Hi Everyone,

This looks like it is an inteesting forum. I am a retired old socialist living in North Carolina. Finding it difficult to really enjoy retirement while this counrty is becoming completely unhinged from reality.

Looking for some sane people.

Wrong place for sanity, here, Wayne....

Nah !! Just kidding !!
Welcome from the resident globe-trotter, currently enjoying Global Warming winter sunshine in the South of France as the planet goes to Hell.

Looking foward to see if Obama can succeed in waking people up, but I sadly doubt it. Never seen so many retro-fitted hick zombies marching to different drums in all my life.
Democracy can work, but the neocon influence needs scrubbing and bleaching before it's presentable again....

Hi Wayne, welcome to the POAC. You'll find that sanity ebbs and flows here, but on the whole this is an exceptionally fine place to discuss your concerns. Enjoy.

Greetings from the board's (tiny) conservative wing. Trying to keep the Constitution in the mix and question the effectiveness and unintended consequences of lefty solutions. Hope we can keep it interesting.

I didn't know we had a retirement program for socialists yet. I'll bet it's a good one! Welcome.

Welcome to the board Wayne.
We can always use more level headed Socialists!

hi.
we're sane in an insane world...
doesn't that make us insane?

nah...


anyway, welcome.

Hi Wayne. Welcome to the board. Don't hesitate to PM me if you have any problems or questions.

Welcome, Wayne!

I hope you won't be too disappointed. Sanity is in short supply here.

Is not! Maxanne keeps hogging it!

Hi... As my name states... Newbie.

Since I do have conservative leanings, can anybody point me to the Talking points page so I may avoid stumbling across them by accident.

Welcome to the Forum Gabrial.

I'm sorry but liberals don't have talking points.
You'll just have to stumble like the rest of us!

http://oldamericancentury.org/counterspin.htm

These, and others... we'll let you know if you enter the red zone.

Thanks Suess,

I will be sure to avoid those at all cost. Frankly, if any Con used those... Well he desires an ass whoopin.

Loved the Al Gore ones. Might consider amending the list to reflect my favorite one. Al Gore ownership in Generation Investment Management LLP

Hi Gabrial. Welcome to the POAC, where you're every post will be read with a fine tooth comb!

I really have nothing to say right now, at least of any value.
I only have questions and no answers. I hope we can have some good exploratory dialogue here.

And as far as fine tooth comb, was not there a song about that?

Thanks for the tip. I'll get get that added some time down the road. Welcome tot eh forum. Always glad to see another conservative come in.

Welcome. Let me know if I can do anything for you.

Hey my name's Lark, I'm from Ireland and just found the main site recently, think its really cool that there's such a thing as a White Rose Society, interested in all sorts of politics, economics, psychology, philosophy, I've got personal and speculative sympathies with both libertarians and socialists depending on the topic.

Howdy doo there Lark!

Wow, that's quite a wide spectrum between Libertarian and Socialism.

Maybe, depends on your understanding of things I guess.

Helps that I dont see them as being polar opposites really.

Hiya Lark. Welcome to the board.
Being British I understand just what you mean when you say libertarianism and socialism aren't polar opposites, but they tend to have this peculiar breed in the States which, from what I can gather, aren't exactly into collective, community, supportive, relations, but prefer a more defensive posture when it comes to helping anyone (person or group) in need of assistance.
I think the ideology is slightly different on this side of the Pond - from my point of view, at least, libertarianism (liberation from the control/rule of central government) is more in tune with socialism and communism (not to be confused with state controlled capitalism as practised in the USSR and elsewhere).

Any way, that's enough from me for now.Welcome!

Heyah Karen, real good to hear from you.

Yeah, I know libertarianism in the US been co-opted by the rich kids and is sort of a Vegas fantasy for the "have nots" or "yet to have something hopefuls".

Although as I've gotten older I'm more patient than I really should be with a lot of them, they are sincere and I really believe that, sincerely believing that if you wipe out the state, particularly the welfare state, then society will revert to a kind of utopian free market order.

But then the marxists used to believe the same, just substitute market for state and utopian fraternal order for utopian free market order.

Although libertarian in the UK can and does mean the same as it does in the US, check out the UK Samizdat sometime for the Karl Popper addicts, some of the earliest market libertarians like Hayek were UKers and like Churchill hailed the US as a new civilisation while the Fabian socialists were doing the same for the USSR and Orwell was despairing of them both. Orwell's probably my favourite political author, ever socialist should read The Road To Wigan Pier or Lion and The Unicorn.

I like the simpler sorts of libertarian or anarchist thought, Marx's journalism about the Paris Commune or Orwell's journalism about self-governing districts in the Spainish Civil War, I dont think anyone should try and reinact either but they provide food for thought.

Taoism is a beautiful philosophy, but if institutionalized politically, it could easily become a method of creating a class of subserviant subjects...

Political philosophy forgets certain things... usually, human greed and lust for power are among them...


by the way, hi, Lark, welcome...
Ireland is gorgeous... I've wanted to return ever since my two week stay about 20 years ago...
I keep praying it won't have changed much by the time i get back...

wishful thinking, I know.

anyway, welcome.

Hi Lark, good to read you.

I look forward to discussions with you. My take on US libertarianism is it's anarchism with a heavy dose of the American Exceptionalism genes from back in the Nineteenth Century, which tend to overshadow empathy with idealism. It's just never really recovered from it. Result is, they overlook the authoritarian organizational nature of corporations (they are just businesses), forget that the colonies were chartered corporations, and that's where the rebellion began in the first place, and they are happily ready for the world to evolve into corporate states. Then they get on about fascism and all those problems, which from their point of view are the scourge of socialism. Other than that blind spot, I tend to get along with them -- if I'm careful.

That's exactly how I'd explain it, a blind spot for the sorts of tyranny not accounted for by the removal of government. Pretty big one too.

In reality I think that is simply a privatisation of tyranny or fascism if you like.

Socialism = pro-government
Libertarianism = anti-government

Welcome, Lark !

Not so.

I'd read Andrew Vincent Modern Political Ideologies for a bit of clarification but there are a lot of varieties of socialism which dont believe the state can be used to introduce of further socialism, in fact the goal of a socialist society recedes further and further into the distant horizon the greater the of government.

Just to give you a couple of examples there are syndicalists, council communists, guild socialists, market socialists, its much more in theory than in fact but change is slow and conservatives have dominated and framed the debate, discussion or what have you for so long their perspectives have been taken for fact rather than conjecture.

Libertarianism is as varied too and I've encountered many American libertarians who would favour a police state provided that that police state concentrates upon the unemployed and leaves property well enough alone, some of them want to privatise the police state altogether by making it subscription based as opposed to tax funded, the state is intact but its privately owned.

Yes, and there are all sorts of Democracy. So what?
Generally Socialism is represnted by more government, which is why the right can't stand it,
and Libertarians are without question, extreme right wing.

It's called a commune, and it ain't here...

they're out there though...
google "intentional community" and beware of the cults.

Lark comes up with a perfectly valid argument, one which could further discussion, based on his research, and your response is 'so what' and argue generalities?

I dont believe socialism means more or big government and I'm afraid I cant concede on that at all, if its any consolation to you this is the view that I encounter a lot on libertarian forums too so you're not alone in thinking that.

That said I feel that all ideologies have personal, cultural and structural visions, suggestions or ideas, I'm personally most interested in the personal and cultural, since realistically until I get made king for a long enough period of time I can influence the structural.

I agree that in the US there's a lot of cross over between libertarianism and the extreme right wing.

lark! look at your member! you must be so proud! not many can say they have an advanced member.

Well I reckon he's got a valid point if he's saying that the obscurities of political studies dont matter, this is what it PRACTICALLY means, I'm a big fan of practical reasoning and common sense, so I'm not annoyed in any sense but it is a bigger topic and could be expanded into a thread of its own I guess.

What does this mean? Will I get laid more now or something?

No.

Well, maybe..


It would be good to fire up a topic about this, if you're interested.
So many Americans have absolutely no idea about what Socialism is, and what it isn't, that it's alarming.

Strangely, in France, we don't have much in the way of Libertarians. Odd, really.
Lets take this somewhere and play with it ?

OK, why is Libertarian an American Phenom?
Or is it an American Phenom?