Arnold Schwarzenegger for president?-OR- If I had a nickel for every time I read the phrase....
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Wednesday, June 15, 2022 07:00
VIEWED: 7135
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From the wikipedia entry on 'libertarianism'
Quote:
Consistent with their belief in minimal taxation and limited government, they generally oppose the tax-funded provision of public services such as postal service, transportation, welfare programs, Social Security, public education, and health care. They argue that whatever the government provides for consumption (e.g., transportation, education, health care, etc.), the private sector could produce more abundantly, and at a higher quality and lower cost. They often argue that in a truly free market, even the poorest would end up better off as a result of faster overall economic growth - which they believe is likely to occur with lower taxes and less regulation.
There's a lot more where that came from, not an ideology that lends itself to a love of socialist big govt. states.
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Quote:In the pilot, Mal was doing something illegal, not wrong. No one was going to claim that stuff. He intended to survive.
Originally posted by Fletch2:
In the pilot Mal et al conduct illegal salvage on a transport ship. You cheer, what a libertarian, what a great guy sticking it to "the man." Yet I bet you thought it was ok to shoot those folks looting in New Orleans? Mal steals from the rich and..... well he keeps it. For all your saying that he's a Libertarian icon most libertarians would prefer people that take other people's property (especially THEIR property) in jail.
The looters in New Orleans were either intending to survive, or profit. And in either case, killing them (or even just wounding them) would be wrong (and illegal, in the strictest sense).
Getting pushed to the wall is an extenuating circumstance IMO; survival is programmed into us, and shouldn't be penalized. If someone took my property in order to LIVE, I suspect I'd understand on some level...
What now? Am I an Anarchist?
Liberal Libertarian Chrisisall
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I can add a Wikipia definition "Dreamtrove is a Git" and that would be what you would find if you searched it (you have been following the news recently right? The fact that they were almost sued for slander because of someone's "joke" enteries.)
You proved my point for me yet again. Allow me to give you a potted version of "Dreamtrove." Way back when someone taught him some kind of Socialist rubbish, and being a thinking sort he saw it was rubbish and he moved on. Along the way he found himself a "new true religion (NTR) that is sort of conservative, well, kinda sorta. Equipped with this new world view he started to look around only to discover like most of us do that the NTR was as full of bull as his old one. Most of us shake our heads at this point, come to the conclusion "a pox on all your houses" and formulate an entirely new political viewpoint. Not Dreamtrove, he's Paul on the road to Damascus, he's the new convert, the zealot, he's been shown the NTR and it can do no wrong. Rather than face the truth he simply changes reality, he arbitarily renames things so that no hint of fault could ever impinge on his "prescious." Like Gollum he hides and obscesses.
Bush a Socialist? Damn straight he is in DT's private Idaho. Better to think that than *horror* a Republican can be as big an imperialist self serving ahole as anyone else. Team Evil? Makes perfect sense that all these politicos on both sides are in cohoots. It means you can avoid the reality that the US has the best politicians that money can buy and that irrespective of the party in power, their paymasters and those paymaster's objectives remain constant.
"Team Evil" is your way of burying your head in the sand. It allows you the comfortable delusion that if a handfull of bad apples can be weeded out we can all go back to that happy place. It ignores real political and economic reality, that the system is corrupted and rather than there being a few bad apples, it's the good guys we are short of.
Now here's the interesting thing about all of this, I see exactly where you are coming from, I understand why you come to the conclusions that you do and even though some of your ideas are out there I respect them because I realise that there is actual analysis going on here, rather than forced fed media potted opinion. The problem I have is that you can never let anyone else have their own opinion, I understand that you may think that they are wrong but you always seem to be saying that they have no right to be wrong. If they disagree you shout them down, or at the very least make damned sure you have the last word.
People presented with the same info can come to different conclusions without malice or stupidity. Differences of opinion are good, they are great, they are grand. People that stick labels on other people and then decide that people with those labels have opinions not worth hearing... well they are the ones that loose in the end.
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Chris, the point is that you can't make political assumptions based only on what we see on the screen. Mal didn't want the Alliance running Shadow, that doesn't make him a libertarian, that makes him a patriot for his world. German Nazis, Russian Communists, American founders, all behaved as patriots when invaded by outsiders, even though their beliefs were very different.
Mal doesnt like the way the Alliance expands but why would he? It cuts down on the crimes he can pull, it means more regulation and more red tape. If a Crack dealer opposes wire taps is he a civil libertarian or does he just not want to get busted?
I like Mal a lot but these are complex characters that live in a radically different and complex world. We have no idea what the larger issues in the Unification War were because it doesnt matter to Mal. The war took his old life from him and left him with this one. How just it was, who was the angels and who was the devils doesn't matter because it's Mal we are concerned about.
If you told the story of a Southern boy in the 1870s, evicted from his home because of the war, you wouldn't know if his family kept slaves or how they were treated. All you know is that boy's life and that boy's needs. You have no way of knowing if his suffering made a better life possible for dozens more or if he really is the tragic figure he appears. It doesn't matter, this is HIS story.
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I just wanted to pipe in and say (for what it's worth) that I agree with most of Fletch2's first post and some points in his following posts, and almost ALL of Dreamtrove's posts.
I too was taught the socialist leaning college mindset and at some point managed to figure things out for myself - which brought me to different conclusions politically than any of my friends had, my parents had, or school & various medial sources had attempted to program into me.
Before this thread came up, I had been thinking about the political implications of the series/movie and thinking that it was very liberatarian. That said, the irony of what seems to be a mostly 'libertarian' crew going out and comitting crime wasn't missed by me.
That said, just as they'd feel no compunction about shooting someone that tried robbing them of their ship/goods/life, I don't think they'd blame someone else if they tried to do the same. It's a risk of the trade.
ps - Dreamtrove, can you point me to whatever you've written about some on the right being 'socialists'?
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[duplicate - sorry!]
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Quote:Before the war, I take it that Mal was a rather upstanding citizen, not a crook. He even joined an army to defend his way of life, only to get let down by both sides.
Originally posted by Fletch2:
Mal doesnt like the way the Alliance expands but why would he? It cuts down on the crimes he can pull, it means more regulation and more red tape. If a Crack dealer opposes wire taps is he a civil libertarian or does he just not want to get busted?
His illegal activities began post-war in Serenity (see posted convictions the Operative pulls up), and was a reaction to the unfairness of the 'verse, and in trying to remain Alliance-free, certain laws had to be broken (without hurt to others, I might add).
Mal is not a career criminal, although his bank job in Serenity brought him as close as he'd ever be. In Serenity, he was against the wall.
I question Mal's methods, but I can't say I can fault him most times.
Do you think he's a 'bad guy', Fletch?
Perplexed Chrisisall
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Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
Mal doesnt like the way the Alliance expands but why would he? It cuts down on the crimes he can pull, it means more regulation and more red tape. If a Crack dealer opposes wire taps is he a civil libertarian or does he just not want to get busted?
The impression I got was that MAL fought the alliance, and after the war he began running shady operations to stay out of the Alliance's interference and meddling.
Think also of River's words about 'people don't want to be meddled with'. That says it all.
People don't want intrusive, meddlesome governments telling them how to be. WE are supposed to decide how to be, and assign government certain limited tasks & powers to make that happen.
When the government begins racking up more responsibilities for itself and more power for itself (ie socialism) it becomes 'meddlesome' and has to restrict individual freedoms to do it's work and maintain it's power without resistance.
Why do you think the government wants to restrict guns? For crime? Get real! Crime stats universally without exception show reduced violent crime rates after gun ownership rights are expanded and drastic crime increases in EVERY location where gun rights are curtailed once those restrictions are put into place (even in areas where crime was falling before the new laws).
Governments want to limit/ban guns so that as they grow power there will be no 'checks & balances' to interfere with that governments plans. It has nothing to do with crime.
This mentality of removing power from the people is a good example of what governments do when they want to grow themselves further. Persons who value freedom and independence don't like it when these types of trends continue unchecked.
That's where I see Mal & crew in all of this. I don't see them as career criminals steering free of the Alliance to avoid getting busted, as much as people whose goal is to steer free of the Alliance's interference and who have no other way of doing it than shady dealings.
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No, I think he's complex and worth watching, which is incidentally why I watch him. My point is that folks are assigning him a political outlook based on their interpretation of what he does. To what extent is he "sticking it to the man" out of political conviction and to what extent is he doing it out of nescessity? As for "well his back's against the wall we'll cut him some slack" that's a bleading heart liberal viewpoint. Most hard line conservative types are fed up of fellons and their sob stories trying to get off from taking responsabilities for their actions.... etc blah.
If you steal from the "bad guy" do you get a pass? Who decides who the bad guy is? The black kid that mugs you probably believes that there is "200 years of the man holding the black man down" just as much as Mal thinks stealing from the Alliance is justified. If that kid thinks that "200 years" makes you the bad guy does that mean he has a right to steal from you?
A look at Mal and I see a lot of things, some of which are frankly contradictory. I don't assume Mal is on "my side" politically, I'm on *his* side because I like him. I certainly don't assign him a political viewpoint and then ignore all the ways he runs counter to it.
Is Mal Libertarian, or is he someone who can survive better in a world with weak law enforcement?
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Century House.
All governments "meddle" meddling is when something interferes with you doing something you want to do. Your mother making you clean your room and eat your greens? meddlesome wasn't she? The FAA deciding how often airliners get checks, just meddling in someone else's business until 300 people go down in flames. Meddling is making you do things you don't want to do.
The problem is that we know nothing at all about anything to do with the issues of Unification. For example, Inara said she VOTED for Unification. We have no idea who was allowed to vote or what the result was. We don't even know if the Independents represented the majority of the people on the planets they came from.
If you knew nothing about the reasons for the Civil War and followed only the adventures of a former confederate soldier then you would believe.
1) That the Confederate states had a right to leave the union (since the Consitution says nothing at all about it and no state ever explicitly ceeded the power to leave.)
2) That the Union had contravened the 2nd amendment because they forcably confescated guns in some border states.
etc etc
Seen from that POV the Union is the evil empire and you'd never know that slavery was involved at all.
That's why assuming a political possition to a fictional character is just holding up a distorting mirror to yourself. The things he does that you would agree with endear him to you and convince you that he has the same beliefs you do, but what you are looking at is a reflection of your own biases, not nescessarily what is really going on.
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