What percentage of machinists are conservative?

Im rather socially liberal. Really. Those of you who read my posts should be quite aware of this.

However..Im politically conservative.

Gunner

Whenever a Liberal utters the term "Common Sense approach"....grab your wallet, your ass, and your guns because the sombitch is about to do something damned nasty to all three of them.

That is libertarian philosophy, wanting less gov intervention both morally AND financially. Most engineers think that way, but are forced to vote with the conservatives to counter the extremes of liberal domination of society.

When we have a gov at the peak of the Laffer curve, bringing in $2T and spending $4T, and there are people who still want even more collectivism, then the liberals have identified themselves.

There seem, to be a few men with enough left brain function to cut metal, and that are still are so dominated by right brain activity to the point of religious faith in collectivism, and they post flames on rec.crafts.metalworking.

It is an anomaly.

Even socialists are capitalists. Without capital, there wouldn't be anything but flowers and trees and caves and raw meat.

It's just that under socialism, the rulers hold all the capital.

Hope This Helps! Rich

I don't usually like raw meat, I prefer rare to medium-rare...depending on the cut. My latest was a six-bone Prime Rib Roast for Memorial day. Roasted on a very hot charcoal spit to get that wonderful crust on the outside yet rare inside. It was perfect! ...bastage relatives didn't leave any leftovers.

Do you believe that people who can think must therefore be authoritarian?

Authoritarian means, among other things, believing that you have the right to think for others. I don't happen to need or want that.

David

Gunner's been advertised as a PE, so I guess he fits your model. Except when it comes to bailing HIS ass out.

Nope. Nor do they believe in the market tyrrany that ideological libertarians would impose, in which poor people are at the whim and mercy of handouts for medical care, and in which banksters run the world by controlling all of the money, with no restrictions on monopoly or collusion among them. Only those who could afford it would get an education ("principle" 2.8 of the platform). Those are among the mindless reductionisms that the Libertarian Party platform provides for, if you read it with a critical eye.

That's where thinking comes in. Libertarianism can be a mindless ideology like all other ideologies. In the case of libertarianism, the mindlessness results in this, inevitably: It takes power away from democratically elected government and turns it over to money, in the form of monopolies, cartels, and oligopolies. Astute observers have recognized this since the time of Adam Smith.

Now, that's libertarianism as an ideology. Conservatism, liberalism, and any other ideology you can think of has equally disastrous failings.

Most people who call themselves conservative, or liberal, or libertarian do not really buy into the ideologies. Their postures most often reflect an attitude and a leaning. On a scale, they lie somewhere between dead center and the ideological extreme, and the closer they are to the true center of political and economic thought they are, the more thoughtful and insightful they're likely to be.

There's nothing wrong with leanings and attitudes. That diversity of persepective and opinion is essential to a democratic society if it is to avoid falling into a static and entropic state. Further, as I've said many times, most Americans, including myself, have a greater or lesser streak of libertarian attitude. But not ideology. That's for the people who can't deal with the anxiety and challenge of the real, and very messy, world, including contradictory facts and ideas that are equally true.

Hardly anyone does.

Excepting for counterfeit, the only way new money can be created is through the constant expansion of indebtedness.

And IMO way too many folks today seem to be confusing "creation of wealth" with "accumulation of wealth"--most of whom also conveniently ignore that in this context, "accumulation" holds basically the same meaning as "redistribution"

--Troll.

NO

He's committed fraud by advertising his business as such.

You oversimplify. That's libertarian right. Just as there are authoritarian left and right, so there are also two sides to libertarianism.

Yet the authoritarian left and right seem to need to do that for everyone. And they do it so poorly!

David

Well, you may be just the guy to clear up something for the rest of us. You're suggesting that there is a side to libertarianism other than "libertarian right." I was basing the words above on the Libertarian Party platform, which says, among other things:

"The only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected. All efforts by government to redistribute wealth, or to control or manage trade, are improper in a free society." (principle 2.0)

"We oppose all controls on wages, prices, rents, profits, production, and interest rates. We advocate the repeal of all laws banning or restricting the advertising of prices, products, or services. We oppose all violations of the right to private property, liberty of contract, and freedom of trade." (principle 2.1)

That's an invitation to monopoly and collusion to control markets, to predatory pricing to strangle new market entrants, etc. Someone at the Party office got carried away with the music of their words and didn't think about what they mean. They forgot about Standard Oil, the Steel Trust, and other monopolies of the late 19th century, and how they came about. They also forgot about quack doctors and snake oil drug salesmen.

Now, does your flavor of libertarianism (what do you call it, "liberal libertarian"?) hold to those principles, too? And if not, what is it about your position that can be called "libertarian"?

One of the two basic strains of conservatism in America is highly authoritarian ("law and order" conservatives -- the traditional type, who have morphed into what we now call "social conservatives."). The other is what's being called "libertarian" today. What they are, in their pure form, is what Murray Rothbard called "anarcho-capitalists." That was a term of approval by Rothbard, by the way, and it was in use for 12 or 15 years before the invention of modern "libertarianism" and the Libertarian Party.

Now, how do you differ from that conservative type of libertarian? Do you somehow restrict commerce or contracts to differentiate yourself from the conservatives? Are there other differences between you and them?

Ed, he is probably one of these types of libertarian:

HA-ha! Those are good. I think we have at least 20 of those types here.

Maybe this can help clear things up on that matter:

The Libertarian Party is libertarian right. The libertarian left is less concerned about economics and more focused on individual rights, but also less inclined to politics.

The libertarian left and right are more unalike than the authoritarian left and right. As far as their effects, the Dems and Reps, as they represent the authoritarian left and right, are becoming indistinguishable. Lots of bluster and righteous indignation, but they end up serving the same interests.

David

"Emphasis" is all well and good, but I'm asking about which specific policies a left libertarian would support or not. Maybe you can clear it up with few examples. Does a left libertarian support the idea that we should not have state-supported education, that every parent is responsible to pay for the education of his kids, in a private-school market? And, second, does a left libertarian support a completely free banking market, in which anyone can set up a bank, issue credit at will and trade in derivatives under the table, with no government oversight of securities markets? Third, does a left libertarian support selling food and drugs with no Pure Food and Drug Act in place, no inspection of meat, and no certification of pharmaceuticals?

Those are key points of contention between the people who usually call themselves libertarian and the rest of us. It sounds like you're saying that those are "right" libertarian positions. Are they also left libertarian positions?

It's interesting, but the subject here is ideology and ideologues, not leanings. Most of the people I associate with lean one way or the other, but ideologues use an ersatz kind of deductive reasoning to reach absolute and extreme positions.

An ideological libertarian, according to the Libertarian Party Platform, opposes pharmaceutical certification, meat inspection, public education, monopolies, and free-wheeling securities trading.

Correction: An ideological libertarian would ALLOW monopolies and free-wheeling securities trading. It's the other things he would oppose.