Category Archives: Individualism Vs. Collectivism

Libertarian Party: Party of Isms, Not Individualism

Gender, IMMIGRATION, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Race, Ron Paul, States' Rights

When it comes to playing manipulative politics with social issues—matters of “racism,” “sexism” (blah, blah), with which government should not concern itself—there’s no daylight between left-liberals and left-libertarians.

The loser Libertarian Party is running a gubernatorial candidate (Robert Sarvis?) against one of the most libertarian attorneys general a state has had: Virginia’s Ken Cuccinelli. The latter has an impressive record of achievements and has taken principled positions on the issues.

For instance, Attorney General Cuccinelli’s attempts to nullify federal health insurance mandates in Virgina go as far back as March of 2010, when he launched a legal challenge to “shield Virginians from paying any penalties for not purchasing federally-approved health care.”

By Wikipedia’s telling, the Libertarian Party’s challenger, Sarvis, “supports same sex marriage and says it is a personal issue for him because his own marriage, which is biracial, was illegal in Virginia 50 years ago.”

By the same token, why not support affirmative action, on the ground that it wasn’t the law “in Virginia 50 years ago”?

Left-liberal argumentation! Sanctimonious too.

As one who believes that the state should stay out of marriage altogether, I cringe when so-called liberty lovers join Hollywood dimwits to place this issue at the forefront of the fight for freedom and beat people about the head with it. If you care about liberty, keep the state out of marriage; don’t expand its purview. Go to an attorney and solemnize your marriage through contract law.

Unsurprisingly, this Libertarian Party candidate is for open borders, framing the matter by using more sly, liberal illogic. (Here: I know immigrants, therefore immigration should proceed unfettered.)

Remember that immigration has pitted governors like Arizona’s against the Feds in a heroic fight for the right of state representatives to protect their statesmen from trespass. On immigration, left-libertarians come down foursquare on the side of the federales. You can be sure that the latest Immigration Bill will be Sarvis’s dream-come-true.

Cuccinelli, on the other hand, has ruled that “state law enforcement officers are allowed to check the immigration status of anyone ‘stopped or arrested.'” According to FoxNews, Cuccinelli issued a legal opinion … “extending that authority to Virginia police in response to an inquiry over whether his state could mirror the policies passed into law in Arizona.”

Most telling, Ron Paul has endorsed … Cuccinelli.

UPDATED (May 7, 2021): GOP Tit-For-Tat Twits

Argument, Barack Obama, Democrats, Feminism, Gender, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Reason, Republicans

No, the president does not have to weigh in on sexual scandals. Why should he? (Besides, Obama seems a bit of a prude. That’s good.) If you objected to Obama’s sermon on Trayvon (I did), but think he should weigh in on Weiner, on what grounds do you deny him his Trayvon intervention? I like it when the president puts a lid on it.

The empaneled bimbos on Fox News—where do they find such dumb women? CNN?—have been outshouting each other to protest the president’s silence on the sexual transgressions of The Weiner and the possible criminal misconduct of The Filner.

The arguments the Democratic and Republican factions advance exist on a continuum. There is no qualitative difference between them. Right now, both Republican and Democratic women seem to agree that everyone, including the president, has to be in full-throated protest mode about those who violate the “isms” in the manual of political correctness.

True individualists would never even dignify the category of “sexual harassment.” Touching someone as Filner did without consent is an assault. It doesn’t matter if the assaulted is man, woman, or someone in-between.

But Republicans are as dazed and confused as the rival gang, reducing wrong-doing to these PC “isms,” and partaking in the silly tit-for-tat: “No, you’re a sexist, I’m not. No, Democrats are racists; we’re the party of Lincoln.” Blah-blah. Pathetic.

Republicans have now turned around and are using the “sexism” and war on women bugbear to try and gain a political advantage. Ridiculous. How ridiculous? Silly enough to make JAY CARNEY that broken clock that is right twice a day:

I understand the allure of issues like this in the media, but it is not what — and I do understand it, and I’m not being critical of it. But I’m saying that the President believes his job is not to comment on those issues, …

UPDATE (8/3/013): Huge concession to Fred Cummins, on Facebook: OK, Fred, most, not all, the women on Fox are terribly dense, loud bimbos. I’ve documented that extensively. Exceptions? Gretta on Fox and EMac on Fox Biz, as well as Gerri Willis and Melissa Francis. I’m not far off.

Glenn Greenwald: Guarding Liberty @ The Guardian

Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Technology, Terrorism, The State

More than “Smashing a CNN Government Apologist,” as EPJ’s Robert Wenzel put it, Glenn Greenwald “floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee,” Cassius-Clay style, around the unincisive, silly Jeffrey Toobin. Here Greenwald demonstrates why “Major media,” as I wrote, “is like a big amorphous amoeba. This simple, single-celled organism will instinctively act in unison to preserve its integrity.” To maintain equilibrium, morons have to keep the brilliant out.

I’ve searched in vain for follow-up headlines on ABC headline News, UPI, Drudge, Fox News & Business, on and on. US media does not wish to discuss the new twist in an “NSA program [that] reportedly allows analysts to track emails, chats, web searches.”

Liberty’s guardian at The Guardian, the American Glenn Greenwald, is responsible for revealing the following new and horrifying details:

XKeyscore: NSA tool collects ‘nearly everything a user does on the internet’

• XKeyscore gives ‘widest-reaching’ collection of online data
• NSA analysts require no prior authorization for searches
• Sweeps up emails, social media activity and browsing history
• NSA’s XKeyscore program – read one of the presentations

“I, sitting at my desk,” said Snowden, could “wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email”.
US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden’s assertion: “He’s lying. It’s impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do.”
But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.
XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA’s “widest reaching” system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet”, including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.

Read on.

IRS? Demolish That Den Of Iniquity

Constitution, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Liberty, Morality, Private Property, Taxation, The State

“IRS? Demolish That Den Of Iniquity” is the current column, now on WND:

“House Republicans are waging a symbolic and futile battle to slash the Internal Revenue Service’s budget by $3 billion. Republicans, according to reports, want the tax-collectors to pay for ‘unfairly scrutinizing conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.’

As usual, the GOP finesses the matter, as does the press.

The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson understated the IRS’s abuse of ‘police power’ as a mere ‘intrusion’; an ideological targeting by federal investigation of a political movement. To its credit, the Post’s Editorial Board stepped it up, conceding, at the time of the scandal that, “Any unequal application of the law based on ideological viewpoint is unpardonable—toxic to the legitimacy of the government’s vast law-enforcement authority.”

More to the point—and likely with White-House imprimatur—the IRS persecuted American patriots for promoting the constitutional principles upon which America was founded, but which are no longer a lodestar for the country’s government. These groups were hounded for their principles—and for asking to keep more of what is rightfully theirs in the service of these values.

How perverse is that?

And how perverse is the sight of the same IRS bureaucrats getting their freak-on (as in groove-on) at your expense?

Watch this YouTube clip of a representative cross-section, no doubt, of the IRS workforce at a “training conference.” Look at these off-putting officials having a jolly good time on your dime. Chins and butts wiggling obscenely all over the show; these people belong in a Federico Fellini film.

You could not fan away the smell in that hall if you tried. …

… These repulsive IRS agents, stomping about with abandon in carnival-like conferences and getaways: Do they represent you? Do they reflect your habits, manners, demeanor, priorities or worldview?

…We are trapped in the deforming, deadly clutches of institutionalized freaks, the remedy to which is…”

The complete column is “IRS? Demolish That Den Of Iniquity.” Read it on WND.

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