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I'm so confused here. In the US, Libertarians are right leaning, yet totalitarianism is always portrayed as far right politics. Am I missing something?


As far as where I lean: I believe that there should be laws, but they shouldn't oppress. I believe that enterprise should not be hampered unless it operates to the extreme detriment of health and safety. I also don't believe I should ever pay someone else's grocery bill unless they are a public servant/emergency/law enforcement/military. Oh, you got a degree in basketweaving and need me to foot your food bill? Nah, learn to hunt, trap or forage.

 Just Tony wrote:
I'm so confused here. In the US, Libertarians are right leaning, yet totalitarianism is always portrayed as far right politics. Am I missing something?

Print media, probably. US televised political coverage is... poor at best.

It's pretty poor here in the UK, too...

There is a tendency for people to think that all Totalitarianism is right-wing because we get fed a lot of information about foreign dictatorships (which tend to be right-wing) and the old Nazi regime. And we hear almost nothing about Stalin's Russia.

Which is part of why militant leftism is getting traction in the English speaking world..

 Just Tony wrote:
I'm so confused here. In the US, Libertarians are right leaning, yet totalitarianism is always portrayed as far right politics. Am I missing something?

The left/right political spectrum is merely a best-fit line through an n-dimensional hypervolume.

 Selym wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
I'm so confused here. In the US, Libertarians are right leaning, yet totalitarianism is always portrayed as far right politics. Am I missing something?

Print media, probably. US televised political coverage is... poor at best.

It's pretty poor here in the UK, too...

There is a tendency for people to think that all Totalitarianism is right-wing because we get fed a lot of information about foreign dictatorships (which tend to be right-wing) and the old Nazi regime. And we hear almost nothing about Stalin's Russia.

Which is part of why militant leftism is getting traction in the English speaking world..

Stalin's Russia was not covered particularly much because it then raises thorny questions of why western social democracies were working with such a state and allowing such atrocities. Russia got noticeably more coverage in the US during the cold war, such that communism became a dirty word and the US pulled pretty hard to the right, supporting despots and corrupt regimes throughout the globe to "stop communism". Meanwhile, the civil rights movement showed that more progressive social structures were viable in the US. The Viet Nam conflict soured public opinion on militant colonialism to a large degree, and the Nixon situation shook public confidence in Washington. Eventually, a hawkish coalition of conservatives, corporatists, and religious factions would push back into power in the 80s with Reagan and again in the 90s starting with Congress, and culminating in the victory of GW Bush. Once again, an unpopular war and a flagging economy would erode public support. Current US politics is a deeply divided, regionally sensitive topic that has loads of history behind it. "Militant leftism" sounds like rhetorical nonsense aimed at the persecution complex of right wingers. Especially given that leftists in western nations tend to be the ones opposing military actions, authoritarianism, and police states, opting instead to support greater inclusiveness and political equity. While there certainly are extremists, and violent ones, that hardly seems to typify western leftists (which is itself such a broad collection of groups as to be meaningless) to any degree.

 Just Tony wrote:
I'm so confused here. In the US, Libertarians are right leaning, yet totalitarianism is always portrayed as far right politics.

This has to do with the peculiarities of American politics. The American Right is made up of many strands of political ideology. The so-called "establishment Republican" tends to emphasize traditional social values, law and order, and patriotism. There is a good amount of overlap between them and centrist Democrats. They are often criticized as being nationalist and authoritarian. By contrast, "Goldwater republicans" tend to emphasize limited government (especially reducing federal government), individual liberty, and free markets. Now, it's not to say that you have to be one or the other. The Tea Party movement, for example, is potent mix of both - a strong appeal to personal liberty based on patriotism ... but note also opposition to gay marriage.

On the other side of the aisle, among Democrats, there is even more variety. The Democratic Party is a big tent but IME Democrats seem to be less skeptical than Republicans of government as such. Traditionally, the Democrats have been the "governing party" and the Republics have been the "opposition party" throughout American history. Overall, I think Democrats are more likely to hold authoritarian viewpoints than Republicans.

 jmurph wrote:
"Militant leftism" sounds like rhetorical nonsense

And it would be, if we didn't have 3rd Wave Feminism setting fire to universities, campaigning to get science teachers fired for claiming that there are only two biological genders, and Canada's Bill C-16, which would place into law compelled speech.

So I wind up being a Goldwater Republican. Good to know. So I have no clue how to vote on the damn poll.

 jmurph wrote:

 Selym wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
I'm so confused here. In the US, Libertarians are right leaning, yet totalitarianism is always portrayed as far right politics. Am I missing something?

Print media, probably. US televised political coverage is... poor at best.

It's pretty poor here in the UK, too...

There is a tendency for people to think that all Totalitarianism is right-wing because we get fed a lot of information about foreign dictatorships (which tend to be right-wing) and the old Nazi regime. And we hear almost nothing about Stalin's Russia.

Which is part of why militant leftism is getting traction in the English speaking world..

Stalin's Russia was not covered particularly much because it then raises thorny questions of why western social democracies were working with such a state and allowing such atrocities. Russia got noticeably more coverage in the US during the cold war, such that communism became a dirty word and the US pulled pretty hard to the right, supporting despots and corrupt regimes throughout the globe to "stop communism". Meanwhile, the civil rights movement showed that more progressive social structures were viable in the US. The Viet Nam conflict soured public opinion on militant colonialism to a large degree, and the Nixon situation shook public confidence in Washington. Eventually, a hawkish coalition of conservatives, corporatists, and religious factions would push back into power in the 80s with Reagan and again in the 90s starting with Congress, and culminating in the victory of GW Bush. Once again, an unpopular war and a flagging economy would erode public support. Current US politics is a deeply divided, regionally sensitive topic that has loads of history behind it. "Militant leftism" sounds like rhetorical nonsense aimed at the persecution complex of right wingers. Especially given that leftists in western nations tend to be the ones opposing military actions, authoritarianism, and police states, opting instead to support greater inclusiveness and political equity. While there certainly are extremists, and violent ones, that hardly seems to typify western leftists (which is itself such a broad collection of groups as to be meaningless) to any degree.

The progressive/leftist pushback against the conservative politics of the US post WWII caused a time of unprecedented domestic terrorism and violence.

But in the United States, terrorism has declined dramatically since the 1970s. In that decade, 1,470 incidents of terrorism unfolded within the nation's borders and 184 people were killed. A total of 214 acts of terrorism were cataloged between 2002 to 2013 on U.S. soil, killing 61.
When William Webster became director of the FBI in 1978, more than a hundred terrorist attacks a year were taking place in the United States. By the mid-1970s, terrorist bombs were being set off in the country at an average rate of 50 to 60 a year.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/homeland-security/249688-the-1970s-and-the-birth-of-contemporary-terrorism

It may be hard to recall now, but there was a time when most Americans were decidedly more blasé about bombing attacks. This was during the 1970s, when protest bombings in America were commonplace, especially in hard-hit cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Nearly a dozen radical underground groups, dimly remembered outfits such as the Weather Underground, the New World Liberation Front and the Symbionese Liberation Army, set off hundreds of bombs during that tumultuous decade—so many, in fact, that many people all but accepted them as a part of daily life. As one woman sniffed to a New York Post reporter after an attack by a Puerto Rican independence group in 1977: "Oh, another bombing? Who is it this time?’"

The underground groups of the 1970s were a kind of grungy, bell-bottomed coda to the protests of the 1960s; their members were mostly onetime student leftists who refused to give up the utopian dreams of 1968. While little remembered today, there was a time during the early 1970s when the U.S. government—the Nixon Administration—considered these groups a genuine threat to national security. Alarmed by a series of Weatherman attacks, Nixon told J. Edgar Hoover during a June 1970 Oval Office meeting that "revolutionary terror" represented the single greatest threat to American society. Hoover promised to do what he could, which wasn’t much.

Why do we recall so little of this? It’s a good question. Conservatives say it’s because the liberal media wanted to let the radicals off easy. It’s also possible that, as a people, we only remember the events we want to. Yet another possibility is that the violence of the 1970s was forgotten in large part because none of the participants—both the leftists facing prison, and the authorities who chased them in vain all those years—had much incentive to make us remember. With no one telling the story, the story melted away.

http://time.com/4501670/bombings-of-america-burrough/

 Just Tony wrote:
So I wind up being a Goldwater Republican. Good to know. So I have no clue how to vote on the damn poll.

Somewhere around Libertarian-leaning Centrist to Very Libertarian. I personally went with Libertarian-leaning Centrist, as I am not a hardline "government is always the problem, never the answer" type but I am pretty skeptical of the government's capacity to actually make things better - at best, I think the government can prevent things from becoming worse.

I don't believe government should be torn down, but it could benefit highly from a little 6 Sigma Lean Manufacturing.

People just need to have realistic pragmatic expectations for what the government can do and not try to force it to do things it can't. Look at how people view governing bodies in sports. The NFL is responsible for creating and maintaining the league entity, it keeps football games from turning into Calvinball and creates a system that provides each team the opportunity to strive for success in a manner of their own choosing. The NFL can't determine how players play, coaches coach or teams manage themselves or if fans have a good time at the stadiums and nobody expects them to do so. The NFL can't fix the Browns ineptitude or stop the Patriots from having success because the NFL cares about the League in the aggregate, it doesn't try to control the performance of teams and individual players because such a level of control isn't possible and trying to achieve it would be counter to the purpose of having a governing body for the league in the first place. The NFL's purpose is to create and preserve a level playing field for the league that creates opportunities for teams and players to do well without guaranteeing any outcomes. That should be the goal of all governing bodies, preserving opportunity without attempting to control outcomes.

Prestor Jon wrote:
That should be the goal of all governing bodies, preserving opportunity without attempting to control outcomes.

It is because of people not agreeing with/understanding this principle that we sometimes see gender quotas - like in the Canadian cabinet.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/05/canada-diverse-cabinet-includes-astronaut-badass-colonel wrote:It even got some Hollywood attention, with actor Emma Watson tweeting: “Why a gender balanced/50:50 government?” and then quoting Trudeau’s comment “‘Because it’s 2015!’” Coolest thing I’ve seen in a while.”

Prestor Jon wrote:

The progressive/leftist pushback against the conservative politics of the US post WWII caused a time of unprecedented domestic terrorism and violence.

But in the United States, terrorism has declined dramatically since the 1970s. In that decade, 1,470 incidents of terrorism unfolded within the nation's borders and 184 people were killed. A total of 214 acts of terrorism were cataloged between 2002 to 2013 on U.S. soil, killing 61.
When William Webster became director of the FBI in 1978, more than a hundred terrorist attacks a year were taking place in the United States. By the mid-1970s, terrorist bombs were being set off in the country at an average rate of 50 to 60 a year.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/homeland-security/249688-the-1970s-and-the-birth-of-contemporary-terrorism

It may be hard to recall now, but there was a time when most Americans were decidedly more blasé about bombing attacks. This was during the 1970s, when protest bombings in America were commonplace, especially in hard-hit cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Nearly a dozen radical underground groups, dimly remembered outfits such as the Weather Underground, the New World Liberation Front and the Symbionese Liberation Army, set off hundreds of bombs during that tumultuous decade—so many, in fact, that many people all but accepted them as a part of daily life. As one woman sniffed to a New York Post reporter after an attack by a Puerto Rican independence group in 1977: "Oh, another bombing? Who is it this time?’"

The underground groups of the 1970s were a kind of grungy, bell-bottomed coda to the protests of the 1960s; their members were mostly onetime student leftists who refused to give up the utopian dreams of 1968. While little remembered today, there was a time during the early 1970s when the U.S. government—the Nixon Administration—considered these groups a genuine threat to national security. Alarmed by a series of Weatherman attacks, Nixon told J. Edgar Hoover during a June 1970 Oval Office meeting that "revolutionary terror" represented the single greatest threat to American society. Hoover promised to do what he could, which wasn’t much.

Why do we recall so little of this? It’s a good question. Conservatives say it’s because the liberal media wanted to let the radicals off easy. It’s also possible that, as a people, we only remember the events we want to. Yet another possibility is that the violence of the 1970s was forgotten in large part because none of the participants—both the leftists facing prison, and the authorities who chased them in vain all those years—had much incentive to make us remember. With no one telling the story, the story melted away.

http://time.com/4501670/bombings-of-america-burrough/

Caused?
It may help to look at the crime rates at the time. According to FBI statistics, violent crimes rose steadily from 1960 through 1980 (violent crime rate increased by 126 percent between 1960 and 1970, and by 64 percent between 1970 and 1980). They took a slight downturn in 1980 before picking back up. 1994 finally saw the breaking point. So was it political or just overall violence linked to American population growth? Lead in the gasoline? The funny thing is nobody is sure why the crime rate finally fell. And the previous poster talked about a growing militant left, not the 70s holdovers. But the best he can produce is some silly Canadian politics (quotas and such). A far cry from the militant Maoist revolutionaries of China, for example, and really just grousing about not liking the results of democratic exchange (they can always be voted out). Real political violence is ugly, but is also common in periods of instability. The current warfare in Syria or demonstrations in Venezuela are good examples. In the US, violence is much more common with the fringes of the political right than the left, particularly with racial identity groups, though leftists are more commonly seen in protest mode. But the violent elements, like most extremists, represent a small fringe element, not a mainstream view. If anything, America is much farther removed from embracing political violence than it has been historically.

I suggest that if anyone thinks that quotas on gender in government is the worst thing going politically, they might want to take a look a the number of environmental activists that have been killed.

Prestor Jon wrote:
The NFL can't determine how players play, coaches coach or teams manage themselves.

Other than the fact that it does. Post TD celebration and sportsmanship issues are definitely affected my NFL regulations.

 skyth wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
The NFL can't determine how players play, coaches coach or teams manage themselves.

Other than the fact that it does. Post TD celebration and sportsmanship issues are definitely affected my NFL regulations.

Post TD celebrations and unsportsmanlike conduct are deadball fouls, they are called after plays are over, they don't influence how the play unfolds. Penalties are meant to deter illegal play just like laws are meant to deter illegal actions but neither actually controls performance they only punish behavior after the fact. Celebration penalties don't impact the ability of offensive players to score touchdowns just like criminal prosecutions don't prevent people from committing a crime in the first place. Governing bodies can enforce rules that protect the integrity of the whole but they can't control people. A certain amount of celebration after a TD is allowed but too much warrants a penalty, drinking alcohol is legal but it's illegal to be drunk and disorderly or drive drunk. The rules/laws don't physically bar people from choosing to break them but they allow the governing body to impose punishment on people who choose to do so.

NFL also controls regulations (such as the width of the goalposts) to change the effectiveness of certain styles of play.

If anything gives the sport a 'bad reputation' the NFL are all over it and changing regulations to affect how teams manage themselves and coaches coach, etc...

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000461139/article/2015-pro-bowl-to-feature-narrowed-goal-posts

 Selym wrote:
campaigning to get science teachers fired for claiming that there are only two biological genders

XXY, XYY, and many other interesting variations would seem to be a bit of a thorn in the argument that there is, no?

Nevermind, ninjaed!

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Selym wrote:
campaigning to get science teachers fired for claiming that there are only two biological genders

XXY, XYY, and many other interesting variations would seem to be a bit of a thorn in the argument that there is, no?

No, that's two men with a genetic abnormality. One still has a V and the other a P. And both are fully compatible in the standard gender dichotomy. XYY has long been debunked as any sort of "Ultraman". It used to be used as an argument for why so many men end up in prison compared to women, but the study on it was discredited.

As for gender-identity, that is different from biological gender, but over 99.9% of XX will identify as female, and over 99.9% of XY will identify as male.

EDIT: Misremembered XXY as being female. It's actually male with an additional X chromosome.

So you're arbitrarily deciding what counts as a gender and what isn't, but is rather an "abnormality". There might as well just be one gender then, with women being a genetic abnormality of men since men slightly outnumber women.

Would be best to stick to the authoritarian/liberal topic. Thanks!

edited by moderator - see above

feel free to start another thread on that topic

 Just Tony wrote:
I'm so confused here. In the US, Libertarians are right leaning, yet totalitarianism is always portrayed as far right politics. Am I missing something?

It's because of how politics in the US works. The left favors a strong government in many ways, but they tend to be ways that don't remove personal freedom*. Yeah, people will grumble about paying taxes, but your freedom isn't taken away just because you paid a slightly higher tax rate to provide government services like health care or education or whatever. What you do with your life once you pay your taxes isn't the government's business. But when the right favors a powerful government, outside of spending vast amounts of money on the military, it's often in the form of government-imposed morality. See things like gay marriage as an example, instead of leaving it at "I'm not gay, but I don't care what you do with your private life" the right said "this is morally wrong, it is illegal to do it". It feels a lot more like government is leaving the reasonable scope of what government is supposed to do and moving into micromanaging the lives of the average person.

Also, libertarians aren't always right-leaning in the US. There are right-wing libertarians that emphasize right-wing economic policy, often at the same time that they advocate for Christian theocracy on social issues, but there are left-wing libertarians that care more about social issues like legalizing drugs and keeping the government out of your bedroom. The main difference between left-wing and right-wing libertarians is that the Libertarian Party tends to draw more support from the right, while left-leaning libertarians support either random fringe parties that can't even make the ballot or concede to practicality and vote for democrats.

*And no, "you can't teach ideologically motivated pseudoscientific garbage in science class", "you can't discriminate against people you hate", and "you can't sell dangerous products that get people hurt/killed" are not meaningful examples of taking away your freedom.

Oh, you got a degree in basketweaving and need me to foot your food bill? Nah, learn to hunt, trap or forage.

This is a joke, right?

It's also something of a recurring joke in US politics that most libertarians are just Republicans who like to smoke pot.

The US Libertarian party is (supposedly) based on classical liberalism. They advocate non-interventionism, laissez-faire capitalism, civil liberties, and are anti- social welfare programs. The focus on dismantling government programs tends to put them more commonly with conservatives and social and civil issues get pushed aside. After all, even though Libertarians nominally support gender equality, etc. they do not believe in government as an instrument to do so. So that leaves the lower taxes/dismantle government angle, which readily merges with more standard Republican planks.

Keep in mind also that the Libertarian party was a split off group of anti-war Republicans in the 70s, so they have never been that far apart.

It also doesn't hurt that Libertarians are predominately white and male. Which leads to another problem (and why Libertarians tend to viewed as more right leaning).

Goldwater embraced a lot of libertarian principles in the 60s and also became an illustration of how "liberty" and racism/segregation intertwine when he split with the party and refused to support the 1964 Civil Rights Act, becoming an unintentional hero for segregationists. Chris Ladd wrote a good article about the issue in Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2016/09/17/the-libertarian-civil-rights-paradox/#761ae6ff4cae

Ladd (who tellingly begins by declaring that the GOP is descending "into a white nationalist death-spiral" - in September 2016 ...) is spinning revisionism, or maybe just peddling ignorance, regarding Jim Crow. Segregation was a legal regime and, if anything, the product of an authoritarian impulse, and cannot be meaningfully displayed on the "small government" shelf. It seems like Ladd is conflating racism with segregation because he is precommitted to the conclusion that both can be/are defeated by big (and ever bigger) government. This is because the transparent goal of his article is to undermine the Libertarian cause (during a presidential election) by associating it with racism.

Well, Libertarianism sees nothing inherently wrong with racism...

 skyth wrote:
Well, Libertarianism sees nothing inherently wrong with racism...

Which definition of Lib?

From what I see, Liberal values are more inclined to apathy about one's origins. Of course, then you come across Social Justice movements that make race, gender and self-identity the primary characteristics by which you should judge someone... I hate that sort of thinking.

Libertarianism is just as pie in the sky as Communism. I have yet to see a version of Libertarian party platform that doesn't immediately result in hard plutocracy.

We're not talking about any particular party platform here; we're talking about a spectrum of political attitudes:

Authoritarianism <----------> Libertarianism

Racism is honestly not an important component of this discussion simply because you can add it to both ends of this spectrum or leave it out completely. There is nothing inherently racist about either authoritarianism or libertarianism, for the purposes of this discussion.

Racism is just a false flag in this thread, partly because it is used as a false flag in the Ladd article. But at least the Ladd article is talking about a specific political party whereas here ITT we are talking only about a generalized spectrum which we invented for the purpose of this specific discussion.

You could still derive meaningful arguments about Auth/Lib issues, by using it as an example to compare the mechanics behind the spectrum's philosophies - by looking at how each end is liable to implement race as a factor (or leave it out).

From what I understand about Authoritarian regimes, racism comes into play in the form of "my race is superior", whereas SJ movements look more like "my race is inferior/morally wrong".