Thursday, July 12, 2018

Some Responses to Trump Fanboys

"I just love a calm sunny day like today."


At the post,  "BREAKING: Trump Has Given FULL PARDONS to Oregon Ranchers who Clashed with Federal Officials Over Land", Unowned writes:
I’m surprised Wenzel posted this.., credit 
What Unowned doesn't get is that I post on the activities of the President good and bad, it is just that Trump's actions as president are almost always bad. 

I am against people being coerced for government violations be they ranchers or young kids being grabbed from their mothers' arms. My guide is advancement toward liberty.

This is what Unowned doesn't seem to understand as a result of being caught up in Chapter 10 Syndrome (C10S). That is, the tribal desire to follow a powerful leader down the road of hate, as described by Friedrich Hayek in Chapter 10 of his book, The Road to Serfdom:
It is in connection with the deliberate effort of the skillful demagogue to weld together a closely coherent and homogeneous body of supporters that the third and perhaps most important negative element of selection enters. It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program—on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off—than on any positive task. The contrast between the “we” and the “they,” the common fight against those outside the group, seems to be an essential ingredient in any creed which will solidly knit together a group for common action. It is consequently always employed by those who seek, not merely support of a policy, but the unreserved allegiance of huge masses. From their point of view it has the great advantage of leaving them greater freedom of action than almost any positive program. The enemy, whether he be internal, like the “Jew” or the “kulak,” or external, seems to be an indispensable requisite in the armory of a totalitarian leader.
Over at EPJ, under the post,  Here’s When Americans Will Really Start Feeling the Pain From Escalating Trump-Imposed Tariffs, we have another C10S sufferer at work.

Shimshon comments:
Bob, considering that you practically endorsed Hillary for president in the crazy notion that it would bring the libertarian phoenix rising from the ashes of societal collapse (that seems like a fair summation of your logic), why not embrace the same here? If tariffs are the disaster you maintain, we'll arrive at Utopia pretty soon, don't you think? Stop gnashing your teeth. Smile.
Besides, it is clear Trump actually understands your point, even as he obviously disagrees with it. He proposed, to Trudeau I believe, that both the US and Canada embrace genuine free trade by both countries dropping tariffs entirely. Justin was conspicuously silent in response.
First, I did not endorse Hillary, as an advocate of the #PPS, I don't vote and never encourage anyone to vote. I simply said that Trump and Hillary were both bad but that Trump would gain a more powerful following and that for strategic reasons that was very dangerous.

 Immediately after the election on November 10, 2016, I wrote:
 Trump supporters are rabid, they will likely follow him down almost any hell hole.
These people are not going to listen to our arguments for smaller government. Their man is in power.

There will be opposition to Trump but it will be coming from the left, not the Trump right.
The left is all about expanding the state. Thus, it will be very difficult to reach out to these people and present state shrinking anti-Trump ideas. They are a perfect target for the socialists...

 The socialists are going to experience a boom in followers under Trump.

Thus, neither the left nor the right is going to be open to libertarian ideas at the present time.
Trump supporters are not speaking out against the taking of children from parents! If that isn't following Trump down any hellhole I don't know what is. And as far as the advance of socialism under Trump, I have one name: Alexandria Ocasi-Cortez.

Things are playing out just as I expected.

And linking that analysis with Trump's tariffs is more evidence of how far down the C10S rabbit hole Shimshon has fallen.

My argument with regard to Clinton-Trump was that there really wasn't much difference between the two. I never, never, suggested things would get worse under Hillary and that therefore liberty would come out at the other end of the tunnel.

I have never promoted the idea that things should get worse so that they would then miraculously get better. Indeed, I am sure that the clever bastard Trump will somehow spin the negative economic impact of tariffs as the fault of someone else, perhaps Mexicans or perhaps Chinese, maybe both, and that the C10S sufferers will once again follow Trump further down the anti-liberty hellhole.

Finally, there is this comment from Philip Martin at the EPJ post, Here’s When Americans Will Really Start Feeling the Pain From Escalating Trump-Imposed Tariffs:
There is no free trade! The WTO institutionalises [sic] and codifies tariffs. Stop lying to your audience! 
This is the argumentative form that many Trump fanboy C10S sufferers use against me most often.

I am not sure if they have trouble understanding complex thought or they are just being dishonest.

They will frequently take a point I am making and disassemble it to charge me with something I have never said. This often happens with the anti-#PPS crowd.

Specifically, with regard to Martin's comment.

I have never said the WTO is free trade. Indeed, I have consistently said it was crony trade but that it is less anti-trade than Trump trade policies.  Once again, my advocacy is always for moving toward liberty. Crony trade is better than what Trump wants. See David Stockman for the specifics on how much worse Trump trade policy is.

-RW  

7 comments:

  1. There’s no denying that the Trump movement and the alt-right have enjoyed a depressing amount of success at recruiting former libertarian fellow travelers into their numbers. So it shouldn’t be surprising that they continue to come back to that well. The silver lining is that we’re left with a more principled core, and hopefully a more coherent message going forward.

    To be sure, many of those ex-libertarians who fell for Trump were never really libertarians, so good riddance. But surely some left because we failed to sufficiently inoculate them against statism when we had the chance. We need to do better.

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    1. I personally don't know any former libertarians who have joined the Trump movement. Are there examples of publicly prominent libertarians who have done so? While I'm not denying that this might have taken place, I'm wondering what the evidence is.

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    2. I think Stefan Molyneux inhaled the Agent Orange and flipped from libertarian to orange-fart sniffer.

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  2. One point about Alexandria blah blah blah is that it may just be the appearance that she is advancing socialism. She can be queen of 30 - 40% of the country and that's fine and dandy by me. The issue becomes if she can mobilize people who normally wouldn't vote and that number is not offset by the number of Democrats who reject socialism and flip to Trump or stay home.

    It's really too bad Ron Paul didn't have the political gumption of Trump. RP was a great campaigner, but couldn't twist the Party into submission.

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    1. @Stuffed Pimento, exactly. If Bob is saying that she is the future of the Democratic party, all I can say is, please make it so!

      https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2018-07-12/sen-chris-coons-democrats-need-to-abandon-wild-eyed-race-to-left

      Those who aren't starry-eyed idealists get that the Democratic swing to the left will, not may, but WILL, result in a significant swing of non-NeverTrumpers over to Trump. They would get that large numbers of non-intersectionally-advantaged will embrace the only path to identity politics available to them as opposition to the insanity. To wit, the Republican party.

      As far as RP, he supports open borders, and thus is a globalist, or a globalist tool, no matter how good he is on everything else.

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    2. You're misinformed on RP's position. He is much closer to Trump on immigration than open border fauxtarians.

      In "Liberty Defined" he writes this about immigration:

      "The libertarians who argue for completely open borders for the free flow of goods and people fail to realize that a truly libertarian society would not necessarily be that open..."

      I'll paraphrase from here:

      *Restore free-market economy and eliminate deficit-financed government.
      *Abolish the welfare state (also abolish SS & DI for non-citizen immigrants)
      *Make immigration labor legal and easy with a generous visitor work program
      *Enforce the laws now on the books with more border guards; permit states to enforce the law; allow landowners to provide private property security assistance and to work with Federal Border Control authorities (ICE)
      *Do not grant citizenship to children of illegals born in US
      *Stop all federal mandates on states to provide free education and medical care for illegal immigrants
      *End the drug war
      *Immigrants who cannot be sent back due to the magnitude of the problem should NOT be given citizenship. No amnesty.
      *Immigrants, legal or illegal, who commit violent crimes should be prosecuted and deported
      *Police should be allowed to ask for "papers" if they have reasonable cause

      RP's issue with strong border protection proponents: They are just as interested in regulating our right to freely exit the country ans they are in preventing illegal entry (cites taking $ out of country) "The right of a citizen to leave the country anytime with his wealth and without government interference is a sharp dividing line between a free society and a dictatorship."

      TL;DR: Ron Paul opposes open borders just as much as he opposes closed borders.

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  3. RW, is the quote in the photo you used an actual Trump quote from today or yesterday? If so, can you share the source? I'm trying to find it but haven't been able to. Thanks in advance.

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