Harsh Your Mellow Monday: Non-suffering of Foolishness Edition

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew's Heard Tell SubStack for free here:

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58 Responses

  1. Saul Degraw says:

    HM1: I’ve long come to the conclusion that a lot of people on the far left and in the libertarian movement do not want actual political power. Political power means you have the responsibility of enacting policy and taking consequence if the policy is not as popular as expected or has negative unintended side-effects. Say what you will about the ACA but the Democrats passed it because they thought it was right, the limited version watered down to appease Liberman and Nelson was better than nothing, and then they suffered the consequence for it in the 2010 midterms and continued to advocate for it and fight for its improvement. For whatever reason, the Jacobin set and libertarians would rather play purist than engage in the necessary compromise that actual political power entails.

    Another issue is that libertarians and the farther left do not realize that Americans said no thanks to their beliefs. Instead of inward reflection, both have gone to “no it is the people who are wrong” and/or “dissolve the voters and elect another.” I think a lot of this could be because libertarians and the Jacobin set spend most of their time talking to themselves and this creates an feedback loop that encourages flying the freak flag instead of “maybe if we soften our stance on X, Y, and Z, we will be more influential.”

    In some ways it is the same as the California GOP which has been decimated and shows no signs of coming back. The former Governator realizes that a kind of Jacob Javits/Nelson Rockefeller Republican could probably do very well in California. Instead, the California GOP including young people in it decided that they would rather just own the libs: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/scaachikoul/california-college-republicans-milo-yiannopoulos-donaldReport

    • Philip H in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Political power means you have the responsibility of enacting policy and taking consequence if the policy is not as popular as expected or has negative unintended side-effects.

      And yet nationally Republicans seem to have insulated themselves form the side effects of their policy decisions by spending 4 decades using emotion laden narrative to frame others for their crimes. Hell, the ACA is a fine example where, after A democratic President took Republican ideas, spent 13 months negotiating with Republicans to make the bill more to their liking and allowing 72 hours of debates and dozens of amendments, Republicans voted against it, and have been trying to undermine it and undo it since. And for their temerity, they have been rewarded with control the Senate, the White House, and 30-ish governorships and state legislatures.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to Philip H says:

        They were beyond Republican ideas. I wish people on the left would stop giving into that narrative. It wasn’t National Health but it was beyond Romney care and what the AEI proposed back in the 1990s.

        White Supremacy combined with religious fundamentalism and a near bottomless well in media funding is a hell of a drug.Report

        • Philip H in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          It was actually the Heritage Foundation, which claimed at the time it was building on Nixon’s original UHC proposal. Not the point however – Republicans insisted on a lengthy seat at the table, heavily influenced the final product – which contained a hefty dose of their ideas from the start – and continue to work actively to tank it. You are spot on at some o f their motivators, but in the context of the process issues those motivations are somewhat irrelevant.Report

    • CJColucci in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      You scared me there. Until I clicked through and eventually checked the date of the article (the references to crowds clued me in to what I was missing), I thought “Oh my God. Milo is a thing again?” I’d managed to pay no attention to him when he briefly was a thing, and my life was better for it, so I’m glad I don’t have to think about him now.Report

  2. Philip H says:

    [HM1]

    Now Justin Amash, himself now almost a decade in office with nothing but rhetoric to show for it, will test the same theory but without the warm blanket of an R beside his name. Depending on your viewpoint he was either heroic or stupid to abandon the party on principle, vote for the Articles of Impeachment against President Trump, and now thrown his lot in with the Libertarian Party, such as it is.

    Seems to have worked well for Bernie Sanders, who at least is a household name nationally. IF Amish got on to actually legislating – even if his proposals got nowhere, that would be a good solid logical next step. We will see if he gets sent back to congress by his district.

    [HM3] – I grew up living and breathing SEC college football. We have some time yet before that season starts but I expect it will be played for television cameras only. Which will be a challenge, but at least it will be a nice diversion from the harsh reality that will no doubt have set in by then.Report

  3. Damon says:

    Americans don’t want liberty. They want their free stuff….Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Damon says:

      Correction, Americans don’t agree with your definition of liberty and freedom. Or liberty and freedom as defined by the ardent Randians at Cato as they feed on the trough money from the Kochs and the Mercers.Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        “Liberty” is one of those vague ideological abstractions that don’t really have any meaning for most people.

        Even for people who are demonstrably oppressed, like minorities who are terrified of encounters with the police, their chosen vocabulary to describe it rarely uses the word “liberty”, but instead choose words like “justice” and “dignity”, words that evoke a collective understanding of how the social order ought to be.Report

        • Saul Degraw in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          I am not sure I fully agree with the first sentence. I agree that it is a rubbery word that is hard to define and means vastly different things.Report

          • Chip Daniels in reply to Saul Degraw says:

            What I mean is that even if we take “liberty” in its most objective dictionary sense, exists only within a framework of collective order.

            It doesn’t mean anything to be free to do what you wish on your property, if your property is not secure to begin with. It doesn’t mean anything to be able to freely walk down the street if armed gangs are roving around.

            Without first having a coherent vision of what a secure order looks like, the liberty within it is meaningless.Report

        • LeeEsq in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          The word liberty seems most attractive to those that have less to fear government than other groups. The wealthy, powerful, and privileged use liberty a lot. Not other groups. The closest you get from oppressed groups is talks about liberation.Report

      • Damon in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        A simple definition: “the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views.”

        I guess it depends upon how you define “oppressive”. Nothing either the dems or repubs advocate can in any way be liberty. All they do is limit it.

        And Chip’s right…it has no meaning for most people because they are too busy putting food on the table, other personal matters, or are caught up in the distractions of the current political structure….Report

        • Philip H in reply to Damon says:

          I guess it depends upon how you define “oppressive”. Nothing either the dems or repubs advocate can in any way be liberty. All they do is limit it.

          Nothing seems a strong term here. Increasing voting access (which is mostly a Dem thing) would seem to increase liberty by your definition. Increasing access to education and healthcare – again Dem actions/ideas/issues – would seem to increase liberty by your definition. Preserving the right to choose – always a Dem position – would seem to increase liberty by your definition.Report

          • Damon in reply to Philip H says:

            That’s a fair criticism. Perhaps “nothing” is a bit much. If the Dems are increasing access, it stands to reason that it’s already limited….because it wouldn’t need to be expanded if it wasn’t limited….and there is no restriction on that “access” is there? Let’s take “the right to choose”. IIRC there are limits to how early/late you can “exercise” that right.Report

  4. [HM1] Rand Paul doesn’t even have rhetorical accomplishments to his credit now that he’s become a Trump bootlicker.Report

    • Philip H in reply to Mike Schilling says:

      he does have one singular accomplishment – he has always fulminated against additional spending not supported by tax revenue, even when its his own party doing it.Report

  5. Road Scholar says:

    [HM1] Libertarians imagine the primary ideological/political division to be between Individualism and Collectivism. In reality, the primary ideological division is between Egalitarianism (both social and economic) on the left vs a kind of hierarchical supremacism on the right. So for most people libertarians, at least a true neutral libertarianism, sits on a knife edge of being neither fish nor fowl. As a practical matter most folks will find themselves in some agreement with the libertarian position on about half the issues and see them as bugnuts on the other half. Also, even when you agree with them it’s often via a different rationale, so it’s more of a coincidence than real agreement. E.g., the doctrinaire libertarian position regarding ssm was predicated on “getting the government out of the business of marriage” as opposed to the liberal position of marriage equality. You end up at the same place wrt laws forbidding ssm but it’s not really the same thing. You see the same sort of thing playing out on most any issue whether they’re siding with the right or left.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Road Scholar says:

      Libertarians sometimes argue that a more market oriented and deregulated society will create more eaglitarianism. I disagree with this view. I suspect others believe that they will be on top in a libertarian society.Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to Road Scholar says:

      The problem that people always end up with, when talking about libertarianism, is “well what about X, you have to have a law about X, you have to have a law about X,” and the idea that anyone would say “no you don’t” is just impossible for them to accept, because, well, you have to have a law about X.

      And I don’t think there’s an “egalitarianism / heirarchical supremacism” divide (I’m not even sure I understand who’s supposed to be on which side of that divide, even.) I think the divide between Democrats and Republicans is mostly about which X’s you have to have laws about. Like, if you have to have a law enforcing antidiscrimination practices, you’re a Democrat. If you have to have a law limiting foreign persons’ stay in the country, you’re a Republican. And the libertarian says “no you don’t” to both of those things and the Democrats and Republicans can’t understand why, because if there weren’t a law, then how would people know what to do?Report

      • CJColucci in reply to DensityDuck says:

        Would libertarians drive on the right side of the road or the left side of the road, or would it be a free-for-all negotiated during real-time traffic?Report

        • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

          This is why, at the end of the day, Eric Garner is such a touchy subject.

          Because we *DO* have to have laws.
          We *DO* need to enforce them.
          We can’t just let people sell loosies.

          Without laws, we don’t know what side of the road people would drive on.

          Report

          • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

            Yes.
            This is why black people in America are terrified of the police.

            Because we have laws.

            Somehow white people can confront police while brandishing guns, but not be harmed. The laws must somehow mysteriously exempt these people from police power.

            So yeah, if we had fewer laws, things would be better.Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              Don’t tell me! I agree with you!

              Tell CJ.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                I’d be interested in the mental process that led from libertarianism to traffic rules to, of all things, the killing of Eric Garner. It certainly isn’t a matter of logic, and the non-logical explanations that suggest themselves to me are the sort I wouldn’t want to accuse decent people of without more evidence.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                Right to jail!

                Anyway, your response to Duck’s comment, which was talking about hypothetical areas in which laws might not be required at all, was to ask about which side of the road people drive on in Libertopia, lest there be a free-for-all.

                Which makes pointing out actual laws actually being enforced by actual law enforcement officers in the same ballpark of non-logicality.

                So here’s the mental process:

                Duck: *SOME* laws aren’t required
                You: I disagree that *ALL* laws aren’t required. Here is a specific law that is good.
                Me: Here is another specific law that you have to embrace if you are embracing *ALL* laws

                See? I took a fallacy and ran with it.

                Does that explain the mental process?Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                If that’s what you’re going to go with, I’ll just let you run with it. Other people can come to their own conclusions about what’s really going on and why you chose what you chose. If they care.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                Well, I think that we can just go back and agree that it’s absurd to argue that *ALL* laws are required.

                Therefore, *SOME* laws are *NOT* required.

                And it is equally absurd to argue that *ALL* laws are *NOT* required.

                So we’re back with *SOME* laws are required.

                And I’ll just copy and paste Duck for this next part:

                And I don’t think there’s an “egalitarianism / heirarchical supremacism” divide (I’m not even sure I understand who’s supposed to be on which side of that divide, even.) I think the divide between Democrats and Republicans is mostly about which X’s you have to have laws about. Like, if you have to have a law enforcing antidiscrimination practices, you’re a Democrat. If you have to have a law limiting foreign persons’ stay in the country, you’re a Republican. And the libertarian says “no you don’t” to both of those things and the Democrats and Republicans can’t understand why, because if there weren’t a law, then how would people know what to do?

                Report

              • George Turner in reply to CJColucci says:

                Most traffic laws came about because we got rid of horses, which were inherently good at not crashing into other horses.

                The cigarette laws likely came about because of New York’s high cigarette taxes (it’s for the children!), which created a natural black market for out-of-state cigarettes. Since the cartons or packs lacked the proper tax stamps, the way to avoid smuggling charges was to sell them as loosies.

                This is essentially the same situation we had with British stamp and tea taxes, with the government trying to generate tax revenue by taxing the heck out of a product, the populace trying to get around the insane taxes, and then the government trying to brutally quash the resulting tax avoidance and smuggling.Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to CJColucci says:

                “I’d be interested in the mental process that led from libertarianism to traffic rules to, of all things, the killing of Eric Garner.”

                what happens if someone drives on the wrong side of the road when there’s nobody on the road? do we say “oh well there’s nobody on the road, no harm done, I guess that’s OK”?Report

              • CJColucci in reply to DensityDuck says:

                No, we give him a ticket. We don’t strangle him to death. Which raises the question of how Jaybird got from A to B and why he thought that was the trip to take.Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to CJColucci says:

                So it was important that Eric Garner not be allowed to sell cigarettes, then?

                It was important to enforce the law?Report

              • CJColucci in reply to DensityDuck says:

                I haven’t studied the “loosie” laws and the reasons for them, so I have no opinion about whether they are “important” or ill-advised. I know that’s a hard concept for some folks around here, but too bad.
                That said, it isn’t, generally, for the cops to decide what laws are good or bad. They aren’t trained for it, aren’t likely to be good at it, and aren’t authorized to do it. They are, however, expected to have some damn sense. We don’t want cops ticketing everyone who drives 57 mph on the highway, or, worse, letting drivers who look like them slide while ticketing drivers who don’t. And we don’t want them killing people who violate minor regulatory laws that carry only minor penalties for the guilty. They are trained in, and expected to carry out, proportional response. Whatever anyone thinks about loosie laws, a summons is a proportional response. Killing isn’t.
                So why, again, are we going there?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                At the time of Eric Garner’s police-involved breath event, he wasn’t even selling loosies. The cops came up to make fun of him and he started complaining about the cops harassing him all the time.

                The police felt he showed insufficient deference to their authority and then accounts differ on what happened after that that resulted in Eric Garner being dead.

                And if you would like it established that law enforcement is tied to laws on the books, I understand your thought processes a bit better.

                There’s a phenomenon among a lot of people who believe that law should exist as an expression of a sentiment.

                “X should be illegal!”
                “Do you think that the cops should kick down the doors of someone doing X, shoot their dog, then drag them off to jail?”
                “You’re being a troll.”

                They don’t want cops kicking down doors and shooting dogs. They just don’t want X. That’s what they mean when they say that X should be illegal. We, as a society, shouldn’t have X happening.

                What, are you a fan of X or something? You should be shamed!

                But passing a law will, necessarily, entail those laws being enforced by law enforcement.

                And some people will be surprised that in a discussion about the importance of laws that we’re discussing Eric Garner.

                And some people won’t be.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                So wait, you’re now telling us that even if there were no laws against loosies, Eric Garner would still be dead?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Dunno. How much do you think Eric Garner would have been complaining about them harassing him all the time had selling loosies been legal?

                “Oh, the cops would have found something else to kill him over” is more of an argument in the libertarian direction than you might think.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                So just to be clear, Eric Garner’s death had nothing to do with cops enforcing laws, just cops acting like assholes? No argument here. Any law enforcement “response” to a non-lawbreaker is, pretty much by definition, disproportionate. So your point is?
                I’m perfectly well aware of people who make the trollish argument that we shouldn’t have laws that we’re not willing to kill people for breaking, and think that they’re making a point. I’d be surprised if anyone here was silly enough to trot it out, but I’ve been surprised before. Maybe I’ll be surprised again.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                So just to be clear, Eric Garner’s death had nothing to do with cops enforcing laws, just cops acting like assholes?

                This is weird. They were acting like assholes under color of law.

                “So your point is?”

                THEY WERE ACTING LIKE ASSHOLES UNDER COLOR OF LAW.

                “Well, they shouldn’t!”, I suppose, is one counter-argument.

                There oughtta be a law, I guess.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                There oughtta be a law, I guess.

                There is. It’s a daily part of my practice and has been for decades. And since there have been lots of posts here about lawsuits over cops acting like assholes under color of law, you probably know about it.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                You know, if I could figure out a way to apply the law to some people but not apply it to others, I’d really be able to game this system!

                Anyway, I’m on team “the cops shouldn’t have jurisdiction over some stuff” rather than on team “we should just not have bad cops”.

                (I’m also consistently against police unions. Which, you’d think, would have more support among the crowd that purports to care about Justice and crap.)Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                There are other laws, the ones I had in mind, that private parties can use without having to depend on people like Bill Barr.
                As for the rest of it, yes, we know.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                Are we back to arguing that *SOME* laws are good?

                If so, lemme go back to what Duck said:

                And I don’t think there’s an “egalitarianism / heirarchical supremacism” divide (I’m not even sure I understand who’s supposed to be on which side of that divide, even.) I think the divide between Democrats and Republicans is mostly about which X’s you have to have laws about. Like, if you have to have a law enforcing antidiscrimination practices, you’re a Democrat. If you have to have a law limiting foreign persons’ stay in the country, you’re a Republican. And the libertarian says “no you don’t” to both of those things and the Democrats and Republicans can’t understand why, because if there weren’t a law, then how would people know what to do?

                Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                “Back”? Except for some libertarians — and you might want to look at DD’s first sentence, which set the terms of the current discussion — nobody, literally nobody, has ever said anything different. So if someone is arguing that point, which is like arguing about gravity, you can find him and argue with him. Leave me out of it.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                I read his argument as saying “the problem with talking about libertarianism is that people start arguing as if they were arguing against anarchy”.

                And then, in response, you brought up roads.

                (Hey, who builds roads in Libertopia anyway?)Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                The absurdity here is pretending that this has anything to do with “jurisdiction”.

                Cops don’t have jurisdiction over people sitting peacefully in cars, or 12 year old boys in swingsets, or people walking along the street or having parties or sitting in their apartments watching TV…and yet somehow they have managed to kill people doing all these things.

                But cops DO have jurisdiction over people storming into the legislature with guns, or storming a federal facility with guns, or confronting police officers and brandishing guns…and yet somehow have resolved all these things without killing people

                And when you compare these strings of events together a striking pattern emerges.

                A pattern that has nothing to do with size of government or jurisdiction.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                This is one of those de facto vs. de jure things.

                “De fact is what actually exists.”
                “Well, officially, it’s de jure.”
                “Well, actually, it’s de facto.”
                “But, officially, it’s de jure.”
                “Well, actually…”

                Personally, I think we should make them align. And if we can’t make them align one way, we should make them align in the other.Report

            • Brandon Berg in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              Somehow white people can confront police while brandishing guns, but not be harmed. The laws must somehow mysteriously exempt these people from police power.

              This is a good illustration of why it’s important to look at the big-picture stats, rather than cobbling a mental model of the world together from a bunch of outlier cases cherry-picked by activists and journalists for sensationalism and/or furthering the Narrative.

              The Washington Post keeps a database of all people killed by the police since 2015, which you can download in CSV format here. Opening that up in Excel and doing a bit of math, we can see that over the past 4 1/2 years there were 4,691 killings for which racial/ethnic data are available, of which 50.4% were non-Hispanic white, 26.5% were black, 18.5% were Hispanic, 1.9% were Asian or Pacific Islander, and 1.6% were Native American.

              The US population is about 60% non-Hispanic white, 18% Hispanic, 14% black, 6% API, and 1% NA. So on a per-capita basis, blacks are killed by police at a bit more than twice the the rate at whites are, and in turn whites are killed at a bit more than twice the rate at which Asians are. Hispanics and Native Americans are killed at slightly higher rates than whites.

              First, this doesn’t support the notion, to which you were alluding, that the police will shoot black people at the drop of a hat, but will go to any extreme necessary to safely apprehend violent white criminals. A 2x difference in per-capita rates is important, but it’s not the orders-of-magnitude difference implied by BLM activists.

              Moreover, it’s not really clear that there’s any meaningful racial difference in rates of police shooting when controlling for arrest rates. Looking at table 43A of the DOJ’s 2017 Crime in the USA report, I see that there were 400,000 arrests for violent crimes, of which 58.5% were white (including white Hispanic), 37.5% were black, 23.5% were Hispanic (accounting for black Hispanics, I estimate that about 40% were non-Hispanic white), 1.8% were API, and 2.1% were Native American.

              Relative to arrests for violent crimes, Non-Hispanic whites were killed by police slightly more than expected, blacks slightly less, and Asians, non-black Hispanics, and Native Americans at about the expected rate. If we look at total arrests rather than just arrests for violent crime, the numbers match shootings a little better.

              In short, contrary to popular belief, the police are not Asian supremacists. Differences in rates at which people of different races are killed by the police can be explained quite well by differences in arrest rates. And no, differences in arrest rates are not just due to police being racist. If this were true, crime rates would not be strongly correlated with the racial composition of the local population.

              This doesn’t mean that everyone killed by the police is a criminal, or even a suspect. There have been some tragic misunderstandings, and also some truly colossal fish-ups (e.g. the shooting of Philando Castile ). But race does not seem to have a great deal of independent explanatory power regarding who gets killed by the police.

              The news is a funhouse-mirror view of the real world. You can’t rely on it to give you the representative data you need to understand the world.

              Well, to be fair, in this very specific case you can, because I got the data from a GitHub repository maintained by the Washington Post. But just watching the nightly news and reading newspaper headlines isn’t going to do it. And social media is an epistemic cesspit.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Brandon Berg says:

                Funny how we don’t hear stories of white people being shot while sitting in cars, or in their own apartments.

                See, you are relying on a single metric to explain the world, and that metric is wildly at odds with the empirical evidence of people’s lived experience.

                So in this case you are literally asking us to trust your abstract data rather than eyewitness testimony, and yet you can’t offer a convincing explanation for why they vary.

                But even on your own terms, the data doesn’t support your conclusion.
                You claim that black people commit crimes at higher rates. And that the police shoot them at higher rates.
                Black people claim that the police shoot black people who are innocent.

                Both of these can be true. Its entirely possible that the police shoot innocent black people while letting guilty ones go free.
                In fact, this is a historical fact, where corrupt regimes react to crime in oppressed communities with malign indifference and treat the guilty and innocent alike with brutality.

                This theory would match both your data and eyewitness testimony.Report

      • Road Scholar in reply to DensityDuck says:

        The problem that people always end up with, when talking about libertarianism, is “well what about X, you have to have a law about X, you have to have a law about X,” and the idea that anyone would say “no you don’t” is just impossible for them to accept, because, well, you have to have a law about X.

        Well… yeah. I mean the extreme form of libertarianism is actual anarchism. I’ve been in online discussions with libertarians who would argue that laws against murder actually caused more murders. I never quite understood the logic chain on that one but there you go. A more general argument was that criminal law as such shouldn’t exist, that all supposed crimes were actually torts for damages and should be handled as such.

        I’m not arguing for or against libertarianism here, just trying to map out the territory.

        And I don’t think there’s an “egalitarianism / heirarchical supremacism” divide (I’m not even sure I understand who’s supposed to be on which side of that divide, even.)

        On the left you have identity egalitarianism (race, sex, religion, etc), e.g. think Hillary Clinton, and economic egalitarianism, think Bernie Sanders.

        On the right you have identity supremacism, e.g. Trump, or better perhaps, Pat Buchanan, and economic supremacism, e.g. Paul Ryan.

        Again, not arguing for right or wrong, better or worse here. Just trying to map out the territory.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Road Scholar says:

          A million years ago, my argument was that in any conflict between a larger state entity and a smaller, the presumption should be in favor of the smaller (with the smallest entity being the individual, of course).

          Which immediately got interpreted as “so you’re arguing that there aren’t going to be any laws!”

          Which was not the argument at all. Just that, in any conflict, the starting point is that the larger has to prove its case against the smaller.

          It’d be similar to a presumption of innocence. We have a presumption of innocence now. Does this mean that nobody ever gets arrested? Tried? Convicted?

          Of freaking course it doesn’t mean that.

          But the second I mention “maybe we should have something like that presumption when it comes to conflict between entities”, suddenly I’m advocating for complete anarchy.

          Anyway. Where was I?

          Oh, yes. That there are somewhat happy mediums in the middle somewhere that put emphasis on the individual without, you know, Mad Max levels of anarchy.Report

          • Road Scholar in reply to Jaybird says:

            Absolutely agree. I think one problem, perhaps the problem, libertarianism has as a political entity is the invisibility of its moderate wing. They exist (e.g. you, Oscar) but they generally get subsumed into the Dems and Reps. So then the public face gets dominated by the most extreme elements.

            Imagine if the Democratic party was dominated by actual Communists and, idk, Black Panthers, and the Republicans by actual Nazi’s and Randians. I dare say folks wouldn’t be flocking to them either.Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Road Scholar says:

              Oh, I’m not a libertarian anymore. I’ve gone off the deep end.

              But I do think that there are contexts within which libertarianism makes sense and the contexts within which the Democratic Party exists have a lot of overlap with those contexts.Report

            • Philip H in reply to Road Scholar says:

              Imagine if the Democratic party was dominated by actual Communists and, idk, Black Panthers, and the Republicans by actual Nazi’s and Randians. I dare say folks wouldn’t be flocking to them either.

              The Republican Party at the national level has been taken over by Randians, who largely seem indifferent to the Nazi’s/nationalists who choose to align themselves with the GOP. Hasn’t hur their election chances any IMHO.Report