American Thinker has a piece today, on how a recent preposterous global warming report on the PBS NewsHour hints they’re overplaying their biased coverage of the issue. The addition of it to the tally of NewsHour discussion segments absent of skeptic climate assessments suggests a media malfeasance problem too big to ignore.
Excerpts:
My tally of the NewsHour mentioning global warming and other ‘climate change’ variations continues to grow. I’m probably short in the count, as the NewsHour has expanded its online-only material significantly in the last year or two, and I’ve probably missed some of their blog content. Of that 350+ count, it can only safely be said that one more skeptic can be included in the overall total, meteorologist Anthony Watts in his September 17, 2012 appearance alongside ‘former skeptic’ Richard Muller, which drew howls of “PBS Channels Fox News“
At what point will the public see such biased reporting as nothing more than a desperate partisan attempt to keep the issue alive? Did we witness it just recently at the NewsHour? Or will they cross that line by reporting how ‘the smell of the ocean is endangered by climate change’?
See:
Jumping the Shark on Global Warming: The PBS NewsHour paints itself into a corner.
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pokerguy says:
August 30, 2013 at 11:32 am
Pokerguy,
In my experience, the majority of CAGW’ers passionately want a climate crisis. CAGW is their wet dream so to speak. It would be a terrible letdown to them if the mainstream consensus changed to AGW being immeasurably small, benign and/or inconsequential.
It has been some time since I commented on the PBS bias. Several times I have posted this link to the PBS Ombudsman. It would probably take a massive amount of comments to get them to listen, but then, are there not a massive amount of comments on this site? http://www.pbs.org/ombudsman/feedback.html
@chad, “Fighting off global warming differs little, in my view, from resisting other forms of tyranny”
While I not surprisingly disagree with your assessment of that tragic war in Vietnam (it takes a real idealist to hold such an opinion it seems to me, with a suspension of the kind of cynicism that many of us skeptics tend to have), I do agree with your analogy above. That Obama is actually circumventing democratic processes via the EPA, is enraging to me, and perhaps even something worth literally fighting against were it to get egregious enough. I continue to believe that GWB was one of our very worst President. It’s absolutely stunning to me that Obama is turning out to be just as bad.
@Robert A “In my experience, the majority of CAGW’ers passionately want a climate crisis. CAGW is their wet dream so to speak.
I agree they’re rooting for it, but I think the motivation is more fundamental than that. They simply couldn’t deal with being wrong. They’d rather some sort of climate catastrophe than to have to endure such a humiliation…
In response to a comment by Robert Austin (“In my experience, the majority of CAGW’ers passionately want a climate crisis. CAGW is their wet dream so to speak”), at 1:50 PM on 30 August pokerguy had written:
To the contrary. Modern American “Liberals” have an enormous amount of experience with “being wrong” on every position they’ve ever advocated, from politicized “public” education (a hideously destructive waste of resources and the young lives of the victims) to economically catastrophic government meddling in the economy.
They can afford to ignore all the consequences of “being wrong” because they can be confident that they will never be considered responsible for the damage they do. With effective control of the educrat-run gulags masquerading as “school systems,” of the academic nomenklatura in the universities, of the bloated, lying lamestream media, and of the pork sluices in Mordor-on-the-Potomac, no one can or will effectively hold them accountable, and they know it.
Rest assured, “some sort of climate catastrophe” is of use to them only as a guise under which they intend to ride, booted and spurred, over the lives, the liberties, and the property of innocent American citizens. They have absolutely no fear of “being wrong” because the distinction between right and wrong – fact and fraud – has no practical or moral value in their eyes.
“Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.” Reagan 1964. Amazingly describing CAGW alarmists so well, almost 50 years ago when the climate was still cooling.
pokerguy says:
August 30, 2013 at 9:47 am
News Item
AP-Hold’em Poker Found to be Contributing to Climate Change
———————————————————————————-
Now that I can understand. I have sat at climate-change card tables. The winds of fortune can shift hot to cold and back again many times. A good anti-perspirant is important with this type of climate change, along with a strong stomach and a steadfast gaze. Resoluteness in the face of a cold hand can make it the equal of a hot one. I should write a book. A short book, perhaps.
It is a safe bet that all PBS reporting in general is as biased and incomplete as their reporting on climate. I stopped watching PBS long ago due to their Marxist leaning reporting. Anything and everything they say needs to be fact checked, so why waste your time.
@goldminor: “A good anti-perspirant is important with this type of climate change, along with a strong stomach and a steadfast gaze”
Man, you’re not kidding. NOthing worse than being stuck at some casino card table with guys who’ve been there for 16 hours or more, no teeth brushing, no showers, SBD’s going off all over the place. Talk about atmospheric pollution…
pokerguy says:
Me too. I like NPR a great deal still, “this American life,” “car talk,” “on the media,” “fresh air,” are shows I still enjoy. I’m a lifelong liberal, and it’s shocking to me as well, how lazy these people are wrt to global warming. They simply don’t for a second entertain even the possibility they could be wrong.
One of the biggest problems I’ve had in political discussions.
As for the rest of what you say – doesn’t it get you thinking, at least a little, about what else they’ve been wrong about? When know you can’t possibly be wrong, there’s no need to bother. I’ve seen the same from the right, too, which is why I no longer align myself with either.
350:4? Isn’t that about the same ratio between PBS stories supporting “prudery” and those supporting NAMBLA instead?
Tucci78 says:
August 30, 2013 at 2:00 pm
“With regard to “conservative hawkishness” on the matter of the anthropogenic global warming fraud, I confess to having been made quite uncomfortable by their general opposition to this preposterous bogosity not because of honestly reasoned skepticism but merely out of a truculent “If them gol-durn lib’ruls are for it, I’m agin it!” ”
In the 60ies, American Cultural Marxism (as propagated by Herbert Marcuse) had the great idea that logic itself was an oppressive tool used by capitalism to exploit the masses.
Since that time, it’s a safe bet that when a liberal says “X is true”; it is nothing of the kind. Therefore the instinctive reaction of the American right proved to be the correct reaction.
Tucci78 says:
August 30, 2013 at 2:00 pm
“In this last, Hayek was speaking of what we know today as political libertarianism. ”
Oh, and the socialists are currently trying fervently to steal that label for themselves. Look around, you will find more and more examples of people calling themselves “left wing liberatarians” or somesuch. In five years it will be the new job title of every socialist and communist on the planet so you better plan what you will call yourself then. The journalists will do their best to redefine the label for the hard far out loonie left.
European Pirate Parties the prime example.
At 2:53 PM on 30 August, DirkH had replied to my misgivings about American “conservative hawkishness” on the subject of the AGW fraud with:
The problem with that “instinctive reaction,” however, is that it really is just about completely instinctive – hell, almost reflexive – and just about never predicated upon sound reasoning.
Such allies are stomach-churningly unreliable, and if that weren’t enough, such conservatives are (as I’d mentioned) impelled or constrained by no regard whatsoever for the unalienable individual human right of each person to go hellbound in his own handbasket.
They’re foursquare in favor of aggressive, intrusive, expensive, and draconian government as long as those who govern adhere to policies of ordination in accord with “social” conservatives’ Mrs. Grundy drive to do their neighbors to death “for your own good!”
At 2:58 PM on 30 August, DirkH had observed:
This is why L. Neil Smith’s statement of the non-aggression principle as the defining characteristic of libertarianism is of such utility as to be considered essential.
Can anyone reading here imagine a political (and therefore inescapably authoritarian thuggish “send in the government goons!”) socialist foreswearing the initiation of force against his victims?
Er, “beneficiaries of social justice”….
If they want to pass themselves off as “libertarians,” ask ’em about their stance on the unalienable, civil, and constitutionally protected individual human right of every man, woman, and responsible child “to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon – rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything – any time, any place, without asking anyone’s permission.”
They’ll herniate and hemorrhage and choke to death on their own blood first.
@tucci78 –
Your experience with “conservatives” must be quite different from mine. I am aware that some people who call themselves “conservative” behave as you suggest, but in my experience these are the exception, not the rule. Those people no more deserve the title of “conservative” than leftist authoritarians deserve to be called “liberal.” My conservative friends oppose CAGW for the same reasons that all of us posters here do, not because it’s a “liberal” meme, but because it makes no scientific or economic sense.
I’m not sure that even the “abrupt change” point applies – I and most of the people I associate with share your impatience (if I read you correctly) with social injustice, racism, institutionalized poverty, excessive religious zeal, dishonest business practices, and want something done about them pronto. They want quick action against some of the more destructive memes, including CAGW, mostly pushed (but not entirely so) by liberals: excessive taxes (yes, also self-proclaimed “conservative” Republicans like Boehner and McConnell), high energy costs, excessive regulation of business, encroachment on Constitutional rights, and passive foreign policy in a dangerous world.
If one is truly libertarian one must be prepared to defend freedom at all levels, including by military force or civil disobedience, and including on the one hand, against CAGW alarmism, and on the other, from foreign aggression (with which, incidentally, the CAGW meme is intimately related, and is actually a dimension thereof).
The terms “right” and “left” and to an equal extent “liberal” and “conservative” have become so confounded as to have lost their true meaning for many people. The left today is mostly reactionary, looking back nostalgically to the days of failed socialist systems (pre-Thatcher Britain at best, Mao’s China at worst) , authoritarianism and crony capitalism, and is anything but “liberal” in the classic sense; the far right similarly hypocritically contradicts conservative principles (i.e., limited government) by its own sort of aggressive government interventionalism, such as in the case of reproductive rights.
If I say someone is characterized by old money, authoritarian impulses, the expectation that the hoi polloi shall bow and scrape, the making of rules that do not apply to oneself, the practice of a corrupt corporate-statist business model – who am I describing? Al Gore!
(and a good many of the other CAGW alarmist types, besides, getting rich off government “research” grants and patronage from people like George Soros and Teresa Heinz Kerry)
At 3:47 PM on 30 August, Chad Wozniak had responded to my earlier comment with:
Probably. I’m a physician, a member of a profession which is almost overwhelmingly conservative both politically and socioculturally, both by selection and by virtue of our various experiences with the pure lying malignantly stupid hatefulness of government at all levels, with the absolutely uniform quality of being highly educated in the sciences, and I have found effectively zilch in the way of sound knowledge about the crippled conjecture of adverse AGW among my colleagues and professional correspondents.
It’s not that they’re incapable of understanding the subject. It’s simply the principle of rational ignorance in operation.
Now, if you can’t get medical doctors to oppose the crippled conjecture of CO2-“forced” AGW on the basis of its blatant intrinsic untenability but only because it’s being pushed politically by the rankest, most odious, most utterly evil “Liberal” fascist Prominenten, there has to be some appreciation of how conservatives educated predominantly in the squishy crap (not to mention the rank-and-file Joe Lunchbox types) are even less likely to absorb the particulars familiar to those of us frequenting sites like WUWT on the basis of scientific literacy incompatible with buying the quackery of the “climate consensus.”
Again, possibly so. Your social and cultural context is doubtless different from my own. Which one of us, I wonder, has accessed a sampling statistically representative of the species “American conservative” as a whole?
I doubt that you (and most of the conservatives with whom you associate) share my perception of the cause of “social injustice…institutionalized poverty…dishonest business practices” et al., which is government intervention in the economy, sharp focus upon the currency debauchment and other politicized debilitations of marketplace functions in a division-of-labor economy that must be free of coercive interferences in order to operate with any prospect of viability, much less effectiveness.
Matters such as “racism” and “excessive religious zeal” are (as they have always been) perfectly self-correcting as long as government thugs don’t protect the bigots and religious whackjobs from the consequences of their own stupidity and bloody-mindedness.
We don’t need lunch counters forcibly integrated by way of “civil rights” laws. We need the owners of lunch counters refusing service to people on the basis of cutaneous melanin content going down the tubes by way of unprejudiced competing service providers bleeding them of custom until they’re bankrupted.
A real conservative does not “want quick action against some of the more destructive memes, including CAGW” of the “Liberal” fascisti, but rather the removal of all taxpayer-funded government support for the Cargo Cult Science charlatanry behind climate catastrophism.
Cut off those grant-sucking slimeballs’ “Big Science” money and the confabulatory crapola dries up and dies. A cult doesn’t survive (much less continue to burgeon) when its high priesthood is reduced to banging drums on streetcorners for pennies.
Addendum to previous message: Al Gore as the archetypical “liberal” of today, and also fitting the classic definition of rightwing.
Tucci78 says:
August 30, 2013 at 4:22 pm
????
Rather, ONLY today’s liberal-socialist-extremists (who ARE in the of today’s governments) are “foursquare in favor of aggressive, intrusive, expensive, and draconian government as long as those who govern adhere to worldwide policies in complete accord with (the socialist’s drive to do their neighbors to death “for their own good!”
The ONLY people worldwide who do support freedom, innocent life, and liberty are those you apparently condemn. The rest? All in today’s “favored” government favor death, imprisonment, banishment or firing to those they oppose politically.
/politics. Please
In response to my correct characterization of normative American conservatives as being foursquare in favor of aggressive, intrusive, expensive, and draconian government as long as those who govern adhere to policies of ordination in accord with “social” conservatives’ Mrs. Grundy drive to do their neighbors to death “for your own good!” at 5:08 PM on 30 August we have RACookPE1978 attempting without support to handwave away these robustly reliable characteristics of politically down-your-throat (and in-your-bedroom) Red Faction drug warriors, womb-guards, prayer-pushers, Comstock-ian fapper-bashers, and otherwise Pecksniffian stalwarts so intoxicated by their own conception of Ordnung that they’re perfectly happy to send SWAT squaddies to break in the doors of their neighbors’ houses at the least little suspicion of pharmaceutical or sexual heresy:
Uh-huh. Yeah, sure.
@tucci78 –
As you say, the non-aggression principle is essential to libertarianism – and to liberty. It is central to the agreement to disagree that is a fundamental requirement of free and democratic societies. Coercion has no place in a free society beyond the restraint of criminal or otherwise unwarrantedly aggressive actions. However, there are situations in which some coercion is necessary to preserve liberty, to stop coercion by other entities or persons. Restraining criminals and resisting the acts of would-be tyrants or foreign aggressors necessarily involves coercion of the offenders. And since the CAGW crowd have demonstrated their criminality and their aggression against a free society from both within and without, it is quite consistent with the non-aggression principle to defend against their transgressions. And if they cannot be reached by reason and facts, coercion in some form is the only alternative.
The fundamental fallacy of pacifism is that it leads to coercion – and violence – far greater than is involved in resisting coercion and violence by others. From a moral standpoint, the greater evil is in failing to resist, not in resisting. Therefore, we should apply every means available to us of coercing the CAGW crowd into backing off their agenda, which I itself pure coercion.
At 5:16 PM on 30 August, Chad Wozniak had succumbed to the fallacious premise that the non-aggression principle makes pacifists of American libertarians when in fact all it does is make them anti-imperialists insofar as foreign relations go. Mr. Wozniak had written:
Not really. Deadly force has no role in a free society – “democratic” be damned – except in retaliation against the initiation of aggression. Just as modern American conservatives are foursquare in favor of using Officer Friendly to ram their “morals” down the throats of their neighbors, libertarians are adamantine about the unalienable individual human right to keep and bear arms.
Anywhere, any type, any time. No “permission” or other government infringement whatsoever.
That’s a peculiar kind of “pacifism.” One which admits the premise that the best way to secure peace is to ensure that aggressors know that their peaceable prospective victims are armed and eager to kill them. Pour encourager les autres as well as in the immediate abatement of public nuisance.
Can you call that “restraint”? Hm. Of a kind, I suppose….
Again, no. It involves retaliation. Pre-emptive deadly force does nothing to “preserve liberty,” and may be said to “stop coercion by other entities” only if one presumes that the agency to which the exercise of the American citizen’s unalienable individual right to the use of deadly force in retaliation has correctly discerned the prospective malefactors who intend to undertake said “coercion.”
(Which does seem a helluva lot like arresting, prosecuting, and incarcerating every male capable of an erection on the premise that he might have thoughts about committing forcible rape, but on an international scale, doesn’t it?)
Considering that the people upon whom American conservatives are relying for the perpetration of such pre-emptive “coercion” are government employees, and that the track record of government employees with regard to intelligence, perspicacity, cupidity, efficiency, veracity, accountability, resistance to corruption, and overall reliability is what we’ve all come to know and appreciate….
Yeah, right.
Oh, it’s “the only alternative,” is it? So we’ve already succeeded in terminating the “Big Science” government research grants upon which the Cargo Cult Science fraudsters rely for their influence and prosperity? We’ve obliged our government thugs-in-office to demand hard proof (as in verified evidence) supporting the CAGW charlatans’ “policy recommendations”? The various corps of Inspectors General battening on the federal and state payrolls have conducted investigations of the knowing utterance of falsehoods in the past grant funding applications signed and submitted by the members of “Mike’s Hockey Team”? We’ve already gotten the federal fuel ethanol requirements abolished?
Seems that we’ve yet to need “coercion in some form” when dealing with “the CAGW crowd.” One doesn’t shoot a three-card monte dealer between the eyes to keep him from fleecing you. You just quit playing his game.
Again, what hoplophile libertarian is proposing a course of action which can be described as “failing to resist”?
In the matter of foreign policy – and foreign aggressors – let me recommend from a recent book on libertarian policy positions the chapter concerning “Defense,” from which I quote:
(Those reading here might like the chapter on “Global Warming” in that book as well.)
Tucci78 says:
August 30, 2013 at 4:40 pm
“If they want to pass themselves off as “libertarians,” ask ‘em about their stance on the unalienable, civil, and constitutionally protected individual human right of every man, woman, and responsible child “to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon – rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything – any time, any place, without asking anyone’s permission.” ”
You don’t understand. They will claim and redefine the word as meaning social justice and the creation of the socialist man (by the usual, unspoken means). And that’s that. Case closed. Anyone pointing to the old definition will be defined as a right wing fringe extremist. Jimbo Wales’ big book will be rewritten accordingly.
Regarding “Liberal”/socialist statists attempting to false-flag themselves as “libertarians,” I had earlier advised:
…at 5:42 PM on 30 August, DirkH had responded:
Ah, but I emphatically do understand. Are you attempting to say that one of these “social justice” smarmers – seeking “the creation of the socialist man” – are ever going to voice hearty support for the exercise of their prospective victims’ unalienable right to the ownership, carriage, and operation of weapons suitable to rest the forcibly coercive imposition of socialism? Ever?
Heavens to Mises, but the first thing any of these “socialist man” slugs lunge for is victim disarmament.
Er, “gun control.” That’s what they’re calling it this week, right?
Tucci78 says:
August 30, 2013 at 4:22 pm
“The problem with that “instinctive reaction,” however, is that it really is just about completely instinctive – hell, almost reflexive – and just about never predicated upon sound reasoning. ”
When you are arguing against an opponent who openly stated that he does not like logic and does not use logic then your best bet is to assume that he’s wrong. It’s the Null hypothesis in that case. A model with negative predictive skill is useful in a way.
In response to my observation that modern American conservatives, in opposing “Liberal” AGW yammerers as an “instinctive reaction” only because the people uttering the yammer are “Liberals”…
…we have at 5:45 PM on 30 August DirkH writing (in toto):
…which kinda does nothing to comfort anyone about the reliability (much less the effectiveness) of the average political conservative – emphatically the religiously-motivated traditionalist “social” conservative – with regard to these alleged allies’ performance on the intellectual battleground against the flim-flam artists of the great CAGW caterwaul.
It’s not so much that the run-of-the-mill conservatives (TEA Party or otherwise) are “wrong” on the flailing fraudulence of anthropogenic global climate change but that they’re right for the wrong reasons.
Reminds me entirely too goddam much of certain medical students of my experience who had arrived at correct diagnoses and/or therapeutic recommendations but by way of hideously incorrect appreciations of both the pertinent clinical picture and/or the pertinent standard of care.
You literally do not know what the hell they’re going to do next. Do you really want them on your hospital service?
Or on your side in a debate?
Well, this is really a Marshal MacLuan moment here at WUWT.
Don’t forget, we have all the MSM plus the fringe (like Rush, Alex Jones, etc) plus the good old Internet (at ever increasing speed) to float your boat.
Andy Warhol must be grinning like the Cheshire cat.
Enjoy it all, singularity approaches!
Forgot to put this in:
pat says: “They remind me of Muslim fanatics.”
Bin Laden said, “all the industrial states” are to blame for climate change.
They are like two peas in a pod
“Socialist libertarian” is an oxymoron, as exposed below:
One of the late, great Breitbart’s brightest moments.
@tucci78: –
Actually, your reference to total defunding of chartlatanism (such as CAGW “research”) coincides exactly with what my conservative acquaintances want, and want now, not tomorrow. They would agree that government meddling in the economy, which includes its social programs and their effects, is the chief cause of poverty and hardships. But I know of no one personally who would subscribe to the sort of religious bigotry you describe, or seek to force their opinions or beliefs on others. I know of such people, but I’ve met enough people in my 66 years on the planet to be quite sure they are the exception, as I’ve said.
Government’s role should be strictly to protect rights, both against itself and against those who won’t play fair (CAGW alarmists among them). There is no question that there are acts of discrimination – the market won’t stop these, not in real time at any rate, especially when you consider that people all too often act in other than their own interest – and other abuses which government must step in to prevent and redress, and one can view these as denials of opportunity – freedom of opportunity being also essential to liberty; But government should also be kept as small as is possible to perform these functions; if this is not done, it inevitably becomes abusive. This is generally agreed upon by all of the basically tolerant, if firmly believing, conservative people that I know. And the CAGW meme is a violation of this principle, and offers many examples of abuses by governments.
I’m in process of writing a trilogy – a set of three novels – in which poverty is eliminated through education with an emphasis on economics, education is free to prepare for all professional, managerial and technical (i.e., trades) occupations alike, everybody does one or the other, goes to work at a well-paying job from the git-go and has a pension account which grows to enable early retirement without a cent of public monies expended. Pensioners do the low-paying service work, which involves no sacrifice because they already have pensions equal to their last pay when working – makes services cheap without impoverishing the service providers. No income taxes, minimal regulation, a stronger Bill of Rights than our own. And incidentally, it’s set on a fictional plant where there is 10 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere on an otherwise very Earth-like world, with resultant abundant growth of crops, forests, etc. AND NO RUNAWAY WARMING.
I’d like to think that such a world would be possible here on Earth if only people would behave themselves – and not dispose themselves to fantasies like CAGW that can do so much harm. And CAGW alarmists certainly are NOT behaving themselves – they’re representative of a broad stratum of people who act on larcenous, perverse, self-destructive or simply destructive motives.
At 9:05 PM on 30 August, Chad Wozniak had written:
As I’d said, your encounters with avowed conservatives may well be entirely at odds with my own. We do not know which of us has had experiences genuinely reflective of the statistical norm among these critters. The religious whackjobs, however, do seem to proliferate both online and in my little patch of flyover country. Possibly my diagnostic “catch” is the result of sensitivity tuned by a watchful expectancy of the pathology.
Egad. Or, as we Sicilians like to say, Oy, gevalt! The armed thugs of an institution with a long and sordid record of corruption and murderous aggression are supposed to protect individual human rights “both against itself [emphasis added] and against those who won’t play fair.”
By the way, who gets to define “fair”? The government thugs?
If these are the genuine appreciations of political philosophy among American conservatives, then there’s no argument that they’re not statists as authoritarian as their colleagues on the other side of the specious “Right/Left” spectrum.
As I’ve observed, the purpose of government is not protection except as a secondary outcome. This is supported by the many “hold harmless” statutes in state and federal codes which specifically excuse government thugs from responsibility for protecting the private citizen’s life and property.
If you hire Brink’s to transport your store’s receipts to the bank, they are responsible for the safety of your valuta from the moment they receive it to the moment they have a similarly responsible officer of the recipient bank sign for the shipment.
The police officer munching a donut in the cruiser outside your establishment’s door? A coterie of kleptomaniac Cub Scouts could pilfer every Federal Reserve note and cupronickel slug from your place of business before that flatfoot’s sugar-glazed eyes, and you have no surety that he’d even get a mild letter of reprimand in his personnel jacket for his failure to act.
What we – the sovereign citizenry – delegate to the malevolent jobholders of government is the exercise of our unalienable right to break things and kill people in retaliation against those who aggressively violate our lives, our liberties, and our property.
Note that the words are “delegate” and “exercise,” meaning it’s understood that in so doing, we do not forswear our own actions in defense and retaliation.
Also, it’s not up to those government thugs to decide whether or not anybody has or has not agreed to “play fair” because rights don’t depend upon but rather dictate the rules of play. Always and always and always, the purpose of government (if legitimate purpose can be said to exist for government) is not to make anybody “play fair” but rather that rights be enforced, whether the victim of rights violation is in any condition to manage retaliation or not.
Think of government as a sort of insurance policy, inasmuch as it works (when it works) only after the fact. It doesn’t keep you from getting whacked, but it does give everybody a little bit of confidence that the guy who’d whacked you is going to get clobbered in response. Maybe even corpsified himself.
Remember: when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
Like hell it is. Just where in the name of Procrustes did you get this “freedom of opportunity” crap? D’you somehow conjure that it springs from the unalienable individual right to liberty of action? Does the negative right to your own freedom of thought and speech and action somehow constitute an imposition upon other people to do business with you against their will?
Gad. One problem with people who conceive themselves to be conservatives is that they still bear the cicatrices of schooling structured by “Liberal” fascists. Takes a heap of genuine learning to break past that mental scar tissue, and as a reliable rule, vanishingly few conservatives have made the effort.
Those who have, y’see, become libertarians.
Those “acts of discrimination” are expressions of other people’s freedom of choice. They choose to prefer doing business with people much like themselves because it’s easier to trust such folks. They choose not to truck or barter with folks who bear the appearance or behavioral hallmarks associated in their minds with unreliability or other adverse qualities.
People always discriminate, whether they announce it as policy or do it only in petto. It’s a simple, unavoidable characteristic of human nature, and legislating against human nature is supposed to be something only “Liberal” fascists are arrogant enough and stupid enough to attempt.
So these are the sentiments and practices of conservatives? And they’re supposed to be different from the “Liberals” in precisely…what way?
Of course, the libertarian has reference to the premise that the right size for government is one that can be dragged into the bathroom and drowned in the tub.
As you explore this premise, I strongly suggest you examine the Freehold series of novels published by Michael Z. Williamson since 2004.
Every writer should be aware of prior art.
Tucci, you ignorant slut. Being right for whatever reason is better than being wrong. Rather than being so self righteous that only pure bloods can inhabit the ratified air around your declarations, you would be better served by trying to understand those you disagree with but come to same conclusion by different means. Have you not yet learned that liberals are so wrong so often that betting against them is the smart choice? Or are you just a social narcissist that can’t stand the possibility that morality exists outside your brain?
At 11:13 PM on 30 August, Mark Besse (@MarkB1205) posts:
To paraphrase Bill Engvall, “Here’s your [/sarc] tag.”
The appreciation of flaming stupidity, malevolence, and error among “Liberals” is well-understood, but we gotta grant the possibility of a “stopped clock” moment every now and then among these yups. Without intention, it seems, the “Liberal” stumbles from his slough of filth to track his smelly hooves over solid ground, and were we to rely entirely upon nothing more than the robust stereotype of “Liberal” malice and rottenness for judgement of the positions they espouse, we would risk – rarely, but undeniably – damning that which turns out to be not damnable.
We may trust, but we must verify.
Similarly, when it comes to conservatives, the fact that they’re more often right than are “Liberals” (which sure as hell ain’t that hard) should never disguise the fact that embracing such folk as best buddies is a practice fraught with peril.
You may find the top of the barnyard dungheap an elevation superior to that of the pastureland surrounding, but employing it to emplace a surveyor’s benchmark ain’t exactly a good idea.
@tucci78 –
I know of the Williamson books. Mine are nothing at all like them; this part of the context in mine is subordinate, really only incidental, to the story lines in them. Also, you appear to misinterpret many of the things I say about conservatives – and I’d be rather inclined to agree with Mark Besse, above, concerning your attitude in general (minus the epithet).
At 11:23 PM on 30 August, Chad Wozniak writes:
Oh, you’ve made it clear that your planned works are nothing like Williamson’s Freehold (2004) et seq. I’d recommended that series – emphasis on the first novel – because the author approaches the hypothetical establishment of a polity with much more thoughtful reflection upon the relationship between society and government (particularly when it comes to political economics) than have you in your summary:
What you’re doing, y’see, is empowering government thugs to make all the critical economic decisions which government thugs are historically really goddam incompetent to do, as has been repeatedly demonstrated and as had been thoroughly examined in Ludwig von Mises’ seminal work, Socialism: An Economic and Social Analysis (1922).
Specifically, you’re screwing the pooch with regard to the calculation problem. This is particularly remarkable inasmuch as you claim to be a conservative rather than a socialist while at the same time envisioning a planetary polity operating (if it might be able to operate at all) in the strangling grip of thuggish government dirigisme devoid of any real market mechanisms to guide the allocation of human effort and material resources.
This is no “emphasis on economics,” but rather the abolition of economics in favor of hammering “top-down” ordination. Who decides what what kind of “education is free” and suited “to prepare [each particular victim] for all professional, managerial and technical (i.e., trades) occupations alike,” anyway? Who are supposed to be so omniscient, so omnipotent, so infallible, so omnibenevolent?
Not to say anything about whence cometh the generous pensions for your “Pensioners” who “do the low-paying service work, which involves no sacrifice because they already have pensions equal to their last pay when working.”
Ever heard the old expression “Ex nihil, nihil fit”?
So you’re gonna have a central bank (or some other source of Federal Reserve-style fiat currency) to just conjure that spending power out of thin air? And how do you guarantee that your “Pensioners” are physically and mentally fit for that “low-paying service work” when so many of us old folks creak with osteoarthritis, sag under the effects of endocrine and other metabolic derangements, and instantiate Dr. Alzheimer’s diagnostic expertise in terms of mentation?
Have you given any thought to child labor yet? That’s a resource much leveraged in conservative polities like Castro’s Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
If your trilogy is skiffy (“sci-fi”), I suppose you can posit a race of super-benevolent hyper-intelligent purple space squid or something, but the critics are gonna jump all over you for a Deus ex Cosmos, I guarantee it.
Ah, but I “appear to misinterpret many of the things [you] say about conservatives.”
Or not.
Most likely not.