Okay, I think I figured this out: only ideologically pure can be good guys. Ideologically pure but on the wrong side can be treated somewhat kindly because they are just stupid or wrongly led, but if somebody supports both good things and wrong things, especially if that person is rich, then it has to be because of some sort of dastardly plan where the end purpose is probably said person's personal gain.
Guess I'd count mostly as libertarian: I want personal freedom. I think gun rights are a great idea, I don't want to give up a good percentage of what I earn as taxes, especially since I have no say how that money gets spend (voting against the people who were for spending it, in my opinion, stupidly does sort of count, I guess, but it doesn't have that much practical effect) but I also support things like the right to abortion even if I do find abortion rather distasteful (I guess I'd prefer a solution where it's easy to get in the first trimester, almost impossible to get in the last and hard to get in the middle. I know my mother had one and while I would really have wanted that brother or sister I can't really blame her for her choice - from what she told me, a long time after, she would most likely have survived that pregnancy, but she would have been ill, possibly very ill, during it, so in the end she decided not to risk it since she and father already had one, and at that time very young and somewhat sickly, child to look after).
Similar to what I think about abortion: it should not be banned, but the way far too many people use it as just another method of birth control makes my skin crawl.
I suppose it's only natural that the more politicians meddle in our lives, the more some of us will meddle in theirs.
The article has the Kochs sounding like good libertarians. All the more reason for neo lib and neo con statists to find common cause in hating them.
Popcorn please!
On a slightly different note, and kind of following on from Marja:
It's General Election polling day in Ireland today. I'm heading out to vote in a minute or two, but I'm not sure yet who I'm going to vote for.
There is a complex proportional representation system, where we rank the candidates in order of our preference and there are several Dail (pronounced "Doyle", the lower house, The senate is elected on a limited franchise of professionals and university graduates, it is supposed to prevent a dictatorship of the majority and guarantee representation for the Protestant minority in a country with Roman Catholicism as the official state church) seats for each constituency area.
During the count, first choice votes are counted until someone has enough to get a seat, then the remaining first preferences for them are transferred to another candidate and so on down the list until all seats have arses on them.
This usually results in no one with an outright majority (no bad thing in itself), but it gives undue influence to smaller parties who can extract a high price for joining a coalition.
Prime example of that was the greens in the last coalition, with all their members as ministers on about 3% of the popular vote!
Favourites this time are Fine Gael who are an anal and pious bunch of "christian democrat" centre right statists, likely with Labour (fabian / democratic socialists) as the junior coalition partner.
The former Government was Fianna Fail (officially they are "constitutional nationalists", but in practice centre right populists with lots of cronies wanting their snouts in the tax funded statist trough. They have a uniquely Celtic culture of flamboyant generosity - with other people's money - of course!), and greens as junior partners and an array of independants, including former progressive democrats.
Fianna Fail is expected to be wiped out, in opinion polls. they are neck and neck with Sinn Fein (National Socialist heavy - the political wing of the provisional IRA), but they have a huge grass roots network who vote for them on the basis that their families have since the civil war.
There is no small government libertarian party (the anti Lisbon treaty "Libertas" was an attempt at that, which fell flat).
It's tempting to spoil the ballot paper with a "None of the above", but that does nothing to counter the clowns who'll vote labour, Sinn Fein and green.
I guess that I'll be holding my nose and voting tactically for collectivist lite to try to keep collectivist heavy parties out.
It's a stinking job, but someone's got to do it!
Ireland had it's first gay civil marriages (in secret) a week or so ago (it's two years since I was best man at a gay wedding), and
surgical abortion is still illegal here unless the mother's life is at risk, although the morning after pill is available.
The Abortion ban has been tested by referendum, and has popular support - something that the lefties decry.
A flight or a ferry to England is easy enough, and thousands take that route for an abortion every year, but I still meet plenty of people in their mid to late fifties with a Downe's Syndrome teenage child - because abortion wouldn't be allowed, none of the pre-natal tests are available.
I'd better get on the road: life in a statist World could get me down.
5 comments:
Whereas the millions George Soros pumps into the political scene is to be admired and respected by the progressive elites.
Sounds like twirling mustaches, yes (does mustache twirling have a sound?).
Okay, I think I figured this out: only ideologically pure can be good guys. Ideologically pure but on the wrong side can be treated somewhat kindly because they are just stupid or wrongly led, but if somebody supports both good things and wrong things, especially if that person is rich, then it has to be because of some sort of dastardly plan where the end purpose is probably said person's personal gain.
Guess I'd count mostly as libertarian: I want personal freedom. I think gun rights are a great idea, I don't want to give up a good percentage of what I earn as taxes, especially since I have no say how that money gets spend (voting against the people who were for spending it, in my opinion, stupidly does sort of count, I guess, but it doesn't have that much practical effect) but I also support things like the right to abortion even if I do find abortion rather distasteful (I guess I'd prefer a solution where it's easy to get in the first trimester, almost impossible to get in the last and hard to get in the middle. I know my mother had one and while I would really have wanted that brother or sister I can't really blame her for her choice - from what she told me, a long time after, she would most likely have survived that pregnancy, but she would have been ill, possibly very ill, during it, so in the end she decided not to risk it since she and father already had one, and at that time very young and somewhat sickly, child to look after).
Marja: only if it's dubbed in.
Similar to what I think about abortion: it should not be banned, but the way far too many people use it as just another method of birth control makes my skin crawl.
I suppose it's only natural that the more politicians meddle in our lives, the more some of us will meddle in theirs.
The article has the Kochs sounding like good libertarians. All the more reason for neo lib and neo con statists to find common cause in hating them.
Popcorn please!
On a slightly different note, and kind of following on from Marja:
It's General Election polling day in Ireland today. I'm heading out to vote in a minute or two, but I'm not sure yet who I'm going to vote for.
There is a complex proportional representation system, where we rank the candidates in order of our preference and there are several Dail (pronounced "Doyle", the lower house, The senate is elected on a limited franchise of professionals and university graduates, it is supposed to prevent a dictatorship of the majority and guarantee representation for the Protestant minority in a country with Roman Catholicism as the official state church) seats for each constituency area.
During the count, first choice votes are counted until someone has enough to get a seat, then the remaining first preferences for them are transferred to another candidate and so on down the list until all seats have arses on them.
This usually results in no one with an outright majority (no bad thing in itself), but it gives undue influence to smaller parties who can extract a high price for joining a coalition.
Prime example of that was the greens in the last coalition, with all their members as ministers on about 3% of the popular vote!
Favourites this time are Fine Gael who are an anal and pious bunch of "christian democrat" centre right statists, likely with Labour (fabian / democratic socialists) as the junior coalition partner.
The former Government was Fianna Fail (officially they are "constitutional nationalists", but in practice centre right populists with lots of cronies wanting their snouts in the tax funded statist trough. They have a uniquely Celtic culture of flamboyant generosity - with other people's money - of course!), and greens as junior partners and an array of independants, including former progressive democrats.
Fianna Fail is expected to be wiped out, in opinion polls. they are neck and neck with Sinn Fein (National Socialist heavy - the political wing of the provisional IRA), but they have a huge grass roots network who vote for them on the basis that their families have since the civil war.
There is no small government libertarian party (the anti Lisbon treaty "Libertas" was an attempt at that, which fell flat).
It's tempting to spoil the ballot paper with a "None of the above", but that does nothing to counter the clowns who'll vote labour, Sinn Fein and green.
I guess that I'll be holding my nose and voting tactically for collectivist lite to try to keep collectivist heavy parties out.
It's a stinking job, but someone's got to do it!
Ireland had it's first gay civil marriages (in secret) a week or so ago (it's two years since I was best man at a gay wedding), and
surgical abortion is still illegal here unless the mother's life is at risk, although the morning after pill is available.
The Abortion ban has been tested by referendum, and has popular support - something that the lefties decry.
A flight or a ferry to England is easy enough, and thousands take that route for an abortion every year, but I still meet plenty of people in their mid to late fifties with a Downe's Syndrome teenage child - because abortion wouldn't be allowed, none of the pre-natal tests are available.
I'd better get on the road: life in a statist World could get me down.
-if I let it
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