John Hume

Yeah Dunphy should always be reminded of this. 

Some truth in that ( e.g. his apology for his attacks on Jack Charlton, whom he dubbed "Andy Capp" ). He could be an invidious little troll but the worst of them is surely Harris, who seems to many in the north as having an unhelpful and unhealthy influence on the current Taoiseach, as he had previously with Bruton and Trimble. RDE is simply insufferable, a smug contrarian who is consistently unfettered by the profundity of her own ignorance. Eilis O'Hanlon can be entertaining occasionally but is mostly just irritating. The latter two are regular contributors to the Belfast Telegraph. I seldom buy the Sindo but Gene Kerrigan is the only columnist writing for it who strikes me as being any good.

sid waddell wrote: political viewpoints have a big bearing on the strength of their columns

Personally, I generally side with arguments which put forward a mixed economy, a wide tax base, social freedoms, and consistency when it comes to matters of foreign policy which doesn't condemn some countries and governments, while condoning other ones who treat the people the are supposed to serve as awfully as they do. I don't like ideological arguments, and I tend not to like shilling for a party, or a personality. The difficulty is, those voices are now being drowned out, as media, and its vastly expanded column inches now are dominated by partisan an opinion laden voices, and independent media suffers heavily from that, in spite of its rebuke of mainstream media, and its view that it has freedoms.

I'm going to disagree with part of the analysis of the first strand, namely the comparison with libertarianism as there is a significant difference between libertarianism and right-wing conervativism, and the dubious labelled "alt-right", which is probably a more digestible term for people who are just white-supremacists, racists etc, and are far more interested in identarianism than libertarianism. There are significant difference between the likes of Friedman, Hayek, Mises, and other libertarian thinkers like Rothbard. I think I said it in a previous post that libertarianism was a misused liable for the likes of the Tea Party a decade ago. It has also been occasionally co-opted by the contemporary "alt right", as a kind of fig leaf, who quickly scuttle away from it when they discover that it requires a large amounts of give when it comes to their authoritarian tendencies, particularly in relation to migration, movement, and immigration. A genuine libertarian baulks at the idea that the state would involve itself in peoples lives to the extent that it determines the freedom of people to move, particularly over arbitrary, and state defined borders, when fundamentally, they don't believe in those borders in the first place. The vast majority of fascists who co-opted the term "libertarian" quickly depart from it, when they discover that it has significant repercussions for their ideological interests, which inherently need a 'strong' state in order to thrive. Any libertarian who favours Trump, is not a libertarian. An example was during the period where executive order was the "order of the day". Libertarians want certainty, and consistency in their laws, which cant happen with 90 day EO's.

Edited by Het-field - 10 Aug 2020 at 3:56pm

Het-field wrote: I'm going to disagree with part of the analysis of the first strand, namely the comparison with libertarianism as there is a significant difference between libertarianism and right-wing conervativism, and the dubious labelled "alt-right", which is probably a more digestible term for people who are just white-supremacists, racists etc, and are far more interested in identarianism than libertarianism. There are significant difference between the likes of Friedman, Hayek, Mises, and other libertarian thinkers like Rothbard. I think I said it in a previous post that libertarianism was a misused liable for the likes of the Tea Party a decade ago. It has also been occasionally co-opted by the contemporary "alt right", as a kind of fig leaf, who quickly scuttle away from it when they discover that it requires a large amounts of give when it comes to their authoritarian tendencies, particularly in relation to migration, movement, and immigration. A genuine libertarian baulks at the idea that the state would involve itself in peoples lives to the extent that it determines the freedom of people to move, particularly over arbitrary, and state defined borders, when fundamentally, they don't believe in those borders in the first place. The vast majority of fascists who co-opted the term "libertarian" quickly depart from it, when they discover that it has significant repercussions for their ideological interests, which inherently need a 'strong' state in order to thrive. Any libertarian who favours Trump, is not a libertarian. An example was during the period where executive order was the "order of the day". Libertarians want certainty, and consistency in their laws, which cant happen with 90 day EO's.

Edited by sid waddell - 10 Aug 2020 at 4:14pm

Being a self-professed libertarian is meaningless, especially if you haven't read the key thinkers. Also, just by co-opting the term doesn't mean its inherently as a result of the ideology. The reason they flocked to Trump was simply because of his election, it allowed people to throw off the veneer of "libertarianism" to join the culture wars, and embrace policy and platforms that shows they were never libertarians in the first place. Namely things like the flag waving patriotism, the massive government programme (especially expense wise) which was the "wall". Like I said, it was a fig-leaf, used by people who co-opted it without knowing what libertarianism was. What remains in the libertarianism space are the genuine libertarians who value social economic freedoms. The ones who left were the ones who liked the "free-speech" aspect of libertarianism, which it shares with a lot of moderate ideologies, but didn't even think that there was a libertarian position of the free movement of capital, the free movement of goods, and the free movement of people. The "Don't Tread on Me" brigade in the US were never libertarians. They were social conservatives and strong nationalists.

Edited by Het-field - 10 Aug 2020 at 4:23pm

Edited by sid waddell - 10 Aug 2020 at 4:33pm

Het-field wrote: sid waddell wrote: Het-field wrote: Being a self-professed libertarian is meaningless, especially if you haven't read the key thinkers.  Wrong James Buchanan is probably the key thinker in libertarian history and saw libertarianism and democracy as incompatible He was correct in that But if libertarianism is incompatible with democracy, that doesn't mean that it has anything in common with Trump's America, the alt-right, and those who used it as a fig leaf to say what they want.

Edited by sid waddell - 10 Aug 2020 at 4:55pm