I’m a free-trader. . . . I’m very libertarian. I’m working on a book called The Libertarian Democrat. . . . I like to make a lot of money.
Like many bad ideas, libertarianism is based on a simple and attractive idea:
People should have a right to do what they wanna do as long as they don’t bother the rest of us.
So, everyone’s a libertarian, right? And, maybe that simplistic slogan is what Markos means when he says he’s “very libertarian.” But I don’t think so. Because for libertarians with money the above quote is almost always greedily transformed into the following:
It’s moral and right for rich and poor to pay the same income tax percentage.
The above is, of course, why libertarianism (and its associated ‘freedom’ doctrines, laissez-faireism and ‘free trade’) is a lavishly funded and therefore major political force in the U.S. Nope my weed smoking fiends/friends, it ain’t its stance on dope.
Libertarianism is, after all, the root of the disastrous Milton Friedmanesque American (and WorldBank/IMF-sponsored global) libertarian and ‘free trade’ economic policies of the last 30 years or so, which have both stagnated the U.S. economy and massively redistributed wealth up to the top 20, 10 and especially 1%.
Heck, we should’ve known, because libertarianism (when it was called ‘liberalism’) was also the root of the laissez-faire economic policies that led both to the Great Depression and to Hoover’s do-nothing response to it. But no problem, that didn’t stop Milton from giving the ‘free the rich’ philosophy a rebirth indecently soon thereafter. And it doesn’t stop the ahistorical Kos either.
So laissez-faireism/libertarianism refuses to die because it’s where rich people and their wannabes are at. And for those like Markos who feel it is their upper middle class birthright (see pic above of the Markos family hotel/resort in El Salvador) to be in the top 10 or 1%, redistribution up is not a problem but a bigger pot of gold at the end of their self-righteous rainbow.
Note especially the reasoning here, where Markos’s immediate rationale for switching away from the Republican party was a feeling that the party rabble (I mean the Christian fundamentalists) were taking it away from the traditional “I got mine” business (I mean ‘libertarian’) Republicans:
When you were younger you were a Republican. Why the flip-flop?
The rise of the Christian Coalition in the late ’80s and early ’90s. The increasing authoritarian streak versus the libertarian side. . . .
Kos: ‘Ah the golden Reagan years, before the trailer-park Christians got uppity & demanded something for their Republican votes.’
Further insight into Markos Moulitsas’s Reagan love is here (emphasis added):
Moulitsas’ family was upper-middle-class in a country with virtually no middle class, and so had little sympathy for attempts to overthrow the corrupt ruling party. “I’m still the family communist,” he says. At the time, though, Moulitsas was politically in line with his folks. The family fled back to Chicago when Moulitsas was nine, and he became a fanatical supporter of Ronald Reagan (who backed El Salvador’s government as part of his anti-Communist strategy), even working as a Republican party precinct captain in high school.
Or look here, where you need to infer the (19th century ‘survival of the fittest’) meaning of ‘liberal’ that Markos wants to revive:
You’re perceived by the mainstream press as very liberal. Do you consider yourself a leftie?
People are hung up on this left/right thing, which is completely ridiculous and stupid. I’m not a traditional liberal in any sense. I’m very libertarian. I’m working on a book called The Libertarian Democrat. . . . I speak of myself as a liberal — but as a way to try to bring the word back and reclaim it. . . .
And so, inevitably, Markos allies with the libertarian and lavishly funded by the rich Cato Institute (He is a well-paid contributor to Cato Unbound).
The Cato Institute effort most important to its wealthy backers is its facts-be-damned promotion of unregulated trade. Its latest counterfactual abomination is reported by Paul Craig Roberts in Cato, Trade and Outsourcing, Blinded by Ideology. A new Cato report – “Thriving in a Global Economy: The Truth about US Manufacturing and Trade” – writes Roberts, “confuses a company’s offshored products with its import competition and wrongly concludes that US companies with the most import competition are the companies that are thriving.”
So Roberts rewrites what the Cato-developed facts actually should conclude:
“Revenues, profits, output, and value added rose the most for industries that offshored manufacturing, and they rose the least for those industries that produced their output domestically.”
And adds:
Obviously, corporations that arbitrage labor and replace their US employees with less expensive foreign labor are going to enjoy greater growth in profits and value added.
Roberts notes, by the way, that offshoring jobs is not just a problem for displaced US manufacturing employees: “Princeton economist and former Federal Reserve vice chairman” Alan Blinder states that offshoring will also eventually axe “30 to 40 million high-end US service sector jobs.”
In fact, says Roberts, here’s the ‘free trade’ problem in all its gory:
Every job that does not require a “hands-on” presence can be offshored. Charles McMillion and I have pointed out for years that the nonfarm payroll jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the US economy can only create net new jobs in domestic non-tradable services. . . .
The Cato report does not acknowledge that the financial prosperity of US capital is at the expense of US labor. The report does not explain how an $800 billion trade deficit can be closed when domestic corporations face powerful incentives to offshore . . .
The financial prosperity that US corporations are enjoying from offshoring increases the US trade deficit and makes American consumers increasingly dependent on imports. In 2006 (the most recent annual data) the US trade deficit in manufactured consumer durable and nondurable goods was 3.4 times greater than the US trade deficit with OPEC. The US “superpower” has a massive trade deficit in consumer manufactured goods and even has a deficit in capital goods, including machinery, electric generating machinery, machine tools, computers, and telecommunications equipment.
The well-funded Cato Institute pundit, or a DNC Democrat like Markos Moulitsas, must not see when “the profit motive becomes disconnected from the general welfare.” Even when the basic economic problem stares us straight in the face:
Today the profit motive causes capitalists to create job opportunities and GDP in low-wage foreign countries instead of their own.
What do we do about this? We re-regulate trade, like our government did during America’s golden age of economic growth, 1947 to 1973. But the solution will have to be over “I’m a free trader” Markos Moulitsas’s dead body, apparently.
Also at http://politicalfleshfeast.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=33300D6440AB400A579AB1CF6A632D27?diaryId=789
One can only wonder if Markos is an avid BMT reader.
i think he prefers Fleshfeast.
Probably isn’t into that whole sins of the father thing either
I’m working on a book called The Libertarian Democrat. . . . I like to make a lot of money.”
— Markos Moulitsas
No reaction yet from booman. Doesn’t the ideology of the most important ‘leftist’ in the blogosphere matter to you?
I reacted. You keep using the word libertarian. I do not think the word means what you think it means. At least, not when Markos uses it.
“very libertarian” is the phrase Markos keeps using to describe himself. I realize no one knows exactly what he means.
But I think he may means the issue positions that attracted him to Ronald Reagan and the pre-Christian right Republican party. Reagan, the man who lowered taxes on the top bracket to 30%. Good ol’ fashioned unapologetic “I got mine” Republicanism.
Maybe you should wait for the book rather than trying to read the tea leaves.
He’s for less obstacles to entry into small business, less corporate welfare, a hands-off policy to sexual morality and reproductive rights, gun rights, and, yes, free trade. Aside from the last, I agree with him. You want to go trash my father and uncle?
‘trash my father and uncle’ crap? There’s none of that in my ‘diary’.
He does have a father (uncle is not mentioned in the diary), who happens to have been a conservative Reagan Republican. Moulitsas took after his father for many years, up to and including voting Republican in the 1992 presidential election. He got disillusioned with the Republicans for explicitly stated, and very non-economic justice, reasons.
I’m simply telling the Moulitsas story and trying to find out what his ‘secret’ ideology. I don’t think we’ll find it in his next book.
Give me a break, the Hotel is in your diary, is it not?
The whole point is that his uncle is an important man in El Salvador and that Markos comes from a wealthy and powerful family, contrary to some claims he has made about not coming from money.
You are using his uncle to smear him. Fuck off.
to the Guernica magazine writer, apparently. That’s how we get this quote:
“The whole point is” that “Moulitsas’ family was upper-middle-class in a country with virtually no middle class…” just like the quoted passage says. And that’s it, as far as I’m concerned. It has nothing to do with an uncle, who I don’t know anything about.
So that’s you smearing Moulitsas as from “a wealthy and powerful family,” for example. Didn’t say that, don’t know if it’s true, it’s absolutely not related to what I’m getting at. In fact the article accepts the truth about his past as Moulitsas has told it.
Turn off the knee-jerk defensiveness, read on the lines only, stop smearing me, and fuck off yourself if that floats yer boat.
You read the Francis Holland piece you cited, right?
It’s about his uncle, and the hotel he owns, and the environmental damage caused by the hotel, and his uncle’s position in the government.
Holland has done other pieces suggesting complicity in death squads.
What you are basically saying is that Markos is worthy of criticism because he came from an upper middle class family with connections to a government that fought a war with a Soviet-backed guerrilla movement. Because Ronald Reagan backed the government, Markos’ family backed Reagan. When Markos grew up and became a man, and an independent thinker, he changed his mind about the GOP, not because he changed his mind about communists, but because he changed his mind about what the GOP really represents.
Here’s my point. Leave his family out of it. Leave the fact that he shared his family’s politics as a young man out of it. Criticize what he says, not where he comes from.
And pay attention to what he says, because he isn’t saying he agrees with the Libertarian Party. He’s making a much different argument.
I cited a Jules Siegel piece, which simply pastes the recent Markos interview.
My point is that knowing what Markos’s politics were in the late 80s and early 90s is relevant to figuring out what his politics probably are now. It is not criticism, it is detective work. His explanation for what moved him from Republican to Democrat is relevant to a discussion of his libertarianism and how pervasive it is in his politics. And the look back is inspired by his (at least seemingly) very explicit words in the interview a few days ago: ‘free trader’ ‘very libertarian’ ‘not a traditional liberal in any sense’.
Nonetheless, who knows what Markos Moulitsas’s politics are. Me, I’ve just grown very cynical since his and dailykos’s stand-down on Iraq funding (which I documented in late May 2007 Booman diaries). That is what is worthy of criticism, and exposure, and my impression is that since then Markos and dailykos have only grown more ‘shut the fuck up’ toward progressive issues and attitudes that make party elites uncomfortable.
Let’s just say it: the self-description, the class background, the recent inaction on and discomfort with essential progressive issues: it adds up to Bill Clintonian “DNC Democrat,” whatever strategic disagreements Markos may have with the former president.
… a government that fought a war with a Soviet-backed guerrilla movement.
Uh oh, this statement leaves out volumes about the civil war in El Salvador — US aid to the tune of $1,000,000+ per day, the Salvadoran government-backed murders of Archbishop Romero and the US church women, the Salvadoran Army being the largest supplier of arms to the insurgents via the corrupt and greedy officer corps, the US-trained death squads, and the horror of the Arena party and Roberto D’Aubuisson.
I’m very uncomfortable with the way you attempt to gloss over the horrors of the ruling elites in El Salvador. Your description of the conflict could be right out of a Reagan administration press release.
Kos deserves to be judged on what he has done, not his relatives.
The Salvadoran communists weren’t heroes either. There are very few clean hands in a society like that. In any case, Kos deserves to be judged on his actions.
I can hardly believe this diary is not he recommend list. It would be one thing if it were a careful deconstruction of something Kos said, or possibly a careful analysis of his impact on lefty blogosphere. But this diary is nothing but an angry smear based on the fact that Kos is prosperous and has dubious relatives.
Alice, my comments are regarding Booman’s characterization of the civil war in El Salvador.
I was active in the Central American Solidarity movement at the time, and the above comment misrepresents the nature of the civil war, and reinforces the Reagan administration’s rhetoric in aiding and supporting a repressive government in El Salvador.
I have no idea why Booman is writing such a misleading description of the conflict, but I cannot let his statement stand without a correction.
controls the biggest ‘progressive Democrat’ blog.
But coming to the conclusion that Markos is a DNC Democrat is a conjecture based partly on what he says and partly on his family and personal history. (Which of course doesn’t mean I’m ‘criticizing’ his family or person.) Basicallyl, I really really don’t think we figure out why Markos has done what he has done (for instance, his banning of the P side of the I/P debate or his blog’s stand down and whimper only when it was too late on the May Iraq funding by the Democrats), or where he is going simply by what he or his loyalists say.
Markos says now his hero is Archbishop Romero. Probably not the case in 1992.
No offense BooMan, but I just have to say that political FleshFeast is great. I have to laugh that a year ago the Frog Pond was the target for DKos. They loved to trash us without really knowing what we were about. Now it is FleshFeast and you are seemingly ok with that. Pretty ironic, eh?
For all of the old timers that haven’t heard yet, Political FleshFeast is a no-holds barred website with no admins and no banning and virtually no rules. Many past Boomers and Dkos’ers and MLW’ers are there. Humor is rampant and so are the flames. I’d give a link, but I am illiterate. Google it.
If you do a search over there for “Comments by kos”, you’ll probably understand the reference to his reading of fleshfeast better.
I’m just wondering how much longer it will be before marisacat starts noticing all the paid operatives on fleshfeast and how peeder faked his falling out with kos so he could set up a “butterfly net” site to catch all the banned users from the DK diaspora and distract them from what’s really going on… 🙂
who cares? anyone with some knowledge of the world knows those with the means to flee a civil war do so first. My upbringing forbids me to like communist, unless I want my ass kicked by all numerous close family members who served in Vietnam and Korea.
Because free trade is bad for most Americans. It’s bad for U.S. economic growth and helps redistribute wealth from the have-nots to the richest 10%. We need FDR-style Democrats to take back the party from the Bill Clintonians. Instead at the top of the pretend left is a Reagan baby Bill Clinton NAFTA free-trade Democrat.
Because libertarianism’s fundamental ‘where the money is’ doctrine, minimally tax the rich and upper-middle class, is a direct attack on the welfare of the rest of us. Is an increasingly wealthy and “hands off ‘my’ $$$ libertarian” Moulitsas the person the left wants owning its most well-read blog?
We need a lot more than that.
We need seigniorage reform.
Look that up. 😉 Eye opening, to say the least.
isn’t that like the “gold” standard that Nixon took us off. The US could only print the amount of money that it had stored in gold?
Kos libertarian?
King of the bans of people whose opinions don’t jive with the prescribed pablum of conventional “left”.
Shall we further seek to replace English as the official language and replace it with George Orwells doublespeak.
A ‘libertarian with money’ is someone who shouts, “I got mine, Jack, stay away from it!”
These kind of diaries sadden me.
Kos’ family is not an issue. This is America, people should be judged by what they do.
I can see criticizing someone for writing for Cato, but not the rest of it.
Daily Kos has made a major contribution to lefty blogosphere. It drives traffic and recognition for lefty blogoshere as a whole. Many people begin by reading Kos and move on to other blogs.
I don’t like Kos’ attitude and no longer read his blog, but these kinds of attacks are getting old.
and he is at the top of what you nonetheless call the lefty blogosphere. That’s the main point, sorry about “the rest of it.”
There is nothing wrong with making lots of money. Prosperity is a good thing.
The left needs to get past the idea that there is something wrong with money. That attitude has been holding back our movement for decades.
Bingo. Why is it that the left as a whole generally thinks that having money makes people somehow less pure, or bad, or wrong? I’ve never really understood why financial success seems to completely negate ‘leftness’ for some people.
+ free trade lover. That generally equals non-leftist. Read what Markos has said and, yes, look a little at his background.
I understood, and I agree, btw.
Sorry, I don’t suffer from an endless fascination with Markos Moulitsas; frankly, he’s just not that interesting.
I think we have bigger things to worry about.
How do you feel about it when MY prosperity comes about by sending YOUR job overseas to someone who will do it for 3 cents an hour?
who put a gun to fairleft’s head and forced him or her to post at Daily Kos.
Mebbe Kos ain’t the greatest, but he built a handy platform. I may not use it, but fairleft does.
That reminds me, ‘free trade lover’ + ‘very libertarian’ + money + censors mildly leftist opinion = what exactly? Lefty blogosphere?
anyone who considers the Minutemen the Leaders of the real left, should not be taken seriously as a progressive. It is time to start working for a veto proof Congress and Senate, and Democratic President named John Edwards.
http://fairleft.blogspot.com/2006/06/are-minutemen-leaders-real-left.html
Tell us all about. You’re a ‘libertarian democrat’ too? Got yours, don’t want Uncle Sam to get more than a flat tax 10% or so from ya?
I’m a Democrat that does not associate with hate groups such as the Minutemen.
What americanforliberty said.
They destroy poor people’s lives, and whole nations. “I got mine, Jack” Neo-Republicans are a hate group. Moulitsas associates himself with them, as do you in your defense of his ‘very libertarian’ ‘free trade’ self.
you know what? You’re a fucking idiot.
Don’t come here and insult people you know nothing about.
I don’t think you know the first thing about civil libertarians. Do you think the ACLU is a ‘I’ve got mine, Jack’ outfit? No? Then what the hell are you talking about?
What is a libertarian Democrat?
It’s someone that supports free speech, free assembly, freedom of religion, free enterprise, and civil rights. It’s someone that wants an equal playing field so that small businesses can get up and started without burdensome barriers to entry and without being crushed by corporate favoritism (like tax abatements for the new Home Depot). These are people fighting for YOUR rights against a government intent on intruding into your bedroom, your bank account, your email, and your phone calls. And you think they are just interested in paying low taxes.
You don’t know shit.
& in the thuggish style.
One question:
— Markos Moulitsas
No it wasn’t! There never was a correlation and that’s the foundation of modern thinking of the non-socialist left. Re-read Upton Sinclair lately? Corporations screwed the consumers of the poisonous products he wrote about a hundred years ago. Corporations needed to be heavily regulated 100 years ago, and the same today.
And also re-read the industrial revolution history of every advanced country with the possible exception of Britain. Smart, trade-controlling government policy forced corporations to do what was best long-term for the countries they were in, rather than what corporations always want to do, what is good for them (and generally not the vast majority) in the short-run.
I don’t believe the purpose of government is to enhance a free market and make it better and freer, as does Moulitsas and his closest in spirit ‘libertarian’ Democrat, Bill Clinton. The purpose of government in the economic sphere is to regulate the never-has-been-never-will-be-free market and its corporations so the results maximally benefit the vast majority. The left’s problem is that, not enhancing the free market, and it’s always been that way.
Have we, or have we not, undergone several decades of deregulation, delaborization, and increasing globalization?
In the past, corporations were American or German or Japanese. Now they are just corporations, with no real home and no fealty to any particular state. In the past, all military activities were carried out by the Armed Services, not Halliburton and Blackwater. In the past, we had a manufacturing base in this country, strong labor laws, and robust regulation.
We’re in a new world, and this new world makes it true that corporations no longer can be said to have much intersection of interest with the country as a whole.
This also has an effect on the concept of free enterprise. Any individual should be free to go into business without undue licensing fees or other onerous regulations…and with the expectation that the government won’t subsidize their competitors at their expense.
Yes, there should be labor laws, environmental laws, hiring practices, and the like. But these need to be reasonable and they need to be applied equally.
I really don’t think you have the slightest clue what you are talking about when you delve into economics or into libertarianism.
The Libertarian Party has their own specific platform. A Civil Libertarian is a totally different animal. And a Democratic Libertarian is really nothing different from a Civil Libertarian.
Free trade is an ideal, consistent with the ideal of free enterprise. It is not a dogma.
so they do the public good. Corporations are loyal to a usually short-run conception of themselves, as they always have been.
And yes Markos (and Booman?), I do have a “knee-jerk distrust of the free market.” It’s a distrust borne out by economic history. As I said, every large economy with one or two exceptions has not been a free market one. Especially when economies are mature they need to be regulated and directed toward the public good. Simply letting corporations be free to do what they wanna do you got the Chicago Stockyards, and/or you get the last 35 years or so of economic history. Which has been relatively stagnant and very anti-egalitarian compared to the 1947-1973 ‘golden age’.
The golden age that Reagan came to power to overturn/destroy. And that’s an aspect of Reagan that Moulitsas apparently still defends/appropriates.
the golden age was so golden if you were a person of color.
the era of the civil rights movement’s success story, of enormous economic and social progress by African Americans.
You’re right that there is, and never has been, a free market. The Libertarian party constantly complains about that fact. When you have corporate welfare and corporate bailouts, you have no free market. But that doesn’t mean much in this discussion.
If we are talking about civil liberties, we’re talking about your right to open up a lemonade stand without paying a $1000 fee, without having to provide a restroom for your customers, without having to compete with a corporation down the street that doesn’t have to pay property taxes…
That’s civil libertarianism. And that is what Markos is advocating. That is why he is so concerned about net neutrality. It’s why he identifies with the entrepreneurial spirit.
When he talks about libertarianism in a Democratic sense, he is talking about a confluence of interests. The Republicans turned out not to respect libertarians. They proved this through the printing of money, deficit spending, corporate welfare, steel tariffs, Terri Schiavo, the culture war…etc.
Democrats have totally different policies, and most of them line up with the libertarians. Where they differ, like on progressive taxation, the minimum wage, and aggressive regulatory oversight, there remain strong disagreements.
But the idea is the pry the libertarians away from the GOP and enlist their help in restoring our rights and our civil liberties. Progressives also tend to agree with libertarians on foreign policy…that it should be less unilateral, less interventionist, and less goddamn expensive.
manufacturing, these can be good things when part of smart, forward-looking economic planning. There’s been a massive Democratic Party intellectual capitulation (which Markos and many others (BTD?) are a part of) to ‘free market’ & ‘free trade’ economic thinking, in other words to neo-classical anti-Keynesian economic thinking. That Milton Friedman stuff is really bad for economies, it is inefficient in the sense of vastly underemploying and undercompensating people and underutilizing their skills, and it is particularly devastating for egalitarian distribution of income.
As I’ve said elsewhere, if only it was just about civil libertarianism, that would be great. But I don’t get that from what Markos has said in a variety of ways.
you’re like a parrot. I doubt Markos knows anything about Friedman and Keynes.
Look at economic activity in the absence of a corporation. Individuals creating goods and services and selling them at a profit. Where does liberty come into it? It comes in in licensing. It comes in zoning. It comes in in fees. It comes in hiring and workplace (OSHA) requirements. It comes in in taxation and cost of accountants. It comes in in any regulation related to that particular business.
Then consider what happens when the government gives preferential treatment to a competitor.
All of these things are potentially crippling, or unfair, or onerous to free enterprise.
That is where the heart of libertarianism intersects with economics. Markos combines those concerns, as a small businessman, with a concern for civil liberties.
It has nothing to do with progressivism, or conservatism, or free markets. It’s about liberty.
If you read his article, you’ll see that he makes a sharp distinction when it comes to corporations, which he considers the greatest threat to individual liberty and to small business. He wants them regulated hard.
So, this is all bullshit.
I don’t agree with him on political strategy and I much more concerned about civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and am definitely for a more radical progressive economic policy and universal health coverage. But you’re way off the mark when it comes to his libertarianism. On that, he and I are pretty close to agreement.
The love of free markets, ‘I want to make a lot of money’, ‘free trade’, the government getting out of the way of the small business owner, ‘I’m not a traditional liberal at all’, these are a collage of signals of Milton Friedman Democratism, DNC Bill Clintonism, Robert Rubinism and so on. The evidence of this orientation on Markos’s part is pretty voluminous, a lot of it in the article he wrote for Cato, which I’ve cited. IMHO.
The person you are quoting isn’t even Markos. Read the article. It’s quite good. And, contrary to what you are saying, it is very tough on corporations.
In fact, his argument, or pitch, to libertarians is that corporations are now more powerful that governments and only government can protect us from them.
You’re right but he emphatically agrees with the sentiment expressed there.
The following is even more telling:
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/10/02/markos-moulitsas/the-case-for-the-libertarian-democrat/
Is ‘our goal’ to promote and champion individual liberty and the free market?
And I the championing of inequality for those who ‘take advantage’ in the last half of the quote, it’s very. let’s say, Reagan era.
You quoted him. You didn’t see he approved of the quote, you said that he said it.
And what is he arguing there? He’s talking to libertarians and trying to explain his rationale for supporting crazy things like public education. He’s saying we have an obligation to provide everyone with equality of opportunity not equality of outcome.
What is there to criticize?
the free market and individual liberty, if we are progressives. It’s to fight for social democracy, justice, and progress, and greater economic and social equality. A progressive or leftist simply could not write Markos’s first sentence, unless they had a very DNC, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair understanding of what those terms mean.
speak for yourself. Individual liberty is the keystone of American life. Without it, income redistribution is meaningless.
You don’t see anything wrong with, first of all ‘the free market’ being one of the two goals, and then the only other one is ‘individual liberty’?
As I’ve said, we need democratic control over the markets, the hand of government should be light as possible but a ‘free’ market is and always has been bad for social welfare, equality, and economic growth. And ‘individual liberty’ must be balanced with the ‘promoting and championing’ of social justice and equality, which go unmentioned in the quote. We can’t just care about and champion only individual liberty and a free market if we’re progressives. Just doesn’t fit the definition.
Anyway, I think popular democracy is the cornerstone of American life, not ‘freedom’ (whatever Paul Harvey, John Wayne, Rambo and Ronald Reagan may have propagandized back in the 80s).
Goals vs. dogma.
Two different things.
Are you going to tell someone that they cannot sell their product to an overseas customer? Are you going to tell someone that they cannot buy a product that was produced overseas? What the hell right do you have to tell them that?
Well…under certain circumstances you might need to tell them that they have to pay a tariff. But you better have a really good reason. Once you start interfering in the right of free enterprise the burden is certainly on you to explain your rationale.
There are some things that the government should do itself, rather than relying on the free market to provide. But, again, you need a good reason.
The prejudice should always be on the side of non-interference in free enterprise. But the higher calling is ultimately the health of the nation, and there are times and industries that must be highly regulated.
But, again, the purpose of government is to safeguard liberty and to provide safety and opportunity to the citizens so that they can pursue liberty. Someone with no option has no liberty.
He is actually arguing that non-state corporations are inimical to liberty and that we need government to protect our privacy, our jobs, and our options for the predations of corporations.
Again, I don’t think you are actually hearing his argument at all.
phenomenon earlier. Your limited government thinking is just more evidence of how widespread it apparently is.
No, definitely the ideological ‘bias’ (of a rational progressive) should be toward what experience shows works best for society as a whole: the Keynesian, all-incomes-lifting-oriented, and mildly protectionist economic policies of 1947-1973. Just the historical record, no big burden of proof for government intervention against unregulated enterprise.
my ‘limited government thinking’ involves support for single payer health care. Again, I don’t think you know what these terms mean.
I don’t know what you want the government to do, but I’m quite sure I’d find it to be a police state.
Sweden is often tauted as THE ideal social democracy. Swedes themselves regard their economic system as a compromise between unfettered capitalism and communism, the result of which is a liberal-socialism in which all citizens benefit. Sweden never lost its liberal focus as a consequence.
As far as I can tell, Sweden has never been accused of being a police state. The government controls essential services and income is redistributed through a tax system, not much unlike our own until Kennedy lowered the top tax rate, which eventually continued under Reagan, who demonized minorities and the poor in order to rationalize his gifts to the rich. Bush of course outdid Reagan by giving the wealthy the lowest tax rates of all, only 15% on capital gains/dividends (the top 10% owns 85% of the stock market), while attempting to destroy our liberal-socialist programs.
Liberty is not threatened by government control of essential services. 50% of Swedes work for the government, 50% work in private industry. There is an 89% unionization rate in Sweden to protect income and its fair distribution, although that distribution is not equal.
So what is the difficulty with regulating the free market within contraints, contraints which prevent the wealthy from accumulating wealth in degree that would turn any country back into England during the Industrial Revolution, yes, the one which inspired Marx to offer a better way. The rich were essentially killing people for profit, including children who labored in their factories. They still kill people to a lesser degree when the alternative is reduced profits, i.e., dividends on their investments.
Crying liberty in the face of such gross income and wealth inequality, like demonizing “socialized medicine,” is a grand deception of those who support the “have-mores.”
Which is all to say, libertarianism sucks beyond belief for the poverty, misery, and death it is capable of engendering.
So FDR Democratism is ‘arguing for a police state’? I’m a Keynesian, like pretty much the entire Democratic Party pre Jimmy Carter. Now we have economics departments that teach nothing but Milton Friedman and call it ‘mainstream’ economics. Wasn’t part of Milton’s schtick equating rapacious unregulated capitalism with the cause of ‘human freedom’? Anyway, I think I know where you’re coming from.
Those were good years, those Keynesian years. But it didn’t matter, they weren’t good enough for the stockmarket, and the wealthy had a plan to fix that. And they were successful: when you allow corporations to suck profits out of the middle and bottom and hand them to the rich, that increases profits and raises stock prices. Whoopee for them; for rest of us, we’ve had economic stagnation and wealth distribution going completely and dramatically the wrong way.
and originally by Jason Schulman:
http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2007/10/12/16445/309/9#9
It resonates with what I’m writing about Moulitsas. Except that I think the commanding heights of both parties (which in fact behave like a single party with two wings squabbling over peripheral matters) are controlled by free-marketeer, upper-class libertarians.
Thanks. I totally get what you’re driving at Fairleft.
While I respect Kos and admire what he’s done (and if he can make a profit from it, more power to him), I do fear that his ideological bent and prominence is skewing the defintion of liberalism, progressivism and “The Left”. Kos’ views are framing the debate and the discourse around his perceptions and his experiences.
And his frame totally buys into the free market/free trade meme that has so predominated over the last generation.
It’s an ongoing struggle and requires the left to identify some ongoing funding or revenue producing entities that can help to support the intellectuals, writers and organizers that don’t reflexively buy into the free market/free trade meme.
Bowers’ and Stoller’s OpenLeft project is a good start but lacks critical revenue development opportunities.
Another choice quote, this time from the Gorman article (Conversation with an Atheist; Michael Harrington on Religion and Socialism)
I’m fine with Markos making a profit too from his website. But it’s a matter of incentive and degree. Anyone who starts making annual income in the top 20% (over about $90,000) should be pretty heavily taxed, to maybe 50% of income. And it should get much more severe in the top 10% (over $200,000 a year or so), 70 or 80%. Incentive to create great websites is fine, but excessive pointless incentive is just an excuse for greed. I don’t expect to find these traditional Democrat taxation ideas promoted on dkos anytime soon.
But one other point about libertarian orientation and dailykos. It would be nice if dailykos were regulated to the extent of being required to post, permanently, who it has banned and its reasoning for each banning, and be required to provide the banned ‘person’ a space to argue their case for why the banning is unjust or why the reasons for the banning are bullshit. A little light state regulation to advance transparency, free speech and social justice, but ‘libertarians’ of course won’t hear of it.
this is some of the stupidest shit I have ever read.
too true.
I disagree that this is stupid shit.
I don’t know what to think about it and fairleft, but I think an idea is being explored.
What are the roles of the blogs? Are there progressive blogs, liberal blogs, Democratic blogs and of course RW blogs. Who needs the blogs? What makes them vibrant and draws people to them
Also how does a person’s history affect the kind of blog he provides? and the types of conversations that emerge.
I don’t know that it all needs to be worked out in depth. However I know that I discovered the blogs last year and lurked at many of them.
I got quite intrigued with the energy generated by the Lamont campaign. It seemed to galvanize people all over the country.
However this year the presidential campaign has a very different flavor. I feel a struggle among the left bloggers on who to support and how to deal with Clinton.
I support Edwards because I do think he has the most progressive agenda. I haven’t been posting much on that since there doesn’t seem to be a place that really supports him on the blogs. There are diaries at Dailykos but kos himself is convinced the campaign is all but over. I have puzzled over that as to why he has been unable to be supportive of Edwards.
This diary gave me some food for thought. Our histories do impact our frames of reference.
I came here to check out what you mean by a progressive blog. And how is this different and who does it attract?
What kinds of conversations can develop. Can there be real dialog with an exchange of ideas and something new learned?
What kind of political advocacy can the various blogs and bloggers promote?
The diary provoked a lot of questions in my mind. I don’t see it as a real slam on Markos. I just see it highlighting the fact that he is not a progressive as many of us would define it. It doesn’t make him wrong but it gives pause to the idea that he represents progressives. On reflection, I don’t think he would claim it, but I do think some people, including me, had that expectation of him.
And I find it interesting that people are so quick to dismiss fairleft. I think he is trying to discern what being a libertarian Democrat means to the progressive agenda.
If you set the personalities aside, there’s an important concept being developed here.
I agree with all your points except one. This diary is not a stand alone diary. This is probably the eighth diary I’ve seen (most posted at My Left Wing) that deals with Markos’ family and suggests that he is some kind of phony. A great deal is made of the fact that he was raised by an anti-communist family, was originally a Republican, and that he once flirted with joining the CIA. Last I checked the CIA is part of our government, any many patriotic people work there. But for some, only a fascist would want to serve our country in such a capacity.
I’m frankly tired of this angle of attack.
Gimme a break! My essayis about reading Markos’s own words and exploring what libertarian probably really means to him. And it definitely cannot be minimized as ‘civil libertarian’. It’s economic, and I think it revolves around the following anti-history by Big Tent Democrat:
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2006/10/10/259/58227
The above is a heavily promoted (by the usual suspects) myth that BTD and Markos have bought into. From that we get ‘economic libertarian / free trade’ Democrats like Bill Clinton. Whose economic legacy is NAFTA, a stockmarket bubble, and more Republicanesque redistribution upwards.
What “efficiency of the market”? There’s nothing efficient about stagnation, which we’ve gotten with market dominant Milton Friedman economic policies. Smart government interventionist policies create better economic growth rates and we’ve known this since Keynes.
We need a government that intervenes in the economy to correct the cautious, short-term profit mentality and wrong way redistributive instincts that are natural to corporate capitalism and capitalists. We’ve been off the job for several decades. That’s because for way too many Democrats now — Bill Clinton, Markos and BTD at least — there’s a belief in an “efficiency of the market” that is instead disproven by the economic development history of nearly every large economy.
A lot of us think there is something rotten in Denmark, or the Daily Kos. Markos is not very tolerant & has a strong authoritarian streak, personality trait that most of us would not characterize as being compatible with the progressive mindset.
Markos’ background fills in the missing pieces.
Markos has chosen to become a public figure, & as such his family background becomes open for scrutiny, like it or no.
was much better and productive than over at fleshfeast.
or unfettered greed after 25 years. Whereas the social democracies of Europe and the English speaking countries have remained on a liberal-socialist track, since Reagan the US has moved toward greater and greater wealth and income inequality.
This 2002 study is from the Canadian Council of Social Development:
Twenty-Five Key Indicators of Social Development
———————————CANADA USA SWEDEN
INCOME AND POVERTY
JOBS
EMPLOYMENT SECURITY
SOCIAL SUPPORTS
HEALTH
CRIME
EDUCATION
CIVIC PARTICIPATION
25. Voter Turnout 56.2% 49.1% 83.2%
Unless otherwise indicated, data are from the OECD Social Indicators Database.
22.and 23. Data from International Adult Literacy Survey.
Fascinating data. On every factor the US is behind Canada and Sweden.
Lots to consider for public policy. This is why the presidential primary IS important.
Edwards is addressing many of these factors. And the msm is not discussing this information.