Socialists claim to be "more progressive" than conservatives. This may be true, but libertarians are far more progressive than both sides. Libertarians value both economic and social freedoms, while the right only bothers with the former and the left with the latter. Libertarianism promotes the virtures of self-sufficency, individual liberty, a peaceful and mature foreign policy, and equal individual and economic freedom for all. Here are seven detailed reasons why libertarians are the true progressives:
7. Socialists believe that government is the answer to everything. It is the all-knowing, all-powerful, authoratarian ruler of all. By contrast, libertarians believe that individuals have the right and responsibility to govern themselves.
6. The left is famous to dividing people into "minority" groups. This creates segragation. Libertarians contend that all should have equal rights -- their sexual orientation, race, gender, eye color, hair color, or favorite flavor of ice cream are secondary to the fact that they are individuals.
5. Many social liberals argue that government should be able to override private property rights for the "common good" -- like Michael Moore in his "Capitalism, a Love Story, " for instance. "Common good" is an extremely nebulous concept and often used as little more than an excuse for rampant government abuse of power. That's why libertarianism seeks to eliminate the government's power to steal property before it actually does so -- progressively looking to the future.
4. Socialists claim that the rich should pay more in taxes, an idea I can't support even though I'm hardly rich myself. This is little more than income discrimination and punishment of success -- which is why libertarianism would have everyone pay the same taxes...ideally zero. After all, if we all have "equal rights," shouldn't we all be taxed equally?
3. Social liberals are admirably charitable, but too often their charity takes the form of draconian and senseless regulations which don't actually help the needy. Libertarians are in favor of eliminating these regulations, which shows faith in private citizens to do the right thing.
2. Who regulates the regulators? The more those supposedly helpful regulations are put in place, the greater the opportunity is for special interests seeking their own piece of the pie at the taxpayers' expense. Libertarians progressively acknowledge the potential problems with regulations and corruption and seek to eliminate both.
1. Libertarians prefer the risks of too much freedom to the risks of too little, allowing individuals to make their own decisions and take responsibility for their own lives. Social liberals put all their faith into the two-headed leviathan, the all-mighty, all-knowing, all-powerful government -- in other words, into the oldest failed idea in the book. What's so progressive about that?
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I get the intention of your post, but as far a the historical roots of the term "progressive" go (and I'm getting this from being a poli sci major, not ever watching that rambling fool Beck), libertarians aren't progressive at all.
The argument that I'm trying to make is that libertarianism is more evolved than either conservatives or liberals, especially socialists. Conservative by definition, is the total opposite of "progressive". Despite being self-admitted conservatives, both Ron and Rand Paul are farther ahead of their time than the rest of the modern-day political idealogies.
Clearly he was using the irony in utilizing a word like "progressive" to describe a system so debunked and antiquated as socialism.
If you're going to take the term literally, as in a person who wants progress towards happiness then yeah, I'll agree because the best way to achieve happiness is to be free, but as far as how it is universally understood, I wouldn't use the term simply because the last image we need popping into the heads of possible converts are Teddy Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson or, god forbid, FDR
Right, this is what I mean. Like I said, I understand where you were going with it, but I'm not sure that's a term which can ever be reclaimed.
for starters, i would reconsider your definition of socialist; there is a long standing tradition (in fact longer than mainstream right-lib tradition) of egalitarian/socialist libertarianism. i get what you're trying to say with the whole "socialist" thing, but it also seems like "socialism" is an ideology that has been highjacked and straw-manned by the ideological right.
6. the point that libertarians see race, sex, age, etc. as secondary to individuality is pretty poorly founded for a number of reasons. first, don't forget that the reasons these characteristics are viewed selectively before the law is because they are characteristics that are discriminated against, and similarly, history has placed those "individuals" with these characteristics at a disadvantage. so there is legitimate reason for acknowledging these differences. second, it seems pretty hard to say that these characteristics are secondary to individuality; these characteristics are merely a part of a person's identity. you can't separate a person's identity from their individuality; distinguishing between who a person is and what they do is sketchy philosophical grounds, especially when it comes to society (which is the purpose of the law), because a person's place in society is dictated by their actions.
3, 4. just to be clear, many do not think that the rich should be fleeced; instead, the government provides the legal and economic subsidies necessary for the majority of the wealthy to become insanely rich. so, because the government creates the insanely rich, the government also feels compelled (and justly so) to ask for a higher percentage of the earnings that it subsidized. otherwise, the government would just be subsidizing the rich without returning any of the benefit to the nation it handicapped in order to create these economic monoliths.
isnt the govt creating the ideal wealth making environment for all citizens and not just for the rich? why should the wealthy be punished for availing themselves of the full benefits which are equally accessible to all? its like punishing someone for doing what you wanted them to do so you can reward those who didnt.
As too your point about 6, what creates this "identity"? Is it a natural occurence or is it through the repetitious indoctrination from both education, media, and ngo's that you have to act like something because you look like something. When you have it drilled into that "black people are inherently disadvantaged, and its whites fault" it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now instead of starting a new business and taking an entrepenuerial risk some blacks will just blame "old white men" for all their problems. This also spurs racism with some whites becoming angry at being blamed for things they have no control over. As I used to say to my friends jokingly, "I'm too busy at my job, or studying for a test to disparage an entire race from economic equality." Your average person does not care about race and is at no fault when it comes to the continuation of racism, yet due to indocrination we are forced to share the blame, and create a double standard.
I remember there were calls saying that Obama was not "black enough." Black enough for what, and who determines what is a black social characteristic. Does the NAACP sit on a throne and decree what black is? Every "racial community" is nothing more than stereotyping, which I thought was racism?
Maybe if we were to actually begin ignoring these features which over and over again have been shown to have no impact in a free society, then we would actually become a human race instead of racially divided.
Instead we attempt to use to state, which was one of the main sources of racism (Jim Crow Laws, Anti-Miscegenation Laws, Eugenics Laws, etc.), to tell everyone to hold hands and sing kum-bah-ya at the barrel of a gun. The idea that you can end racism by writing a piece of legislation is like saying that we can end depression by making it illegal. It existed long before the law existed, and will exist long after the law is gone because it is a human idea. Ideas don't die, they just manifest in new forms.
You have to ask yourself, are people any less racist, sexist, or homophobic now since the CRA of '64 was passed? I would say no, they just now have to hide it better. What does that say about the laws affects on society? Like the many arguements that came up when Rand Paul was being interrogated about the CRA, I would rather know who wants to discriminate, so I can discriminate against them by not purchasing their products or services. Social changes cannot come from legislation, they come only through education and cooperation.
About your point on 3 and 4, you accept that these people are insanely wealthy because of their works being subsidized and they receive better treatment from the government, and because of that they must pay more taxes. Why not actually get at the root of the problem and get rid of the subsidies and special privledges. When they are forced to actually compete on a even playing field many of these "economic monoliths" would have been bankrupted, liquidated, and had investment that originally were spent on them allocated to better businesses.
a. you made alot of assumptions about humans that i think are pretty easily challenged, and it isn't the "indoctrination" that makes people care about black and white. let's not be so blind to culture that we are callously cosmopolitan. these differences are naturally cultural, and they are historical. the problem with color-blindness is that it fails to take into account the history of a persecuted people, therefore, it cannot grant proper reclamation for those disadvantaged groups. its a principle of reclamatory justice, not of "discrimination".
b. to both you and the person above: look at the entire legal/economic/physical infrastructure. it is created to benefit the wealthy; you can't say its here to make everyone wealthy because the facts just don't support that kind of hypothesis. i agree that the gov't should repeal these laws, but until then i think some good cases can be made for a progressive tax code for a number of reasons. (1) concepts of justice are cultural and often times not objective; so when we talk about what is the most just tax system, we can't say that one flat rate is necessarily the most just because that kind of perspective fails to take into account the increased privilege and access that wealth grants to a society. these types of trade-offs are prevalent in all forms of distributive justice, but i'm just using the flat tax as an example. this is all to say that the idea of a philosophical justice in the flat tax is misleading because a flat tax is just a culturally preferred approach to distributive justice. (2) also, considering that the lower and middle classes have been sacrificed both in the workplace and in overall economic status in order for the ridiculously rich to be successful, it seems fair as an act of reclamation to require more of the rich when it comes to taxation. this is not to say that the tax system should be absurdly complex or overburdening, but this is to say that laws should be as just as possible. part of justice is reclamation, and if a law grants special privileges to certain groups, it should also hold those special groups accountable. if those privileged groups are allowed to excel at the expense of the rest of society, then then their undeserved successes should be returned to the rest of society.
Firstly on your point B, I didn't even need to keep reading after you made the statement "i agree that the gov't should repeal these laws, but until then..." Show we should spend time, money and energy supporting a process that is inherently wrong simply for "social economic justice." To me the only answer is an even playing field, either everyone is equal in the eyes of the law, or we have a priviledged class. Since it is my belief that we are all created equally and endowd by our creator, whether a god or not, with inalienable rights, the idea of some priviledged class that gets superior treatment from the government is on its face wrong. By supporting a "progressive" tax system, we are legitimizing that these people deserve this treatment if we could only tax them further. Well i'm sorry to say since they already have their camel in the tent which set up house and is ordering his rider around our camel can't even get a nose in. So expecting the downtrodden to actually have a voice in politics is laughable, they simply don't have the budget to afford it.
On your point A, while the nature vs. nurture arguement is far from settled in sociology, its more than ever pointing to that while nature has its affects, nuture far out ways the actions of conscious thought. Reinforced stereotypes, revisionist education, and the promotion of race as a factor have led to more racism not less.
Also was it I who percecuted someone. By the shear fact that I am white does that mean that I share the blame both emotionally and financially for atrosities carried out before my family was even apart of this country? My family has heretige ties going back all the way to Charlamenge, does that mean I'm entitled to his spoils and should share the blame from the atrocities he carried out? Are we going to blood test every person in america to determine who at one point was related to a slave owner, and then have the decendants of those slave owners give property to the decendants of the slave?
All I'm saying is that if you want to preach equality, actually preach equality, that being that we are all equal under the law. By creating specific laws for specific classes of people you create the class system you seek to destroy by it. It is not the duty of the state to make sure we are equal economically, because our activity in the economic world is based upon our motivation, drive, and tenacity. When the state stays out of it, the unintended consequences are not shared by each community, and it falls back onto the individual making decisions. It is our individual decisions that matter, not our collective racial history.
First off, the age, race, gender, and sexual oreintation aren't all "secondary to the individual", they HELP CREATE THE INDIVIDUAL. Just like eye color, preference of ice cream, political views, and individual value judgement, create other individual attributes that derive a particular individual's characteristics.
As for government subsudizing the rich, then yea that is un-fair that the government is subsudizing finicial companies with billions of dollars of taxpayer's, while these same finicial companies are literally throwing people out onto the street. While paradoxically NOT SUBSUDIZING the people who are losing their homes with anytype of bailout money. Then if that isn't unfair, I don't know what is??
As a Libertarian, I sympathize greatly with the Davy Crocket/Blunts story that states the cliche of complete equality "what is good for one, is good for all". In other words, either bail out ALL AMERICANS IN FINICIAL DISTRESS, or DON'T JUST EXCLUSIVELY BAILOUT THE RICH FINICIAL COMPANIES who are causing this crisis. Fairness is a virture, and neither one of these wicked establishments in either of the two "major" political parties have any.