Lame Duck Obama-Prelude to a Sea Change?

8 Comments

1. 

   Arthur Gilroy on September 8, 2013 at 2:16 pm

   

   Let us pray.

   AG

2. 

   The Voice In The Wilderness on September 8, 2013 at 7:56 pm

   Feral government indeed! Good term, I’ll have to remember it.

   What do you see anti-war Right and Left turning to? Surely not Libertarianism.

   • 

     Arthur Gilroy on September 8, 2013 at 10:36 pm

     Libertarianism might the be the seed point. All real mass movements change from way past their beginnings as the addition of many other points of view alter them. It’s the only mass movement other than DemRats + RatPubs that has a functioning political machine in place. Starting an entirely new party would take too long, I think, and taking over one of the two current parties is off the table. There has been too much corporate money poured into the two party fix system to allow any kind of real change.

     We shall see, soon enough. Things are already right near the breaking/boiling point.

     Watch.

     AG

     P.S. “Feral” was a mistype. It worked, so I used it. Sometimes mistakes lead the way. Bet on it.

     • 

       Marie2 on September 9, 2013 at 12:20 am

       Libertarians as the New Communists

       …
       Yes, liberty is a core American value, and an overweening state can be unhealthy. And there are plenty of self-described libertarians who have adopted the label mainly because they support same-sex marriage or decry government surveillance. These social libertarians aren’t the problem. It is the nihilist anti-state libertarians of the Koch-Cruz-Norquist-Paul (Ron and Rand alike) school who should worry us.
       …

       • 

         Arthur Gilroy on September 9, 2013 at 2:16 am

         Later in the above linked article the author states:

         Communism failed in three strikingly similar ways. It believed that humans should be willing cogs serving the proletariat. It assumed that societies could be run top-down like machines. And it, too, was fanatically rigid in its insistence on an all-encompassing ideology, leading to totalitarianism.

         Hmmmm…

         Let’s translate that into Obama-speak/Corporate Surveillance-speak, shall we?

         Early 21st Century Permanent Governments failed in three strikingly similar ways. They believed that humans should be willing cogs serving the Permanent Government, and that active and successful opponents to the dictates of that Permanent Government should be hunted down like traitors. They assumed that societies could be run top-down like computer-contolled machines. And they were fanatically rigid in their insistence on an all-encompassing surrender to the dictates of the corporate-owned mass media, leading to media-enforced totalitarianism.

         

         Hmmmm…

         There has to be a better way!!!

         No?

         Yes!!!

         

         Bet on it.

         AG

     • 

       ishmael on September 9, 2013 at 3:34 pm

       You’re ignoring that recent success and increased influence of Libertarianism is happening almost entirely in the Republican party. You won’t be voting for Rand Paul (Ron’s passed the baton) on the Libertarian ticket. You’ll be voting for him as a Republican.

       So libertarians have indeed had some success in taking over the Republican party at the local level. See Iowa and Maine as an example. They have managed to get elected some Republicans in federal elections who articulate libertarian conservative principles.

       • 

         Arthur Gilroy on September 9, 2013 at 4:05 pm

         You write:

         You’re ignoring that recent success and increased influence of Libertarianism is happening almost entirely in the Republican party. You won’t be voting for Rand Paul (Ron’s passed the baton) on the Libertarian ticket. You’ll be voting for him as a Republican.

         Possibly. But I believe…and I think the Paulistas also believe on the evidence of Ron Paul’s media non-person treatment during the Republican so-called ‘debates” in 2012…that they will once again be mediaed out of contention in 2015/2016 regarding the two major parties.

         Ron Paul has been quite open about this.

         From Sept. 3rd of this year:

         Former Texas Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul said Thursday the Congressional debate to use military force in Syria is a “historical event” for its chance to unite both parties against it.

         “If this vote is won, that is defeat the request to have more military approach to Syria, I think it’d be historic because it’ll be a grand coalition of the libertarian Republicans and the Democratic progressives,” he told MSNBC’s Alex Wagner.

         As early vote counts predict defeat for the Middle Eastern strike, Paul praised it for bringing members together across the aisle.

         “Everybody’s worried about the split in the Democrats and the split in the Republicans, I’m delighted with that split because it’s pushing people together who are on opposite ends of the spectrum, one which I enjoy,” Paul said. “Get the progressives to come together with the libertarian Republicans and the constitutionalists and oppose these wars and protect civil liberties.”

         —snip—

         How will this work?

         I dunno.

         Disaffected Dems leave the squalid DemRat Party and vote Republican in the primaries?

         Maybe.

         Or…New Party Time!!!!

         Or…failure once again.

         How many failures can this American Dream stand before it stands up and says “NO MORE!!!”

         I dunno that either.

         But I do know this…if it doesn’t happen soon, that dream be dead.

         Bet on it.

         Subsumed into a mechanistic technocracy that watches over us all. Just as long as we do our little jobs, we’ll be allowed to sorta kinda live. But raise a voice in protest?

         Here come de judge!!!

         

         An’ his little airplane, too.

         

         We cain’t be having no more of that dissent shit!!! We got ter’rists to beat!!!

         

         And the rich and brainless shall inherit the earth.

         AG

       • 

         Don Durito on September 10, 2013 at 12:15 pm

         And let us not forget that libertarianism is just another form of corporatism:

         The True History of Libertarianism in America: A Phony Ideology to Promote a Corporate Agenda:

         The FEE was set up by a longtime US Chamber of Commerce executive named Leonard Read, together with Donaldson Brown, a director in the National Association of Manufacturers lobby group and board member at DuPont and General Motors.

         That is how libertarianism in America started: As an arm of big business lobbying.

         Before bringing back Milton Friedman into the picture, this needs to be repeated again: “Libertarianism” was a project of the corporate lobby world, launched as a big business “ideology” in 1946 by The US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. The FEE’s board included the future founder of the John Birch Society, Robert Welch; the most powerful figure in the Mormon church at that time, J Reuben Clark, a frothing racist and anti-Semite after whom BYU named its law school; and United Fruit president Herb Cornuelle.

         The purpose of the FEE — and libertarianism, as it was originally created — was to supplement big business lobbying with a pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-economics rationale to back up its policy and legislative attacks on labor and government regulations.

         [snip]

         There’s no idealism here. The notion that libertarian ideas have captured the political imagination of millions in this country is a root problem: if we’re going to escape the corporate oligarchy that is running this country–their ideas can’t possibility be the alternative solution. This movement has to be recognized for what it is.

         The whole thing is worth a read. Libertarians (whether of the Third Party variety or GOP variety) are not, contrary to their propaganda, going to stick it to The Man. Rather, they are The Man attempting to stick it to us proles.