Curt Doolittle

Source: Facebook

  • LIBERTARIAN, LIBERTARIANISM, BLEEDING HEART LIBERTARIANISM, CONSERVATISM, AND PR

    LIBERTARIAN, LIBERTARIANISM, BLEEDING HEART LIBERTARIANISM, CONSERVATISM, AND PROPERTARIANISM DEFINED

    “Libertarian” refers to sentiment that is expressed as a value judgement which in any political question favors individual liberty, but where the sentiment cannot be articulated in analytical terms, and only articulated as metaphor or analogy.

    “Libertarianism” is a philosophical framework which at the minimum, reduces all political questions to those of property rights and voluntary transfer, but which different factions also include the scope of property definitions, the limits of those rights, the cause of those rights, the justification of those rights as moral or utilitarian, the inclusion of warrantee, the necessity of symmetric ethics, the use of normative or procedural institutions.

    “libertarian’ (small-l- libertarian) is the self-identifying label for the faction of Libertarianism that restricts all questions of politics to a the narrower criteria of several-property and voluntary exchange. (This term has become synonymous with anarchism.)

    “Classical Liberalism” is advocacy for a certain set of procedural institutions that assist in libertarian value judgements: participatory republicanism, a division of powers, a hard constitution, and the rule of law, and restriction on the concentration of power.

    “Bleeding Heart Libertarianism” is an *as yet unarticulated* sentiment that some sort of egalitarian allocation of resources is necessary, utilitarian, or desirable.

    “Conservative” refers to a value judgement which favors organic meritocratic change rather than intentional and planned legislative change, as a defense against the dangers of hubris and corruption.

    “Conservatism” refers to an historic philosophy which favors the priority of procedural institutions over normative institutions.

    “Social Conservative” refers to a bias that favors the priority of normative institutions over procedural institutions.

    “Democratic Socialist” refers to the collective ownership of all resources, and hte lending of those resources to individuals for the purpose of producing collective ends, and income as the reward for service, and the amount of the award to be determined by representatives of the collective. (Democratic Socialist Secular Humanism.)

    “Socialist” refers to the collective ownership of all resources and all means of production, and all human beings, and the organization of production, and allocation of rewards by representatives of the collective.

    PROPERTARIANISM is an articulated set of arguments using an expanded concept of property, and which recommend different sets of procedural institutions that both allow us to explain and compare different political preferences as descriptions of property and transfers. It makes political strategies possible to articulate. In so it justifies bleeding heart libertarianism, and allow conservatives to articulate their political sentiments, which are expressions of the non-procedural normative economy, in rational propertarian terms. This ability to articulate ideas can improve general political discourse by making conservatism, which includes libertarianism, at least int he west, finally arguable in rational terms.

    A PROPERTARIAN is unconcerned with the preference for any institutional combination, only which combination of institutions are possible and which outcomes they can and cannot produce.

    (NOTE: The term “Libertarian” evolved out of Classical Liberalism when the term “Liberal” was successfully appropriated by the socialists, and Classical Liberals sought a new self identifying term that was less victim to appropriation. This term was then appropriated by the anarchist movement despite their narrowing of the scope of the properties of classical liberalism.)

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-05 13:52:00 UTC

  • MOST ABUSED BIT OF REASONING ON THE INTERNET

    http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/04/05/godels-theorem-needs-godels-law/THE MOST ABUSED BIT OF REASONING ON THE INTERNET

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-05 12:40:00 UTC

  • TIME PREFERENCE Why people are richer and poorer

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmgWONDERFUL : TIME PREFERENCE

    Why people are richer and poorer

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-05 11:04:00 UTC

  • THE SOURCE OF PROGRESSIVE HUBRIS “The progress of the natural sciences in modern

    THE SOURCE OF PROGRESSIVE HUBRIS

    “The progress of the natural sciences in modern times has of course so much exceeded all expectations that any suggestion that there may be some limits to it is bound to arouse suspicion.” — Friedrich August von Hayek

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-04 21:28:00 UTC

  • NATIONALISM REQUIRES MYTHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY “Europe, in legend, has always bee

    NATIONALISM REQUIRES MYTHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY

    “Europe, in legend, has always been the home of subtle philosophical discussion; America was the land of grubby pragmatism.” — Daniel Bell

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-04 16:54:00 UTC

  • POST ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY “Truth is simply a compliment paid to sentences seen

    POST ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY

    “Truth is simply a compliment paid to sentences seen to be paying their way.”

    — Richard Rorty

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-04 16:51:00 UTC

  • than jump on Skye’s thread I’m going to walk through this just to see what I com

    http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2012/04/the-inexpressible.htmlRather than jump on Skye’s thread I’m going to walk through this just to see what I come up with. (Yes, some of us do not have preconceived notions we are blindly attached to. We make arguments to test our ideas. We find the outcomes no matter how unpleasant they are. Usually proving we’re wrong somehow in the process. ) 🙂

    [autistic dialog on]

    QUESTION: Are Some Ideas Inexpressible?

    ANALYSIS: There are patterns we recognize but whose identity, and therefore causality is not yet understood by us. If that causality is not understood then further knowledge must be gained. Such things are not inexpressible they are simply not understood. Once that causality is understood identity is known. Causality and identity must be expressed in language. Language consists of analogies to experience. We can experience such concepts, therefore we can express it via language, however imprecise that language may be. The problem arises when we seek communication rather than expression. Communication requires a shared experience. Or at least rough enough analogies to shared experience that each step in that walk can be followed by the listener. If we are unable to walk someone through a line of thinking, feeling, and experiencing concepts that are either foreign or biologically incomprehensible to them, then we cannot communicate with them. Because communication requires we recognize those shared experiences. One cannot experience what one cannot comprehend by at least analogies to the senses, and abstractions require complex coordination of the senses. The blind man can never understand color. Some of us can never, no mater how hard we try, understand — which means experience — certain categories of knowledge. We are color blind — actually concept blind — to them. I do not think things are inexpressible. They may be incommunicable. As incommunicable they may be untestable. And as us untestable we cannot be sure whether our expression is sufficiently articulate to convey the experience, or whether the recipient is sufficiently possessed of the senses with which to perceive the content of our expressions. (or in most cases, the short term memory required.)

    I do not think ideas are inexpressible if they are available to the senses of any individual. And I have found (adorno’s ramblings included) that the problem lies not in the idea, but in the insufficient labor that was put into articulating it as a series of experiences that the audience can follow — assuming they are able to. More often, (adorno included again) the incompetence at articulation is not a product of laziness, but of deception, erroneous perceptions of the physical world, erroneous concepts of human nature, and psychological avoidance. All of which are conducted abstractly out of complex analogies, because in that obscurity, they make it difficult to detect what our experience would convey to us as faulty. In adorno’s case, like many others, I suspect that the last case arises: it’s not that he doesn’t understand, not that he cannot articulate, not that we cannot perceive, but that we DISAGREE WITH HIS VALUE JUDGEMENTS if he rendered them in the language of common experience. A language which exists precisely because it is tested against the real world daily, and has been honed by trial and error over time to meet its current state.

    Therefore the questions to raise whenever someone states that something is inexpressible are:

    1) Do you understand its causal relations?

    2) Can you articulate those causal relations in terms of shared experiences (even if those experiences are simply formulae)?

    3) Do I lack those shared experiences? Am I capable of understanding those relations if you explain them? Or are you unable to articulate those relations? Which?

    4) If I am capable of understanding those relations, is the reward sufficient that I want to invest in learning those experiences and relations instead of some other set of relations and experiences?

    4) Do I agree that those causal relations correspond to reality if I can understand them?

    5) Do I agree with the value judgements expressed by those causal relations if I can understand them?

    In wittgenstein’s case, I kind of doubt that he was sure himself whether he understood. And I think later writers have stated as such. (That’s ok. It gave grad students something to do.) In Adorno’s case I think he was just creating a mess in order to advocate his ideas while avoiding unveiling the miscreant underlying his language. And he was a miscreant. (But then, maybe I’m wrong. I don’t understand Heidegger either. Because I lack empathy for his values and experience. And I do not see the value in obtaining the knowledge necessary to empathize with him, and therefore build a shared experience.) 🙂

    Sorry if that was too long, but I just wanted to walk through it and see what I came up with. [Autistic dialog off]

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-04 16:12:00 UTC

  • THE LEFT IS A FUNDAMENTALLY CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION “…when we consider guerrilla

    THE LEFT IS A FUNDAMENTALLY CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION

    “…when we consider guerrilla warfare … either of the classic Maoist rural form, or the newer urban-guerrilla (“terrorist”) approach, or simply the strategy of building ominous and threatening paramilitary militias. These strategies work for leftist revolutionaries because they are essentially criminal in nature, and leftism – whose Yeatsian passionate energy is inseparable from its capacity for pure plunder – is fundamentally a criminal movement.” — Moldbug

    PRICELESS

    (thank you for the pointer)

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-04 12:01:00 UTC

  • STEPHEN J GOULD WAS WRONG: EVOLUTION INCREASED DRAMATICALLY IN THE PAST 50,000 Y

    STEPHEN J GOULD WAS WRONG: EVOLUTION INCREASED DRAMATICALLY IN THE PAST 50,000 YEARS

    “Can the human genome respond to new selection pressures in, say, thirty generations (six hundred years)? Or would it take more than five hundred generations (ten thousand years) for a new selection pressure to produce any genetic adaptation?

    The actual speed of genetic evolution is a question that can be answered with data, and thanks to the Human Genome Project, we now have that data. Several teams have sequenced the genomes of thousands of people from every continent. Genes mutate and drift through populations, but it is possible to distinguish such random drift from cases in which genes are being “pulled” by natural selection.

    The results are astonishing, and they are exactly the opposite of Gould’s claim: genetic evolution greatly accelerated during the last 50,000 years. The rate at which genes changed in response to selection pressures began rising around 40,000 years ago, and the curve got steeper and steeper after 20,000 years ago. Genetic change reached a crescendo during the Holocene era, in Africa as well as in Eurasia.” — The Righteous Mind – Haidt, Jonathan

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-03 04:26:00 UTC

  • ALINSKY – STRATEGIST OF THE LEFT I get a lot of heat from the left for adopting

    http://www.libertyzone.com/Communist-Manifesto-Planks.htmlSAUL ALINSKY – STRATEGIST OF THE LEFT

    I get a lot of heat from the left for adopting one of the Left’s tactics. But let’s see where those tactics comes from. Saul Alinsky. Our president’s hero.

    The western concept of political debate originated in the right of the enfranchised warrior to debate tactics in order to gain consensus on those tactics — since unlike eastern militaries, western tactics required individual initiative. The citizen warrior’s right was predicated on forgoing theft, fraud, and violence, and speaking the truth and only the truth in the process of that debate. If truth was abandoned, error was presumed, passons could be forgiven. But if RIDICULE was employed, then the prohibition on violence for the purpose of debate was forgone, and the ridiculed could fight and kill the man who broke the contract by which we put down our weapons and enter debate.

    While Marx and marxists were wrong in their understanding of the physical world, of human nature, and of economics, they could be counted upon to adhere to rational discourse and confine themselves to moral criticism.

    Saul Alinsky was one of the first people to strategically abandon the western principle of honest discourse and promote argumentative ‘the ends justify the means’.

    To those of us who are from the aristocratic manorial tradition, within which dishonesty, cowardice, or loose and libelous words are reason to end someone’s life, Alinsky’s tactics are a violation of every civic principle, and draw out our basic conservative instinct to kill threats to our hierarchy, social order, and group competitiveness.

    His strategy (from a lost link) is this:

    CREATE AN IDEOLOGICAL ARMY OPERATING ON EMOTIONAL ANTAGONISM NOT A PROGRAM OF RATIONAL SOLUTIONS THAT THEY ARE UNABLE TO INTELLECTUALLY DEFEND ON THEIR OWN.

    Through a process combining hope and resentment, the organizer tries to create a “mass army” that brings in as many recruits as possible from local organizations, churches, services groups, labor unions, corner gangs, and individuals.

    Alinsky provides a collection of rules to guide the process. But he emphasizes these rules must be translated into real-life tactics that are fluid and responsive to the situation at hand.

    SUN TZU: DECEPTION IS MORE POWERFUL THAN HONESTY

    Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.

    SPEAK IN THE IGNORANT VOICE OF YOUR PEOPLE SO THEY FEEL THEY SPEAK THROUGH YOU

    Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.

    The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

    Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

    ARGUE FOR BLACK OR WHITE FALLACIES THAT FORCE THE CRITICISM OF YOUR OPPONENT BUT WHICH DO NOT REQUIRE YOU TO DEFEND YOURSELF OR PROPOSE SOLUTIONS

    Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

    AVOID REASON, IT WOULD ONLY EXPOSE YOUR LACK OF A SOLUTION OR UNDERSTANDING OF POLITICAL REALITY.

    Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.

    THE LOWER CLASSES HAVE NOTHING USEFUL TO DO, SO GIVE THEM AN EXCUSE TO ENTERTAIN THEMSELVES AND CELEBRATE A UNITED IDENTITY. SUCH RELIGIONS ARE OPIATES OF THE MASSES.

    Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”

    A MEANINGFUL ARGUMENT IS OPEN TO CRITICISM AND REQUIRES INTELLECTUALIZATION OF THE SOLUTION. INSTEAD, MAINTAIN THE GROUP’S EMOTIONAL AND MORAL ANTAGONISM TOWARD YOUR OPPONENT AND AVOID THE SELF DOUBT THAT WOULD OCCUR IF THEY HAD TO BECOME INTROSPECTIVE.

    Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.

    CONTROL THE INITIATIVE BUT PREVENTING YOUR OPPONENT FROM DETERMINING THAT YOU HAVE NO PROPOSED SOLUTION OTHER THAN THE ACCUMULATION OF POWER. THE RATIONAL MAN CNANOT UNDERSTAND THIS SIMPLISTIC A STRATEGY: OBTAIN POWER. ONCE YOU HAVE POWER YOUR ARGUMENTS DO NOT MATTER. POWER CAN BE OBTAINED THROUGH MORALIZING, CRITICISM AND DISTRACTION. IT DOES NOT NEED TO BE OBTAINED BY SOLUTION, ARGUMENT OR REASON. THAT ONLY WEAKENS YOU.

    Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”

    RELY ON TERRORISM WHENEVER POSSIBLE. CREATE FEAR BECAUSE UNCERTAINTY AND FEAR IS A GREATER THAN THE ACTUAL RESULT. PEOPLE WILL ABANDON MAORAL AND TRADITIONAL PRINCIPLES IF YOU MAKE IT HARD ENOUGH FOR THEM TO RESIST YOUR PURSUIT OF POWER.

    Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation.

    STICK WITH YOUR ATTACKS, NEVER OFFER SOLUTIONS THAT WOULD ExpOSE YOU TO CRITICISM

    Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”

    DEMONIZE INDIVIDUALS. DO NOT ENGAGE IN REASON. DO NOT ENAGE IN FACTS. SIMPLY DEMONIZE AND RIDICULE THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS POLITICAL POWER TO INFLUENCE OTHERS WILL DIMINISH.

    Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

    CONTROL YOUR ENEMY’S RESPONSES TO YOU SO THAT HE BECOMES EMOTIONALLY RATHER THAN RATIONALLY ENGAGED AND LOSES HIS ONE REAL STRENGTH: RATIONAL SOLUTIONS.

    According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”

    AS AN ADDENDUM

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-02 18:02:00 UTC