Question to purists- Do you want progress?

[Ender]

I detest the term purist. It's a weasel word. Given that to be libertarian simply means to be against government-over-man, there is only fundamental. Fundamental is not purist. Fundamental is fundamental. So either The Individual or a group of Individuals support and defend the fundamental principles of (as well as the primary foundation for moral code for) Individual Liberty as an Indivisible whole or the Individual or group of Individuals do not. It's relatively simple. When you start inserting terms like purist into the terms of controversy all it really demonstrates is one's arbitrary sacrifice of fundamentals without actually acknowledging so. Weasel words like "purist" are intellectually dishonest.

1000% in agreement-

 

[Jesse James]

from whom?

the people that won the Revolution

 

[Theocrat]

Trump Plays With Puppets, Apparently

How do you expect to make progress in America? Your strategy seems to be convert everyone to become paleoconservatives or libertarians and then elect an entire government full of Ron Pauls. Does that really sound realistic to you?

You are missing the big picture. America was not stolen in one day and will not be taken back in one day either. It was stolen incrementally. There wasn't just a surge of globalist wrong on everything politicians that suddenly were elected and took control of the government. They slowly shifted the political landscape. They didn't instantly create the Fed, end the gold standard, create heavy taxes, police the world, create the war on drugs all in one swoop.

By not understanding the value of electing politicians who at least are good in certain areas, only supporting Ron Paul purity level candidates, and equating politicians who have some good views in critical areas with bad on everything politicians (like equating trump to bush or hillary) you are making your efforts in vain. Your strategy is awful.

Thankfully most people don't have this view, which is why there is a surge of support for anti-trade anti-globalist and anti-immigration politicians etc in Europe and America. Brexit and the future certain fall of the European Union would not be possible with your mindset.

I supported Rand Paul for president first. He lost and normally I wouldn't have voted after that for the big 2 candidates...but I voted for Trump because he is not some puppet shill like McCain Romney or Bush. He has some good views.

Consider the following:

Hillary wants to antagonize Russia and basically build up a massive conflict further while Trump is friendly with Russia. Its possible the election outcome may have prevented a war. Is there no value in that for you?

Trump will crack down on illegal immigration and finally end open borders. No value in that? What about establishing voter ID laws? Huge improvements in free trade deals at min or repealing them? No value? Cutting taxes? Cutting welfare? Ending Obamacare (even if you think he will replace it with bad at the very least he will open competition by ending state lines, repealing the individual mandate etc). What about how Politicians like Bush and Hillary directly fund terrorists, while trump will end that. At the very least foreign aid will be cut down and other countries will have to pay us for any services. At best he will slash foreign aid significantly....will crack down on islam... campaign finance reform.... This can go on and on.

In football terms you are basically trying to throw a hailmary every drive , going for it on 4th down every time and only accepting drives that end up with 7 points with no regard to field position, time of possession, field goals, plays that go for intermediate or short gains.. going for that madden bomb on every play.

Some of the hardcore purists (not many though) are so extreme that they refuse to even support Rand Paul.

You don't seem to know how to get things done.

[Bold emphasis mine]

You voted for Trump because he's not a "puppet shill like Romney"? Then why is Trump considering that "puppet shill" as his Secretary of State?

 

[jmdrake]

We all have cognitive dissonance; you have cognitive dissonance. Get over it!

It is perfectly reasonable to be optimistic that President Trump will cut the size of the national government over the next four years -- maybe even more than Rand would have!

It is also perfectly reasonable to be pessimistic and assume that President Trump will turn into a typical politician, break his promises, grow the government, and do nothing particularly interesting.

Neither of these positions require any cognitive dissonance, logic-ignoring, mental disease, insanity, nor anything of the kind.

A senior Trump advisor just promised to take 1 trillion dollars for "infrastructure", throw it against the wall and see what sticks. So if I believe Trump's promises......

Seriously, which of Trump's promises should I believe? Should I believe him when he says he's going to deport all of the illegals and just bring back the "good ones" through the "big beautiful hole" in the "big beautiful wall" that he's going to build and that Mexico is going to pay for? Do I believe him when he say no to wars of regime change or when he was advocating taking out Gaddafi but making sure we "get the oil" in the process? If Trump keeps his promises....he'll be breaking his promises.

 

[H. E. Panqui]

"Progress" is for Progressives, not "purists." As a "purist" I want regress.

...going back (a regression) in US history will reveal no/very little 'purity'....(pure fascism maybe)

..lol!..what a thread!...hey 'impurists,' how much sh!t do you tolerate in your water and still swallow it?..

[hint for republicrats:...learn a little honest monetary reality and stfu about purity...]

 

[presence]

I'm w/ Panqui.

It all boils down to financial freedom to me.

Zero "progress" can be counted on this side of a legal tender and income tax regime.

END THE FED
END THE IRS

When 60k pages of tax code and the "money" printing machines are gone, we can talk about "progress" from there toward eliminating federal, state, and local economic regulations.

Until the theft ends, I only see revolution on the horizon and have little care for progress.

 

[Pericles]

The free state concept is a sound idea. Unfortunately we have neither the numbers or resources to realize that dream.

In a state that has many of the same qualities, a free county project has a much better chance of success, and serve as the pilot program which demonstrates the concept.

In any case, the amount of liberty gained and maintained must be defended by force of arms. This is an unpleasant truth that it seems to me is wished to be avoided by many libertarians. There is always a point in time at which the forces of tyranny will seek to destroy such an undertaking, and the result must be bodies on the ground and piles of hot brass.

Until we are willing to do that, there will not be liberty throughout the land.

 

[CaptUSA]

If the goal is to climb the mountain of liberty, you don't progress towards that goal by digging a deeper hole.

 

[otherone]

If the goal is to climb the mountain of liberty, you don't progress towards that goal by digging a deeper hole.

or,
If you want to be Free, you don't build a wall.

 

[Pericles]

or,
If you want to be Free, you don't build a wall.

I do when I want to make it more difficult for people to be free to steal my stuff, or my job, or my family members, or my life.

 

[otherone]

I do when I want to make it more difficult for people to be free to steal my stuff, or my job, or my family members, or my life.

You have a wall around your own little Athens, Pericles?

 

[Pericles]

You have a wall around your own little Athens, Pericles?

Look at very prosperous and more often than not relatively free citizenry at times and places throughout history. They were very restrictive about who was accorded the privilege of joining them.

Everyone else in the world was perfectly free to copy those successful societies. Why didn't they?

 

[otherone]

Look at very prosperous and more often than not relatively free citizenry at times and places throughout history. They were very restrictive about who was accorded the privilege of joining them.

Everyone else in the world was perfectly free to copy those successful societies. Why didn't they?

What does that have to do with your desire to rob me so you can feel safe?

 

[CaptUSA]

Look at very prosperous and more often than not relatively free citizenry at times and places throughout history. They were very restrictive about who was accorded the privilege of joining them.

Everyone else in the world was perfectly free to copy those successful societies. Why didn't they?

I'll just leave this here...

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors." - Robert Frost, Mending Wall

 

[helmuth_hubener]

A senior Trump advisor just promised to take 1 trillion dollars for "infrastructure", throw it against the wall and see what sticks. So if I believe Trump's promises......

Seriously, which of Trump's promises should I believe? Should I believe him when he says he's going to deport all of the illegals and just bring back the "good ones" through the "big beautiful hole" in the "big beautiful wall" that he's going to build and that Mexico is going to pay for? Do I believe him when he say no to wars of regime change or when he was advocating taking out Gaddafi but making sure we "get the oil" in the process? If Trump keeps his promises....he'll be breaking his promises.

I am not saying you ought to believe any of them. Nor that anyone else should. Nor, indeed that anyone should believe anything that anyone says.

I am simply saying that both optimism and pessimism are outside of the realm of logic. Both attitudes are equally reasonable in this case.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

What does that have to do with your desire to rob me so you can feel safe?

Your hallucination is noted.

Pericles expressed no such desire.

 

[otherone]

Your hallucination is noted.

Pericles expressed no such desire.

Neither did he express a desire to build a wall around his own house, using his own money, to keep his own stuff safe.

 

[jmdrake]

I am not saying you ought to believe any of them. Nor that anyone else should. Nor, indeed that anyone should believe anything that anyone says.

I am simply saying that both optimism and pessimism are outside of the realm of logic. Both attitudes are equally reasonable in this case.

Sure. I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to be optimistic about when it comes to Trump.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Sure. I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to be optimistic about when it comes to Trump.

I am optimistic. So, perhaps, I'm a good one to explain. (Or perhaps that actually makes me poorly-suited to the task!)

Anyway, first: Trump is his own man, not a puppet. That's just a fact. So, that means: who knows what he'll do! He could do whatever! Literally. There are not the massive behind-the-scenes strings of lobbyists and puppet-masters controlling him. So he's a wild card. That certainly doesn't mean he'll do something good -- but it means that he could.

Second: many, many of the things he talked about during the campaign are things that would be good for liberty. People tend like to stay in character. Politicians can't keep impossible promises, but they can and do stay true to the general ideological platform they set out during the campaign. Obama promised ObamaCare. Guess what? Delivered! Promise kept. Bush delivered on his promise to be a "compassionate" big-government conservative and to expand Medicare to pay for drugs. Presidents generally are pretty much -- or, often, exactly! -- the type of president anyone could have predicted them to be before being elected. Obama has been exactly the type of President I would have expected him to be, based on who he was while campaigning. Exactly. Same with Bush.

Let's expand on this second point. Mr. Donald J. Trump has:

• Promised to put a freeze on all new regulations. This actually seems to be happening, by the way! To all appearances, this is his settled policy, his actual plan. It realistically may happen once he is sworn in. If it does, this would be, by far, the best and most important libertarian victory on the Federal level in my lifetime. Probably, in fact, the hugest victory since the mass-liberalization following WWII.

• Proposed to pay off the national debt by selling off federal assets. This is the Harry Browne plan. That Mr. Trump proposed this shows, by the way, if nothing else, that he has listened to or read Harry Browne's policy proposals (or that he's a libertarian super-genius who came up with the same thing as Harry independently). That is a good thing, in my book. Now, it goes without saying, this is wildly unlikely to actually happen. If it does, we will all be so insanely happy we will forget about any problem we ever had with Trump and every libertarian in America will build a monument to him in his front yard and name or re-name all his children Donald... including the girls.

• Promised to appoint people to the (so-called) Supreme Court from a list of candidates who are conservative and largely small-government people (compared to the status quo). This is certainly not too hard to imagine happening. Seems very doable. Very likely he will deliver on this promise.

There are lots of other proposals and policy statements that could be listed, but three's a good number, people can wrap their heads around three. And those are three great positions Trump took on the campaign trail. Good for him.

Third: Both the House and Senate are Republican majority. Donald Trump will just be the President. A lot of what happens is determined by Congress. There are many items that are on the Republican agenda that are small-government pro-liberty items. With both houses and a friendly President, they could start to get through. Even some Rand Paul bills might get passed and signed. We'll see.

Anyway, I can't control what happens, so why not enjoy it? Why not be optimistic? For the first time in my lifetime, there is actually some real, articulable reason to be optimistic! (no matter how slight.) So yeah, I'm optimistic, and then when nothing good happens and instead everything bad does, I can have my hopes crushed to pieces and dashed on the rocks and shake my fist at the betrayal! It's all part of the fun!

 

[H. E. Panqui]

helmuth trumpets: Anyway, first: Trump is his own man, not a puppet. That's just a fact.



....and you know this exactly how?...do you know him personally?...or do you 'know' him through 'the media' ?your republicans frequently condemn...

...let's say someone owed gold sack$ and/or the chinese government banksters, etc., some yuuuuuuge illion$...would that person be his own man?...

...good grief, helmuth, i know the holiday season is rough for a lot of republicrats...maybe lay off the keyboard republicrat cheerleading for a while...