Upon hearing that I had tickets to the St. Louis Cardinals’ opening game of the 2006 season in Philadelphia and he didn’t, Retardo of elementropy flew into a blind rage, dispensed with all the class for which Cardinals fans are reknowned around the world, and commenced an attack on me.
It’s really less an overarching thesis than a bunch of willful misunderstandings, so I guess I should just take them one at a time.
Way back in aught-five, Retardo linked to an article that made the laughable claim that “Rand is the only novelist whose work has been read by every single US Congressman.” Not only did the article make that claim, but Retardo actually QUOTED it!
I doubt any such novelist exists, but if one did it would probably have to be Mark Twain. Obviously it’s not Rand. Here is a list of US Representatives. Have all of them read Ayn Rand? Maxine Waters? Bernie Sanders? Charlie Rangel?
I stopped reading the article there. But today I learned from elementropy that my objection to an outright lie about hundreds of politicians betrays my deep adoration for Rand’s works.
He goes on to write that my “general schtick pretty much consists of denying that propertarianism and social darwinism are the legs upon which modern libertarianism, his ideology of choice, stands.” Well, anyone is free to read through my archives to see whether that is true of my writings in the “general” case. I’d say my general schtick pretty much consists of linking to something some better blogger than I wrote about why the Bush administration sucks and saying I agree. I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “propertarianism", which isn’t surprising since Retardo invented it and no one else has ever used it.
Retardo thinks that, since I’ve got family in Ireland, consistently bringing up the famine is going to make me embrace socialism (except in November, when socialists support exactly what the Democratic party happens to stand for that year and attack anyone to its left). He recently linked to an article that was supposed to pin the famine on libertarians. I happened upon this quote:
“We attach the highest public importance to the strict observance of our pledge not to send orders (for food) abroad, which would come into competition with our merchants and upset all their calculations".
Trevelyan, 1846.
I asked Retardo if he disagreed, since he is generally an outspoken supporter of putting the needs of domestic businesses ahead of anyone abroad. His learning disability caused him to read this question as “Free trade would have stopped the famine.”
By the way, in all my conversations with my dear departed grandmother, she never once mentioned wishing that the British government had taken a more active role in her family’s life. Quite the contrary.
There’s a whole segment in there that amounts to “a lot of libertarians are assholes.” Well, okay. Why should that make me want to change a single one of my ideas on public policy? If I started calling myself a digammatist instead of a libertarian, what difference would that make?
Because I self-identify as a libertarian but am willing to compromise with statists on basic welfare programs more than on other things, this apparently makes me a deeply-conflicted closet socialist. I’d say the most glaring contradiction in my political beliefs is that I lean towards the Democratic party despite the fact that it has, in the last decade, bombed a medicine factory, put an American citizen in solitary confinement for no reason except to scare China, and supported a war that constitutes the country’s biggest policy blunder in decades.
But Retardo, who agrees with that party’s economic policies less than I do, thinks it’s a contradiction that I don’t support that party ENOUGH. I know you’re conflicted, but what am I?
Then he goes and rehashes the only interesting thing we have ever argued about, which is whether most people’s policy preferences come out of a coherent philosophy (his view) or not (mine). I think people are motivated a lot more by partisan and tribal loyalty than by anything else. There are a lot of people who might agree with Party X on most policy issues, but, ew, it’s Party X! They’re wackoes! Party Y may not be perfect, but they’ll take them, thank you very much.
This may or may not prove the “a lot of libertarians are assholes” thesis, but again, what does that then imply?
Then he takes this post and says (unaware of the irony) that I want the world to be exactly like it was in The Jungle.
Then he goes after this post:
His “right” to a good car absolutely trumps the right of a Vietnamese woman to not get braindamage from glue fumes in a shoe factory, the right of a Chinese to not work with a gun to his temple, the right of a Brazilian to not be kicked off his land to work on a corporate farm, etc. Put another way, his “right” to self-determination – in this case being a better consumer market for whatever product – trumps the rights (no quotes) of self-determination for Third Worlders who are forced, through their unrepresentative and/or corrupt governments, to accept neo-liberal shock therapy.
But why exactly do “the right of a Vietnamese woman to not get braindamage from glue fumes in a shoe factory, the right of a Chinese to not work with a gun to his temple, the right of a Brazilian to not be kicked off his land to work on a corporate farm, etc” mean that I should be forcibly prevented from buying a car from a Japanese company?
Finally he goes into a strange legal argument that doesn’t address the text of any laws, but rather the fact that the Constitution is not “Friedmanite". Well, okay. Did anyone ever say it is? Although Friedman’s presence at the Constitutional convention might explain how President Washington knew how to order electronic surveillance.
Very confused and confusing stuff. And it’s only going to get worse when the Cardinals start losing on April 3rd.