ED’s post about Cato flunkie Julian Sanchez’s quest to get his Creedence tape PS3 back got me thinking: is there anything more quintessentially libertarian than fantasizing about using the dark powers of the surveillance nanny state to open some whoop-ass on the punks who stole your gaming system?
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[…] Balloon Juice reaches new depths of libertarian-bashing hackery. It’s probably better to first read Julian Sanchez’s thoughtful post before reading the […]
Ann B. Nonymous
No.
Captain Haddock
That and weed.
aimai
No Doug, this is why we love you.
aimai
aimai
No Doug, this is why we love you.
aimai
pragmatism
maybe they’ll get a pat on the head from mr. koch. not that one, the other one.
Zifnab
You’ve got to do it from aboard your high tech sea-steading tax free fortress of awesomenessatude.
John Cole
I actually think Julian is an interesting and likable guy.
DougJ
@John Cole:
I agree, but I have no sympathy for anyone who works at Cato after the purge. I’m sure he’s the kind of guy I’d like to have a Four Loko with, but I just can’t support anything to do with the Koch brothers anymore.
Aet
It makes perfect sense. He’s a libertarian, so _he_ should be able to be free of the government.
pragmatism
@John Cole:
yeah, he’s one of the better ones out of that noxious bunch.
i wish the kocheses would bring in their distant cousin ed koch to be teh mayor of cato. just cause.
Martin
Heh. The chance of getting a fatal cancer from the new screening machines is about the same as the chance of getting killed on a plane by terrorists.
More policymaking from the gut. It’s like GWB never left us.
Zifnab
@DougJ: What is always hilarious about these think-tank libertarians, is their total acceptance of corporate ruler ship. The Cato survivors don’t mind getting tyrannized by the Koch family. But government, yeah, that’s the real problem.
electricgrendel
You should name a law after it. Something like: ““Every advocate of eliminating state surveillance always — always — envisions himself able to rely on that surveillance to get back his gaming system.”
DonkeyKong
“Well, you see, DougJ, in this war, things get confused out there. Power, ideals, the old morality, and practical military necessity. But out there with these natives, it must be a temptation to be God. Because there’s a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and irration, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes, the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.”
Yes, I do love quoting Apocalypse Now. Its like a bracing tonic against the teabag/galtian hordes.
rufflesinc
I have a good friend who’s in the middle of a medical residency in Texas, and did medical school in Illinois. He complained about the medicare reimbursement cuts in HCR and how Texas has lower medical malpractice rates because of tort reform. Later I asked him what he plans to do after he finishes residency. He plans to work in a state-run hospital because it has better job security and tenure. Meh.
El Tiburon
A new internet tradition to be aware of.
Otherwise seemed like the “free-marketeer” was simply taking advantage of an open window in which to secure what appeared to be unclaimed and unwanted electronics.
Why Sanchez must rely on the nanny-police to attempt to take the dude’s freedoms away is deplorable.
Martin
Awesome.
Jon Favreau, Steven Spielberg, Han Solo, James Bond, and 13 make a movie.
joe from Lowell
Fantasizing about your fighter-cleric opening up a can of whoop-ass on them with a halberd and leveling-up enough to earn a keep?
taylormattd
@DougJ: “I’m sure he’s the kind of guy I’d like to have a Four Loko with”
hahahahaha. You win the thread too.
justinslot
@John Cole: Not to mention thoughtful, fairly left-leaning and not unaware of the irony of his situation. Doug is admitting he’s being an asshole here, though, so I think all our bases are covered.
rufflesinc
@DougJ:
The Four Loko bans (initially by states) coincided with the new packaging for cigarettes (by the FDA). I’ll let you guess which one the libertarian blogs complained about.
Mnemosyne
@Martin:
Notice they specified “from a single exposure.” So if someone flies on a plane only one time in their entire lives then, yes, they have a better chance of being struck by lightning.
What about people who fly often? How much exposure are they getting? Some people work in one city and live in another — if they commute home every week or every other week, that’s over 100 exposures in a single year.
As with HFCS, it’s not the occasional use that’s a potential problem, it’s the people who get it over and over and over again.
Mike G
Someone once described libertarians as anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
Libertarians have a deeply-principled opposition to the security state; but they will chuck this overboard and embrace maximum surveillance to get back their electronic junk.
The root of the right’s racism and class warfare is about heirarchy and privilege. Their tribe counts as people, and everyone else are cattle who deserve no rights. They love a skull-cracking police state, smug in the knowledge that “their people” are running things and implicitly know only to abuse the “bad people” and not their asshole selves. And there are always exceptions and back-doors out for the wayward privileged, as GW Bush well knows.
When the police are turned on them, they’re outraged beyond belief. When a SWAT team busts down Elian Gozales’ door it’s unspeakable Nazism, even after righties’ decades of cheering on much greater abuses in the name of the War on (Dark People’s) Drugs. Because “those people” don’t count.
Obama threatens them because he’s in charge and they don’t think he’s one of their people, and they’re projecting onto him a desire to oppress them the way righties love to cheat and oppress outsiders when they hold power.
MikeJ
@joe from Lowell: Can fighter clerics used edged weapons? Sorry, jr. high was too long ago and I played with the three thin paperbacks in the boxed set.
John W.
@John Cole: He is interesting and likable. Met him a couple times when he was in college. He’s a good guy.
He’s more Nozick and I’m more Rawls, but you won’t find a more intellectually honest guy in my opinion.
JGabriel
pragmatism:
Wouldn’t make any difference. Ed Koch is literally a Republican shill these days. I got repeated taped phone calls from Ed on election day, pushing GOP candidates.
.
cleek
libertarianism is fine for a personal philosophy, but can’t even begin to work as a governing philosophy.
morzer
@DougJ:
I imagine Glenn Beck will be telling his cultists to buy Four Loko Gold, before the government takes it away from them. Better build your stockpile while you can.
something fabulous
@Mnemosyne:
Like, for example, Congresspersons? Maybe this can be one of those direct-democracy moments!
pragmatism
@JGabriel:
true enough. i’ll stop trying to fuel the kochmentum.
Surly Duff
@cleek:
That cannot be said enough. The ability to recognize the need for nuance in policy,regulation, etc. is ignored.
guster
@John W.: Isn’t he a Koch head?
ETA: Oops. Looks like I’m about the seventeenth to mention it.
alwhite
Authoritarian = libertarian who has had is PS2 stolen
Jay in Oregon
@MikeJ:
I believe that was one of the perks of multiclassing in older editions of D&D; giving a character access to armor or weapons they couldn’t use otherwise.
Starting with 3rd edition, clerics were allowed to take a free weapon proficiency in their deity’s signature weapon. Some races got certain weapon proficiencies for free, as well.
aimai
@John W.:
Hm. Nozick. Nozick. The link to Brad delong’s little piece on Nozick’s infamous misuse of rent control laws to rip off his colleague and landlord Eric Segal seems to be broken. But Nozick would, of course, not only be a case in point of a libertarian/anarchist being more than happy to use any law or abuse of law to get his own but is a personal favorite of Julian Sanchez despite that. I won’t bother to link but if you google Nozick, Rent Control and Julian Sanchez you’ll see that Sanchez has devoted quite a bit of ink to proving that Nozick’s hypocrisy is no problem for a real libertarian.
aimai
Catsy
@morzer:
Is there any way we can encourage this? It seems like a recipe for both Darwinism and karmic balance in action.
The Other Chuck
@Mnemosyne:
You’re exposed to far more radiation by _flying on the plane_ than from going through the machine.
Bnut
@Martin: Orgasm.
Corner Stone
I had no idea Gov Pataki is such a bedwetting scaredy pants ideologue asshole.
And un-American to boot.
arguingwithsignposts
Funny and it but someone brought it up: very interesting sitting in air terminal watching CNN report on new scanners. I didn’t have to go through one. And didn’t see anyone put through while I was in line.
Corner Stone
Man, I think I’ve reached the point where I just despise anybody who’s a Republican.
I flat called a long time wingnut friend of mine a racist today. He didn’t seem to care for it.
Corner Stone
@Corner Stone: Good God. Everyone needs to read the transcript of the Hardball show today. The part between Turley and Pataki.
Absolutely defies description.
j
Hey, DOOD,
It’s a TOY…
Get over it.
erlking
@aimai: For slipping in the Lebowski reference sous rature alone, I’m in love. DougJ, I want to have your babies.
I’m a middle-aged guy but, still.
MattR
@Corner Stone: My aunt just called me to vent because she got so enraged watching it.
Villago Delenda Est
Libertarianism only works as a personal philosophy if you understand that your rights end a millimeter before your fist hits someone else’s nose.
Your “property rights” do not include displacing your pollution on to someone else’s property.
The reason we’ve got a state is that there has to be a means of mediating between the “rights” of individuals when they come into conflict.
Or we can just do it the old fashioned way. With clubs.
silentbeep
@DougJ: the purge? you mean Wilkinson and Lindsey right? or am I missing something?
FWIW Julian’s libertarian views never seem knee-jerk to me. Always well thought out and nuanced.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: What were they arguing about?
MattR
@FlipYrWhig: I don’t know details, but the topic was yesterday’s terror trial verdict.
DougJ
@silentbeep:
Yes, Wilkinson and Lindsey. I think that counts as a purge.
Paris
At what age do you stop caring about material possessions? I can’t help but think that if someone stole my shit I wouldn’t really care. Except for the gator, but that’s because I use it to plow a fairly long driveway.
Darkrose
@Jay in Oregon:
In 1st and 2nd editions, humans could only dual-class, not multiclass, and a fighter-cleric still couldn’t use edged weapons. 3E changed the multiclassing rules as well as the weapons restrictions. Taking the martial weapons ability allows you to use a sword, regardless of class–although some classes, like monks, lose some of their spiffy bonuses when using “non-monk” weapons.
Chet
About as much as if their flight lasted another 10 minutes.
celticdragonchick
@Corner Stone:
Not the usual socially approved thing to accuse your friends of…at least if you want to keep them.
What happened?
Mnemosyne
@The Other Chuck:
Yes, I know, but since when has additional routine radiation exposure been a good thing? No one knows what level is going to tip the scales to causing cancer.
Since people who work with radiation at their universities say they’re concerned about this extra exposure, I don’t think hand-waving is going to cut it.
For my part, my mother died of breast cancer before she was 40, probably due to x-ray exposure (she was a dental hygienist in the 1960s and no other woman in her family has ever had it), so they’ll have to drag me into that thing kicking and screaming. I’ll take the crotch-grabbing first.
celticdragonchick
I’m not sure that using the normal powers of the police to track down a normal and trackable technical feature of stolen private property is really an abuse of librtarianism. They do actually believe in law enforcement. They just don’t like law enforcement that blows away your pets and potentially your kids and you as well before admitting they are at the wrong house while enforcing a misdemeanor pot warrent.
Douglas
http://www.npr.org/assets/news/2010/05/17/concern.pdf
Letter of Concern by scientists from the UCSF regarding teh backscatter xray scanners.
morzer
@celticdragonchick:
In my experience, the defining feature of your bog-standard libertarian is their utter lack of awareness that anyone’s liberties matter except their personal right to have their tax-exemptions and eat them too.
SciVo
I prefer to call big-government conservatism (or authoritarian corporatism or neo-confederacy) the “pappy state.” It isn’t any kind of nanny state. It won’t nurse you back to health if you get the measles and don’t have health insurance. It’ll cancel your policy (if you have one) for violating the clause about not getting sick, arrest you for the public menace of not getting a contagion treated, and then forcibly over-work your diseased body into an early grave for private capital’s benefit. Just think of yourself as the proverbial red-headed stepchild and you’ll understand your place in the pappy state.
Corner Stone
@celticdragonchick: We’ve been having an ongoing argument about UI extension and a few other things. Today he transitioned into the defunding of NPR and how next we need to defund ACORN. !!
So I asked him if he were serious? Didn’t he know about the fake video? And that was how defunding happend?
He said a few things about fraud and I told him his party hated ACORN because they were so successful registering blacks and minorities to vote. And further, “you guys” hate it when anyone but a white male votes.
He asked me if I were calling him a racist and I said, “If the Party fits…”
I then sent him a multi-paragraph e-mail with several links, Atwater, Southern Strategy, Reagan in Neshoba, voter caging, etc. And told him maybe it was time to evaluate why the Republican party hates the things that it hates.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: Civilian trials for terrorists.
Pataki went nutso. Full asshole, scared scared scared to let justice work. And full on blaming the administration for failure and other things related.
celticdragonchick
@morzer:
Well, yeah, I have run into that.
celticdragonchick
@Corner Stone:
Ouch. That may have been a bit…uh…more direct then was called for. I hope you guys patch that up. :(
morzer
@celticdragonchick:
A Glock to the face would have too direct. Corner Stone was relatively restrained.
A Squirrel
If there was a lefty mirror site analogous to Red State, the posts would read like this one. That’ll teach that Sanchez to advocate burglary…or something.
He seems like a good guy who just got robbed. Jesus.
Midnight Marauder
@celticdragonchick:
Because that’s pretty much all there is to being a libertarian.
@celticdragonchick:
I am going to vehemently disagree with this notion. Now obviously, we have no insights into the nature and history of this friendship, but everything Corner Stone mentioned is the kind of gross ignorance and bigotry that we’ve all come to know and love as the standard operating procedure of the Republican Party. I’ve had conservative friends literally try to argue with me that poor white Southerners were forced to fight the Civil War against their will by those mean ol’ slave owning rich whites. We are talking about a group of people who are literally disconnected from reality and whose “beliefs” have been empirically disproven for years upon years upon years. At some point, friendship or no friendship, you need to decide if you actually care about confronting the tide of ignorance and know-nothingism that has consumed this country. I’ve had friends recently who tried to push nonsense about how the Bush Tax Cuts actually worked, and I ripped them to fucking shreds. Of course, they were upset that a friend would be so mean, whereas I was more upset at the astounding ignorance and completely misguided confidence as they kept talking about how awesome those tax cuts were.
My point is that we have reached a point as a country where the horrid quality of our political discourse will not change unless people are willing to confront friends and other loved ones on their outright bullshit. And at some stage in the game, it becomes necessary to choose between enabling an unimaginable level of ignorance for the sake of a “friendship” and calling know-nothings out on their bullshit.
If a friend decides to stop talking to me rather than admit than were entirely wrong in everything they were arguing…well, I think that’s an example of someone revealing their true nature to you.
cs
Sanchez seems like a good guy, at least from his writing. I’ll always appreciate him for posting Your Tears Are So Yummy and Sweet in the aftermath of the 2006 elections. At Reason, he was the token liberal much hated by many of the right wing commentators. A basically Democratic pundit with a libertarian twist and a side of lime.
And no, having a surveillance society save your stuff is not a libertarian wet dream. The libertarian wet dream, for some of the more unhinged folk, is to catch the burglar in the act and either kill him with your legally obtained handgun or make him beg for his life while you call the cops.
Sanchez doesn’t seem like the sort of guy who would even own a gun, even if he would defend your right to do so, and so he’s just indulging in the irony of wanting less government surveillance in daily life while, at the same time, wanting the government to use its surveillance powers to get his PS3 back and arrest the bad guys who stole it.
That’s an interesting dilemma and one that many of us here could identify with, even if we don’t call ourselves libertarian. I wish DougJ could have approached the issue from that angle, which would create a better philosophical debate, rather than yet another “hurf durf libertarians are bad, ok” post.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Midnight Marauder: We enable their ignorance at our peril.
scarshapedstar
Yeah, he could write a cheesy novel about a world in which everyone hides their PS3 inside an invisible force field and all the console thieves starve to death and rue the day they crossed him.
A Squirrel
Take that, Julian Sanchez-shaped straw man!
newhavenguy
Look on the bright side, DougJ, You might be an asshole, but at least you aren’t a libertarian.
(That’s what I tell myself every morning, anyway.)
Ryan
All the dude ever wanted was his
rugPS3 back.fasteddie9318
@morzer:
Shit, they better chug as much of it down as they can, because the only way the government won’t get its hands on it is if they’ve already drunk it. COME ON, BECKSTERS! CHUG!
Bill
Wow, are you guys really incapable of distinguishing between the use of sweeping, warrantless electronic surveillance and targeted, specific use of available technology, with cause, and potentially with a subpoena or warrant, to find a specific stolen item? No hypocrisy whatsoever on Mr. Sanchez’s part.
There is nothing unlibertarian about wanting to find the perpetrator of a property crime, recovering the property and bringing the perpetrator to justice.