02-08-2020, 02:02 PM
(02-08-2020, 09:26 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(02-07-2020, 10:54 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: Yes, Antifa is a violent group. I think the term, terrorist applies. Terrorism - the use of violence to achieve a political aim.
This definition is what I use to assign any group or individual. And of course the term applies to any right wing groups who do this crap as well.
That is a fair definition. The quibble is that the Neo Nazi, KKK and Antifa are not into lethal or large scale violence. Fistfights and scuffles with other violent protesters I can live with. I am over 65 and handicapped. I assume I will be forgiven for not participating. As one who has trained in the martial arts, I was sort of disqualified anyway. It is certainly a young person’s game.
But the above organizations as they currently act do not compare with what the Middle Eastern organizations have done recently, or McVeigh, or what Hitler’s Nazi and Stalin’s communists did. It cheapens the word terrorist a little.
But let me try another definition. A racist harasses minorities or supports other organizations that harass minorities. By this definition, a person who does not at least renounce the KKK and Neo Nazi would be racist.
It is sort of a litmus test. It is hard to tell the racists in the middle of the country from those who favor small government and low taxes for economic reason. Calling someone short viewed or ignoring the collapses of the economic system after a few years of Republican voodoo economic policies does not quite have the same cachet as supporting racism does. One way to tell is support for those who do go out and actively harass minorities. For that reason, I would consider it impolite to be absolutely neutral in the three sorta terrorist group case. You have to make at least a token objection to continuing the history of harassment, which is past its peak but was persistent during the slaver and Jim Crow years. That tradition needs to be sat on.
The libertarians mean well. The contemporary GOP is as much a big-government party as the Democrats. Republicans are for using the government to enforce raw deals -- monopoly, privatization of the public sector to monopolistic gougers, and wars for profit. Libertarians recognize that a government that can do things for people can just as easily do things to the same people.
Whatever we ask of government we must ask whether such is efficacious and just. "Others will pay" is a malign pitch. Maybe people are wise enough now to ask whether racial or ethnic bigotry can result in sound social policy. That the German people did not ask what was so horrible about the Jews that they deserved to be robbed, beaten, and killed is a warning to us all. If one must choose between limited government that leaves people to their own resources and abilities or Big Government that does horrible things, then the libertarian option is the right one.
On the other side, I see a transition to a social market economy, a system of high taxes but great opportunity, as an unambiguous improvement for most Americans. It is pay-as-you-go, which is traditionally acceptable. People expect that if they get education that prepares them for better roles in society that they will pay for such as taxes. I also believe that we will need to restore the role of undergraduate education to that of improving the student (yes, there is more to life than "sex and drugs and rock-and-roll"... and luxury, ease, and bureaucratic power; and woe is it to the person who cannot find a pretext for sacrificing those). I prefer thrift to "luxury", recognizing that savings can do me far more good than can ostentatious display. Ease is over-rated. Bureaucratic power ideally ideally implies as much the responsibility to do good for those "below" as "above".
I am reminded that verbal power is far more likely to cultivate love than is the sex drive. Just think of the romance between Winston and Julia in 1984 that cannot develop because neither can express themselves verbally because the system has gutted language of its power to express anything other than propaganda. Drugs? I can think of better, like art. "Rock-and-roll"? There is good rock-and-roll, but it clearly takes some experimentation to figure that instrumental music with a banal title ("String of Pearls") or even so generic as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, String Quartet No. 18 in A major, K. 464, Op. 10, No. 5 (from 1785, so it must have a huge layer of dust upon it) is worthy of attention.
Don't believe me? Just listen:
Knowing what the good stuff is takes some intellectual inquiry, and such is true whatever position one is in the economic hierarchy.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.