Freedom is not safe

Cello

This is just rhetoric aimed at smearing political opponents – I’m not actually sure the jibe that - left wingers are racists and right wingers are - even works.

 

Cello

Sorry not sure why you are bringing up racism?

My question was in the context of historical US interfere in Latin America and its link to migration from those areas (after you brought up a story about a Guatemalan woman).

Many of those fleeing to the US are doing so because of the desperate social and economic circumstances in their countries that are due to historical US involvement

Fleeing a hell the US helped create: why Central Americans journey north

So if the US doesn’t want so many Guatemalan migrants wouldn’t it be a good idea in putting in the effort to make Guatemala a better place to live in, especially since it is in large parts the reason why it is so bad?

So far, your answers have been deflections – first you said – if libertarians had been in charge then the US wouldn’t have done it (but they were not and it did) and now you are for whatever reason talking about racism

Can you please answer the question?

 

Cello

Again not sure what your argument is, I mean the Indian Larry who is featured in the video died from head injuries after falling off one of his bikes, so he risked his life and lost it, but what has that to do with such things as health and safety regulations or environmental protection laws, deregulation of which seem to be the biggest concerns of the wealth sponsored right wing libertarian think tanks.

As I say there seem to be manipulation going on here – you have the people promoting the politics of ‘freedom’ through such things a biker videos, lawn darts and kids lemonade stands been closed down and all the supposed ‘big government interference’ but those that finance the promotion of all that use it to get things they want like cut taxes and deregulation.

Indian Larry clearly had the freedom to ride without a helmet and died from it, and since his bike sold for 10’s of thousands of dollars he also had the money to pay for any medical bills. But what about if another ‘freedom loving risk taker’ has an accident on the open highway due to exercising their freedom to break the rules of the road, they don’t just put themselves at risk, what if someone else through no fault of their own get involved in the accident and becomes injured has no insurance (because ‘freedom’ loving voters don’t like universal healthcare) and ends up losing their job and being bankrupted?

 

Right wing libertarianism has two faces

The sales force

One face is big on personal freedom and the little laws and regulations that supposedly highlight ‘governments’ silly, irritating or sinister involvements in Americans personal life. A million kids lemonade stalls take place without comment but if just one is stopped by an overenthusiastic cop or city official and these are the people that blow it up beyond all sane proportion as an attack on the very fundamentals of the American way of life. This is the face that appeals to the rugged individual who asks why they have to wear a crash helmet, seat belt or face mask or why can’t they have an assault rifle or come to that their own personal nuke. Any regulation that limits certain actions is an attack on the very concept of freedom.

It’s about trying to convince people that ‘big government’ is on their backs and that ‘government isn’t the solution it’s the problem - taxation is ‘government’ repression as in why should their hard worked for money be taken away to be given to some free loaders that are not willing to work for it. They are big on saying public system are not working, public schools are failing because they are public, public assistance doesn’t work because it is public, basically that public government doesn’t work because it is too public.

The other face

The face that is less interested in been seen in public is the vast amounts of money that is given to promote libertarian ideas and give them some semblance of an intellectual fig leaf.

By the late 70s, Koch had adopted a three-part strategy to create a movement that aimed, he said, to “destroy the prevalent statist paradigm”. It would involve lobbying government to repeal regulation of industries and all taxes, educating a new young “libertarian cadre” and funding politicians directly to win influence. Koch anticipated that bringing about this ideological shift would take decades, and he committed to the long haul…he saw the libertarian effort as a kind of production line. In the mid-1990s, the president of the Charles Koch Foundation, Richard Fink, wrote an essay that laid out the Koch strategy for change. First, donate to universities in order to produce the necessary “intellectual raw material”. Second, donate to thinktanks, which then process this raw material into a “usable form” to be consumed by opinion formers. Third, donate to political advocacy groups, which have been characterised by critics as front groups whose function is to make politicians believe there is strong grassroots pressure for small-state, anti-welfare policies. These synthetic “grassroots” groups were described by David Koch as their “sales force”. Guardian Long Read 29/11/2019

A lot of time money and effort is been spent by very wealthy groups and individuals to push the free market agenda and mould peoples opinions

These are hardnosed people who don’t give a fuck about crash helmets, seat belts or lemonade stands or the ‘little people’ who go on public forums to push libertrian ideas (except as useful pawns) for them it is all about retaining or gaining power and influence, and tax cuts and deregulation of services and industry are all about that.

To those on the forum that push the libertarian agenda, I say look up and see who is pulling your strings

 

I love it when Brits talk bad about America... Those on the losing side always smack talk the winners, and it's nice to be reminded that we're the latter (despite the whiners we have these days). They pretend ours is the only country which ever had slavery, as if we're somehow responsible for the concept, even. Like there's never been any slavery in the UK.

But boy do they love to prattle on!

 

Thanks! Wisdom comes with age. And a bit of observational skills. If you're lucky enough to become a grandma, you'll eventually sound like her one day too. And it might surprise you the first time you realize it.

Don't lose hope. It can take decades for it to really take hold. Search for answers instead of trying to convince yourself that you already know the answers.

 

Trud

Here is something I posted recently on the culture wars

There is an interesting debate going on in the UK at the moment. An organisation that is charged with looking after and perceiving our national history and heritage is under attack from many on the right for wanting to explain and teach British history – why – because it is highlighting the role that the slave trade and the exploitation of slaves underpinned the wealth of many of the elites in the history of Britain.

The National Trust is under attack because it cares about history, not fantasy | Peter Mitchell

For many on the right history’s role is to bolster national pride and nationalism and where possible promoting the role of the elite in a glorious past, the slaves, peasants, commoners and poor have no role in that history, they drag it down, and people might begin to ask some difficult questions if their history was better known, questions like why were so many people, even children, been so badly treated and exploited all for the benefit of so few.

And the right will fight to try and preserve its history

Back in 2020 a large group of protesters pulled down a statue of a slave trader in Bristol

Yesterday in 2021 the right wing government [in the UK] responded by passing a law that would allow those protestors to be sentenced to prison for ten years - as many have pointed out the prison sentence for rape is only 5 years

 

You're right, we should help in a better way. We need to give them business and show them how to manufacture (similar like how we got China going). This simply handing their government 500 million dollars a year to develop isn't working to develop but to enrichen the politicians.

 

Trud

As to slavery in the UK – here is something else I’ve written on the subject – in the Britain of that time - Wealth was confined to a few the majority of Britain’s lived in poverty (it has been argued that one reason why we didn’t import large numbers of African slaves into the UK was because it was cheaper to exploit the British poor).

Although that UK elite did greatly profit from slavery in say the Caribbean and from the exploitation in the empire

It is how you deal with the history of those time not the facts of history – it seems to me that many on the right of politics don’t want to confront what went on and learn from it but instead hide it under some culture war carpet – a if talking about these things is the bad thing not the actual enslavement and exploitation.

 

So does senile dementia . How old are you?

 

Trug

Got China going? – the western involvement in China was devastating – do you know anything about the Opium Wars? Then the western powers did nothing as Japan carved the country up or to help the Republic and when the communist took over the US didn’t even recognise the Beijing governed China until 1979 after years of trying to destabilise it (what do you know about the Vietnam War?)

If anything in manufacturing the Chinese got themselves going

 

Funny thing about national socialism.... it's socialism. That's left wing.

Hence the red socialist flag. Left wing.

 

Wrong. False. Incorrect. Libertarianism is neither right wing nor left wing. It's merely the desire to give wings to the people to be free from both the tyranny of the right and the tyranny of the left.

 

That's true. IE: police, garbage collection, firemen,legislators, military, public schools, roads and bridges, national and state parks, USPS and probably other institutions I haven't thought of. Socialism for sure. Don't know 'bout any flag that represents what I've mentioned . Maybe the red white and blue one.

Forgot social security, that evil that FDR instituted to help old people survive in a tough capitalist world.

 

Yes, he did. He lived free and died free. In fact, he died right here in God's own North Carolina. And while I personally favor wearing a motorcycle helmet, helmet laws suck.

 

Cello

Have you ever read any history? I mean you do know that the first people that the Nazis persecuted where the left wingers?

Do you know of Pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous poem on Nazis suppression?

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

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Here is something I posted back in 2005 when I first began noticing something about right wing libertarians on the forum

Why do the national libertarians keep reminding me of the Nazis?

One of the things I noted was their claim to be neither of the right or left.

The thing is that right wing libertarians are some of the most right-wing crusaders out there.

I repeat - To those on the forum that push the libertarian agenda, I say look up and see who is pulling your strings.

 

What a moron, Larry, that is! Score another for Darwin! One down, several million more to go! We may get the species cleaned up yet!

 

Cello

Sorry but are you ever going to answer any questions?

For example I asked something about migration from Latin America and so far you’ve mentioned a non-existent Libertarian government, went off on one about racism and now are babbling on about socialist flags- what next aliens?

 

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