Authoritarianism

Come an gut em! Gif your conspiracy theories for free! Roll right up! If we don’t have one you like, well we got us some whole cloth out the back we kin make some new ones from!

 

I’m not a conservative and don’t live in fear. Thus I have no need to hold a gun close to make me feel safe.

 

Living wage = enough to pay for basic necessities, food, shelter, clothing, transportation, plus a little extra for diversions. This isn’t rocket science. It seems making a big deal out of the definition of a living wage is just trying to muddy the water and not face the issue at hand.

Authoritarianism, conservatism, the right wing, they are all things that go together. They are practically synonymous. Politically, a dictator is as right wing as one can get. A pure democracy is as far left as one can get.

That right wingers like to call democracies, the will of the people, authoritarian, is kind of funny.

 

I guess this is the advantage of having had a liberal arts college education. But then even a cursory high school economics class should have informed one that exploitation is kind of the game of capitalism. Read between the lines. One does not get rich keeping their head to the grindstone. One gets rich by exploiting those who do. It is how the system works, it is how wealth is created. Your job, as a worker, is to make the aristocracy more wealthy. And they are going to pay you as little as they can get away with. Your job, as a consumer is to make the aristocracy more wealthy. And they are going to charge you as much as they can get away with. That is the reality of the world. It is Elizabeth Warren who is fighting back against the overreach of the aristocracy, to put the power back into the hands of the people.

 

"Trump is an authoritarian dictator!"

Says the people who would be dead, or locked up in camps, if Trump was truly an authoritarian dictator.

 

I love reading Conspiracy rags like USAToday
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opin...g-congress-jonathan-turley-column/1045991001/

Even in a city with a notoriously fluid notion of truth, Clapper’s false testimony was a standout. Clapper appeared before the Senate to discuss surveillance programs in the midst of a controversy over warrantless surveillance of the American public. He was asked directly, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?” There was no ambiguity or confusion and Clapper responded, “No, sir. … Not wittingly.” That was a lie and Clapper knew it when he said it.

Later, Clapper said that his testimony was “the least untruthful” statement he could make. That would still make it a lie of course but Clapper is a made guy. While feigned shock and disgust, most Democratic leaders notably did not call for his prosecution.

Gotta love those conspiracy rags.

 

These hardworking americans should quit working for the corporations and work for themselves and keep 100% of their labor value.

 

Then stop being a worker. Go into business for yourself and keep 100% of your labor value.

 

I'm sure you don't have locks on your door or smoke alarms either. Or fire extinguishers. Because you don't live in fear.

So how about opening a bank? Will the authoritarians let me hang out my shingle and start operating a bank if I want to?

 

You live in a liberal part of the world where crazy liberal extremists set fires, destroy public property, regularly engage in violent protests, and all of this anti-social and destructive behavior is tolerated by your insane liberal government, and condoned by crazy liberal residents such as yourself.

Here's your "fun filled hedonistic liberal lifestyle" right here...

Yeah, looks like a regular paradise.

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Are you agreeing that “living wage” is an entirely subjective term used only as an appeal to emotion?

 

Although that was an elegant surrender on your part, he has a point, although probably not the one he thinks he has.

The term "liberal" was absconded by early socialist in the mid 20th century when the word "socialist" became tainted. Professor Ralph Raico wrote extensively of this, expanding upon the point brought up by Rothbard on page 15 of "For a New Liberty"

One of the great historical malfeasance was classic liberals allowing socialists and social democrats to abscond with the term "liberal".

 

I have an open mind. I'll watch for that from you. I may be wrong.

 

Not exactly. Small government Conservatives aren't the authoritarians. Big government progressives are the thought police, think they should be able to dictate acceptable speech, and promote violence against people who don't think like them. Of course they hide their fascist tendencies behind monikers like ANTIFA ,,, since they have a shrinking segment of society brainwashed.

Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Chavez, Castro, Mao ,,,,, all left wingers.

 

Your definition of living wage is completely subjective as well. What kind of food, shelter, diversion? Someone using subjective appeals to emotion is what actually muddies the water. Wouldn’t deciding for someone else what a living wage is be authoritarian in and of itself? Do you want someone deciding what lifestyle you deserve for you?

A pure democracy is very authoritarian. It’s amusing that people so misunderstand what authoritarianism is. It’s violation of individual rights be it by dictator, minority, or majority. It’s the act, not the political structure of the violator, that makes it authoritarianism.

I guess mischaracterizing authoritarianism is the defense mechanism for some.

 

Again, thinking of others, first and foremost as members of groups rather than as individuals. Even when I point it out, even when I literally spell it out in just so many words, some individuals cannot break themselves from the habit for even one post to prove me wrong.

 

Why can nobody answer the question? I guess that’s the value of liberal arts. Endless talk about perceived problems loosely defined with no workable solutions. Ideas based on premises like tax burden by income demographic, poverty levels, and income inequality that are demonstrably false.

If an employer makes bad decisions and goes broke, we say too bad. If employees make bad decisions and are impoverished we blame someone else. Unfortunately for your argument I’ve lived about half my life on each side of this equation. The idea one can’t get ahead by hard work is BS. You can’t get ahead by hard work and being stupid. Your argument completely leaves the stupid out of the equation.

It’s why I ask the question of what is a living wage. Both employers and employees must at times implement the concepts of thrift, self control, and delayed gratification.

Another interesting part of the employee/employer equation is the complete blind eye to exploitation of employers by employees. This is what accounts for a large share of the value you believe the employer is extorting from the employee. Labor is a two way street. The employer must account for this to remain in business.

The solution to what you perceive as the problem is entrepreneurialism or self employment. If someone doesn’t like oatmeal for breakfast, try bacon and eggs. And don’t tell me about capital, etc. etc. I know the drill. And I know it’s an excuse to not follow your dreams. Save that drivel for countries where it isn’t allowed. Nobody in this country has to metaphorically eat oatmeal for breakfast.

 

Every time I wade into these threads, I often ask myself: Is it worth it to get into a debate on the material topic at hand? For veterans of PF, they know that I've not only researched the topic, but endorse the policies(mostly) and the politics thereof. But to have such an argument would require us to adopt different political terminology and language to that we're accustomed to.

But in the spirit of good faith, you know what? I'm going to do it. I'm going to try and make an Authoritarian case for Authoritarianism, by first describing what the movement really was and is at the 19th century.

Let me paint the picture: Socialist Italy went into WWI, Socialist Italy lost. Socialist Italy had few goods and material possessions as well as the economic tools to develop what they had. Everyone knows Germany's story, so no need to rehash but Japan was a very similar scenario as an island-nation that had begun to expand with Western development.

Ignoring the future war crimes, what all three nations had in common was a need for economic and social-mobility development and a lack of tools to accomplish these goals. But because all three nations due to their various circumstances were so undeveloped(not to mention the political mayhem in the three countries), there was a need to consolidate political power for both efficiency as well as domestic peaceful purposes.(The inner civil war of Germany, if not kept in check would've destroyed it entirely. Leaving Soviet Russia to gobble up a divided Germany. This was Hitler's first fear, and a very real one. It would've been a major setback for the US as well.)

We can bemoan that the Nazis won that civil war, but the alternative is equally as damning: If Communist Germans had won, there would've been an alliance with the Soviets(think Germany as Soviet client state) and it would be the USSR in prime position today, instead of us.

Socialist Italy was equally as fractured, and the Japanese civil conflict was no less for the ware.

So, Authoritarianism had settled down what was inner-strife conflict in three developing nations. The other question is economics: What's the record? Well, that depends on who you ask. There most certainly was a concrete economic doctrine in Germany that enabled the German Economic Model, one in which the German Government put an emphasis on getting people to work, as well as the government acting as a national agency of sorts(as opposed to the civil unions), the government whose agenda is to get people to work was more qualified to be a neutral arbiter than a union whose sole purpose is for the stoppages of work. As Hitler himself had complained: Countless working hours lost to the random and self destructive stoppages.

Yes, there definitely was the 'living space' theorem for more crops. To the extent that we'll discuss the war, we should ask: If the new food technologies that exist today existed in 1930, would there be a need for an expansion military theory?

Probably not. That doesn't excuse war crimes. Rationality and reasoning are, despite what you may have heard: Different models of thought. You can rationalize something, and you can reason something without necessarily excusing it. But even if we were to include the gain in land mass by warfare, Germany's economic theory on manpower production was essentially proven and we could stand to include some of that today in our economic policy. Pro privation as well as ensuring work productive hours leads to efficiency.

If we were to subtract the war, we would see something encouraging take its place: A bio-organic government, consumed with its existence and sustaining its existence by itself. As opposed to a modern form of government where the government needs the people to sustain its existence, and rarely produces to the benefit of the people.

"Nothing without the State" does not necessarily mean that the government stands alone, it means that nothing stands alone. The government needs the people to succeed, but the people also need and benefit from the government. A proper Authoritarian government is a synergistic relationship, not an abusive one.

The quote by Winston Churchill "Democracy is the worst government that's been tried, except all of the others" is used as a form of defense for democracy, but it's actually quite damning once you remove 'all of the others'. Winston Churchill just called democracy the worst form of government, and he's right.

It's by far the easiest to abuse and the least managed. It's also the least synergistic. Democratic government exists unto itself. Unto the ones with control of the treasury and the ones who make 'promises' to the people. Interestingly, these promises universally always fall short. ACA? A total disaster, our economic budget? Far from controlled, it expands regardless of party control.

Furthermore, in a Democratic society "of the self", people act in their own interests without necessarily knowing whether or not it is in their own interest. I'm not saying that the government solely knows what's in the individual's best interest(that is after all, the chief principal complaint against the ACA which was the first conscription program since conscription was outlawed in the US), but I am saying that a joint effort between the government and the civil society tends to bring better benefits than either going it alone.

Furthermore, a government of the self has the distinct problem in that humans are actually more geared towards a self-interested way of living, instead of a long-term thought process. Whatever fits our joys, happiness or daily living circumstances is far more convenient, than the long term for those same things.

Whereas if Society could guide most people towards a long-term residual happiness, that would be beneficial for both individual and society at large. I've personally coined the term "Guided Freedom" to explain this rationale of government. We deserve to be, and should be free. But that freedom should lead to an expression of wise choices for the benefit of all including the self.

It shouldn't be an either/or. It should be both. And lost in the military expressions and the war era of that time, is that the Fascist/Third Position came damn near the closest to an ideal civilization for humanity. Can we reduplicate it without the warring times? I believe so, especially since it came as a reaction to said civil dysfunction. It seems to be its strongest suit. The only thing is reduplicating that without violating the self. It takes someone who values both society and individual.

 

Were the above claim true - the world would be a better place. Unfortunately it is not.

 

You believe that your morals must be forced on others using the violent police powers of the state. That is conservative and authoritarian, even if your intentions are what you deem liberal.

In other words, you are saying that peace is a fantasy.

 

Like someone who can tell you that you can't start up and operate a bank?

 

"Fascist," "capitalist," "conservative," about 100 different "isms" (colonialist, imperialist, racist, supremacist, nationalist, originalism, constructionism, evangelicals, authoritarian, etc. etc.) ALL propaganda terms foolishly allowed into the general lexicon because they came from "scholarly" works or "credible" media. It was a gigantic mistake and will take a long time for the net to correct, provided the net is not corrupted as well. They are trying their best to do that.

On the other hand, watch them howl when any of their previously SELF-IDENTIFIED "isms" are applied. They were "communists" before communism was discredited and failed utterly, "socialists" until that failed, "radical" until that failed, now they grudgingly accept "liberal" and "progressive" only because it is the exact -opposite- of what statist/collectivists truly are.

If one's political worldview hinges on nebulous abstractions with only a relative meaning, one's political views have no credibility.

The true modern struggle of politics is waged with a concrete, definable group of -taxpayers- in the voluntary private sector on one side... whose numbers, taxes paid and regulations borne can be counted and measured, and an amalgam of involuntary statist interests on the other who can also be counted and measured. There is overlap, but in general that is what our politics is.

More government = more authoritarian
Less government = less authoritarian

This also can be measured, but instead we should simply abandon nebulous abstractions altogether and discuss policy only as concretely as possible.

 

No she isn't. She is a fake Indian looking to give more power to the government and to keep Americans from having the ability to prosper and to make their own decisions. She wants to make all the decisions for you and would destroy the economy.

All the smart businessmen and women get that and will never allow her to be President. Besides, she is a liar who claimed she was a native American Indian to get a teaching position at Harvard that paid her $450K to teach one course and to sell cook books.We don't more liars like her in office.

She is a complete joke yet many leftists still follow her. Bernie has a huge leftist following too. He embraces the ideas of Putin and Stalin.

 

You didn't address his question.
No one is surprised.

 

100% correct. People who oppose Liberty should not use the root to self-identify as Liberal. Fascists should not self-identify as ANTIFA. The good news is that adults have begun to see through the deception in spite of the marketing arm of the deceivers who self-identify as the media.