Salt City Sinner

posted 3/21/2013 by the Salt City Sinner Photo: AP Paul Mero has a freedom problem. And not a freedom problem in the sense that an alcoholic has a drinking problem. Modern conservatives have made out like bandits by exploiting metaphors and ideas that are deeply embedded in American culture -- concepts like freedom, liberty, personal responsibility, and individualism. During the Bush years, these linguistic tics took on a grim, ironic quality. Increasingly, they were deployed alongside other, older conservative idioms regarding patriotism, faith, and family as a smokescreen to cover concepts somewhat at odds with freedom: indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping, and torture (proud new American traditions that continue under President Obama to this day). I've   written before  about how an ideology -- any ideology -- is like a room in which conceptual furniture must be arranged. That's not my metaphor (although I wish I had thought of it first); I cribbed it...

posted 10/25/2012 by the Salt City Sinner Okay, let's get this out of the way first: I am NOT a libertarian, big L or small. I suppose you could consider me a civil  libertarian, as I support the maximum possible amount of personal freedom (i.e., free speech, an end to the "war on drugs," gun rights, etc.). However, the economic views of libertarians (end the welfare state, deregulate industries, lower taxes on corporations) are extremely repulsive to me, since they amount to the opposite of consumer advocacy and the mirror image of activism on behalf of poor, working class, and middle class people. My ideological relationship with libertarianism is complex. Any ideology consists of a subset of emphases. One of my favorite college professors of all time used the metaphor of a room that consists of a certain set of furniture: given said furniture and said room, different people arrange the furniture differently, placing greater emphasis on this or that aspect of...

Ah, Ron Paul. I can think of very few political figures who inspire such bat-$h!t, unwavering (and some would say myopic) devotion in his followers. It's a curious phenomenon, one I'm not sure I understand completely. Paul doesn't have the gift for oratory or good looks of Barack Obama, or the fiery, off-the-cuff populism of Chris Christie. Yet there they are, the "Paulites," at Republican events, at town halls, at protests, wearing their Guy Fawkes masks (lately and clumsily co-opted by #OccupyWallStreet), holding up signs clamoring for a "Ron Paul rEVOLution" (see, they put the backwards 'love' in revolution - which sounds kind of ominous to me, frankly). Even Ron Paul looks kind of confused and distressed by this sentiment The media also doesn't seem to know quite what to make of Paul (I'm actually watching Congressman Paul on Fox News Sunday right now - it's been a very strange program). Take today's Reuter's ...

Ron Paul is an unusual human being. He actually has quite a bit in common with Barack Obama in my opnion (hear me out): both men tend to serve as symbolic ciphers onto which extremely loyal followers, looking for a man of ideological purity and political benevloence, project their hopes. You can see this phenomenon in Obama's continued support in some sectors of the left that should, by all rights, be taking what the President has to say with a grain of salt considering the amount of money he has taken from Wall Street and the composition of his cabinet in terms of hunchbacked, black-hooded capitalist necromancers. Paul has the same "reality problems" with libertarians. Many economic libertarians (or classical liberals, or whatever they want to be called) love Paul's hard line stances on a variety of issues. From the gold standard – I used to play a drinking game in political discussions with libertarians where I would take a shot when the term “fiat currency” w...

"The Democrats want to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor, the Republicans want to transfer wealth from the unborn to the rich. They are the same disgusting species." - Anonymous friend of mine This quote jumped out at me the moment I saw it in a Facebook update regarding the recent credit rating downgrade that S&P dumped on the United States recently. My friend's initial comment on the downgrade was that the stock slide and credit downgrade are a response by "the Market" (his capitalization) to the US' deficit reduction plan, which he dismisses as "smoke and mirrors." The credit downgrade and stock mini-crash are worthy of their own posts - my interest was piqued by my friends statement at the top of this one, which was made in response to some statement about the free market, which this friend does not believe is being treated in a properly laissez-faire manner. I'm of the opinion that the Democrats do not, in fact, want to transf...

Via Andrew Sullivan , Freddie deBoer talks about Libertarianism and power: When libertarians argue endlessly about the tyranny of paying taxes and the poor, oppressed state of enormous, multinational corporations, while remaining consistently silent on the plight of the urban poor (on the material dimensions of their freedom), they reveal an ideological framework that is stunningly incapable of reflecting the world as it is rather than as ideal theory would prefer it. They have no vocabulary of power as experienced, so even if they were inclined to help those on the bottom, they would lack the understanding capable of doing such a thing. They have nothing to say on the issue. I'll go one step further. The reason why libertarians do not speak to these issues is not because they have nothing to say - perhaps it's because what they have to say is HORRIFYING. I remember getting into a discussion with a libertarian (a hard-core, Chicago School neoliberal economics nerd) about negat...

Ryan Avent posts a well-crafted critique of the libertarian CATO think tank's reality problems regarding global climate change: That is to say, confronted by a problem demanding solutions inimical to libertarian beliefs, libertarians were faced with the choice of reneging on their beliefs or turning their back on science. Tellingly, they chose the latter. One might think that’s a rather drastic decision, given the role scientific endeavors have played in delivering the material prosperity so dear to the hearts of the libertarian world, and one would be right. A belief system that cannot grapple with the fundamental reality of a situation is, quite simply, not a belief system worth having. If I were a part of a movement that demanded I not get out of the way of oncoming cars, and that challenged the conclusion of the fields of physics and biology that an impact between the car and my person would leave my person badly damaged, I would begin to suspect that this movement was maybe ...