The New Libertarians
Kevin Drum’s confused by this bizarre Nancy Pelosi sign at the Tea Party:
I’m more interested in the Benjamin Franklin quote. Probably the weirdest thing about the Glenn Beck / Tea Party nexus to me is that it tends to rely so heavily on libertarian rhetoric and fear of incipient authoritarianism. These kind of sentiments would be a lot easier to take seriously if not for the fact that we didn’t see these people marching out in the streets when George W. Bush used the threat of terrorism to justify secret, illegal warrantless surveillance, detention without trial, torture, etc. Indeed, the very same people who spend Monday, Wednesday, and Friday complaining that Barack Obama’s “czars” are a threat to liberty not only weren’t worried about czars in the Bush years, they spend Tuesday and Thursday worrying that Obama’s not doing enough to ensure that intelligence operatives can break the law with impunity.
Jonah Goldberg, it seems to me, was the real pioneer in this brand of hypocrisy-driven hysteria—holding captives in secret where they’re hung by shackles from the ceiling and occasionally beaten to death is fine by him, but efforts to curb smoking are “liberal fascism.” And now this line of thinking seems to have completely taken over the right.
122 Responses to “The New Libertarians”
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September 12th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
I can’t believe I didn’t see it before: Jonah moves backward through time!
That’s the only explanation, because his argument is totally nutballs, but relative to these people, it really was thoughtful and serious, made in greater detail and with far more care.
September 12th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Matthew kinda misses the larger point: According to the NY Times:
“The crowd numbered well into the tens of thousands, though police declined to provide an estimate of the size of the crowd. Many of the participants simply came on their own and were not part of an organization or group. But the size of the rally took the authorities by surprise, with throngs of people streaming from the White House to Capitol Hill for more than three hours. ”
———-
And what is the size of the CROWD assembling on the Mall FOR Healthcare Reform?
I guess MoveOn has ..er.. moved on.
September 12th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Re Matthew’s comment “Jonah Goldberg, it seems to me, was the real pioneer in this brand of hypocrisy-driven hysteria—holding captives in secret where they’re hung by shackles from the ceiling and occasionally beaten to death is fine by him, but efforts to curb smoking are “liberal fascism.””
————-
Yep. I actually thought Wayne LaPierre of the NRA had a point during the Clinton Administration when he complained of “jackbooted federal thugs” during the Clinton Administration.
Look at the size of the Settlement the Justice Department made to Randy Weaver and his kids. (Ruby Ridge)
But when George W Bush wiped his ass on the Bill of RIghts during the BUSH Administration , where were Wayne and the NRA membership?
IF you think you need to keep firearms to fight the rise of a dictator in the distant future, then why stay totally silent when is dictator starts rising TODAY?
Instead , ole Wayne and the NRA laid down and spread their legs for Dick Cheney’s Homeland Security state. They evidently can shoot their mouths off when they get drunk on Saturday night –but come Monday morning they sober up and go back to sucking their bosses cocks like the docile herd they are. Too cowardly to even form a union.
September 12th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
I guess the NRA figures so long as they’ve got one out of 10 of the Bill of Rights, that ain’t bad.
Utter bullshit, of course. Anyone who knows anything about Resistance knows guns are a minor part. Subversion, covert communications, and massive widespread coordinated industrial sabotage with high explosives is the basic template.
Cheney’s massive surveillance state — including tens of thousands of surveillance cameras — got installed without the NRA ..er..firing a shot.
September 12th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
[...] of 2009 coincides almost exactly with the eighth anniversary of 9/11 should not be ignored. The New Libertarians – yglesias.thinkprogress.org 09/12/2009 Kevin Drum’s confused by this bizarre Nancy Pelosi [...]
September 12th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Jonah Goldberg is the Jew of Liberal Fascism.
September 12th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
It’s also kinda hilarious to see these dumbshits on the Mall saying “I’m Not Your ATM” when their President Bush and his Republican Congresses ran up $6 TRILLION in federal debt within 8 years. Plus started an unnecessary war and an economic collapse that will cost us $Trillions more.
IT would be nice if the Democratic Party had something …I don’t know.. maybe a thing called “Leadership” ..that would point these things out. I know Obama made a reference to it during his speech a few days ago. But two sentences in a 30?? minute speech during a 6 month propaganda war don’t really cut it , now do they?
September 12th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
[...] he apparently was there to take original photos, so I’ll defer to his on-the-ground analysis. Here and here. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Update: Gwen releases official photo of [...]
September 12th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Here’s a better Franklin quote:
Emphasis mine. But wait, it gets better:
Granted, it would be hard to fit all that on a sign. But if Franklin had a problem with taxation for the public good, he sure as heck didn’t show it.
Source
September 12th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Freedom isn’t free, and apparently not available at all to not white people.
I guess they gotta ration it.
max
['I kinda wish they'd said, 'I'm not your ATM! You're MY ATM!']
September 12th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
And what is the size of the CROWD assembling on the Mall FOR Healthcare Reform?
I dunno. Your take is that these deeply confused people are actually protesting HCR? Cuz I’m not sure what they’re protesting. What I get from them is that HCR is just a symbol for some darker thing all bound up with Obama’s crypto-communism and illegitimacy and some Big Conspiracy that They are trying to foist on Us.
The essential Glenn Beck quote is not about any of that specific stuff. The “sense” in “Common Sense” is a feeling, not an intellectual judgment, and it’s meant to stay that way: you’re supposed to have a “creeping sense that SOMETHING JUST DOESN’T FEEL RIGHT. America has let thieves into her home … Our country is about to be stolen … Open your eyes … These people are robbing us blind. They have set our house on fire and blocked all the exits.” It’s about being uncertain and angry and pointing that anger at “liberalism” and Obama. You can fit any particulars you want to that sense, the important thing is to have it. And judging by all those Confederate flags in the audience it’s pretty clear what the “something” that “just doesn’t feel right” about Obama is for an awful lot of these people, though they’ll never admit it.
September 12th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
1. There was a sizable pro-reform group present in DC today, though little coverage of counter-protestors in anything I’ve seen yet. Similarly, there have been more pro-reform people attending this summer’s town halls, but they don’t shout and say stupid things and so haven’t made the evening news on a regular basis. Apparently, you have to bite someone’s finger off to get covered on the pro-reform side. Just ask the 30,000 or so who rallied for reform in Seattle the same day as the unfortunate finger incident. Pro-reformers are entirely too reasonable to interesting.
2. On a similar note, the “Million Mom March” of May 2000 was attended by some 750,000+ proponents of gun control. It got far less coverage in the national media than the “tens of thousands” of “Tea Partyers,” and had about 0 effect on policy discussions.
Crowd numbers only warrant media attention in coverage of right-wing mobs. Period.
September 12th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
They weren’t afraid of Bush because he was on their side. He had no intention of suppressing the civil rights of people who were white, conservative and Christian. These are people who truly believe the rhetoric of the “Culture War” and believe that Liberals will destroy America.
Remember how mas these people were when the government went after David Koresh and the Branch Dividians? They were calling cops “Jack-booted thugs” and calling for the overthrow of the goverment. And David Koresh was a legitimately evil person. Now compare it to the Gates controversy. A completely innocent man is arrested in his own home after providing ID to a police officer and proving that it was his residence. Yet, you won’t see a single “Libertarian” defend the rights of Mr. Gates. In fact, you’ll almost never see these “Libertarians” defend the rights of anyone who isn’t a White, Conservative Christian – the most oppressed group in America Today! The only rights they really care about is their own right to be backwards.
The Know-Nothings are back and they represent the ultimate over-reach of Reagan’s politics of race and fear.
September 12th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Well, there was a good bit of coverage of those WTO protests a decade ago. Of course those were pretty intense compared to the average pro-health reform rally.
September 12th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Jonah’s position as Matt describes it is indeed hypocritical, but it is not a mystery. The basic principle is to ignore violations of liberty that are very unlikely to affect you personally (say, because you are white and socially well-positioned), and to cast as an outrageous violation of liberty anything that might affect you personally in even the most marginal fashion, either by preventing you from doing something you want to do (texting while driving, say), or by slightly increasing your tax burden.
September 12th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
I was wondering where all the Progressive organizations have been in this war — and I heard a rumor that Rahm Emmanuel has them locked up in a warehouse somewhere — hand cuffed and with duct tape over their mouths.
Which kinda is curious — most commanders don’t lock their troops in the barracks and go out onto the battlefield to fight the enemy’s army ALONE –mano a mano.
I mean, what we are seeing in the healthcare war this weekend is not even the 300 Spartans standing against the Army of Xerxes. It is more like the Seven Samurai going up against the hordes of Mordor.
(I’m including Max Baucus in the Seven, although I would caution Obama about wondering in front of Max’s bowstring.)
September 12th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Yet, you won’t see a single “Libertarian” defend the rights of Mr. Gates.
You’re wrong.
In fact, you’ll almost never see these “Libertarians” defend the rights of anyone who isn’t a White, Conservative Christian
What on earth are you talking about why don’t you read Radley Balko’s blog. Most libertarians can’t stand the social conservatives. I can find you many pages at Both Cato and Reason criticizing civil liberties violations by the Bush Administration: you are clearly making stuff up.
September 12th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
judging by all those Confederate flags in the audience it’s pretty clear what the “something” that “just doesn’t feel right” about Obama is for an awful lot of these people, though they’ll never admit it.
Well, they try very hard to dance on the edge of what they’re really thinking:
Indeed.
September 12th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Oppressed, unless oppressing.
September 12th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Matt, the reason for this apparent contradiction is actually the very restricted meaning of freedom for contemporary libertarianism in the U.S. Quite simply, they’ve fully accepted the neoliberal identification of freedom with the free market.
Think of the famous Hayek quote about Pinochet’s Chile: “My personal preference inclines to a liberal dictatorship and not to a democratic government where all liberalism is absent.”
It’s not just that they’re crazy and racist–they’ve bought into an ideology that equates unregulated capitalism with liberty. The real irony, of course, being that so few of them actually benefit from it.
September 12th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Excellent quotation, anonymous 9!
September 12th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
And what is the size of the CROWD assembling on the Mall FOR Healthcare Reform?
Don’t know yet. Those marches are all around the country tomorrow on 9/13….find one near you and participate!
http://www.marchforhealthcare.com/
September 12th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
It’s a mistake to expect logic or coherence from the Tea Party crowd.
September 12th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Oops..updated website link…
http://www.march4healthcare.com/
September 12th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Examples of Libertarians objecting to the bush administration’s civil liberties violations:
here’s one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
I could link to many, many more, anyone who claims that libertarians didn’t object to Bush’s civil liberties violations is either an idiot or a liar.
September 12th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Libertarian is correct. Actual libertarians protested Bush’s civil liberties violations and his wars quite loudly.
Now, the teabaggers, Dick Armey, Glenn Reynolds, and various other fake libertarians who’ve hijacked the name, most certainly did not, and are showing themselves to be hypocrites. If I was an actual libertarian, I’d be pretty steamed at these a-holes.
September 12th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
About 1.8 million.
September 12th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Just so.
These are people who believe that being in control of the country is their birthright. They’re like the Iraqi Sunnis. They believe that having the politicians who represent them fall out of power is a violation of their rights – their rights to govern, to be in control, to be the ruling class. They’re like monarchists whose favored king lost a succession struggle to someone they consider a pretender to the throne.
September 12th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
EUROPEAN WAR TAX!
(The Problem is The American Empire)
The American Empire is made up of only (2) Two City States, (NYC) New York City and Washington, D. C., the rest of the country is the land of Serfs. The district of Degenerate Democratic and Republican Crooks, who are there by crooked controlled election tactics, based upon Gerrymandered Districts, Stuffing the ballet boxes, Closing election poles early, they are bought and paid for where the (544/DC) live in the Imperial City and only venture into the land of the serfs only when absolutely necessary, they will be carried out feet first from their political office positions in death only to be replaced by , yet another member of the family based business of lifetime appointments of professional politicians, which can be demonstrated by the fact nothing is either said or taught of as not (1) One Kennedy, but (4) Four Kennedy’s family members were looked at to replace old Teddy, and those that do family trees better look at the one that will be put into Teddy’s seat in the (544/DC), a second or third cousin with a different name. We of the Ponder Generation failed to check this influence and continued to elect family member after family member leading to corruption and unchecked power, corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and now the dangerous consequences which follows when politicians and rulers forget moral principles are here, we allowed, (NO) Term Limits, (NO) Recall, (NO) Impeachments (Nancy Pelosi the San Francisco Hag over-ruled the Constitution). The (NYC/NYSE) New York City, The New York Stock Exchange (Wall St.), (AIPAC/AZC) American Israel Public Affairs Committee/American Zionist Council, a (100K) One-hundred membership neo-conservative Jewish [LOBBYISTS GROUP] group, connected to various caucus members of influential members of the Empire’s pro-Israel lawmakers, and their hired hand (544/DC), providing pre-packaged with donations to the election campaign legislation, ensuring the packing of committees with people that will vote the way that (Nancy Pelosi the San Francisco Hag), dictates they should vote, and above all (LIE), and that is the stock and trade of the (544/DC), they control and set the make-up of town hall meeting by busing in those who will not act as Independent Thinkers and flat out yell at them that they are (LIARS), even in the face of the Imperial God Media Messiah’s Face, they didn’t establish the post of Master-Of-Arms within what was the peoples house, but is now the Imperial Court Halls, for nothing. And if you don’t agree with (Nancy Pelosi the San Francisco Hag) and the (544/DC) you are (UN-AMERICAN), Wing-nut, Insane, Racist, Fanatic, etc., And, then the (544/DC) complain about the outcome of puppet governments elections and policies that do the same thing but don’t go alone with the (544/DC), Afghanistan, is a prime example.
(European War Tax)
So, now that we have now clearly defined just who the major world problem really is what can, anyone do about them. Well, the fact is the American Serf society can do very little, we have massive demonstrations with tens of thousands attending and we have at them in Town-Hall-Brawls, but those outside the problem area can do quiet a lot. Now, the Europeans need to understand that after the German elections it is the plan of the American Empire working with European Governments to basically impose a European War Tax, upon (NATO) North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership nations. The Empire is running out of options in ways to funnel money into its (MIC) Military Industrial Complex, such as the Healthcare Scam that money is going into the (MIC), so they have decided to impose a (EU) European Union War Tax. So, what do you do, simple;
* Stop buying American Empire products, Soft Drinks, California Wines, Cars, etc., any and all products manufactured or made in the American Empire, or at least cut your purchase of such products by double digit percentages. (INCREASE THE AMERICAN EMPIRES TRADE DEFECIT).
* Stop accepting Dollars, insist that you be paid in Euro’s, Pound Sterling, or the local currency, and simply tell them if they insist upon paying in Dollars there will be an additional surcharge added to the cost. Your paying a War Tax they can pay a (EU) First surcharge tax.
* Stop going to any American Empire Entertainment, Concerts, and Movies especially do, not support Hollywood, make the Palm a Goal and the Oscar a Door Stop.
* Do not invest in the (NYSE) New York Stock Exchange or any companies listed by the (NYSE), invest in the New Europe, invest in the (EU) European Union, or in the (BRIC) Brazil, The Russian Federation, The Peoples Republic of China.
(Bloody Hands)
Now, we Un-American Serfs can do very little legally to stop the American Empire but we are responsible for their actions, for having let it happen after being warned by Dwight David Eisenhower what was coming down the pike if we didn’t perform our civic duty of vigilance, and yep we failed, and Blood is upon our hands. Now, it is up to Europe, and if Europe fails its individual World Community of Citizens responsibilities than the blood of those killed in the increscent American Empire Wars of Resources and Markets is upon their hands as well. No, were not going to stop all wars, but we can make an effort to limit the amount and scope, and the first step is by stopping the (MIC) Military Industrial Complex, of the American Empire and it’s continued path of, More Escalation, More unveiling of repeated new strategies, More Time, More Troops, More Mission Creep for Markets and Resources, and European War Tax’s, in it’s support. It is time for the World Community of Individual Citizens to act together using the power of the purse to end the insanity of the American Empire and its (MIC), Military Industrial Complex, or we may all pay more than just a European and American Serf Society War Tax.
HERCULE TRIATHLON SAVINIEN
September 12th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
joe from Lowell, I have no use for republicans who are just now discovering concern about civil liberties and fiscal restraint, and a can’t stand the way mainstream Republicans have highjacked to tea parties(the first tea parties originated during Ron Paul’s campaign and mainstream republicans couldn’t stand Ron Paul and my feelings about him were mixed). I don’t particularly like everything Obama is doing but many of his opponents are insane.
September 12th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Anonymous 7:07pm, I prefer this version.
September 12th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
I use TRIATHLON’s comments as an opportunity to exercise my scrolling finger.
Has anybody ever read them? Are they worth it?
September 12th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Libertarian,
I feel for you. I feel my my Uncle Frannie, who’s an old-school New England Republican. Yes, he’s conservative. He doesn’t like welfare. He’s a bit too truculent in his foreign policy for my tastes. Maybe he’s a little behind the curve when it comes to the roles of women, minorities, and gay people, though not deplorably so.
But he realized the president was born in America, that carbon emissions are warming the planet, and that the Earth wasn’t created six thousand years ago.
I can only imagine what it must be like to have one’s party taken over by insane criminals from Texas. It must be horribly embarrassing.
September 12th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Has anybody ever read them? Are they worth it?
1. Personally, I haven’t.
2. I doubt it.
September 12th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Pelosi can haz cheezburger?
September 12th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
LolSpeakers?
September 12th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
I live in Texas and know a fair amount of people who sound like your Uncle Frannie, Joe from Lowell. Give to charity and do lots of volunteer work – good people. Read some books. Vague policy positions against welfare, debt and maybe affirmative action. Believe in global warming, evolution and stem-cell research. Figured out that Bush was a bit of disaster – probably early in the 2nd term. My dad is like this. A number of Republican lawyers at the firm where I clerked are like this.
I’ve been wondering how these people would react to Obama. They seem to believe he was born in America, is not a Muslim, etc. But they’ve really bought into the “Obama is arrogant” storyline. They’re incensed about tax rates, but the figures I’ve heard are all wrong – heard from a couple Republicans that the top tax rate was being raised to 50 percent and that most deductions were being eliminated. I know three Republican lawyers who do high-level work with banks and don’t seem to understand how marginal tax rates work. They’re worried about the debt, which they can get away with because they were actually worried about it during the Bush years. Skeptical on Iraq. Might throw around some 1/4-informed jargon about inflation worries.
I’ve been wondering how these people form their opinions about Democratic politicians. I think they absorb most of this stuff second-hand from Limbaughites. They never believed any of the Vince Foster stuff about Clinton, but they fully absorbed that Hilary was a man-eating bitch. They could ignore Bill’s center-rightism on a number of issues even though it probably was a fair reflection of their own policy preferences. I’d thought that the insanity of the Bush years and the ascendancy of Beck et al would throw more of these people – passive center-rightists who don’t follow politics that closely – into the Obama camp, but, from my small sample size, it seems not.
September 12th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
TRIATHALON depends on my mood, if it’s a serious topic and I want to talk about issues I scroll through. If I’m just dicking around I read it, but I’m also a huge Francis E. Dec fan. Francis totally kicks TRIATHALON’s ass for the crazy
September 12th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Congratulations Will @ 35. You have won the thread.
September 12th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
The “Chicago style politics” bugs me. As a resident and observer, “Chicago style politics” means putting your opponents into car trunks with bullets in their heads. Rahm Emmanuel is a student of the more metaphoric “murder your opponents” through money hardball or the like, but Obama isn’t (and I wish he was). I haven’t seen Rahm do a damn thing. I’d love to see the machine alive in DC, it’s just not true.
September 12th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Has anybody ever read them? Are they worth it?
I read all of them. It is frankly amazing that he’s not a spambot, but actually types all the garbage he spews. It is the worst of incoherent paranoid rambling, but if you can actually pin him down on a topic, he responds with frankly hilarious abuses of logic and a litany of “facts” that just aren’t true. And he Start Words With Capital Letters A Lot, which we all know is international code for “really, i’m not crazy, I’m not!”
Also, I we supposed to believe that his name is Hercule?
September 12th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Ed Marshall — when I think of “Chicago-style politics,” I totally envision the Hyde Park Independent Democrats.
September 12th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
When I think of “Chicago-style politics,” I don’t think of violence at all. I think about Mayor Daley the Elder meeting a young Jesse Jackson, listening to him complain about the conditions in the South Side, and responding by offering him a job with the wastewater department.
September 12th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
I can’t believe no one on our side thought to add an LOL Cat (or the like) contingent to the Tea Party. Or maybe a protest of some favorite TV show. Or against an American Idol candidate. A missed opportunity. Sad, really.
September 12th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Re: They’re like monarchists whose favored king lost a succession struggle to someone they consider a pretender to the throne.
Ah, the Jacobites (in the political, not religious sense). Good stuff.
September 12th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
People tend to overestimate crowd sizes, but 2 million is just a lie. Professional estimates of Obama’s inauguration were 800,000. If there were 2 million at today’s march, that wouldn’t be a count—-that would be the story.
September 12th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
[...] Matthew Yglesias, one of my great sources of inspiration and education on current events, had this to say about the tea parties (and the larger conservative unrest) today: Jonah Goldberg, it seems to me, [...]
September 12th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
joe from Lowell offers the most active description of Chicago politics ever. What’s silly about the attack is it’s complete and utter racial code — except the wingnuts seem unaware that Chicago is completely run by a bunch of Southside Irish (and Daley’s corporate backers).
Obama didn’t pick direct fights with the machine, as it’s not his style, but anybody trying to organize the tenants in Altgeld Gardens is not “of it.” The phrase “Chicago politics” is meant to evoke something out of “The Untouchables,” but (1) that’s completely false, and (2) gets Obama wrong.
September 12th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Yeah, maybe I shot wide of where I was going, but it is galling that the Machine in Chicago in it’s heyday’s greatest success was building interstates in a conscious effort to wall off blacks from the loop.
That’s not the folks that liked Obama, at least back when the machine had more teeth.
September 12th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
The basic point is simple. These people are fascists. Their allegiance is to god,flag and Volk (just not kind of Volk Obama is). The principles you or I think of as defining our polity mean nothing to these people. They talk about “freedom,” but what they mean is freedom from sharing political power from what they regard as the Other. Bush was one of them. Obama isn’t. Nothing else matters.
September 12th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Regarding Don Williams’ comments about Ruby Ridge and the Clinton administration:
Although the settlement did occur during the Clinton years, the “jackbooted thugs” belonged to Poppy Bush, since the incident at Ruby Ridge took place on August 21, 1992, before Clinton was even elected.
http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:iAc_c-THVV0J:www.stormfront.org/ruby.htm+Ruby+Ridge&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&ie=UTF-8
September 12th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Hyde Park has acquired some kind of mythical status among wingnuts as a hotbed of political corruption and liberal plotting. When I mentioned to one of the right-wingers that I had actually been to and visited Hyde Park because my friend’s wife was a postdoc at UChicago, he gave me this look as though I was somehow associated with a wide-ranging criminal plot. And at that moment I realized why “liberal intellectuals” start to seem like a different species to conservatives: all those boogeymen locations that wingnuts talk about (Berkeley, SF, Boston, Chicago’s Hyde Park) are places that we’ve actually been, lived, or have friends who live in. Apparently they think everyone who works in or near a university, has a graduate degree, and/or lives downtown in involved in a wide-ranging conspiracy involving hob-nobbing with former domestic terrorists, undermining democracy, implementing socialism, etc. If any of you wingnuts are reading, I can tell you it’s actually much less interesting than that, though it has been nice to live in and visit a lot of new places.
September 12th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
The Seminiary Co-Op, Medici Cafe, and the strip of Thai restaurants on 55th are worth putting up with all manner of domestic terrorists. (Or, apolitical students, right-wing economists, and members of the black middle class, as the case may be.)
September 12th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
I’m more interested in the Benjamin Franklin quote. Probably the weirdest thing about the Glenn Beck / Tea Party nexus to me is that it tends to rely so heavily on libertarian rhetoric and fear of incipient authoritarianism.
Well it’s hard to avoid the strong impression that the libertarian, anti-authoritarian cast to all this hysteria is simply a mirror-image rerun of very similar reactions of the left under Bush.
Perhaps this kind of phenomenon is just a permanent feature of American mass political psychology in our era. You start with the fact that many people have intensely strong partisan identifications with two deeply institutionalized political parties, even though those strong feelings of attachment and loyalty sometimes exist in parallel with extremely confused, incoherent and fluid ideological motivations. The tow major parties themselves have proven oddly durable and long-lived, and now comprise a sort of all-encompassing political industry that rules the country. Whereas democratic theory might imagine that parties are the sorts of things that would come and go within the permanent political structure, it now appears to be the case that, in America, the two dominant parties are the political structure. Life in America without these two parties has become virtually inconceivable. It is increasingly hard to imagine any realistic scenarios in which either one might disappear.
The members of the party out of power naturally feel powerless. It’s opponents are able to move legislation and change executive branch policy, while they must sit by, powerless to stop it. Of course most people in the opposition party don’t possess actual power either; but they experience the calming satisfactions of vicarious participation in its succeses.
For the party our of power, the result of powerlessness, defeat and humiliation is paranoia, which feeds conspiracy theories and rebellious, libertarian impulses. The craving for liberation from one’s currently dominant opponent takes somewhat different forms under Republicans and Democrats. Republicans seems to worry that their oppressors are going to take all their money and guns away and give the money to welfare mothers and illegal immigrants. Democrats worry that their oppressors are going to bug their phones, dismiss the parliament and install a authoritarian, military-industrial theocracy. Rumors of plots and hidden, unseen forces abound. Each side, when out of power, perceives the end of liberty and the death of the imaginary Republic.
September 12th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
It boils down to trust. Nobody trusts Obama ok a few diehard liberals still do but large swaths of the general public now see him for what he is: an incorrigible liar. He and Rahm screwed the pooch… they did the bidding of the corporations and bankers thinking “the one” had everyone adequately fooled. Now only fools remain fooled.
September 12th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
RE Elsie at 51: “Although the settlement did occur during the Clinton years, the “jackbooted thugs” belonged to Poppy Bush, since the incident at Ruby Ridge took place on August 21, 1992, before Clinton was even elected”
—————
Good point — I had forgotten it occured in the tail end of pappy’s administration.
Not, however, that it was Clinton and his FBI Director Freeh who tried to have Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris convicted of capital murder. Only to end up having to give Randy Weaver $100,000 and His two daughters $1 Million each. After prolonged litigation, they ended up having to give Kevin Harris $380,000 in settlement.
I prefer not to visit Stormfront pages — Wiki has an account of the incident, although it largely skips over the Clinton Admin attempts at prosecution and their AGs being overturned by juries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge
September 12th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
I do see your point, Ed.
Obama is certainly not a Chicago machine pol. He’s a “Lakeside Liberal.”
September 12th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Libertarian,
The problem stems from most liberals accepting a communist’s (Thom Hartmann) definition of what it means to be a libertarian. (in other words… the Iglesias among us don’t know what their talking about). Fact is those protesting today are no more libertarian than my dog.
September 12th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Oooops make that a “they’re” not “their”
September 12th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Nobody trusts Obama ok a few diehard liberals still do but large swaths of the general public now see him for what he is: an incorrigible liar.
It is amazing that anyone can say that with a straight face.
September 12th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
The Washington Post seems to be strangling while trying to report on the size of the demonstration today. What the fuck is “many tens of thousands”? Even primitive tribes have more precise mathematics than that.
And the “authorities refused to give an estimate” is also fucking bullshit. You take a fucking map of the Mall, draw in the crowd, determine the square footage occupied by the crowd (leaving out the ReFlecting pond,etc.) and assume 4 square feet per person to come up with a crowd estimate.
UK’s Daily Mail is saying 2 Million –which I think is bullshit but I can’t refute it because the stupid shit photographers didn’t take any good shots.
It is surprising that so many people came from far away — suggests someone is organized. Although I didn’t see a non-white face in the bunch in the news photos.
September 12th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
I would take their fear of Obama’s tyranny more seriously if they weren’t a bunch of casually-dressed fat people walking around with signs, clearly unconcerned about violent reprisal from the state. In the fever dream they pretend to live in, they’d never return to their homes and there would be no mention of any of them ever again in any newspaper or on any television program, and all Internet searches for the 912 project and Glenn Beck would return no results.
September 12th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Tyro Says:
September 12th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Hyde Park has acquired some kind of mythical status among wingnuts as a hotbed of political corruption and liberal plotting. When I mentioned to one of the right-wingers that I had actually been to and visited Hyde Park because my friend’s wife was a postdoc at UChicago, he gave me this look as though I was somehow associated with a wide-ranging criminal plot. And at that moment I realized why “liberal intellectuals” start to seem like a different species to conservatives: all those boogeymen locations that wingnuts talk about (Berkeley, SF, Boston, Chicago’s Hyde Park) are places that we’ve actually been, lived, or have friends who live in. Apparently they think everyone who works in or near a university, has a graduate degree, and/or lives downtown in involved in a wide-ranging conspiracy involving hob-nobbing with former domestic terrorists, undermining democracy, implementing socialism, etc. If any of you wingnuts are reading, I can tell you it’s actually much less interesting than that, though it has been nice to live in and visit a lot of new places.
================================
Tyro=clueless rookie engages in more silly stereotyping.
Serious question – do you really spend any time with people you disagree with politically? It doesn’t sound like you do.
I mean I lived in bluest of blue California for 13 years and most of the people I work with here in Colorado are very liberal, so I see their side all day every day. I’ve also spent lots of time in Boston, the Bay Area, and Chicago. I have a good idea what those places are like.
I don’t get the impression that you have spent much time outside of such places.
E
September 12th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
Re Ed Marshall at 40: “Rahm Emmanuel is a student of the more metaphoric “murder your opponents” through money hardball or the like, but Obama isn’t (and I wish he was). I haven’t seen Rahm do a damn thing. I’d love to see the machine alive in DC, it’s just not true.”
—————-
1) Jane Hamsher has reported at Firedoglake that Rahm has silenced a lot of Progressive groups by threatening to have institutions cut off their funding. This in response to some early criticism of the Blue Dogs by some of the Progressives. See
2) We now see the PROBLEM with that Rahm “Chicago” approach:
a) The Healthcare Reform OPPONENTS have mounted a large demonstration of the Mall.
b) Who is Rahm going to be able to get to show up in tomorrow’s Counterdemonstration?
3) We will see — if it is small, the News Media will argue that the disparity in size of the demonstrations is INDICATIVE that the voters of this country do not strongly support healthcare reform. That conclusion will be false, in my opinion, but pictures of demonstrations –where people have traveled hundreds of miles to show up — are pretty convincing.
4) If that happens, then i think a strong argument can be made that Chicago tactics have shot healthcare reform in the kneecap.
Democratic elites should have learned by now that there is a difference between a party which communicates with, motivates, and organizes its base — versa one which
tries to suppress its base upon gaining power.
September 12th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Campesino, once you learn how to block-quote or use italics to quote others, I’ll explain it to you in more detail. But if you were a more astute reader, you’d have noticed my second sentence where I am engaged in a conversation with a right-winger I know personally. Albeit one of the ones who allowed his life to be defined by wingnut talking points, in part due to the social isolation that comes with his job.
September 12th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
Re: Don Williams at 56:
I don’t think that any president is necessarily responsible for what the DOJ does – unless it was during Bush’s “unitary executive” phase.
Here’s an excerpt regarding Freeh’s actions from the Wiki page you linked to:
FBI director Louis Freeh disciplined or proposed discipline for twelve FBI employees over their handling of the incident and the later prosecution of Randy Weaver and Harris. He described it before the U.S. Senate hearing investigating the incident as “synonymous with the exaggerated application of federal law enforcement” and stated “law enforcement overreacted at Ruby Ridge.”[28]
September 12th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
Tyro Says:
September 12th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Campesino, once you learn how to block-quote or use italics to quote others, I’ll explain it to you in more detail. But if you were a more astute reader, you’d have noticed my second sentence where I am engaged in a conversation with a right-winger I know personally. Albeit one of the ones who allowed his life to be defined by wingnut talking points, in part due to the social isolation that comes with his job.
====================================================
So, Tyro=clueless rookie, you know one. I suppose that answers my question
September 12th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Aw, isn’t that nice.
One of the snipers from Ruby Ridge and Waco is now Special Agent in Charge of the Boston FBI office. He wants to hand out M-16s to the Boston PD, and can’t understand why anyone is objecting.
September 12th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Sorry — here is the link to Jane Hamsher’s report on the suppression/intimidation of the Progressive groups:
http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/09/06/van-jones-a-moment-of-truth-for-liberal-institutions-in-the-veal-pen/
September 12th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Alas, but for his mom’s unholy crusade against Bill Clinton, we would have never known Jonah Golberg’s name.
September 12th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Re Elsie at 66: “FBI director Louis Freeh disciplined or proposed discipline for twelve FBI employees over their handling of the incident and the later prosecution of Randy Weaver and Harris. He described it before the U.S. Senate hearing investigating the incident as “synonymous with the exaggerated application of federal law enforcement” and stated “law enforcement overreacted at Ruby Ridge.””
————–
As I said earlier, the Wiki article Elides over the acts of the Clinton Administration in this matter.
Maybe this NY Times article will clarify the matter:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/06/us/freeh-was-spared-censure-for-handling-of-ruby-ridge.html?n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fF%2fFreeh%2c%20Louis%20J.
“An internal Justice Department inquiry recommended that Louis J. Freeh, the former F.B.I. director, and three other bureau officials be censured for managerial failures during follow-up investigations of the deadly standoff at Ruby Ridge in Idaho in 1992, but Justice Department officials rejected any disciplinary action, government lawyers said today….
…Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said today that decisions about the bureau’s disciplinary actions stemming from the Ruby Ridge case were ‘’shrouded in secrecy.”
The committee heard testimony in July from John E. Roberts, the lead F.B.I. agent in the bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility, who examined the investigations into Ruby Ridge and sent a critical report to Mr. Colgate in June 1999. Mr. Roberts testified that it was ”outrageous” that Mr. Colgate ultimately determined there was no misconduct by senior officials. Mr. Freeh was not named at the hearing.
”It appears from this that the ‘good old boy’ network has been allowed to persist at the F.B.I.,” Mr. Leahy said in a statement. ”It serves to protect some senior F.B.I. executives from the same scrutiny and discipline applied to rank-and-file agents who are not part of ‘the club.’ ”
September 12th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
UK’s Daily Mail is saying 2 Million –which I think is bullshit
It’s bullshit for the following reasons, stated upthread:
- The Daily Mail (actually, the Mail on Sunday, a separate shop) goes to press at about 10pm Saturday night in London, and you can actually buy the Sunday papers around midnight in the city. That’s 5pm Eastern, and nobody had a crowd count then.
- The Mail doesn’t really give a shit about that sort of stuff, anyway. They covered their asses by picking the biggest number floated in the days before the march itself.
It is surprising that so many people came from far away — suggests someone is organized.
Army of Dick’s FreedomWorks organised the buses.
September 12th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
Don Williams,
The NYT article you linked to pretty clearly lays the blame on the FBI, not the Clinton administration.
September 12th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
The FBI was part of the Clinton Administration. Louis Freeh was appointed by Bill Clinton. The federal prosecutors of Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris were part of the Clinton Administration. Janet Reno was part of the Clinton Administration.
Don’t your see a problem with an Administration calling for the EXECUTION of two men — and then having to pay those same men almost $3 MILLION to settle lawsuits after juries free them and Congress conducts a scathing investigation ?
September 12th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
David Shuster tweets:
September 12th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
[...] Deafening Bells Posted September 13, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized | Matthew Yglesias writes: Probably the weirdest thing about the Glenn Beck / Tea Party nexus to me is that it tends to rely [...]
September 13th, 2009 at 12:02 am
These people are so full of crap that they should not be allowed permits to march unless they agree to use Lysol:
ABC News
September 13th, 2009 at 12:11 am
One day, Yglesias will grow up and realize how much like a spoiled little brat he sounded like. Maybe.
Of course, old hippies are just as spoiled and bratty, and they still haven’t grown up. Or cleaned themselves.
September 13th, 2009 at 12:30 am
Re Rich at 75: “David Shuster tweets:
I’ve covered rallies at dc capitol for 20 years. When the crowd goes only as far as 3rd st, it is 50,000 or less.”
—————
Hmmm. I estimate a crowd of 200,000 would fit in that space. I estimate you have about 1,000,000 square feet after taking out the Reflecting Pool. Assuming 5 square feet taken per person.
Double that to 10 square feet per person and you have still have around 100,000.
The one news photo of the crowd from the rear indicates it is a fair size but the photo is misleading — it shows the Capital off in the distance but doesn’t show how a large space in front is taken up by the Reflecting Pool.
We have such a shitty News Media. They can run their mouths for days and still not nail down a single solid fact.
September 13th, 2009 at 12:32 am
All of which are provably false.
Bush did bug our phones. Provably so.
False equivalencies do more to hide the truth than to reveal it.
September 13th, 2009 at 12:38 am
I figured out the problem with the big holes in news reports. News Media’s paradigm is Who, What, When , Where, and Why.
They never get around to asking HOW?
And since Reporters avoid military service, they never heard of SALUTE:
Size of Enemy? Force
Activity of Force
Location of Force
Unit (Organization) to which they belong
Time of sighting
Equipment possessed by sighted Force
September 13th, 2009 at 12:42 am
So I’m feeling like this “no coffee on weekends” rule is not working out quite as well as I’d hoped, because I keep on feeling to shitty to do the stuff I’d planned to do over the weekend. I’m thinking of having a second go at quitting the stuff once and for all. Maybe it will take this time.
September 13th, 2009 at 1:03 am
Oh, SteveAR, you really are a sad, sad shitlicker. Now go and tongue-bathe Dick Armey’s taint. He’s had a long day.
September 13th, 2009 at 1:16 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Lee. Lee said: Libertarians of convenience: http://tinyurl.com/qu85qo [...]
September 13th, 2009 at 1:31 am
Regarding the crowd counts — look at any picture where they’re all yelling. Count the number of teeth and divide it by two.
September 13th, 2009 at 1:41 am
This thread confirms to me that leftists are by and large pretty disgusting people. Moral cretins, who happen to be gifted with IQ points.
September 13th, 2009 at 2:04 am
This thread confirms to me that leftists are by and large pretty disgusting people.
At least we know when to stop eating. On the other hand, teabaggers are apparently pretty large disgusting people.
Moral cretins, who happen to be gifted with IQ points.
Even if that were true, it’s far more than what you’ve got to offer.
September 13th, 2009 at 2:14 am
[...] But Matthew Yglesias calls these folks The New Libertarians: [...]
September 13th, 2009 at 2:32 am
WTF? Is the right coming out against the intelligence quotient?
Yeah, boy. It sure sucks to be able to understand things and think in the abstract. Every day I feel more and more like Ulysses Everett McGill.
September 13th, 2009 at 3:40 am
Golberg gave a pretty good defense of Bush’s overspending / big government brand of Republicanism back in 2003. I think pretty much all of it could be used today to defend Obama:
“Now, there’s all sorts of stuff to say in the president’s defense. Bush leapt onto a barreling freight train of overspending when he took office.
President Bush also inherited a weak economy. The recession began on Clinton’s watch when the ’90s bubble burst. Spending money during a recession is certainly more forgivable than spending it the way we did during the boom.
Also, Sept. 11 resulted in real costs for the government that aren’t just military in nature. I think a lot of Bush’s spending on homeland security -and certainly on defense -was warranted or certainly defensible.”
http://townhall.com/columnists/JonahGoldberg/2003/06/13/bushs_spending_binges?page=2
September 13th, 2009 at 5:38 am
Your charges of hypocrisy and intellectual incoherence
on the Right would be both more honest and less, shall we say hypocritical?, if you occasionally turned your dull
rapier of a wit upon yourself and your fellow Progs.
It is striking that as but one example, you were uninterested in the White House announcment of changes to ObamaCare
meant to prevent illegals from benefiting from Federal
subsidies.
Those changes would not have been necessary if Obama had
had not lied and been called out for that lie by Wilson.
Or your gloss over the fact that Kennedy consumed half a million$$$ in futile medical intervention, which was known in advance to be futile, care which Kennedy would have denied the peons in his health care reforms.
But of course my favorite is your constant hectoring on
bicycle lanes and health care matters while resting on your lard ass.
Oh I know, in good Leftie fashion it isn’t your bad habits
it must be genetic!
After all no good Prog can ever be responsible for his
own failings.
Matty was lied into Iraq!
September 13th, 2009 at 7:46 am
love the fauxgressive douche bag implying that the teabaggers are wrong because they are fat. Way to raise the discourse.
September 13th, 2009 at 7:58 am
And the “authorities refused to give an estimate” is also fucking bullshit. You take a fucking map of the Mall, draw in the crowd, determine the square footage occupied by the crowd (leaving out the ReFlecting pond,etc.) and assume 4 square feet per person to come up with a crowd estimate.
No, it makes sense in this particular case. The teabaggers weren’t the only group on the Mall that day; it was also the National Black Family Reunion, so there were a large number of people on the Mall who were, shall we say, likely to be pro-Obama. Additionally, since the National Black Family Reunion was better-organized and reserved space first, the teabaggers had to use a portion of the Capitol grounds as well, so Mall photographs would be inaccurate.
In general, though, it’s bullshit, but I have some sympathy for the authorities. They were getting raked over the coals with every rally; their estimates were getting them attacked from both sides. “They deliberately undercounted our rally because they’re pro-abortion!” “They deliberately overcounted the anti-abortion rally because they’re taking orders from Bush!”
September 13th, 2009 at 8:20 am
1.5 million people would have looked like Obama’s innauguration.
September 13th, 2009 at 8:55 am
The Teabaggers evince great concern for their “grandchildren”, who have to pay off the deficits. But the grandchildren seem not to give a sod- if anything their demographic supports Obama.
September 13th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Absolutely love the guy with the “trade freedom for security” sign. Insurance reform is an assault on liberty but domestic spying, rendition and torture are just government keeping us safe.
September 13th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Yglesias, I think, misses the point. The concept of liberty has no inherent existence but is, rather, always situated within a larger view of the way things are. Conservatives define liberty as economic liberty: as the freedom not to pay for someone else’s health care or education, in other words. Additionally, the conservative version of liberty belongs to Americans, not foreigners. The law may forbid us to torture or detain American citizens without trial, but suspected terrorists are another matter. Indeed, such harsh measures are considered necessary in preserving the liberty of American citizens, for the threat of another terrorist attack looms large in the conservative imagination.
The upshot of all this is that, when Yglesias complains that the Tea Party /Glenn Beck crowd didn’t take to the streets during the Bush years, he is essentially complaining that conservatives are conservatives. While I share his frustration, I’m not sure it makes sense to call them hypocritical.
I have developed this comment more fully at my blog.
September 13th, 2009 at 10:14 am
Banksters threaten my liberty and may be plotting another economic terrorist attack against the US. We must start torturing everyone at Goldman Sachs who is a Senior VP or higher. It is the only way to preserve our freedom.
September 13th, 2009 at 10:23 am
No, it’s not. The FBI was founded in the 1920s. Like the CIA and the military, it is a long-lived, independent arm of the government that remains, when presidents come and go. Read your own piece, Don. “The good-old-boy culture” at the FBI. Bill Clinton and Janet Reno were not FBI good old boys.
September 13th, 2009 at 11:29 am
100
Since the comment count was 99
September 13th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Or your gloss over the fact that Kennedy consumed half a million$$$ in futile medical intervention, which was known in advance to be futile, care which Kennedy would have denied the peons in his health care reforms.
We “gloss over” it because it is a lie. It’s the insurance companies today, that Kennedy fought against, whose business model is based on figuring out ways to deny you coverage.
The concept of liberty has no inherent existence but is, rather, always situated within a larger view of the way things are. Conservatives define liberty as economic liberty: as the freedom not to pay for someone else’s health care or education, in other words. Additionally, the conservative version of liberty belongs to Americans, not foreigners. The law may forbid us to torture or detain American citizens without trial, but suspected terrorists are another matter.
Bush claimed the right to torture and detain anyone, including American citizens, indefinitely. He did this to American citizens on at least 2 occassions–Padilla and Hamdan (sp?). His denial of habeus corpus means that he could’ve done it to any of us—we’d never have access to the courts to prove mistaken identity, or that we’re not terrorists. If he said we are, if he made a mistake, it was the final word and we would’ve had, even as citizens, no opportunity to prove our innocence. He was judge, jury and torturer-in-chief. And they accuse *us* of believing Obama is god!!
September 13th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Re Joe at 99:
So the President is not responsible for what the FBI and Department of Justice do on his watch –even after Congress starts investigating?
September 13th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Also a lie. The White House has not announced any changes. Max Baucus, who is a Senator, stated that he would review the language.
September 13th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
You’re hiding behind vague terminology. “Responsible for” means what, exactly?
I, on the other hand, am perfectly happy to speak in precise language. The President and Attorney General chose not to overrule the career Justice and FBI people when they decided on how to handle the cases. They did not make the decision about how those cases should be handled; they decided to leave that decision at the rank-and-file level.
September 13th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Re “They did not make the decision about how those cases should be handled; they decided to leave that decision at the rank-and-file level.”
———-
I believe that was also Cheney and Rumsfeld’s defense re Abu Ghraib.
The idea that Janet Reno didn’t get briefed on Ruby Ridge early on is ridiculous.
September 13th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Of course, it’s now been proven beyond any possible doubt that they were lying, and that the decision to carry out those acts was made by Cheney and Rumsfeld themselves.
As opposed to Ruby Ridge and Waco.
Seriously, Don, the fact that you can phrase a truthful statement and a dishonest one in similar language isn’t that impressive an argument.
September 13th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
“Well it’s hard to avoid the strong impression that the libertarian, anti-authoritarian cast to all this hysteria is simply a mirror-image rerun of very similar reactions of the left under Bush.”
It’s hard to avoid only if you’re an idiot.
And, Don Williams, get your own fucking blog. And please, people, stop feeding his paranoid, violence-fetishizing lunacy.
September 13th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
What is dishonest, Joe? Which of the following FACTS are untrue:
a) That the CLINTON Administration chose to prosecute Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris for murder and to seek the DEATH PENALTY?
b) That juries found Weaver and Harris innocent of most charges.
c) That the Clinton Administration was forced by litigation and Congresssional investigations to ultimately pay the Weaver family $2.1 MILLION and Kevin Harris $380,000?
d) That the Clinton Administration did everything it could to UPHOLD the acts comitted by the FBI, Marshall’s Service, ATF
and US Attorneys — until forced to investigate by Weaver and Harris’s defense attorneys and a Congressional investigation.
September 13th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
From the Department of Justice report on its internal investigation of the Ruby Ridge matter:
“In February 1993, the Office of Professional Responsibility (”OPR”) of the U.S. Department of Justice (the “Department”) was informed of allegations made by defense counsel for Randall (”Randy”) Weaver and Kevin Harris in thecriminal case of United States v. Weaver which was pending in the federal district court in Idaho. Defense counsel alleged that employees of several components of the Department had engaged in criminal and professional misconduct during the investigation, apprehension, and prosecution of Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris. The Department decided to defer action on thismatter until the criminal trial was completed.”
Oh — so you try and execute a US Citizen BEFORE you determine if he was acting in self-defense?
http://www.byington.org/Carl/ruby/ruby0.htm
September 13th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Here is an excerpt from a 2002 report by the Office of Inspector General, Department of Justice re federal misconduct in the Ruby Ridge matter.
Look at the Table (Chronology of Events) at the beginning -most of those dates are during the Clinton Administration:
http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/0211/chapter5.htm
September 13th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
The part where you attribute the actions of career Justice Department people to “the Clinton administration,” although I’m open to the possibility that you aren’t being dishonest, and just don’t understand how the executive branch functions.
September 13th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
When the NASA and NOAA and the EPA released all of those reports stating that global warming was real, and manmade, and a serious problem during George Bush’s term of office, was “the Bush administration” behind them?
Quoth Shrub: “I’ve seen the report from the bureaucracy.”
Did “the Bush administration” deliver the August 6, 2001 President’s Daily Brief to George Bush?
September 13th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
As of roughly March 1993, the Justice Department was being run by Clinton appointee Janet Reno.
As of roughly Sept 1993, The FBI was being run by Clinton appointee Louis Freeh.
Freeh became Director after Bill Clinton FIRED FBI Director Sessions. ( I don’t criticize firing Sessions — what I criticize is that bullshit meme that the President doesn’t run the FBI and DOJ. )
Every police chief in America knows that part of the job is ensuring that your own people aren’t dirty.
September 13th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Just an astounding display of ignorance about the government right here. Simply amazing.
September 13th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
[...] to “anonymous” in Yglesias’ “The New Libertarians“. September 13th, 2009 | Category: [...]
September 13th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
On one level the comparison is apt and reveals hypocrisy. From the point of view of most conservatives, it’s two entirely different matters. Millions of people smoke, and while they probably would agree they shouldn’t, a significantly large minority probably resent the government trying to persuade them or corner them into quitting. On the other hand, very, very few Americans are terrorists or even suspected terrorists. It’s much easier for the average non-ideological American to relate to curbs on their personal habits than the possibility of being tortured by the CIA. Torture is either seen as impossibly distant, abstract and rare, or, for some, a kickass way of dealing with “bad guys”.
September 13th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
brewmn is a corporate tool who hates puppies, women and rainbows. He is a misogynistic ballwasher of the highest order.
September 13th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Matt, it isn’t weird at all. Most libertarians (big L or little l) are political narcissists. It’s fine if you hang up by the shackles at a secret location as long as it isn’t them, a member of their family or friend. But if you so much as touch on what they regard as “freedoms” (which frequently turn out to be privileges) that might effect them, then you are worst than Hitler, Stalin, and Satan all combined.
That’s libertarinism for you in a nut shell: “Everything for me, sucks to be you if you have none.” It’s perhaps the most selfish ideology that has ever existed.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:21 am
These people are not “libertarians”, they are propertarians who stole the label libertarian from anti-state socialists like Kropotkin!
150 years of libertarian
Iain
An Anarchist FAQ
September 14th, 2009 at 7:22 am
ALAN J GERSON launched an unprecedented number of initiatives including: a new youth swim team, an evening teenage center, a free community mediation facility, a heart defibrillator pilot program, new emergency shelters for homeless (runaway) teenagers, starting work on the Hudson River Waterfront Park, the first Arts Committee and Calendar, a new Public Safety Committee and a Community Court Proposal.
Please Vote for this strong & Experienced member for him in District-1 Council election on Septemer 15th
September 14th, 2009 at 7:23 am
DEMOCRACY IS THE ANSWER TO ALL POLITIC REFORMS
September 14th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Freedom to, not freedom from
The liberal ideal of individual freedom from arbitrary and/or unnecessary government control, is so inarguable that, of course, everyone identifies with it. Like motherhood and apple pie, it isn’t very ambitious. I mean that a society that simply avoids having the govt oppress individuals for no reason is thereby doing something definitely worth doing, that avoids potentially great harm, but it doesn’t thereby achieve positive justice, or attain any other great accomplishment.
The libertarian ideal would understandably like to expropriate the general aggreement that the liberal ideal enjoys, but as it consists of the freedom for the bearer to do whatever he or his group pleases, it generally runs clean contrary to the freedom that liberalism says that we should all have from the depredations of the govt and the powerful. So, of course the libertarians are all for the freedom to torture other people. You couldn’t possibly be against that unless you hate this country for its freedom to do pretty much whatever stupid and nasty thing enters its id at any given moment.