I've said before that I can't find these "libertarians" in our modern political history. With few exceptions, Goldwater?, Ron Paul?, a small handful of others in between. Those guys are libertarians... Reagan? There's been some debating over that ... French is in a class of his own and RARE breed, my he stay largely unknown.
What Hammer is hitting at is mincing today's understanding of terminology with 1920-1960's (70s'ish) politics largely as a slur... a nice undercut that no one gets. By the comments some are offended but I don't think anyone has really hit on why.
So now maybe I understand the "libertarian reference" going on (finally) but I'd argue It's poorly deceptive if the pot calling the kettle black. I'd also say Hammer is picking on a political ghost they few would even understand well enough to argue about but it has implications that are horrific.
He is right that the conservative side has no fight in them and is being run over. I would contend that stems far more from being in debit and trapped into other more pressing issues like not becoming a target of the FBI. I've stated MANY times we absolutely suck like that.
But what is Hammer suggesting we do? Man up or reintroduce the flip side of Meyer? He really isn't saying it out loud but some seem to be "hearing that" and I'd flatly caution against it.
Maybe he's simply attacking French but it seems not?
To get to the root of Hammer's complaint of Fusionism which is a 100+ year old argument that's raged in-between even libertarians themselves... It isn't well known today but could be summed up into saying the following... Meyer is despised for generally showing conservatives that enforcing progressive Christian virtues by the state is, in fact, anti-Christian. Maybe more specifically he's despised by some for his early years of following Jewish faith and converting to Catholicism, that got him bashed as a heretic in many circles. Largely he simply didn't side with those who were undoubtedly attempting to justify their own brand of progressive ideology via government social policies.
What we're those other sides up to during that time frame though? Hello Prohibition!! ... as one of many historical examples of how this goes off a cliff.
That's a whole can of worms to open but I'll short cut it by saying there are direct parallels in the arguments made today by liberal progressives trying to institute today's crazy and the Judeo-Christian progressivism that helped inistute prohibition in the early 1900s. That duality in argument can't be ignored by cheering any "brand" of social reformerisum. It is what it is!
That I think is the main knock against Meyer, it what he is known for.
Awkward? Uncomfortable?... It should be but that's where Meyer stood up and said this isn't right to do and Hammer is not touching his meaning or ignoring how that all arrived.
I'll strongly note that I'm not defending Meyer in anything... I'm saying that guys like him largely don't exist in today's politics anymore. If they did they would be an extreme right of most conservatives from a constitutional perspective. But again, he's an easy safe target to pick on because you'll have little defence from yesteryears political dead guy.
Just like you'll find few conservatives lining up to back French. He's unknown in most circles.
But again, and I'm repeating myself here but what is Hammer suggesting? The undertones of returning to yesteryears neochristan socal reformers? I'm kinda concluding that knowing where Myers hails from. Does Hammer? I really don't want to believe that.
What I am decisively not mincing words with here is the *defense of progressivism* by trying to narrow or limit the dangers of its it's definition to "liberal progressives"... Let's call progression what it really is... ANY social political philosophy under the guise of "social reform" backed by a government gunpoint.
Selling that idea will largely fall on dear ears to most conservatives. These arguments with rare exception can be coated with enough sugar for them to swallow. Roe is a GREAT example of that and the duality between the liberal / conservative battle. Rarely in modern times do we see w better example... Each side semily wants our government to enforce their OWN brands of beliefs in that subject. There however many conservatives out there saying this never belonged to the Fed's and let the states sort it out.
Am I going overboard here? Maybe, maybe not.
Kavanaugh nailed this issue on the head the other day in the Louisiana case when he said very plainly... "You have to pick one interest over the other; they can't both prevail." For following that with the question of "what does the constitution say?"... I guess by Hammer's philosophy, because of Meyer's theroy Kavanaugh is firmly in rubbish bin of the classic liberal Fusionism? Im speculating but it's a valid question put towards a legitimate current issue, I'd kinda like to know!
Kavanaugh certainly isn't within my comfort zone of "conservatives", I would say he's far less of a constitutionalist than I would prefer... But he isn't wrong in understanding that issue's duality.
So do we really sink to the terms of defining conservatives as "non-conservatives" because of their political beliefs not falling directly upon the values held in religious faith? That's been suggested here more than once. That's a HARSH if not downright offensive path to beat through the underbrush, especially if your goal is unity.
But Hammer went further down this rabbit hole... not at French but Meyer.
If I were to name a "libertarian institution" I would probably first say the Cato or Mises Institutes? He is being incredibly deceptive there to create a boogie man that most wouldn't understand in today's modem terms by pointing at the Heritage Foundation and calling it libertarian. The Heritage Foundation certainly wouldn't agree, neither would the actual libertarians.
I don't frequent the National Review, I'd say today it's generally another brand of propaganda I find to be offensive to reality in the "Fox News" kind of way. But I understand the argument Hammer is trying to make in linking Myer to his founding editor status there in the 1970s with something that doesn't exist in todays world of what would be defined as "classic liberal". I know a few things about the Heritage Foundation and would describe it to be up there with other *so called* but NOT conservative groups such as The Club For Growth. Those groups speak of conservativism, liberty and constitutional values wrapped in a cloak of big government! They are no friend of conservatives or follower of Trump.
Plainly, when I hear "Heritage" I think "Sean Hannity Republicans" and they are why the majority of modern conservatives are forever confused about why their expected representative party "says" one thing while actually "doing" another.
Mr Tick Tock / "99% are good" is one of those favorite propagandist I can't stand, I had no idea his audience was libertarians though... Kinda funny.
Again I'm connecting the dots given but Hammer seems more to me to be looking for blame and avoiding the historical blowback associated with social neochristan exceptionalisum. He seems to want to do this while avoiding plainly stating what he's after... I gather why is because like many he believes The Grand Ole Party been infiltrated by "something" and it must be some form of evil liberalism.
It's largely destroyed itself from within...
I offer a different take... And in all reality it doesn't side with any name in this. But what it does side strongly with is today's lack of moral character and sound political principles.
The GOP (to me) hasn't so much failed in it's lack of "fighting back" or playing too far into the game of "going along to get along" by placating any semblance of classic liberal principal. It's failed because it's become a wolf in sheeps clothing and has no actual principal except the principal of big government, that's been crafted by careful design. I often say most Republicans are not conservative but most conservatives identify as Republicans. The party speaks of conservative values to their base as a propaganda outlet while acting as a quazi agent of the government it's self. Why would it not? It's in the parties better interest of self enrichment and power. They are after all as a group in their own category of being another government entity.
At that point... Asking for party morality is like asking a government to police it's self.
Essentially, the result of that is what the populist Trump movement sees as "the problem" but largely refrains from concluding the full picture because its just to damn painful to accept... though I do see people coming around.
Also I'm not an absolutist here, my beliefs on this have migrated over time as evidence comes fourth. I'm wholly open to alternative theories but I have yet to find a better one that remotely comes close in the big picture.
And again maybe I've just overshot Hammer's implication but with the references given...I suspect not, as I said I doubt most even correctly understood them.
You're coming through loud and clear, despite the tediously verbose obfuscation--you want the government to enforce conformity with your liberal version of morality, to impose it on conservatives.
What did American "conservatism" actually conserve? American jobs? American laws? It couldn't even keep boys out of girls' bathrooms. Its intellectual leader, Buckley, was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, for God's sake, ground zero for America hating globalism. It doesn't mean libertarianism is good but not being the same as American "conservatism" is a pretty faint black mark at this point in time.
As I noted above, Buckley was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the group that sociopath Hillary Clinton, when Secretary of State, joked was there to tell her what to do. Situations like that are how terms like "controlled opposition" are coined.
Complete losers in the political game like Jonah Goldberg who does nothing but pat himself on the back for the quality of his surrendering, like Ben Shapiro who occasionally talks a decent game but often beats the left to the punch in attacking anyone on the right in the crosshairs of the woke mob, losers like that call themselves "conservatives". The United States has lost immense social and political capital all while "conservatives" were supposed to be protecting it. The Democrats were actively working in the other direction. That conservatives are not as horrendous for Americans as those actively working to make our lives miserable is not such a feather in their caps.
"wokesters are abetted by fusionist right-liberals who refuse to inject any sense of overt value or morality into the national fabric as a matter of high-minded principle...
critical race theory indoctrination in the classroom and forcing Christian bakers to bend the knee and “bake the damn cake” for a same-sex wedding."
Much hinges on the exact meaning of "refuse to *inject any sense* of overt value or morality into the national fabric as a matter of high-minded principle".
I'll bet that most libertarians quite support the Overt Value, of *protecting* kids from critical race theory indoctrination, and the right of Christian bakers *to refuse* to bake the damn cake.
If Hammer is trying to pin the plight of the Christian bakers, or anti-Woke parents, on libertarians, that's a very cheap shot.
If all Hammer aims for is, to encourage libertarians to put weight upon values other than just Freedom, I look forward to such a debate, sp. insofar as it encourages analysis on what sort of weight be given to which such values.
In my judgement, debates about, say, gay marriage, are not at all identical to debates on, say, abortion, or, say, prayer in schools, or, say, the War on Drugs, or, say "multiculturalism"/ Open Borders.
No doubt you're right about "most libertarians," but what you're missing is what Hammer is implicitly saying--that libertarians have no real principles to allow them to formulate a coherent moral philosophy. They rely on the notion of freedom but without a theoretical justification for that in human nature. That's why Hammer is correct to say that history proves his case. Everywhere libertarian ideas (Classical liberalism) have become dominant the slide into moral relativism has been precipitous, precisely because libertarians insist that "values" are essentially subjective, not objective.
A brilliant little book that examines this question in is "The Liberal Mind" by Kenneth Minogue. Smart man smart book. Helped me understand that I was a conservative.
They "rely on the notion of freedom but without a theoretical justification....
libertarians insist that "values" are essentially subjective, not objective."
I'll quite grant that French does these things, but I quite doubt that most libertarians do so, e.g. Objectivism (the main point of which was, to provide such a theoretical justification).
How well Objectivism did at that can be debated, but not what their aims were.
(French, outside of the Beltway, is usually seen as milktoast.)
And (where he quotes Ahmari) on “civility and decency are secondary values”, much hinges, not only on *how* "secondary" such values are viewed to be, but on how one views the magnitude of the Woke threat to those values.
I'll bet that most libertarians are quite appalled by the (sometimes subtle) Wokester assault *upon civility*.
Insofar as D. French is not so appalled, most libertarians likely see him as a pathetic suck-up to Conventional Wisdom.
I'm not sure why you list Flynn as one of the people who wants to just "move on" from the 2020 election fraud. I thought he was clearly in the opposite camp.
At least it's real, we can be thankful for that and maybe start a coalition of the based, anyone who wants to experience humans as humans, not as cardboard cutout players in liberal clown world. The dawn of the internet put the process of liberal incursions into "normal" private life of individuals into hyperdrive, or it went into hyperdrive with the advent if Good Morning America I can't decide which. My wife to this Day watches CBS Morning (or whatever it is called I don't know) and I can't stand to watch 3 minutes of it and haven't been able to for 10 years, such is the blood boiling liberal propaganda it spews. Yet we are still married, never talk politics, she's vaccinated and I'm not. They're coming for us? Feels like they already came.
I've said before that I can't find these "libertarians" in our modern political history. With few exceptions, Goldwater?, Ron Paul?, a small handful of others in between. Those guys are libertarians... Reagan? There's been some debating over that ... French is in a class of his own and RARE breed, my he stay largely unknown.
What Hammer is hitting at is mincing today's understanding of terminology with 1920-1960's (70s'ish) politics largely as a slur... a nice undercut that no one gets. By the comments some are offended but I don't think anyone has really hit on why.
So now maybe I understand the "libertarian reference" going on (finally) but I'd argue It's poorly deceptive if the pot calling the kettle black. I'd also say Hammer is picking on a political ghost they few would even understand well enough to argue about but it has implications that are horrific.
He is right that the conservative side has no fight in them and is being run over. I would contend that stems far more from being in debit and trapped into other more pressing issues like not becoming a target of the FBI. I've stated MANY times we absolutely suck like that.
But what is Hammer suggesting we do? Man up or reintroduce the flip side of Meyer? He really isn't saying it out loud but some seem to be "hearing that" and I'd flatly caution against it.
Maybe he's simply attacking French but it seems not?
To get to the root of Hammer's complaint of Fusionism which is a 100+ year old argument that's raged in-between even libertarians themselves... It isn't well known today but could be summed up into saying the following... Meyer is despised for generally showing conservatives that enforcing progressive Christian virtues by the state is, in fact, anti-Christian. Maybe more specifically he's despised by some for his early years of following Jewish faith and converting to Catholicism, that got him bashed as a heretic in many circles. Largely he simply didn't side with those who were undoubtedly attempting to justify their own brand of progressive ideology via government social policies.
What we're those other sides up to during that time frame though? Hello Prohibition!! ... as one of many historical examples of how this goes off a cliff.
That's a whole can of worms to open but I'll short cut it by saying there are direct parallels in the arguments made today by liberal progressives trying to institute today's crazy and the Judeo-Christian progressivism that helped inistute prohibition in the early 1900s. That duality in argument can't be ignored by cheering any "brand" of social reformerisum. It is what it is!
That I think is the main knock against Meyer, it what he is known for.
Awkward? Uncomfortable?... It should be but that's where Meyer stood up and said this isn't right to do and Hammer is not touching his meaning or ignoring how that all arrived.
I'll strongly note that I'm not defending Meyer in anything... I'm saying that guys like him largely don't exist in today's politics anymore. If they did they would be an extreme right of most conservatives from a constitutional perspective. But again, he's an easy safe target to pick on because you'll have little defence from yesteryears political dead guy.
Just like you'll find few conservatives lining up to back French. He's unknown in most circles.
But again, and I'm repeating myself here but what is Hammer suggesting? The undertones of returning to yesteryears neochristan socal reformers? I'm kinda concluding that knowing where Myers hails from. Does Hammer? I really don't want to believe that.
What I am decisively not mincing words with here is the *defense of progressivism* by trying to narrow or limit the dangers of its it's definition to "liberal progressives"... Let's call progression what it really is... ANY social political philosophy under the guise of "social reform" backed by a government gunpoint.
Selling that idea will largely fall on dear ears to most conservatives. These arguments with rare exception can be coated with enough sugar for them to swallow. Roe is a GREAT example of that and the duality between the liberal / conservative battle. Rarely in modern times do we see w better example... Each side semily wants our government to enforce their OWN brands of beliefs in that subject. There however many conservatives out there saying this never belonged to the Fed's and let the states sort it out.
Am I going overboard here? Maybe, maybe not.
Kavanaugh nailed this issue on the head the other day in the Louisiana case when he said very plainly... "You have to pick one interest over the other; they can't both prevail." For following that with the question of "what does the constitution say?"... I guess by Hammer's philosophy, because of Meyer's theroy Kavanaugh is firmly in rubbish bin of the classic liberal Fusionism? Im speculating but it's a valid question put towards a legitimate current issue, I'd kinda like to know!
Kavanaugh certainly isn't within my comfort zone of "conservatives", I would say he's far less of a constitutionalist than I would prefer... But he isn't wrong in understanding that issue's duality.
So do we really sink to the terms of defining conservatives as "non-conservatives" because of their political beliefs not falling directly upon the values held in religious faith? That's been suggested here more than once. That's a HARSH if not downright offensive path to beat through the underbrush, especially if your goal is unity.
But Hammer went further down this rabbit hole... not at French but Meyer.
If I were to name a "libertarian institution" I would probably first say the Cato or Mises Institutes? He is being incredibly deceptive there to create a boogie man that most wouldn't understand in today's modem terms by pointing at the Heritage Foundation and calling it libertarian. The Heritage Foundation certainly wouldn't agree, neither would the actual libertarians.
I don't frequent the National Review, I'd say today it's generally another brand of propaganda I find to be offensive to reality in the "Fox News" kind of way. But I understand the argument Hammer is trying to make in linking Myer to his founding editor status there in the 1970s with something that doesn't exist in todays world of what would be defined as "classic liberal". I know a few things about the Heritage Foundation and would describe it to be up there with other *so called* but NOT conservative groups such as The Club For Growth. Those groups speak of conservativism, liberty and constitutional values wrapped in a cloak of big government! They are no friend of conservatives or follower of Trump.
Plainly, when I hear "Heritage" I think "Sean Hannity Republicans" and they are why the majority of modern conservatives are forever confused about why their expected representative party "says" one thing while actually "doing" another.
Mr Tick Tock / "99% are good" is one of those favorite propagandist I can't stand, I had no idea his audience was libertarians though... Kinda funny.
Again I'm connecting the dots given but Hammer seems more to me to be looking for blame and avoiding the historical blowback associated with social neochristan exceptionalisum. He seems to want to do this while avoiding plainly stating what he's after... I gather why is because like many he believes The Grand Ole Party been infiltrated by "something" and it must be some form of evil liberalism.
It's largely destroyed itself from within...
I offer a different take... And in all reality it doesn't side with any name in this. But what it does side strongly with is today's lack of moral character and sound political principles.
The GOP (to me) hasn't so much failed in it's lack of "fighting back" or playing too far into the game of "going along to get along" by placating any semblance of classic liberal principal. It's failed because it's become a wolf in sheeps clothing and has no actual principal except the principal of big government, that's been crafted by careful design. I often say most Republicans are not conservative but most conservatives identify as Republicans. The party speaks of conservative values to their base as a propaganda outlet while acting as a quazi agent of the government it's self. Why would it not? It's in the parties better interest of self enrichment and power. They are after all as a group in their own category of being another government entity.
At that point... Asking for party morality is like asking a government to police it's self.
Essentially, the result of that is what the populist Trump movement sees as "the problem" but largely refrains from concluding the full picture because its just to damn painful to accept... though I do see people coming around.
Also I'm not an absolutist here, my beliefs on this have migrated over time as evidence comes fourth. I'm wholly open to alternative theories but I have yet to find a better one that remotely comes close in the big picture.
And again maybe I've just overshot Hammer's implication but with the references given...I suspect not, as I said I doubt most even correctly understood them.
Dev96 I can't follow your argument. At all.
You're coming through loud and clear, despite the tediously verbose obfuscation--you want the government to enforce conformity with your liberal version of morality, to impose it on conservatives.
What did American "conservatism" actually conserve? American jobs? American laws? It couldn't even keep boys out of girls' bathrooms. Its intellectual leader, Buckley, was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, for God's sake, ground zero for America hating globalism. It doesn't mean libertarianism is good but not being the same as American "conservatism" is a pretty faint black mark at this point in time.
Yeah, and the LP was founded as a utter repudiation of Buckleyism, incl., if not esp., his backing of what Trump later called "monstrous wars".
As I noted above, Buckley was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the group that sociopath Hillary Clinton, when Secretary of State, joked was there to tell her what to do. Situations like that are how terms like "controlled opposition" are coined.
Complete losers in the political game like Jonah Goldberg who does nothing but pat himself on the back for the quality of his surrendering, like Ben Shapiro who occasionally talks a decent game but often beats the left to the punch in attacking anyone on the right in the crosshairs of the woke mob, losers like that call themselves "conservatives". The United States has lost immense social and political capital all while "conservatives" were supposed to be protecting it. The Democrats were actively working in the other direction. That conservatives are not as horrendous for Americans as those actively working to make our lives miserable is not such a feather in their caps.
"wokesters are abetted by fusionist right-liberals who refuse to inject any sense of overt value or morality into the national fabric as a matter of high-minded principle...
critical race theory indoctrination in the classroom and forcing Christian bakers to bend the knee and “bake the damn cake” for a same-sex wedding."
Much hinges on the exact meaning of "refuse to *inject any sense* of overt value or morality into the national fabric as a matter of high-minded principle".
I'll bet that most libertarians quite support the Overt Value, of *protecting* kids from critical race theory indoctrination, and the right of Christian bakers *to refuse* to bake the damn cake.
If Hammer is trying to pin the plight of the Christian bakers, or anti-Woke parents, on libertarians, that's a very cheap shot.
If all Hammer aims for is, to encourage libertarians to put weight upon values other than just Freedom, I look forward to such a debate, sp. insofar as it encourages analysis on what sort of weight be given to which such values.
In my judgement, debates about, say, gay marriage, are not at all identical to debates on, say, abortion, or, say, prayer in schools, or, say, the War on Drugs, or, say "multiculturalism"/ Open Borders.
No doubt you're right about "most libertarians," but what you're missing is what Hammer is implicitly saying--that libertarians have no real principles to allow them to formulate a coherent moral philosophy. They rely on the notion of freedom but without a theoretical justification for that in human nature. That's why Hammer is correct to say that history proves his case. Everywhere libertarian ideas (Classical liberalism) have become dominant the slide into moral relativism has been precipitous, precisely because libertarians insist that "values" are essentially subjective, not objective.
A brilliant little book that examines this question in is "The Liberal Mind" by Kenneth Minogue. Smart man smart book. Helped me understand that I was a conservative.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=kenneth%20minogue%20the%20liberal%20mind&ko=-1&ia=web
Thanks.
They "rely on the notion of freedom but without a theoretical justification....
libertarians insist that "values" are essentially subjective, not objective."
I'll quite grant that French does these things, but I quite doubt that most libertarians do so, e.g. Objectivism (the main point of which was, to provide such a theoretical justification).
How well Objectivism did at that can be debated, but not what their aims were.
(French, outside of the Beltway, is usually seen as milktoast.)
And (where he quotes Ahmari) on “civility and decency are secondary values”, much hinges, not only on *how* "secondary" such values are viewed to be, but on how one views the magnitude of the Woke threat to those values.
I'll bet that most libertarians are quite appalled by the (sometimes subtle) Wokester assault *upon civility*.
Insofar as D. French is not so appalled, most libertarians likely see him as a pathetic suck-up to Conventional Wisdom.
For gripping critiques of aspects of the (deeply toxic) Woke mentality, see (Burkeian) ArchDruid J.M. Greer, e.g. at https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-hate-that-dare-not-speak-its-name.html , and
https://www.ecosophia.net/conversation-as-commons/
I forgot the link: https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/02/why-the-right-needs-a-more-muscular-and-masculine-conservatism/
True. In the Gilson book I translated he tasks his opponents with propounding ideas that they obviously don't believe--based on their everyday lives.
I'm not sure why you list Flynn as one of the people who wants to just "move on" from the 2020 election fraud. I thought he was clearly in the opposite camp.
Kyle Rittenhouse seems to have a very different opinion of his own time counsel, Lin Wood.
At least it's real, we can be thankful for that and maybe start a coalition of the based, anyone who wants to experience humans as humans, not as cardboard cutout players in liberal clown world. The dawn of the internet put the process of liberal incursions into "normal" private life of individuals into hyperdrive, or it went into hyperdrive with the advent if Good Morning America I can't decide which. My wife to this Day watches CBS Morning (or whatever it is called I don't know) and I can't stand to watch 3 minutes of it and haven't been able to for 10 years, such is the blood boiling liberal propaganda it spews. Yet we are still married, never talk politics, she's vaccinated and I'm not. They're coming for us? Feels like they already came.
I seem unable to avoid talking about what's on my mind.