It wasn't bad by any stretch - my only problem was that the argument struck me as hand-wave-y.

Yeah. I like that one day we're blasted for being obsessed about civil liberties and not taking the whole totality of things into consideration on the subject of the Blue Will to Power, then another we're somehow suggesting that "environmental regulations are a greater threat than unaccountable mercenaries" because we stop talking about civil liberties for five minutes and talk about regulation. (Yeah, that line really set me off on Katherine.)

Yeah, it needs fleshing out. I put it up in a hurry rather than letting the idea simmer because I wanted to get away from FISA blogging. And I had this naive idea that maybe if I moved on to something other than FISA and partisan politics, something more basic about libertarianism, the conversations would become less heated. Instead it became "Hah! Another reason why you libertarians suck!"

Unqualified Offerings

www.highclearing.com

Jim Henley's place, if you've come across him on H&R or elsewhere; Thoreau and Mona of subscription-canceling fame blog there, too. Jim's been writing a really good blog for ages.

I think some of it is an utterly mystifying belief that libertarians are more - vastly more - influential than in reality. I've actually seen comments on UO blame libertarians for the Bush administration, the Iraq war, and the terribly insufficient size of the government.

I can't easily reconcile those sorts of remarks with the assumption the commenters are adults capable of dressing themselves, much less working for a living, but that's some inexplicable portion of it.

EDITED for Eric having had insomnia all week.

He actually doesn't get as much blame as he deserves.

Libertarianism according to UO commenters:

Libertarians are single-handedly responsible for keeping the government way too small, as evidenced by their complicity in the expansion of executive power under Bush. These Bush-supporting libertarians are nothing more than a bunch of single-issue civil liberties voters who only care about the interests of big business. If they really cared so much about civil liberties, they'd vote Blue and realize that it only matters that a Blue wins, and stop caring about whether the Blue does anything good in regard to civil liberties.

the only thing worse than a freeper is a blue state freeper that doesn't realize they're a freeper.

Thanks for the new signature, dhex.

Wow. I'm not even sure to whom or about what MDS is talking on the regulation thread.

*shrugs and marks it and all the other ones others "read" in Google Reader so it doesn't track them, anymore*

Yes and yes. Back in 2004, when I was marching around with a bunch of LPNY folks, an angry Blue actually told me that we (Libertarians) were going to throw the presidential election to Bush. I was flattered that he thought the LPNY was so powerful we could throw New York's electoral votes to the Republicans, but really I just think it's a symptom of the mindset THIS IS A WAR FOR SURVIVAL AND IF YOU'RE NOT WITH US YOU'RE AGAINST US. You know, like how if we don't support their efforts to make the world better that means WE MUST WANT THE EVIL CORPORATE OVERLORDS TO WIN.

Damn, I just read the first page, and almost every post had the words:
-stimulus package
-Green project
-A Manhattan project
-more infrastructure
-CCC or WPA
-increase minimum wage

Sweet Baby Jesus, it's like some hive-mind descended on the NYT and all had the same bland, technocratic "power-words" about "stimulus."
And I just looooooved the guy who talked so high and mighty about Fiscal and Monetary, but then said we need to focus less on the Fiscal side by funding infrastructure projects...is the dude advocating printing more money to fund those projects or is the guy spouting some bullshit to sound fancy-smancy to advocate infrastructure funding?
Who cares, he's a moron!

I swear, at least the "fire Bush and Cheney" and the "abolish the Fed" sounded like individual people other than mindless babblers of technocratic bullshit.

The people with that objection I've talked to have basically held a binary view of acceptability. The word is either unacceptable or acceptable; if black people use it, it's clearly acceptable. That they object when white people use it, to these people, strikes them as some sort of hypocrisy borne out of hostility towards white people.

I've noted before that teh internetz are disproportionately libertarian such that online libertarians occasionally lose their minds and feel they have a silent majority and reds and blues feel like libertarians are to blame for what the other side does.

yeah, yeah it is.

call it the "rap music more like CRAP music" effect.

I'm not arguing the belief, Mo. I'm telling you that people hold it. They don't buy the in-group out-group dynamics.

I knew a guy from Alabama who in a conversation ranted about how "Yankees" shouldn't the mock "redneck culture" and it was only acceptable for Foxworthy to do it because "he's one of us." Five minutes later he was doing the whole, "Why can your people use the N-word and I can't?"

In a later conversation he was ranting about people mocking "Southern speech" and saying he shouldn't have to "speak like a Yankee" because his speech pattern was part of his culture and who he was proud of his culture. The next day he was mocking ebonics.

Just a random anecdote but still interesting.

yeah, pretty much.

no one is that fucking dense. not even people from long island.

did you tell him that you guys had talked this over at the meeting last year (in harlem) and you all decided that after the five year moratorium it would be reopened again in 2011?

IMHO, the word is unacceptable no matter the race of the user. It is equally unacceptable for both Jews and gentiles to use kike. I'm just that way.

the temptation to answer this with "nigga, please" is overwhelming.

i apologize.

when it comes down to it there are rules of engagement, and just like any good tom clancy novel*, life always has a plot twist.

it's like when you're out drinking with friends and you're all "man, this motherfucker here...*this* motherfucker...." cause you're too drunk to say things like "i enjoy your company" and whatnot; when a third party does that it is a prelude to a bar fight. why? because "this motherfucker" is really your motherfucker.

now, imagine if the term "this motherfucker" had been the domain of third parties in bars with hoses and dogs and the KKK.

it's like, shit, man. it's pretty straightforward.

* yes yes no such thing, i know. but bear with me here.

I was thinking about this and realized the only time I've used racist language* in jest (EDIT: this is to say used it at all) was actually in mixed company. I had a white buddy and a chinese buddy in college and we would sometimes do the whole racist language joking thing. But we knew each other very very well.

*When I was in the military, I often referred to the North Koreans as "Bukhans" and one person accused me of being racist because of it. Bukhan just means North Korea. The North Koreans consider it a slight only in that they refer to themselves by a much longer name that breaks out, in English, into Democratic People's Republic of Korea/(Choson)**. They feel that the use of the "North" in particular implies they are not the true heirs to the Korean government and what not.

There is some other funkiness about Korean naming.

Bukhans isn't proper in the sense that if I was going to refer to a North Korean person, I would probably say something like "Bukhan saram" or "Bukhan Kunin" (North Korean soldier). That is the sort of thing you would find in the say the Choson Ilbo or other major Korean paper.

Bukhans is a just a sort of bastardized Kongrish.

What I was doing it more akin to people who say "Chicom" or something like that not. I worked and even trained South Koreans who are the same exact ethnicity as their Northern more Communist cousins. Some people might find it annoying, hawkish, and what not but it isn't racist.

**(조선민주주의인민공화국) Choson Minju Ju ui In Min Gonghwaguk

Actually, while I'm on the subject of slurs and Korea. There was actually a bit of discomfort for me for a while after first learning Korea. The way one typically refers to a Korean is as a "Hangook saram". Years of American living had me uncomfortable using the syllable "gook" around any sort of Asian. There is some evidence to suggest that the racial slur may have come from the American war. The word for America is "Migook/miguk" and the story goes that when American GIs arrived in certain places they heard people saying "Miguk" in reference to the American troops and mistook it for "Me, gook."

EDIT: I did go through a phrase with other black friends of mine in college where we referred to each other as "negro" on occasion. We thought it was amusing in some ironic retro way.

I say they do, because the ones who've come into contact with its use as a pejorative seem to conclude, "it's just wrong to use and they are wrong to use it." Others don't seem to get why it's untoward for a pale-male to say, "N—, please," even to another white person.

Both are reacting with a binary view of acceptability, just different values for it in this case. I find it weird. I'm generally against declarations of "You can't say that!", but some stuff is just dumb.

Large portions of the AA community share that opinion.

Ha. I say this and it's gotten me some puzzled looks (probably because it's unexpected), but no fights yet. And I say it to all races (especially while drinking). Although I have lately taken to calling everybody "cracka"...'cause it makes me laugh.

I'm reminded of that scene in Shaun of the Dead. :)

The problem (as I see it) isn't the use or forbidding of the use of this or that rude word. Basically, it's an attempt to legislate politeness. The problem is the attitude conveyed by the word by people who stereotype and dislike blacks, Asians, whites, hispanics, etc. It doesn't matter what word(s) you ban, someone will either make up a new disparaging term, use the acceptable term disparagingly, or just refer to "those people".

"As I've always told the kids, always wipe from front to back, and don't trust whitey." Oh, Family Guy, is there no humor you can't teach us?

I have a sneaking suspicion that using "nigger" is unconsciously demeaning no matter who says it, but that seems to be a debate the African-American community is having on its own and it's for them to decide. I wish nobody would say it. But while I'd like us to be to the point that white people could say it in jest, there are a loooooooooooooooooot of fences to be mended first.

I also dislike the "n-word" euphamism, except in mixed company where you might be heard out of context. If the word is being discussed, just discuss it. If it's news that someone said the word, print it. If it's not news, don't.

Koreans run all the convenience stores around here anyway (well, except for a few that Hispanics run). And yet they still get pissed off when I ask them if they carry dog meat! Man, what's up with that? It's like only other Koreans are allowed to say that or something. Unfair!

I've heard it as "call center or casino," for the alliteration.

New York City, weren't they?

My thoughts apply even in the absence of legislation - you can't force people to think a certain way, you can, at best, force them to act a certain way.

The general social discussion of racial pejoratives often seems to go beyond simple disapproval - harsher penalties for hate crimes relies on legally infringing on freedom of speech, for example.

People have a lot of opinions. They discuss them.

Some of them end up getting enforced by law in a fundamentally unreasonable way.

This doesn't mean there's anything wrong with those opinions or discussing them.

I'm going to outsource my call centers to the reservations, and really throw a monkeywrench into Indian stereotypes!

Please tell me that it will involve various pictures of (call center) Indian women in various states of undress.

It's kinda my thing.

uh oh. I sense Cleveland's own Chief Racy McRacist raising his head.

Can't we get a little love for The Washington Redskins?

That's not bad, but I prefer "tomahawks or Taj Mahals."

here's a fun discussion to be had: is social pressure coercion? i.e. when i make my in-laws uncomfortable for being bigotylicious about topic xyz am i being coercive or just cool?

all is force.

HHHRRRROOOOOWWWWWRRRR!

People relating knowledge about you isn't force. Privacy isnt' that powerful, and it's getting weaker every day. Freedom from this kind of force is being zen about your skeletons.

I would call it force if for some reason only one side had the freedom to post personal information about the opposition. , I guess.

I would call it force if for some reason only one side had the freedom to post personal information about the opposition. , I guess.

maybe that's why folks recording them occasionally get cops in a tizzy?

I think that "is social pressure considered 'force'?" is one of the big things that separates libertarians and some right-anarchists from social anarchists. Consider the case of a society where people who are in an unpopular minority - gay, a different religion, a different political view, whatever - are completely and utterly shunned by the community. Complete ostracism: no one else will speak to them or do business with them in any way. There's no legal punishment and no coercion, just Coventry. Is this society "free"? In a narrow sense it is, because there's no coercion, just people exercising their right to freedom of assembly. But it would be a nearly impossible life for members of the unpopular minority.

I lean more towards the right here (I don't cotton to the argument that some social anarchists have made that "We have to force people to behave in certain ways so that everyone can be free") but I don't dismiss the concerns lightly, either.

when i wrote that all is force, i was being flippant; but it's also true. the entire world is a continual smashing together of people trying to put their will on the world, on themselves, or on others.

Thoreau, what's your take on the current UO commentariat? Just looking at the last day or so of posts, they seem much the same, just with different names...