Liberal Schadenfreude

i understand what you’re getting at but remember that hilary got almost 3 million more votes than trump and was within 100,000 votes of obama’s 2012 results. the electoral college desperately needs reforming out of existence.

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I would add to your list something about supporting creativity and knowing that our contributions are for the greater good: that we each MEAN something. If all we are is wage slaves, serving some fat master somewhere, then what’s the fuckin point? Shoot me now. Life is to be lived richly, to have substance and vitality. We need the arts. We need richness and texture in our many-cultures-as-one.

If we are always being stomped on by authority, then that human spirit is lost. Police brutality. Economic uncertainty and inequity. Human rights being stripped away, lgbt rights being suppressed, racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism, bigotry, etc. The list goes on. Without a system geared towards innovation and uplifting individuals in a way that facilitates their creative contributions in society, then a system even with all the parts you listed is still a failure.

I guess you said entertainment, but I mean something deeper and more like “the arts and culture as a focus” not just pure entertainment.

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based on their actions and their rhetoric the republican party is totally against it.

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Of course. I mean we should be 20 million over. It really should be that much. And even in those red and purple states.

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I like it. Basic human dignity, but with depth.

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I wonder if you might find these ‘tests’ and the conclusions they lead to, of interest. Hopefully they will also be thought-provoking. They can help focus thoughts around many of the (rhetorical) questions others are posing for you further above.


Told me I match “Libertarian Socialism”. Is that a thing?

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Google - and especially Wikipedia - are often your friends. :wink:

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Yes, the current use of Libertarian in American discourse is the result of a right wing hijacking of the term.

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The first anarchist journal to use the term libertarian was Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social and it was published in New York City between 1858 and 1861 by French libertarian communist Joseph Déjacque.

It is worth noting that French has two words for libertarian. Libertaire describes the left wing variety, and Libertarien is the right wing version.

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Frankly, the wikipedia article doesn’t inspire much confidence in me that it is a thing either.

You must be a fast reader! :wink:

Did you get as far as Noam Chomsky?

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Would some real world examples help?






That’s more than the Ayn-caps have managed.

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Yep and the citation points to an article on anarchism as I would expect.

No. It just obscures the problem.

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My guess is about 1% of the most sadistic least empathic people on the planet. Which probably translates to 50%+ of elected Republicans.

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Not all libertarian-socialism is anarchism though

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That was a good chunk of my complaint about the Wikipedia article. It included enough relatively independent lines of thought that it didn’t actually seem to form a coherent “thingness” about it. To me the basic essence of the word “libertarian” is “private property and minimal state” and the basic essence of the word “socialism” is “public property”. Regardless of how other people define those words the two concepts that I’ve described here don’t go together and while I can see that “minimal state” and “public property” might go together, I don’t really think the term is a very good one and the fact that it applies to an incoherent group of ideologies doesn’t help.

At any rate, I’m not a libertarian socialist. I don’t believe in programmatic minimalism of the state or exclusively in public property.

Except libertarian did not always mean pro private property. That’s the current American use but not the historical use.

It’s not an oxymoron to use an older term in its original form.

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When Joseph DeJacque called himself a libertarian, it was long before the capitalist ideology would take the same name. Back then it was called liberalism. Ayn Rand wouldn’t be born for 45 years.

Europe is still fighting to keep libertarians left wing even if that battle has been lost in the US. The White Overalls Movement Building Libertarian Effective Struggles were not capitalists.

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