PDA

View Full Version : What the Alt-Right Gets Wrong



Chris
08-31-2017, 04:57 PM
A libertarian reaction to the alt-right, or should I say rejection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdAxX5It84w

Mister D
08-31-2017, 06:58 PM
First let me say that the term "alt right" is positively useless for discussion now. It simply means "neo-Nazi and this refers to nothign interesting or politically relevant. Thanks, progressives.

That said, I agree assuming "alt right" can be used intelligently. I use it to refer to traditional conservatism particularly with respect to anti-liberalism and anti-capitalism. I have long maintained that liberalism is antithetical to conservatism. Libetarianism, in so far as libertarians embrace liberalism in its purest form, is a far cry from conservatism and stands in stark fundamental opposition to it in several respects. I simply do not understand why progressives struggle with libertarian concepts and feel compelled to place them in a "conservative" box. Yeah, they might say that they do this because libertarians have a market focus but that's hardly everything libertarians stand for.

Chris
08-31-2017, 07:14 PM
I think it's sort of it you can't fight them join them. He's just accepting what the left has don't the the terms, all the while the left insists there's no alt-left.

The way I see both alt-right and alt-left is as collectivists and authoritarians. Libertarians are of course individualists and, well, libertarian. Care has to be taken not to associate the methodological individualism, that sees the individual as actor in society, with the sort of indivisualism that isolates from society.

The video speaker probably hovers between the two.

Chris
08-31-2017, 07:36 PM
I liked this part, what Rauch, a liberal, had to say:

https://i.snag.gy/HGu83V.jpg

"Being offended is part of how we learn, if you can't offend people, then you can't criticize people, and if you can't criticize people and ideas, then there's absolutely no way to figure out what ideas are good and what are bad."

Trish
08-31-2017, 08:14 PM
I have no idea what a libertarian is anymore. They appear to be the step child of the republican party.

Chris
08-31-2017, 08:20 PM
I have no idea what a libertarian is anymore. They appear to be the step child of the republican party.

Left libertarians, too?

Here's a Nolan Chart:

https://i.snag.gy/xmZ9EJ.jpg

Trish
08-31-2017, 08:24 PM
Left libertarians, too?

Here's a Nolan Chart:

https://i.snag.gy/xmZ9EJ.jpg
Are there left libertarians? Leftest seem to care for everyone at the expense of everyone else. hahahahaha

I didn't think libertarians liked people all that much. They seem to never want to be a part of a society where people help each other. I thought they preferred to wallow by themselves in life without a care for others.

Mister D
08-31-2017, 08:26 PM
Are there left libertarians? Leftest seem to care for everyone at the expense of everyone else. hahahahaha

I didn't think libertarians liked people all that much. They seem to never want to be a part of a society where people help each other. I thought they preferred to wallow by themselves in life without a care for others.
Because they don't support government programs of wealth redistribution?

Trish
08-31-2017, 08:45 PM
Because they don't support government programs of wealth redistribution?
I don't think that's what I said.

Chris
09-01-2017, 08:04 AM
Are there left libertarians? Leftest seem to care for everyone at the expense of everyone else. hahahahaha

I didn't think libertarians liked people all that much. They seem to never want to be a part of a society where people help each other. I thought they preferred to wallow by themselves in life without a care for others.


Why of course there are left libertarian. Two places I read a lot are Center for a Stateless Society (https://c4ss.org/) and Bleeding Heart Libertarians (http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/)



I didn't think libertarians liked people all that much. They seem to never want to be a part of a society where people help each other. I thought they preferred to wallow by themselves in life without a care for others.

No idea where you get that. At the heart of classical liberal analysis is the methodological individualism I mentioned above. Some see that as focus on the individual to the exclusion of society but actually all it says is the individual is the actor in society. When it comes to markets, for example, it requires more than one to engage in exchange, in fact the market emerges from the myriad of exchanges everyone engages in all the time.

I think part of the problem goes back to Plato who posted collectivists are altruistic and egoists selfish, assumed by Hegel and then Marx. But there's no basis for that assumption and in fact history shows the supposed altruistic collectivists authoritarian if not totalitarian where the individual is abstracted away and the state is all that matters. Selfish is not miserly but self-interested and in order to serve self interest, in order to get what you want you must provide others what they want in exchange. So serving self-interest serves society, what Adam Smith called the invisible hand.

Mister D
09-01-2017, 04:33 PM
Why of course there are left libertarian. Two places I read a lot are Center for a Stateless Society (https://c4ss.org/) and Bleeding Heart Libertarians (http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/)




No idea where you get that. At the heart of classical liberal analysis is the methodological individualism I mentioned above. Some see that as focus on the individual to the exclusion of society but actually all it says is the individual is the actor in society. When it comes to markets, for example, it requires more than one to engage in exchange, in fact the market emerges from the myriad of exchanges everyone engages in all the time.

I think part of the problem goes back to Plato who posted collectivists are altruistic and egoists selfish, assumed by Hegel and then Marx. But there's no basis for that assumption and in fact history shows the supposed altruistic collectivists authoritarian if not totalitarian where the individual is abstracted away and the state is all that matters. Selfish is not miserly but self-interested and in order to serve self interest, in order to get what you want you must provide others what they want in exchange. So serving self-interest serves society, what Adam Smith called the invisible hand.
Collectivism was unknown in Plato's world. I would use the term holism to describe traditional or pre-modern societies. The phenomenon of collectivism only manifests where individualism is deeply rooted and thus collectivism is a distinctly modern phenomenon. Totalitarianism is as well but that's another albeit related topic. This is an important distinction because we can lose sight of the fact that individualism is essential to the ethos of modernity and we are all impacted by the social, political and ethical values such a metaphysic entails. My point is that "collectivism" per se is not an instance of caring about your fellow man but of holding him hostage. It's a system based in suspicion, jealousy and fear. It's an instance not of social harmony but of a mass of individuals at war with one another.

Mister D
09-01-2017, 04:35 PM
I don't think that's what I said.
I didn't ask about what you said but why you said. Do you know? What did you think a libertarian was and what has you confused these days?

Chris
09-01-2017, 04:42 PM
Collectivism was unknown in Plato's world. I would use the term holism to describe traditional or pre-modern societies. The phenomenon of collectivism only manifests where individualism is deeply rooted and thus collectivism is a distinctly modern phenomenon. Totalitarianism is as well but that's another albeit related topic. This is an important distinction because we can lose sight of the fact that individualism is essential to the ethos of modernity and we are all impacted by the social, political and ethical values such a metaphysic entails. My point is that "collectivism" per se is not an instance of caring about your fellow man but of holding him hostage. It's a system based in suspicion, jealousy and fear. It's an instance not of social harmony but of a mass of individuals at war with one another.

Plato was talking about designing and implementing utopian systems though, not defending society holistically. Remember, he would put himself as philosopher king.

Here is Popper on the spell of Plato, from The Open Society and Its Enemies:

https://i.snag.gy/pmJh4f.jpg

Chris
09-01-2017, 04:46 PM
The problem with classical liberal or libertarian methodological individualism as a tool of analysis, where the individual is the sole actor in society, is it is blind to society itself being an actor, to culture and time and place being actors. And to try to impose that on the past is anachronistic. Individualzism didn't become a major for until after the American and Fench Revolutions, which weren't just political, but turned society upside down, inside out.

Mister D
09-01-2017, 04:51 PM
Plato was talking about designing and implementing utopian systems though, not defending society holistically. Remember, he would put himself as philosopher king.

Here is Popper on the spell of Plato, from The Open Society and Its Enemies:

https://i.snag.gy/pmJh4f.jpg
Was he speaking of a designed system or was this a philosophical reflection on the ideal sociopolitical system? Would you at least agree that Plato's Republic is not a manifesto?

Mister D
09-01-2017, 04:58 PM
The problem with classical liberal or libertarian methodological individualism as a tool of analysis, where the individual is the sole actor in society, is it is blind to society itself being an actor, to culture and time and place being actors. And to try to impose that on the past is anachronistic. Individualzism didn't become a major for until after the American and Fench Revolutions, which weren't just political, but turned society upside down, inside out.
I would suggest that metaphysical individualism inevitably leads to a devaluation of society, history, culture etc. That said, I agree.

Chris
09-01-2017, 05:14 PM
Was he speaking of a designed system or was this a philosophical reflection on the ideal sociopolitical system? Would you at least agree that Plato's Republic is not a manifesto?

He was designing the system Hegel advanced and Marx adopted it. As Hegel put it "Man is free, this is certainly the substantial nature of man; and not only is this liberty not relinquished in the state, but it is actually in the state that it is first realised. The freedom of nature, the gift of freedom, is not anything real; for the state is the first realisation of freedom." The state becomes God: "The march of God in the world, that is what the state is." Marx took it to the manifesto stage.

For Plato, it was an ideal, manifest in 20th-century totalitarian states.

Liberals, especially in academia, have embraced Plato's analogy to the full, even though it is completely wrong.


It's a far cry from natural holistic collectives.

Chris
09-01-2017, 05:18 PM
I would suggest that metaphysical individualism inevitably leads to a devaluation of society, history, culture etc. That said, I agree.

Yea, what I'm trying to say is that. Popper was an individualist, as was, at that time, his friend, Hayek. Hayek later turned away from that and toward how society is an actor, how society selects for certain traits etc. Individualism fails, for instance, I think, to account for self-sacrifice. I think you need to turn to social selection for that, society teaches you to self sacrifice your self-interest for the good of the whole by the way society elevates heros to a special status to be worshiped and emulated.

Mister D
09-01-2017, 07:36 PM
He was designing the system Hegel advanced and Marx adopted it. As Hegel put it "Man is free, this is certainly the substantial nature of man; and not only is this liberty not relinquished in the state, but it is actually in the state that it is first realised. The freedom of nature, the gift of freedom, is not anything real; for the state is the first realisation of freedom." The state becomes God: "The march of God in the world, that is what the state is." Marx took it to the manifesto stage.

For Plato, it was an ideal, manifest in 20th-century totalitarian states.

Liberals, especially in academia, have embraced Plato's analogy to the full, even though it is completely wrong.


It's a far cry from natural holistic collectives.
I'm not sure I quite see the design in Plato although I certainly see validity in your initial assertion (i.e. that the supposed opposition between 'collectivism" and individualism stems from Plato's ideas) but I also tend to side with Hegel in so far individual liberty is actualized in the state (broadly defined...I am not in anyway referring to centralization). After all, liberty outside society doesn't seem to make any sense. What exactly is the "gift of freedom" to the isolated man? Donttread suggested it's a chicken and egg question but I don't see it that way. We only know man in society not man in any abstract way. That said, I do see the danger in that. It's just as real as the danger posed by metaphysical individualism but in this case the state is everything and the man nothing.

Chris
09-01-2017, 07:59 PM
I could go along with individual liberty is actualized in society. Not the state, which is a product, designed and managed by, society.

But I tend to agree with a perspective of thinkers like Burke, Smith, Jefferson, etc, that rights are of the people. Even the Constitution is written that way.

Society comes first. Individualism, the state comes only in the last 2% of man's existence.

Trish
09-01-2017, 08:22 PM
I could go along with individual liberty is actualized in society. Not the state, which is a product, designed and managed by, society.
But I tend to agree with a perspective of thinkers like Burke, Smith, Jefferson, etc, that rights are of the people. Even the Constitution is written that way.
Society comes first. Individualism, the state comes only in the last 2% of man's existence.

Damn it! Now I'm really confused. hahahahaha

Trish
09-01-2017, 08:42 PM
Why of course there are left libertarian. Two places I read a lot are Center for a Stateless Society (https://c4ss.org/) and Bleeding Heart Libertarians (http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/)




No idea where you get that. At the heart of classical liberal analysis is the methodological individualism I mentioned above. Some see that as focus on the individual to the exclusion of society but actually all it says is the individual is the actor in society. When it comes to markets, for example, it requires more than one to engage in exchange, in fact the market emerges from the myriad of exchanges everyone engages in all the time.

I think part of the problem goes back to Plato who posted collectivists are altruistic and egoists selfish, assumed by Hegel and then Marx. But there's no basis for that assumption and in fact history shows the supposed altruistic collectivists authoritarian if not totalitarian where the individual is abstracted away and the state is all that matters. Selfish is not miserly but self-interested and in order to serve self interest, in order to get what you want you must provide others what they want in exchange. So serving self-interest serves society, what Adam Smith called the invisible hand.

Can I just get it layman's terms? I was with you up until "the problem goes back to Plato" and then it all went down hill from there.....

Just kidding. The libertarians that I've communicated with of late have taken a hard line when it comes to the left. I've actually been quite surprised at how much they despise the left. I used to have a healthy respect for libertarian views and agreed with some positions they took. Now I find myself questioning who they really are and it seems to me that if there was a zombie apocalypse and we were all running towards the safety zone - if the libertarians got there first they'd lock everyone else out to be eaten. Kinda cold hearted is how I see them these days.

Chris
09-01-2017, 08:53 PM
Can I just get it layman's terms? I was with you up until "the problem goes back to Plato" and then it all went down hill from there.....

Just kidding. The libertarians that I've communicated with of late have taken a hard line when it comes to the left. I've actually been quite surprised at how much they despise the left. I used to have a healthy respect for libertarian views and agreed with some positions they took. Now I find myself questioning who they really are and it seems to me that if there was a zombie apocalypse and we were all running towards the safety zone - if the libertarians got there first they'd lock everyone else out to be eaten. Kinda cold hearted is how I see them these days.

Libertarians in the US do tend to be conservative. They want to conserve limited government against the left wanting to grow it. They are individualistic against the left's collectivism.

Plato dreamed up a great utopian government. Hegal helped make it reality in Nazi Germany and Marx in communist Russia. It was the thing back then. FDR pursued it.

On edit, I'll add libertarians tend to be individuallists against post-modern neo-Marxist SJWs. I have a thread around here on that.

But being against the left doesn't really put us on the right, as the OP here explains. We're against both the alt-right and the alt-left.

Devil'sAdvocate
09-22-2017, 01:41 AM
I think you need to turn to social selection for that, society teaches you to self sacrifice your self-interest for the good of the whole by the way society elevates heros to a special status to be worshiped and emulated.
Given that when you're dead, you won't be around to reap any of the rewards of being 'made a hero', then to be honest, that makes about as much sense as killing yourself in order to inherit $1 million which you'll never even get to spend.

So that explanation would only suffice if there was some type of life after death, where one would be rewarded or punished.

Devil'sAdvocate
09-22-2017, 01:47 AM
The problem with classical liberal or libertarian methodological individualism as a tool of analysis, where the individual is the sole actor in society, is it is blind to society itself being an actor, to culture and time and place being actors. And to try to impose that on the past is anachronistic. Individualzism didn't become a major for until after the American and Fench Revolutions, which weren't just political, but turned society upside down, inside out.
The problem is that "individualism" is really a construct based solely on perspective. The biological reality is that "your body" isn't just an individual actor, as it's shown to be composed of millions of living cells, all 'individuals' in their own right working in union.

So even the view of "yourself" or a "person" as "an individual" is factually meaningless, unless perhaps one takes a dualistic perspective, and views themselves as an "indivisible whole" separate from their physical body (aka a "soul").

But from a purely scientific perspective, it has no basis. For that matter, why should the individual living cells in your body be bound to serve "you", whatever "you" even is?

Chris
09-22-2017, 04:53 AM
The problem is that "individualism" is really a construct based solely on perspective. The biological reality is that "your body" isn't just an individual actor, as it's shown to be composed of millions of living cells, all 'individuals' in their own right working in union.

So even the view of "yourself" or a "person" as "an individual" is factually meaningless, unless perhaps one takes a dualistic perspective, and views themselves as an "indivisible whole" separate from their physical body (aka a "soul").

But from a purely scientific perspective, it has no basis. For that matter, why should the individual living cells in your body be bound to serve "you", whatever "you" even is?

True but it has utility in explaining political and economical and other aspect of human life whereas a purely cellular or even atomistic/particlistic view cannot.

Chris
09-22-2017, 04:56 AM
Given that when you're dead, you won't be around to reap any of the rewards of being 'made a hero', then to be honest, that makes about as much sense as killing yourself in order to inherit $1 million which you'll never even get to spend.

So that explanation would only suffice if there was some type of life after death, where one would be rewarded or punished.

Your response sort of misses the point. Individualistically, being a hero and sacrificing yourself does not make sense, it's only on the social level that it does. The life after death at that level is survival of the species in selection of genetic traits that promote heroism.

Devil'sAdvocate
09-22-2017, 06:20 PM
Your response sort of misses the point. Individualistically, being a hero and sacrificing yourself does not make sense, it's only on the social level that it does. The life after death at that level is survival of the species in selection of genetic traits that promote heroism.
That doesn't make logical sense, unless one believes in reincarnation or something of that nature, as if one is dead, they wouldn't be around to reap any of the rewards of the survival of the species.

If one's life ends at death, the hypothetical "survival of the species" would have no reason to matter at all, and wouldn't benefit the self in any way - if it was more in one's self interest in this present life, to rape, plunder, and murder their own kind, that would be the rational choice.

Devil'sAdvocate
09-22-2017, 06:23 PM
True but it has utility in explaining political and economical and other aspect of human life whereas a purely cellular or even atomistic/particlistic view cannot.
Regardless, it's purely subjective and definition-based.

One could just as easily define a "nation" not as a "collection of individuals" but as a "unified organism", and the "individuals" just the cells that make up the body.

And if it was in the self-interest of the nation (the individual entity) to subjugate some of its cells to the utitility of the whole (the state), there wouldn't be any rational incentive to do otherwise, anymore than there would be for the human body to sacrifice its own interests for the good of its individual cells.

Chris
09-22-2017, 06:24 PM
That doesn't make logical sense, unless one believes in reincarnation or something of that nature, as if one is dead, they wouldn't be around to reap any of the rewards of the survival of the species.

If one's life ends at death, the hypothetical "survival of the species" would have no reason to matter at all, and wouldn't benefit the self in any way - if it was more in one's self interest in this present life, to rape, plunder, and murder their own kind, that would be the rational choice.

You're repeating your missing of the point. You're stuck on the individual and value to him alone when the point is about social value and selection. Evolution is about survival of a pool of genes.

Chris
09-22-2017, 06:26 PM
Regardless, it's purely subjective and definition-based.

One could just as easily define a "nation" not as a "collection of individuals" but as a "unified organism", and the "individuals" just the cells that make up the body.

And if it was in the self-interest of the nation (the individual entity) to subjugate some of its cells to the utitility of the whole (the state), there wouldn't be any rational incentive to do otherwise, anymore than there would be for the human body to sacrifice its own interests for the good of its individual cells.

One could use all sorts of analogies and metaphors. The danger is in believing they are real.

Kalkin
09-22-2017, 06:42 PM
I didn't think libertarians liked people all that much. They seem to never want to be a part of a society where people help each other.
Actually, they don't want to be part of a society where the government forces them to subsidize other people's wants/needs. Libertarians are about personal choice. Some can choose to help, others can choose not to.

Devil'sAdvocate
09-22-2017, 08:59 PM
You're repeating your missing of the point. You're stuck on the individual and value to him alone when the point is about social value and selection. Evolution is about survival of a pool of genes.
That's the value toward the collective, not the individual agent - the collective might benefit from the individual's sacrifice materially speaking, but arguing that he could "benefit" from it by dying does not make sense. The individual can't benefit from "being remembered as a hero" in any measurable way if he's no longer around to hear the praise.

Unless you're arguing that individuals are hardwired in such a way that what benefits the group as a whole always mutually benefits the self in some way or another, or something of that nature.

Chris
09-22-2017, 09:20 PM
That's the value toward the collective, not the individual agent - the collective might benefit from the individual's sacrifice materially speaking, but arguing that he could "benefit" from it by dying does not make sense. The individual can't benefit from "being remembered as a hero" in any measurable way if he's no longer around to hear the praise.

Unless you're arguing that individuals are hardwired in such a way that what benefits the group as a whole always mutually benefits the self in some way or another, or something of that nature.

Seems hard to get through. Of course the individual sacrificing life or limb for society doesn't benefit him, it benefits society. That's been and continues to be my point, the one you keep missing.

Society selects for it.