This probably doesn't exactly encourage people to comment. But I am not running a popularity contest here and if I was into driving traffic I would have gone off-the-wall in favor of Trump in 2016.
Here goes:
Stuffed Pimento writes:
Where the hell did I ever give the impression that socialists were going to sweep through mid-term Democratic primaries?
Wonder why RW omitted the fact that all candidates backed by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez lost in the primary elections. Her and Crazy Bernie Sanders went around the country and stumped for hard line Leftists and they all lost.
When Trump was elected, I said it was going to be beneficial for socialists. It has been. Cortez won and the membership in the Democratic Socialists of America is booming. DSA chapters on college campuses are exploding. But I never ever said anything about socialists sweeping in mid-term elections.
If anything, the Cortez victory proved my point about socialist gains because it far exceeded my expectations back in 2016 when I warned about a socialist advance because of Trump.
And about the races where Cortez campaigned/is campaigning. Consider. for example, in New York, her home state. Cortez has endorsed Cynthia Nixon for governor. Incumbent Andrew Cuomo is ahead of Nixon 59 to 23. Nixon is not going to win but Cortez campaigning with Nixon is going to introduce more to socialists themes. Campaigning even where the candidate supported is sure to lose is a very powerful strategic move for a minority group. It is right out of Murray Rothbard's unpublished strategy paper.
This has been Cortez's wise strategy across the country
She even made it on prime time CNN:
If you think this is losing, you have no idea as to how movements are built.
I didn't report on the primary "losses" because I didn't report on the campiagns before the primaries. They were a nothing burger. They told me nothing. That Cortez in her trips around the country was drawing crowds told me a lot.
There is a groundswell of support for her socialist nonsense and it is growing. That is the danger. It is not that she is already powerful enough to swing votes across the country. To think socialists are not a danger because Mimi Soltysik is not going to be elected president in 2020 completely misses what is going on.
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Unknown has left this comment at the post, IT'S GOING TO BE BAD: The Coming National Turn to the Left:
Robert, you have repeatedly treated Trump as the problem.
Trump is the symptom.
In many ways Trump is the absolute perfect representative of what the Republican Party has become in the last 5 decades. A mishmash of "might makes right" that is applied to virtually every perceived "problem" in society. The Dems are the same, but with -- as The NAPster points out -- different cronies. This is the culmination of a rich society where privileged people get to spend other people's money -- even money other people haven't earned yet -- and rob them directly through "taxation" and indirectly by literally taking value out of their wallets without removing the actual currency. Then, they get to use the plunder to injure those they've plundered even further.
Trump is not the problem. He's just the image that remains when the Devil finally removes his mask.Where the hell have I ever said that Trump is the problem, implying that if we get rid of Trump our problems will be solved? I have consistently stated that I did not see a significant difference between Trump and Hillary but that just for strategic reasons we would have gained more followers for the small-government, anti-government movement if Hillary had won. I point out the times Trump moves in an anti-liberty directions because that is what I do here. I am not attempting to say that if we remove Trump we will end up in the Garden of Eden. In fact, what I do say consistently is that revolutions, overthrows, whatever are a waste of time at present because the masses are not tuned in to demanding liberty.
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a ware writes:
You are completely missing my point. I am not punching anyone. The Alt-Right is willing and proving themselves ABLE to COUNTER attack. For decades the Left has gone into the streets with no one there to oppose them. This has gained them actual power where it counts...
The truth is that in this evil world it is violence, or the threat of violence, that gets actual results. This is not what I like or agree with but it is just a simple fact which I am remarking on. The Left certainly understands this and operates as such with the results of advancing their agenda...
If they are willing to kill you to get their way how far are you willing to go to not let that happen?
Look, again, if you think you are going to counter-attack with violence for liberty (but simultaneously not punch anyone), good for you. please email me when you have gained victory. As I said, I will be home watching baseball games on television.
Power is about domination, I want to go in the other direction---freedom and civility. The #PPS.
As far as a government attempting to kill me, I would do what, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstien and Ludwig von Mises did when facing similar circumstances, get out of town.
"Anti-semitism is strong here and political reaction is violent." - Einstein, in a letter written from Berlin in December of 1919
"Turn around, you will never see it again!" - Einstein to his wife as they left their house in Germany, December 1932
-RW
Bob, a ware is exactly right. It's not about immediately resorting to violence, but the willingness to do so. The Germans stopped using gas only because they got the same treatment in kind. The Allies didn't say to themselves, we're better than that, or, that's not who we are. And spare me the claptrap about how war is just evil and what's the difference between gas and any other weapon of war.
ReplyDelete"As far as a government attempting to kill me, I would do what, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstien and Ludwig von Mises did when facing similar circumstances, get out of town."
That's great, Bob. Three world famous Jews got out of Dodge. You know who also did that? Otto Frank (father of Anne), unlike many of his fellow Jewish Germans, did leave. He went to Holland. It was compelling logic, because Holland was neutral in WWI, and it seemed a reasonable assumption its neutrality would be respected the second time around. How well did that work out? As it is, von Mises barely escaped Austria after fleeing Germany.
Bob, people are not cogs, and that advice might apply in certain limited circumstances, but it doesn't work when scaled to millions. You deserve quite a bit of bashing for this idiotic advice. Sometimes fighting back is the only option.
I agree that leaving is not a mass option and it would be good to cook up mass options. Not easy, but good. Leaving remains a wise option for those that can, but even for those few, the question is where. America used to be the place to run to. Where do you run to now?
DeleteJH, everyone knows the answer to that question: we Rothbardians pine for Somalia [sarcasm].
DeleteThis topic is frequently discussed by Doug Casey and his colleagues in his "International Man" column. They have some interesting suggestions within Latin America.
There are no perfect options right now. Leaving aside residency requirements, personally, I would look to find the smallest, militarily weakest country that is either explicitly neutral, or not a pawn of the US. Size and aggressiveness in foreign policy seem to be correlated with liberty destruction domestically, and being a pawn of the US just seems awful. Some countries that might fit the bill are Costa Rica, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein (on this last suggestion, if you haven't done so already, you should read the Prince's book; this country has a very interesting constitution).
I understand the Prince of Liechtenstein and Hoppe are friends or at least correspond with each other. And Hoppe uses Liechtenstein as an example in his arguments against democracy.
DeleteI don't know enough about the laws and politics of Costa Rica but based on having spent four weeks riding dirt bikes down the west coast, it is an option.
Identity politics are just taking hold as America collapses. It's a very predictable and unsurprising outcome.
ReplyDeleteWhites can either organize as a voting bloc working for their own collective interests or get trampled by the folks who want to take everything from them. That is the simple, undeniable reality of our times.
"Whites can either organize as a voting bloc working for their own collective interests..."
DeleteThe ugly statist system we have today has been built primarily by whites in the U.S. (same thing in western Europe). For those who are interested in liberty, it makes more sense to associate with others who are interested in liberty -- meaning anti-state -- and not just pick skin color as the key determinant.
NAPster,
DeleteAgreed. If anything, we libertarians should be doing whatever we can to enlist other skin colors and age-groups - especially university students to our thinking. I recall the huge crowds of cheering students at Ron Paul's college campaign stops.
I suspect that one thing we internet commenters can do is to hunt websites frequented by the worst (most wrong) state worshippers and courteously debate them. We will be debating mainly white folks, I bet.
Liberty would not flourish as a reaction to Hillary any more than it did as a reaction to Obama. Meanwhile the left is turning to exposing one decades long "conspiracy theory" after another as being Trump's fault. Which probably is part of the reason Alex Jones had to be put back into a box and also why AJ has had to get so far out there lately. Now standard government corruption/evil stuff are standard leftist talking points. Liberty minded people should be leveraging the left's admission of government evils and pointing out how long they have been going on at every opportunity.
ReplyDeleteThe left is out there admitting to their crimes of the last century and trying to hang them on Trump. It's a huge weakness to be exploited because admitting the government is capable of these things and does them is the big barrier to getting people to "hate the state".