Sep 28th, 2009 at 9:28 am
A Funner Brand of Rightwinger
Germany’s Free Democrats have a lot of pro-business tax cutting views, much like our Republicans. But they’re also liberal on cultural questions. Thus things like these t-shirts people were wearing at their election party last night:
The slogan says something in German that roughly means “make love, not tax forms.”
50 Responses to “A Funner Brand of Rightwinger”
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September 28th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Trust-fund scumbags of the world, unite!
You have nothing to lose but your tax forms.
September 28th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Aren’t these people just your standard libertarians trying to recruit college students?
September 28th, 2009 at 9:49 am
And only the 3rd one from the left looks happy about you taking photos of them.
September 28th, 2009 at 9:49 am
So they are not right wingers at all – just classical liberals?
September 28th, 2009 at 9:50 am
My query has always been what political party Matthew would belong to if he were British.
We all know he wouldn’t go with Labour.
I’ve always suspected the ineffectiveness of the Liberal Democrats would win him over, but given this post, maybe he’d be a Tory after all.
September 28th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Westerwelle is a silly, slimy, vacuous populist, who, apart from shifting money towards his clientèle, doesn’t know or understand anything. The fact that he might become “Aussenminister” is truly scary.
The FDP used to have some substance with people like Burkhard Hirsch, Genscher and, yes, even Kinkel. Now they have Westerwelle and, had he not jumped off a plane without opening his parachute, we would also still have Moellemann – sad.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:02 am
Novakant:
Agreed. You only left out one thing, he also allowed Juergen Moellemann to try to increase votes through anti-Semitism. Moellemann even hired one of the main advisors away from the odious FPOe in Austria. It turned out to be a debacle in 2005, and Moellemann then committed suicide, but the FDP’s recent run as a “Spasspartei” (Party of Fun!) has been sorry indeed.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:06 am
My query has always been what political party Matthew would belong to if he were British.
I think I would be a tactical Labour/LibDem voter depending on what constituency I lived in.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:09 am
You’re right. It is a refreshing change from the “values voters”, the old and near-dead John McCain, and the plastic fantastic Sarah Palin. I wouldn’t vote for them, but I sure would date up their campaign workers.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:09 am
I think thats sex sells plain an simple. The FDP appeals much more to young males than young females.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:13 am
They do that quite often. Lots of advertising with long blond hair woman.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Of course. Clearly, casual sexual intercourse is better than social justice.
And the Germans have the temerity to wonder why their birth rate is fallen through the floor.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:17 am
> Aren’t these people just your standard
> libertarians trying to recruit college students?
I doubt it, since 4 female libertarians would be the world’s entire population of same. Since IIRC there is 1 female libertarian in the United States, all 4 can’t be German.
Cranky
September 28th, 2009 at 10:23 am
What makes you so sure they are actual FDP supporters and not bougth staff?
September 28th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Matt:
I think I would be a tactical Labour/LibDem voter depending on what constituency I lived in.
Please don’t feed the troll Petey.
Hector:
Of course. Clearly, casual sexual intercourse is better than social justice.
That’s a tactical decision which depends on the context of course.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:40 am
I think that sex sells plain and simple.
American conservatives really are different then … instead of using cute girls to sell the party; the GOP uses closeted Focus on the Family types and weirdly masculine “suck on this” Neocons. Or maybe the GOP is unconscionably seeking a demographic that it claims it doesn’t like so much?
September 28th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Self-interest is so much more Spass than social responsibility!
It’s kind of a bummer that the first openly gay party head in the West is a German-style Log Cabin Republican.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:41 am
That’s a tactical decision which depends on the context of course.
Or what constituency you lived in…
September 28th, 2009 at 11:05 am
I doubt it, since 4 female libertarians would be the world’s entire population of same. Since IIRC there is 1 female libertarian in the United States, all 4 can’t be German.
I was kind of assuming these girls were being paid.
September 28th, 2009 at 11:34 am
I don’t know. Encouraging people to make love has all kinds of public health implications. Not to mention the impact all the subsequent children will have on global warming. (We can’t assume all people will use responsible birth control, just like we can’t assume people will limit themselves to one or two sugary carbonated beverages per day.)
A such, shouldn’t the progressive response to this be a little more circumspect? Like, say, a tax on love-making? They could use the revenue to pay for better health care. It’s win-win, really.
Sure, it might be hard to tax the actual act. But perhaps they could tax the accoutrements, such as alcoholic drinks that appeal disproportionately to young females, short skirts, Barry White albums, etc.
Or they could steer more of the sex away from traditional pairings by legalizing prostitution and taxing the actual sex.
September 28th, 2009 at 11:39 am
I would presume that Europe also would have parties that are straightforwardly interested in pursuing economic justice without being encumbered by paraphernalia such as gay marriage, feminism, etc.?
September 28th, 2009 at 11:40 am
is it me, or are three of these chicks non-white? and only two are busting out.
September 28th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
The two on the left are looking at Matt like he just asked them to show him their tits.
So the problem for the Germans is too much social justice and not enough sex?
September 28th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Dan: not so!
September 28th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Pretty girls.
Too bad they speak such an ugly language.
September 28th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
I think everyone is misunderstanding the joke on the tee-shirt.
This is not a libertarian issue. We lived in Germany for many years. German tax forms are virtually impossible to fill out. Almost no one does their taxes themselves. There is a whole tax-preparer industry, unionized I believe, and these unionized tax-preparers are the reason it takes so long to do taxes in Germany. Every time they try to simplify the tax code, the tax preparers use whatever political clout they have to stop it. Having such complex tax forms becomes a kind of surtax of about $500 per taxpayer. If the forms were easier, or if no forms were necessary at all, that money might be put to better use, and the tax preparers could do something more rewarding.
September 28th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I believe that the Nussbaum position is that social justice is better than casual sexual intercourse, but that casual sexual intercourse is still pretty good.
September 28th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
thank you, paula: i was just going to make the point that it is entirely possible to believe in tax simplification and progressive rates, something that hector doesn’t seem to think can happen.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
The FDP ran on a campaign of tax simplification and reform. Westerwelle says he will not enter into a coalition with Merkel unless she agrees to pushing tax reform through.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Dave, in all fairness, they probably assume he’s taking the pictures to post them on the internet… oh, wait!
At least the third one seems flattered. Not quite as cute as the second one, but it’s she’s not nothing.
I can’t imagine somone paid these girls. Have you ever been to a convention and seen the kind of girls that ACTUALLY get paid to stand around looking hot? These girls are normal person pretty, they are not “get paid just for being hot” level pretty.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
They look miserable because they do not work for the state. It’s only people beholden to the state that look happy. Remember the Russians? Now that was a fun bunch!
September 28th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
The Free Dems are in favor of a more capitalistic Germany, though, and not just cutting down on the paperwork of taxation. If one regards capitalism as antithetical to social justice (and not merely in comparison to some utopian ideal, but in comparison to virtually every other system, including those typically regarded as less just, more hierarchical, and less efficient than capitalism, such as medieval corporatism and manorialism), then the free democrats are opposed to social justice.
I can’t presume to speak for Hector, given that we rarely agree, but I’m doubtful that this is about a misunderstanding of the FDP’s platform with regards to tax code simplification.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
I hope the 2nd one from the left will make good on her t-shirt’s offer.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Yeah…this is why social justice is such a valuable metric in dealing with the fuzzier political identification issues, especially in the U.S. In a world in which union organizers and bond traders both smoke pot, it’s the only way to tell which side people are on.
Being “progressive” on cultural issues is easy – it doesn’t cost you anything.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
I doubt it, since 4 female libertarians would be the world’s entire population of same. Since IIRC there is 1 female libertarian in the United States, all 4 can’t be German.
I went to an IHS conference once, and was quite surprised to find 2/3 of the attendees were female, and shockingly smokin’ at that. Some of the thin-”hot”-Southern-girl-with-long-straight-hair models that you find in every conservative activism circle, and a lot of ex-Soviet types – Hungarians, Ukranians, etc. (Some of them straight from the home country – one of the VRWC’s underappreciated goals is cultivating and maintaining an explicitly free-market elite behind the old Iron Curtain).
Also, they finished every day by giving us a few cases of beer to drink, so, y’know, spasspartei indeed.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Great since that uncontrolled free market shock therapy worked so good in eastern Europe.
September 28th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Didn’t say they were creating a free-market culture, said they were creating a free-market elite.
September 28th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Julian Elson, read what the eminent historian Joseph Needham had to say about medieval corporatism.
September 28th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
By all accounts, I’m baffled that the German FDP qualifies as “right-winger” in the United States. Shows for me that the political discourse in Continental Europe and the US is quite different. The Free Democrats were part of the ruling coalition for many, many years, often with the Christian Democrats, sometimes with the Social Democrats, and as such, were the hinge between center-left and center-right.
The problem is, of course, that the mix of policies represented in the FDP doesn’t translate into a US group – they go back to the ordoliberal school, believing that true freedom needs a strict rulebook. This school is a far cry from anarchist libertarians, as the state plays an important role as forum for working out the rulebook and as enforcer of the rules. And the FDP has voted for many social programmes when they were a government party, as a social safety net is one of the rules the German society, from left to right, has agreed upon.
@ Moellemann: You know, politicians are always in danger of succumbing to populism. This happens all the time in all parties. No need to single out one party for it.
September 28th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Right wing for the FDP might be pushing it, though, Hollerbusch, the FDP lost a large portion of its left of centre members in 1982 when they left the coalition with the SPD and since then it’s been clearly on the right of the political spectrum overall.
The FDP is not a libertarian party. The FDP does have young members who look exactly like the people above – pretty sure these are volunteers. (btw. – to me this is not a good thing – the typical characterless, no spine, slick, career-oriented FDP type).
If you want to put the FDP into a political camp, I think neoliberal would be a good term. They share a lot of the general ideas of liberalism, but give much higher importance to economic questions. They also have much more faith in the market than many classical liberals. We German sure as hell are grateful that our right-wing is not anywhere as nutty as the US right-wing. That still doesn’t make their policies right.
September 28th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Most of the FDP isn’t really libertarian – but conservative instead – on important matters. For instance, the FDP justice minister of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Ulrich Goll, showed impressive zeal in wanting to forbid so-called “flatrate”-brothels recently, just to gain a few votes from right-wingers.
It’s cool that we’ll be governed by a woman and a gay man from now on, though. Not many countries can say this
September 28th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
The FDP is a Libertarian party. They are not “right-wingers.” Big difference.
September 28th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
I suppose the UKIP and the FPÖ are also libertarian instead of right wing?
September 28th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Right wing? Libertarian?? Srsly?
They are the yuppie party. I don’t see anything right wing or libertarian about that.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Well, if I’m ever actually given the choice between making love and making tax forms, I might choose making tax forms, because I’ve never done that before.
September 29th, 2009 at 12:59 am
[...] 2. Does Germany have fun right-wingers? [...]
September 29th, 2009 at 7:46 am
Communication is also a key component in intimacy. Learn to communicate with your partner. This can also mean learning their body language as well. By respecting what your partner is telling you, your intimacy will grow deeper. This will help improve your lovemaking as well. There may be times when either partner is just not in the mood.
September 29th, 2009 at 10:46 am
In the European Parliament, they are just European Liberal Democrats -the group that is neither left nor right. It does tend to include a lot of fun people though.
September 29th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
In times of an aging population in Germany, this was not that bad idea.
September 30th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
[...] The new Reich? [...]