US Politics: To Open or Not To Open, That's the Question

[Freshwater Spartan]

5 hours ago, Ran said:

How does an exploratory committee help with this?

He's acting as a spoiler, and may succeed (in Michigan, anyways).

As I understand  an exploratory committee allows a person to raise one's profile and to begin raising funds without coming under the complete scrutiny of federal campaign finance laws that kick in once you declare yourself a Presidential candidate. It also gets you a media coverage day before you officially declare.

[DMC]

15 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

But he's a consistently libertarian douche!

Well, this is like saying the Pauls are consistent.  Yes, kinda?  But what kind of consistency are we talking about here?  Isn't it even worse than the regular GOP much of the time?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

8 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

Much as I disdain Libertarianism as a philosophy for half-bright upper middle class white bros, Amash has actually been fairly consistent to his stated ideals. He's not one of these Republicans who preaches limited government and fiscal responsibility and then rolls over for Trump's power grabs and berserk money-shoveling budgets. He's been unafraid to call out Trump's abuses of power. I imagine he really wants to prevent Trump from being re-elected.

I’ve been incredibly disappointed in purported libertarians offering apologia and support for Trump.  He’s as Statist and authoritarian as they come yet they keep backing him...

[IheartIheartTesla]

Looks like Trump's bounce has fizzled away re: his approval ratings. On a side note, there are not too many good pollsters in the average, and those ones tend to only run their polls once a month or so.

When do people start losing their health care coverage? That's when Americans will really feel the pinch, and I dont imagine getting a UI paycheck will offset the cost of an uninsured doctor's visit or two.

[Maithanet]

Just now, IheartIheartTesla said:

Looks like Trump's bounce has fizzled away re: his approval ratings. On a side note, there are not too many good pollsters in the average, and those ones tend to only run their polls once a month or so.

Yeah, but the two most recent good pollsters (Emerson and Suffolk/USA Today) had Trump -9 and Trump -10 net approval.  According to 538, those pollsters are actually slightly Republican friendly, so that's not great news for him at all. 

Emerson also had in their poll who voters think will win, and Trump was well ahead.  Which is interesting because it appears that Trump's strategy of projecting inevitability is working.  But is that really helpful?  Everyone assuming she would win certainly didn't help Clinton. 

[DMC]

20 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I’ve been incredibly disappointed in purported libertarians offering apologia and support for Trump.  He’s as Statist and authoritarian as they come yet they keep backing him...

As someone who's been frequenting bars around college campuses for the past 15 years, the entire concept of "libertarianism" is incredibly disappointing.  These kids are excited about the individuality premise it accentuates, without realizing the abject racism actual libertarians believe in when it comes to social policy.  Or that their foreign policy boils down to Lindbergh-esque isolationism.  Or that the economic policy might as well be a recipe for anarchists.  But it picks up more chicks to say you're a libertarian, bra.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

5 minutes ago, DMC said:

As someone who's been frequenting bars around college campuses for the past 15 years, the entire concept of "libertarianism" is incredibly disappointing.  These kids are excited about the individuality premise it accentuates, without realizing the abject racism actual libertarians believe in when it comes to social policy.  Or that their foreign policy boils down to Lindbergh-esque isolationism.  Or that the economic policy might as well be a recipe for anarchists.  But it picks up more chicks to say you're a libertarian, bra.

That was not my experience.  

And it depends on the individual.  I think of myself as a pragmatist with libertarian leanings.

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, DMC said:

As someone who's been frequenting bars around college campuses for the past 15 years, the entire concept of "libertarianism" is incredibly disappointing.  These kids are excited about the individuality premise it accentuates, without realizing the abject racism actual libertarians believe in when it comes to social policy.  Or that their foreign policy boils down to Lindbergh-esque isolationism.  Or that the economic policy might as well be a recipe for anarchists.  But it picks up more chicks to say you're a libertarian, bra.

Not to mention how it allows a handful of super-wealthy individuals to have spent their entire lives accumulating gains under the current system, which then libertarianism allows to essentially pull the socio-economic ladder they used to get there up behind them.

It's essentially a philosophy of "I've got mine, now FOAD."

[Rippounet]

I was working on that kind of stuff and stumbled upon the fact that Aristotle destroyed libertarianism in a single sentence 2500 years ago.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I was working on that kind of stuff and stumbled upon the fact that Aristotle destroyed libertarianism in a single sentence 2500 years ago.

That is?

[Rippounet]

Two sentences actually:

The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole. But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state.

[DMC]

28 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I think of myself as a pragmatist with libertarian leanings.

I'm sorry.  Even the most purist of libertarian leanings is far removed from anything resembling pragmatism.  At least within any large industrialized democracy.

22 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

It's essentially a philosophy of "I've got mine, now FOAD."

I'm not entirely clear what FOAD means, but yeah, I already agree with this.

ETA:  Fuck off and die.  Took me a bit but I think I got it!

13 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I was working on that kind of stuff and stumbled upon the fact that Aristotle destroyed libertarianism in a single sentence 2500 years ago.

Please share!

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole. But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state.

Interesting.  I try to leave out the Greeks in my syllabi for any state-building lectures to undergrads so as to avoid the students' eyerolls, but I'll try to remember to mark that down.  Thanks!

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

24 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Two sentences actually:

The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole. But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state.

That’s very similar to the thesis of “Rule of the Clan” by Mark Weiner (I suspect Mr. Weiner may have borrowed his thesis from Aristotle).  

After reading it I significantly moderated my advocacy for libertarian ideals.  Mr. Weiner points out how historically when you have no State or a very weak State individual liberties are generally ignored in favor of communal ideals like “clan” and “family”.  People band together naturally to protect themselves from other groups of people.

The only place where individual liberties are valued and fostered are reasonably strong States.  Therefore, the libertarian idea of a weak State has, historically, always failed.  

When I say “libertarian tendencies” I mean that I strongly value individual liberties.  I simply recognize that a reasonably strong State needs to exist for those liberties to be protected.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

25 minutes ago, DMC said:

Interesting.  I try to leave out the Greeks in my syllabi for any state-building lectures to undergrads so as to avoid the students' eyerolls, but I'll try to remember to mark that down.  Thanks!

You shouldn’t very interesting ideas there.  

You should check out The Cave and The Light by Arthur Herman.  He posits that most European political arguments are really between Platonic idealism and Aristotlian pragmatism.

[DMC]

11 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

He posits that most European political arguments are really between Platonic idealism and Aristotlian pragmatism.

You try assigning The Republic or assorted Aristotle readings and see what reaction you get from undergrads.  That's what I was talking about.  I'm not familiar with Herman or the work you're referring to.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

While I definitely won’t be voting for Jesse, he was a way better governor than Pawlenty was after him

I mean, a pile of shit looks great compared to radioactive waste.

I will say though Pawlenty always treated me kindly when I interacted with him. He could even be quite funny. Not like Bachmann, who was just cold, but the worst was Emmer. He's just a fucking jackass. MSA, the student government at the U held a gubernatorial debate back in 2010, and that dude was a straight up piece of shit, even to the conservative members that got him to come. Many of them left saying they backed Horner, who was equally as gracious as Dayton. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 minutes ago, DMC said:

You try assigning The Republic or assorted Aristotle readings and see what reaction you get from undergrads.  That's what I was talking about.  I'm not familiar with Herman or the work you're referring to.

You’re the professor.  What’s wrong with assigning Plato and Aristotle for reading in a class on political philosophy?

[Ran]

We're past this moment in the election politics, but Princeton Economics has a new paper suggesting that the share of wealth held by the top 0.1% is about half what estimates in the past have suggested, and that a wealth tax would consequently bring about half of what some of the estimates from from Warren and Sanders suggested. Saez and Zucman, and Piketty, are referenced.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

As someone who's been frequenting bars around college campuses for the past 15 years, the entire concept of "libertarianism" is incredibly disappointing.  These kids are excited about the individuality premise it accentuates, without realizing the abject racism actual libertarians believe in when it comes to social policy.  Or that their foreign policy boils down to Lindbergh-esque isolationism.  Or that the economic policy might as well be a recipe for anarchists.  But it picks up more chicks to say you're a libertarian, bra.