No, the point of this thread is to attack libertarian political philosophy without backing up any of the attack. Nothing presented here has backed your point. You've just made another troll libertarian attack thread with as little intellectual honesty or value as possible. Congrats.
I think I've made some pretty rigorous arguments, so either you must have simply ignored them or you're looking for something more. What more would you like?
D00d with this guy everything is still about bush. :roll:
No, only things that actually are. But you make it increasingly clear that with you, nothing is about anything. You haven't listened to a word I've said, you asked questions whose answers you didn't want to hear, and then you made unbelievably stupid, flippant remarks about
war crimes as if you were talking about sports or pop culture. There is a serious reality deficit going on in your comments. Be a substantive contributor to this discussion or not, it's your choice.
IIRC, it went something like...
Most libertarians supported Bush, despite him being a dirty thumping big-government type.
And, Bush is a (lying, torturing, murdering) fascist. Ergo...
More or less, although the size of government is irrelevant. Bush could have been a lying, torturing, murdering fascist with a balanced budget and a flat tax - these things are just funding mechanisms, and have nothing to do with what powers a government asserts. Police in some socialist European countries are not even allowed to pat down criminal suspects without a warrant, IIRC.
I have met both types of self-identifying libertarians: Genuine libertarians with integrity, who stay true to their ideas of small government, no matter if the President expanding big government is named Bush or Obama, and people who call themselves "libertarian", but I don't seem to care about Bush's big government policies.
I've had many discussions with "genuine" libertarians, and even they often reveal warped priorities by
how they address the issue. One gets the distinct impression that they don't see a greater freedom imperative in preventing torture and military aggression than avoiding tax increases, so they say things like "Bush was a big government leader
too" or "Bush was just as bad as (insert Democrat)." Hearing such things, I'm not exactly filled with confidence that these people would be highly motivated to defend their country against a tyrant who was solidly on board with their views on taxation. They probably wouldn't
support a leader like that, but when taxes aren't part of the equation, it's as if the whole thing becomes academic to them. So on the one hand we can reasonably say the "fake" libertarians would probably be on board with a fascist leader who adopted their rhetoric, and the "real" ones would mostly be ambivalent rather than determinedly opposed. I see my basic thesis as being strengthened.
Cato is probably one of the best institutions to draw policy from, but they generally get ignored or painted as some quasi Republican mouth piece, when that isn't true at all.
I wouldn't characterize Cato as quasi-Republican. They are definitely rigorously ideological - almost to the point of religious - in their application of libertarian articles of faith in formulating economic positions. However, while the sincerity of their members might not be in question, their funding base includes a number of powerful, predatory corporations, so we basically have True Believers being wielded as weapons by the most cynical of interests. As for their output, it's typically on a level that would literally be laughed out of a 1st-year economics course, but is usually presented as the august word of experts because of the money behind them. They speak through the lens of "Laffer Curve reality," where zero taxation would equal infinite revenue. So it's not really a think tank - not much thinking can go on when your conclusions are predetermined - but more of a libertarian monastery.