here, well, I've already addressed that, but suffice it to say we all can make better use of our time. However, while I certainly can't speak for the electorate as a whole, I could inform others of my reasoning on various specific issues or the larger and more important ones. I believe there is a huge misunderstanding, not just here, that needs to be explained. Not just to those that are in opposition but those that vote in lock-step agreement with Republicans. There are few things that annoy me more than talking to an ignorant Republican with no understanding or foundational values informing them.

Part of my hope coming back here was that some of my old friends and, yes, I consider even Jon`C here a friend (and would hope that sentiment is someday shared), was that I could try to present myself better and more accurately to the forum. I'm just sincerely surprised how cynical it seems to be here.

I don't have to participate in any grander discussion. If this is all this is ever going to be here, that's fine. I'll pop in to post some random bit of something that I think someone might find interesting. That's okay too.

Good post, thanks.

The opposite of cynicism is naiveté. One of the more significant criticisms of the Republican voting `round these parts seems to be that the voters (especially the poor ones) are being duped into voting against their own interests. Books have been written about this.

To say that capitalism is broken requires throwing some of the axioms of conservationism out the window. For some reason, conservationism seems to more or less be a club, whose initiation ceremony is simply a permanent commitment to faith in conservative axioms. The problem with faith is that it prevents one from building models of ideas, in which the model goes beyond the original idea, so as to better understand it. To truly understand something, one must go outside the idea in question. How can this be possible if many of your basic assumptions are conjoined with your mental faculties? I think conservatives would do well to learn more about their own assumptions by coming up with criticisms of liberal ideas. Then, see how well you can rebut the liberal's defense, especially in the context of the conservative alternative.

As a liberally minded person who is nevertheless skeptical of all organs of power (including government), I would challenge conservatives to question their own basic values. (And, if this doesn't hurt your head, you aren't doing it right. Expanding the mind can never, under any circumstances, be comfortable.) Under what assumptions (and what century) were conservative axioms conflated with positive outcomes? Why are certain things axiomatic (like private property)? There are a whole host of (mostly unwritten) assumptions that are needed to justify the prudence of any given axiom that lies at the base of every conservative's worldview. For example, consider the sacredness of private property. The unwritten assumption (aside from the moral component--i.e., the Little Red Hen parable) of making private property sacrosanct almost without exception is basically a slippery slope argument. I.e., if I can expropriate private property for reason X, what's to say that my neighbor won't expropriate private property for reason Y. That's a viable argument, but only in some cases! By making private property an (almost*) global axiom, you are basically seeking to constrain the economy to one system of organization, with the all resulting dynamics resulting by dividing up the economy based on individual accumulation of wealth by profit via competition and collusion.

Deeply rooted in conservative thought is the right-libertarian principle that markets should be the fundamental driving force behind all aspects of society, whereas it should be obvious to anyone that the accumulation of wealth by means of profit is merely one possible way of organizing economic activity. Would (for example) Wikipedia exist if the only way of organizing economic activity were the exchange of goods and services for money? That's not to say that conservatism denies that Wikipedia should exist outside the framework of capitalism, but rather, that conservatism fails to realize that its existence and (runaway success, especially in technical articles like software and mathematics) proves that there are gaping holes in what traditional economic activity, based on money and markets, can provide. The conservative defense of having such a limiting worldview more or less boils down to, "Well, we acknowledge that capitalism isn't ideal, but we can't have anything else than pure, simplistic and unadulterated market activity, since no other pure idea results in comparable economic productivity". And, you know what? This might be true. The question then becomes, though, why do we need to stick to pure and simplistic ideas? Which brings me to my next paragraph.

In conservative circles, the litmus test for attacking a policy is usually a question of violating one of your axioms. If you listen to talk radio, you will often hear the host aligning himself with the most fanatical of politicians in the Tea Party, for the SOLE reason that the said candidate hasn't said something that goes against fundamental conservative axioms, and has implied that s/he is a "true believer". Witness hardline radio host Mark Levin (for example) supporting Rand Paul. Rand Paul hadn't said anything that too seriously violated conservative axioms (unlike, say, his father, Ron Paul).

What about outcomes? Don't you think it's an assumption that simply getting as many people in power to obey your conservative principles / axioms will lead to the positive outcomes? What if that's not the case?

What if, in reality, the effect of bestowing the ruling class with legitimacy--based on the simplistic fantasy that conservative axioms result in positive outcomes, in any given situation--is to shut down discussion? What if the effect is for the ruling class to **** the rest of us even harder?

* Surprise: the axiom of private property doesn't totally apply to those at the very top who are well connected! (And it is an inevitable outcome of capitalism that the rich will be have a drastically unfair and corrupt influence in government--often called "crony" capitalism to wrongly distance this fundamental flaw from capitalism in general.)

(The purpose of the above post was to serve as a justification for being cynical*.)

*cynical--that is, cynical about capitalism, since this is a discussion about politics, and Wookie is accusing us of being cynical, with the context being that he himself is less cynical (or more naive, IMO) about capitalism (by virtue of being a conservative).

(Where cynicism is defined (at least in this case) as the belief that a very significant chunk of votes are basically the result of manipulating people into believing things that, in the long run, result in serious damage to their own interests.)

Actually, my biggest beef with Jon's (purported) cynicism is that he's not cynical enough. In fact, I'd argue that he's one of the most idealistic members of this board, in a certain sense, due to his high expectations. Personally, I can't see society being organized any other way than it is now (if only because there will always be a subset of the population that will fall prey to manipulation), so it's difficult for me to come up with reasons to criticize it, other than to acknowledge that we're getting more of the same crap. Perhaps I suffer from lack of vision, or I have simply been victimized by the "neoliberal agenda"'s success in basically shutting down all debate about alternatives to capitalism.

Anyway, Wookie, I'd argue that what you see as cynicism in Jon and Antony is the result of internalizing many unfortunate facts. I'm really glad there are (evidently) people out there that are simultaneously intelligent enough to recognize the flaws in our society, and yet still feeling compelled to talk about it and fight it, rather than just give up and feel overwhelmed.

But yeah, I would say that failing to do either, and instead try to justify the kind of crap that the ruling class is subjecting us to, can only be called naiveté.

By the way, since my basic thesis here is that conservative axioms are too tenuously related to positive outcomes, feel free to point out cases where liberals fail to connect their assumptions with their supposed positive outcomes.

I suppose the most oft cited example of this is the failure of government to deliver promised goods and services, and to fall prey to waste, fraud, and general abuse. Corporations are often contrasted, in which the private firm is held up as the paragon of efficiency and service.

My fundamental beef with neoliberalism (aside from the issue of conservatives being manipulated) is that its exponents often criticize liberals as being against the market. But that's not really true! All that advocates of neoliberalism can grumble about is increased regulation and taxes.

Certainly, these things can stifle economic productivity. But, since when has this price been so heavy that we have to hand over the keys to the ruling class? Surely it is worse to be a serf than to pay higher taxes, no?

I STARTED THIS THREAD OFF SAYING THAT I WASN'T GOING TO VOTE FOR REPUBLICANS BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT FANATICAL ENOUGH! WHY ARE PEOPLE ASSUMING I'M A FANATICAL REPUBLICAN?

Let's talk about the ACA, Wookie. I actually don't know much about it, TBH.

Since you seem to be against it, would you please provide a 2x2 matrix, in which you enumerate the positive and negative outcomes of the ACA and the Republican alternative each? Thanks.

I don't know. How did you become a one-man cargo cult, adopting the terminology of American liberalism in the vain hope that it would strike a nerve with us the way it has with you?



You missed our curious phase, which was very brief. You came back after everyone here figured out that the GOP is a white nationalist party.



Pretty much all of the humorous stuff Jon`C says is also sincere.



Oh, come on. Why not go full Koobie here? What have you got to lose?



No, you're actually a white nationalist.



See entire post, supra.



Man. I just wish your preferred political party was content to die with you.

Antony you horse ****er

Actually, I'm curious to know why we would be jaded. Mid-life crisis?

I'm a lot of things. That isn't one of them.

Koobie was here

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My fundamental beef with neoliberalism is that none of them actually believe in a free market. They cry free market, but use every scrap of their ill-gotten influence to grant themselves special protections from free competition.

They are all liars, and they all deserve to be put to death. Along with the useful idiots who support them.

A couple years ago, Canada Post was a well-run, profitable corporation - despite being state-owned and operated. The Conservative party felt that the existence of a profitable crown corporation was ideologically incompatible with their public platform of free market / private platform of corporate hand-jobs, so they reinvented the world in their own image by installing noted Satan-worshipper and/or neoliberal Deepak Chopra as President and CEO.

Now, Canada Post is "run like a business". And like all good, fiscally responsive businesses run by your usual deep conservative thinkers and free market demagogues, it was rapidly bogged down by corruption, inefficiency, and outrageously overpaid executives. It is no longer able to compete against the "more efficient" free-market alternatives, and certainly can't survive without active government intervention.

Which, of course, is how you know it's being run like a business, conservative-style.


These are the sorts of people Wookie06 looks up to. The American private sector CEO, folks who bootstrapped themselves into the biggest government welfare, free hand-out crony political insider jobs in the world.

American CEOs get billions of dollars of zero-liability taxpayer money to spend on private jets, but Wookie06 pisses his boots over a few million in food stamps. But at least you good Christians can always recant on your deathbeds, so you've got that going for you.

The problematic nature of the word "values" dovetails perfectly with my point about conservative axioms interfering with their capacity for rational deduction. If only conservatives could grasp the idea of using "rational means of pursuing [an] end", rather than being perfectly happy for one of the many false assumptions which generate their worldview to preempt any independent thought from intruding into their fixed minds.



My post only sought to address Wookie's charge of cynicism. The philosophical stuff about the axioms of conservationism has been around a lot longer than Stefan Molyneux (although perhaps not in my manner of writing, since I basically made it up from what I've assimilated listening to conservatives over the years), and I only needed it to attack conservativism in general. I don't think it is a straw man, since the "conservative movement" more or less has the axiom of private property at its very core.

There may be a minority of moderate, pragmatic conservatives. Wookie, do you consider yourself one of them? I.e., if we went back in time, and the ACA was crafted in a way that satisfied you in every way w.r.t. the positive outcomes, but still resulted in the government being heavily involved, could you possibly support it? (Also: would a tax increase nullify your support for such government activity? If so, what kind of government activity do you support, aside from military and infrastructure spending?)

I'm assuming there must be some reason Wookie is against the ACA, and since people seem to be accusing him of allowing his conservative allegiance to cloud his reasoning, it must be because either:

• he has specific knowledge about how this specific bill has worse outcomes for the country as a whole than the alternative, or:
• it violates some kind of gut instinct about the role of government that resulted from the worldview that someone assumes when s/he accepts conservative axioms

I may be conflating conservationism with libertarianism, but it's really hard not to. The two are not independent enough to generate non-overlapping worldviews. The only difference I can see between the two is that libertarians take their axioms more seriously in practice, whereas conservatives simply generate their worldview from them, but sometimes back off in practice in cases when taking them too seriously leads to crazytown (e.g., having a fetish for abolishing government agencies for no real reason at all, although Reagan certainly had a lot in common with libertarians in this regard).

Wookie, I still want to know your thoughts on this post.



w.r.t..:

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I suppose you are correct that it may not be correct to use the word axiom. A more accurate would would be "assumption", but with the connotation that the person's worldview could be constructed, more or less from the ground up, so that you could predict his/her reaction to a given political notion. In this way, dogma is probably the right word.

Okay, now that is rather harsh.

Unless you are using the word "know" to strictly refer to knowledge in the philosophical sense, and you want to claim that he's just repeating unverified claims made by conservative opinion-makers.

But, maybe he's not, and has genuinely researched the issues surrounding the bill, and has independently applied his own logical criteria to the matter, deciding that it is a bad law.

Do you honestly believe that is how conservatives think about the ultimate outcomes of their ideal system of government? You've accepted a number of negative outcomes of implementing conservative ideology in practice, whereas I doubt that conservatives think in these terms. From what I can gather, conservatives seem to think:

• inequality is inevitable, and even desirable to some extent, but not necessarily something to pursued for its own sake
• we'll all be richer if we lower taxes and decrease regulation, since businesses will increase efficiency, and the market will induce optimum signaling between consumers and producers
• any remaining shortcomings of the resulting system are unavoidable costs of maintaining the ideological purity which sustains the system

There are probably a lot of Republican voters (and probably also many former Republican voters) who are uncomfortable with ostentatious wealth, since it really makes neoliberalism look quite bad.

Those who truly idolize the rich are an insane minority. The fact Fox News and talk radio have been able to convert any sizable number of true believers into believing the same is one of the more disturbing trends of the last 20 years.

But, I don't think you can necessarily count Wookie as among those who worship Donald Trump and Bill Gates because they accept the axiom of

• person A is rich => person A necessarily possesses qualities X, Y, Z, which explains why s/he is rich and I am not, but at least I now have somebody to emulate to remedy that matter

Hah, that's great.

The more you think you know, the less you know.

Why have axioms / assumptions / dogma, anyhow?? All of conservative thought is one giant brain-fart. It's like they spend their entire lives thinking so hard to rationalize all kinds of crazy, unjustified assumptions, and apply them in all manner of situations where they don't apply.

Listening to Rush must be a full time job, since each day also comes with the difficult homework assignment of slowly rationalizing away the extreme cognitive dissonance that still manages to emanate from whatever remnants of your natural human intelligence weren't fried by conservative anti-logic.

Then again, if you isolate yourself from the outside world, you might just be able to live in a conservative bubble, hence avoiding all cognitive dissonance!

Damn liberal elites--you stay away and keep your evolutionist teachings away from my unspoilt urchins.

How's that for a circle-jerk, Wookie?

Anyway, goodnight.

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This post contains some excellent ideas. Brilliant.

True, that. It certainly makes it easy to see how conservative claptrap makes tools out of so many people. It's like the ultimate faux-logical infection of the brain.

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