What’s wrong with the truckers? Seems like they are fighting the good fight.
The other day Youngkin signed a law forbidding mask mandates in schools and the loudoun county school board finally caved. He handed the pen he signed it with to a girl that has been suspended nine times for refusing to wear a mask. All people who have been suspended over mask mandates have had it expunged from their record.
I’m a little tired of libertarians that support liberty except when you actually fight for it.
"Never get political or remotely uncivil in defense of liberty", says movement that only exists in country founded and politically organized for the cause of liberty, made possible by large scale treasonous violence.
Re: "what he [deBoer] longs for is a political movement that is rational and coherent. One with a clear manifesto. But we have not seen such a movement in decades. What we get instead are movements that are inchoate and heavy on negation. Think of the Canadian trucker protest."
Don't let the best be the enemy of the good. "Negation" can be righteous and choate reaction to tyranny of the majority, unnecessary suppression of individual liberty, martial law, or arbitrary rule by 'experts'. The Canadian trucker protest -- civil disobedience -- is actually counter-negation, against government negations of freedom.
In the conflict between Trudeau's phalanx and the convoy, beware temptation to cast a plague on both their houses.
Since images are important, it's worth also considering how "serious' left-wingers like FdBoer express nostalgia for the American labor movement of yore, which was, it should be noted, more reliant on jacked, square-jawed, and violent organizers than it was on pointy-headed and paunchy grad students. FdBoer:
"We would identify obscurantism, factionalism, purity signaling, and other behaviors that limit the potential numbers of the movement as counterproductive. We would limit the use of specialized vocabulary and other forms of in-group signaling. We would constantly consider how our practices and discourses actually grow or fail to grow the ranks of the movement."
That's what you use Freddie de Boers for. If they were a unit in a strategy game, you would recruit grad school brains to spout words that end in *ism for pure signaling value. If you did not want that, you would not recruit those units; you would instead recruit square-jawed Stakhanovites like the one in the cartoon he posts to sabotage machinery and block industrial railways with enormous hunks of misshapen steel. You would be recruiting insane Italian immigrants fresh off the boat to suicide bomb bankers. You would not be writing newsletters to the overeducated. FdBoer says that the grad students are bad for the movement while continuing to act like what he is. He is telling tigers to stop being so stripey and to consider changing the stripes to spots.
"the only way to achieve a moral social system is through building a post-capitalist world."
Good luck, Fred, maybe where Lenin failed you will succeed. He goes on to say that his ideal society would be...
"Civil libertarian. My ideal left political movement would recognize that guaranteeing certain individual rights is not at all contrary to the pursuit of social equality and social justice but rather an essential element of that pursuit."
Lenin would say "sure man, keep pounding on that line right before we kill all of you, whatever you need to say to keep the bourgeoisie on its back foot."
"We would recognize that left movements have traditionally suffered terribly from assaults on individual rights, such as in anti-Communist purges, redbaiting, and anti-left eliminationism."
A bizarre statement, given that all of the most powerful leftist governments in history have relied on all of these, including incremental purges of both the leftmost flank of the government and the rightmost flank when it was opportune. This characterizes a lot of FdBoer's thinking, in which he sympathizes with the useful idiots who wind up dead in a ditch instead of the leftists who win every time. People like Freddie would be useful to more serious revolutionaries in the same way that Emma Goldman was useful to the Bolsheviks until she stopped being useful.
At least in the US, it's also wrong, relatively speaking. Left movements suffered comparatively much less from anti-Communist purges and anti-left eliminationism - which were restricted to a fairly brief period of less than 10 years after WWII, its end marked by the Senate censure of Sen. McCarthy in 1954 - than right movements did from anti-JBS etc. purges and anti-right eliminationism. W. F. Buckley, the founder of modern organized conservatism, built it on the platform of anti-right eliminationism.
David Brooks' latest is literally entitled "The Dark Century", such is his rosy-tinted nostalgia for the 20th. Well, at least the 90s, from the American perspective. Though even then, he says our elites had become "naive". Technological progress aside, the 20th century wasn't so hot in other times and places.
Worth reading just for the reaction you'll have to lines like: "Putin, Xi and the other global conservatives ... " Lol, ok, sure. I guess I'm nostalgic for the 20th century too, at least, for how David Brooks used to write back then.
When in the 20th Century were norms so favorable to reason? Throughout? A particular period? What were the characteristic marks of reason's authority that are missing now?
> What we get instead are movements that are inchoate and heavy on negation. Think of the Canadian trucker protest.
But these protests had prominent leaders (whom the government has targeted) and actionable demands (which the federal government has ignored, but various provinces have honoured).
And if anything, this looked like a turn towards 19th century trade unionism, until the government overeacted.
There would be less social friction if the government were weaker, so that less was at stake in the contest for political power. But, of course, one of the principal political issues is how strong the government is to be--how many matters are to be dealt with governmentally, that is, coercively. And, alas, it seems that most people, bedazzled by the vision of a government enforcing *their* preferred policies, favor stronger government.
I've been trying to think of different ways to frame the asymmetrical power and information issues in ways that might be useful. One is to imagine the political market (at the macro level) of moving from a state of monopolistic competition to one of perfect competition.
In a market, monopolistic competition exists (in part) because consumers can trust that a McDonalds burger (for example) is of a certain standard. Politicians are similar. You generally know what you're going to get from your Rs and Ds... They both serve a generic but slightly different burger. Alternatively, one can imagine that politicians held a certain amount of information superiority that could hold voters together, and the power of franchising as Ds or Rs gave them a certain amount of control.
Moving to (or toward) perfect competition means the advantages of the franchise diminish. Consumers know they can get what they want (and exactly what they want at a given moment). So they can still choose McDonalds or Burger King, but they've got 5 Guys, In-N-Out, and wenty or thirty other options in addition to hundreds of local diners that the consumer knows all have a similar product.
So what does perfect competition in a political market look like? A lot like mob rule in ancient Athens, because the politicos simply become indistinguishable voices of whatever the mob wants at the moment. Which might be the opposite of what it wanted yesterday. Which makes it very easy for the mob throw out infinitely replaceable politicians and very hard for politicians to get traction as somehow unique and stable entities that voters should choose. Much less to build blocks of politicians.
Most Western countries have worked around this by forcing voting for many parties, which form coalition governments that have little relationship to what people want at the moment. They simply distance themselves from democracy as much as possible so that the choice people get is the same dissatisfying and anodyne buffet of government that keeps politicians happen.
An opportunity would seem to exist, though, to restructure government along more responsive lines. Where people have more information and more power, a more popular, directly democratic government should be possible. Directly democratic Athens devolved to mob rule because the structures in place couldn't support it. Directly democratic Switzerland is routinely pronounced one of the best governed countries in then world, and they handle many significant issues with direct referenda.
What’s wrong with the truckers? Seems like they are fighting the good fight.
The other day Youngkin signed a law forbidding mask mandates in schools and the loudoun county school board finally caved. He handed the pen he signed it with to a girl that has been suspended nine times for refusing to wear a mask. All people who have been suspended over mask mandates have had it expunged from their record.
I’m a little tired of libertarians that support liberty except when you actually fight for it.
"Never get political or remotely uncivil in defense of liberty", says movement that only exists in country founded and politically organized for the cause of liberty, made possible by large scale treasonous violence.
Re: "what he [deBoer] longs for is a political movement that is rational and coherent. One with a clear manifesto. But we have not seen such a movement in decades. What we get instead are movements that are inchoate and heavy on negation. Think of the Canadian trucker protest."
Don't let the best be the enemy of the good. "Negation" can be righteous and choate reaction to tyranny of the majority, unnecessary suppression of individual liberty, martial law, or arbitrary rule by 'experts'. The Canadian trucker protest -- civil disobedience -- is actually counter-negation, against government negations of freedom.
In the conflict between Trudeau's phalanx and the convoy, beware temptation to cast a plague on both their houses.
Since images are important, it's worth also considering how "serious' left-wingers like FdBoer express nostalgia for the American labor movement of yore, which was, it should be noted, more reliant on jacked, square-jawed, and violent organizers than it was on pointy-headed and paunchy grad students. FdBoer:
"We would identify obscurantism, factionalism, purity signaling, and other behaviors that limit the potential numbers of the movement as counterproductive. We would limit the use of specialized vocabulary and other forms of in-group signaling. We would constantly consider how our practices and discourses actually grow or fail to grow the ranks of the movement."
That's what you use Freddie de Boers for. If they were a unit in a strategy game, you would recruit grad school brains to spout words that end in *ism for pure signaling value. If you did not want that, you would not recruit those units; you would instead recruit square-jawed Stakhanovites like the one in the cartoon he posts to sabotage machinery and block industrial railways with enormous hunks of misshapen steel. You would be recruiting insane Italian immigrants fresh off the boat to suicide bomb bankers. You would not be writing newsletters to the overeducated. FdBoer says that the grad students are bad for the movement while continuing to act like what he is. He is telling tigers to stop being so stripey and to consider changing the stripes to spots.
"the only way to achieve a moral social system is through building a post-capitalist world."
Good luck, Fred, maybe where Lenin failed you will succeed. He goes on to say that his ideal society would be...
"Civil libertarian. My ideal left political movement would recognize that guaranteeing certain individual rights is not at all contrary to the pursuit of social equality and social justice but rather an essential element of that pursuit."
Lenin would say "sure man, keep pounding on that line right before we kill all of you, whatever you need to say to keep the bourgeoisie on its back foot."
"We would recognize that left movements have traditionally suffered terribly from assaults on individual rights, such as in anti-Communist purges, redbaiting, and anti-left eliminationism."
A bizarre statement, given that all of the most powerful leftist governments in history have relied on all of these, including incremental purges of both the leftmost flank of the government and the rightmost flank when it was opportune. This characterizes a lot of FdBoer's thinking, in which he sympathizes with the useful idiots who wind up dead in a ditch instead of the leftists who win every time. People like Freddie would be useful to more serious revolutionaries in the same way that Emma Goldman was useful to the Bolsheviks until she stopped being useful.
At least in the US, it's also wrong, relatively speaking. Left movements suffered comparatively much less from anti-Communist purges and anti-left eliminationism - which were restricted to a fairly brief period of less than 10 years after WWII, its end marked by the Senate censure of Sen. McCarthy in 1954 - than right movements did from anti-JBS etc. purges and anti-right eliminationism. W. F. Buckley, the founder of modern organized conservatism, built it on the platform of anti-right eliminationism.
David Brooks' latest is literally entitled "The Dark Century", such is his rosy-tinted nostalgia for the 20th. Well, at least the 90s, from the American perspective. Though even then, he says our elites had become "naive". Technological progress aside, the 20th century wasn't so hot in other times and places.
Worth reading just for the reaction you'll have to lines like: "Putin, Xi and the other global conservatives ... " Lol, ok, sure. I guess I'm nostalgic for the 20th century too, at least, for how David Brooks used to write back then.
When in the 20th Century were norms so favorable to reason? Throughout? A particular period? What were the characteristic marks of reason's authority that are missing now?
> What we get instead are movements that are inchoate and heavy on negation. Think of the Canadian trucker protest.
But these protests had prominent leaders (whom the government has targeted) and actionable demands (which the federal government has ignored, but various provinces have honoured).
And if anything, this looked like a turn towards 19th century trade unionism, until the government overeacted.
There would be less social friction if the government were weaker, so that less was at stake in the contest for political power. But, of course, one of the principal political issues is how strong the government is to be--how many matters are to be dealt with governmentally, that is, coercively. And, alas, it seems that most people, bedazzled by the vision of a government enforcing *their* preferred policies, favor stronger government.
I agree with deBoer, but would call what he describes as "centrist" or "now-liberal" rather than "leftist"
I've been trying to think of different ways to frame the asymmetrical power and information issues in ways that might be useful. One is to imagine the political market (at the macro level) of moving from a state of monopolistic competition to one of perfect competition.
In a market, monopolistic competition exists (in part) because consumers can trust that a McDonalds burger (for example) is of a certain standard. Politicians are similar. You generally know what you're going to get from your Rs and Ds... They both serve a generic but slightly different burger. Alternatively, one can imagine that politicians held a certain amount of information superiority that could hold voters together, and the power of franchising as Ds or Rs gave them a certain amount of control.
Moving to (or toward) perfect competition means the advantages of the franchise diminish. Consumers know they can get what they want (and exactly what they want at a given moment). So they can still choose McDonalds or Burger King, but they've got 5 Guys, In-N-Out, and wenty or thirty other options in addition to hundreds of local diners that the consumer knows all have a similar product.
So what does perfect competition in a political market look like? A lot like mob rule in ancient Athens, because the politicos simply become indistinguishable voices of whatever the mob wants at the moment. Which might be the opposite of what it wanted yesterday. Which makes it very easy for the mob throw out infinitely replaceable politicians and very hard for politicians to get traction as somehow unique and stable entities that voters should choose. Much less to build blocks of politicians.
Most Western countries have worked around this by forcing voting for many parties, which form coalition governments that have little relationship to what people want at the moment. They simply distance themselves from democracy as much as possible so that the choice people get is the same dissatisfying and anodyne buffet of government that keeps politicians happen.
An opportunity would seem to exist, though, to restructure government along more responsive lines. Where people have more information and more power, a more popular, directly democratic government should be possible. Directly democratic Athens devolved to mob rule because the structures in place couldn't support it. Directly democratic Switzerland is routinely pronounced one of the best governed countries in then world, and they handle many significant issues with direct referenda.