Liberals Are Capitalists
Dan responds incompetently to my remarks on socialism:
So it’s okay to gun civilians down, as long as you are doing it in the name of an unpopular war. Gotcha
How do you want me to respond to that? It bares no resemblance to what I said. If I were to assert that I like apples you would respond with incoherently claiming I say its okay to like things that are red.
I don’t see how this helps you. No change in government will make everyone happy.
My argument was actually:
First many socialisms have started with this kind of barbarism. Arguably it’s a requirement since socialism raises the ire of those that embrace classic liberal values.
My argument is that socialism requires this kind of barbarism as a means to eliminate the dissenting liberals. You aim to eliminate that distinction by arguing, extremely poorly, that every single revolution has masked men going around murdering dissenters. Bizarrely your fictional example fails to illustrate your point. Your friend’s ancestor was not even murdered by masked men sympathetic to the regime.
To prove you wrong I only need to mention one revolution in which masked men did not go around killing dissenters. The first one that comes to my mind is the Russian revolution of 1989. Of course this was the revolution that resulted in the dismantling of socialist values to be replaced with what else but liberal values.
I have easily shown you poor argument to be wrong. Some revolutions do not involve bloodshed while others do. This prompts the following question. Since we know that some revolutions do not require bloodshed can we show a correlation between the revolutionary ideology and the amount of bloodshed? Since you are all about taking things out of context we need to be very careful with out language here. There is no doubt that liberal revolutions have resulted in bloodshed. The question becomes is there a higher amount of bloodshed associated with socialistic revolutions when compared to a liberal revolutions?
Pretty clearly the answer is yes. Really I don’t think it matters how you measure the death but sure as the sun will come up socialistic revolutions will always result in more bloodshed then liberal revolutions. More to the point; I would argue that all actual revolutions of a socialism ideology must result in bloodshed.
Why should this be? This answer should be obvious. Liberal values hold in highest esteem the right to property. People are allowed to own things. Socialism bans private property. People are not allowed to have things. Now I don’t know if you noticed but people are really partial to their things. A very easy way to get someone to punch you is by taking their stuff from them.
Now if your ideology is in the business of redistribution you have the very real problem of having to forcibly take wealth away from people that will kill to stop you. Thus socialism must get very violent very quickly it it’s going to implement it’s ideology. Until socialists figure out a way to get people to not like owning things implementation of their ideology will require bloodshed. It is a necessary requirement.
Just for fun let’s look at a liberal revolution. It says you now enjoy legal protections on the stuff you own. Furthermore, state actions are now going to be determined by every single person that is directly affected by its actions through vote. Plus everyone gets a standard set of rights that the state is forbidden from interfering with. A proper liberal revolution gives these rights to everyone including the people running the current regime reducing even further the likelihood that bloodshed will result.
Oh I’m afraid your wrong. You are wrong on a very basic and profound level. By definition socialistic revolutions must kill people. Liberal revolutions do not need to kill people and the is very often the case.
What do you think those Venezuelan dissenters are protesting? That they don’t like the tie Hugo Chavez wore last week? They are protesting having the socialistic revolution take away their liberal rights putatively for the good of all. People will die safeguarding their liberal rights and this is most assuredly a fate Hugo Chavez’s socialism has chosen for them. A decision you have incompetently argued in favor of.
November 8th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
I said: “So it’s okay to gun civilians down, as long as you are doing it in the name of an unpopular war. Gotcha”
Your suggestion was that the Venezuelan violence was different (and presumably worse) because it was done in the name of socialism. I was merely affirming that.
Isn’t the example you provided an instance of protesters being -injured- by law enforcement officers? I suppose it’s trivially true that law enforcement officers are likely to be sympathetic to the regime, and they could have been wearing masks, so whatever.
Suggesting that the soviet revolution was liberal by this standard is an extremely poor argument. “On March 17, 1991, in a Union-wide referendum 78% of all voters voted for the retention of the Soviet Union” - wikipedia Clearly an example of state actions being determined by every single person?
But then, we already know you are fine with making arguments that are both ignorant -and- foolish if you are suggesting that was bloodless. Let us set aside bloodshed in regions such as Afghanistan that contributed to conditions that made the revolution possible. Let us also set aside many of the soviet satellite states, such as Romania, where the revolutions were quite bloody and vicious. Turns out, soviets were still hesitant to give up power without blood. “On the night of July 31, 1991 Russian OMON from Riga, the Soviet military headquarters in the Baltics, assaulted the Lithuanian border post in Medininkai and killed seven Lithuanian servicemen… The January Events (Lithuanian: Sausio įvykiai) were a series of events that occurred on January 11-13, 1991 in Vilnius, Lithuania. As a result of Soviet military actions at least 14 civilians were killed and more than 600 injured”. Law enforcement attacks on protesters; exactly what you accuse socialist revolutions of. Compare that to 0 killed and 8 injured… Yes Steve, you have really presented a powerful argument that socialist revolutions cause violence on a scale much greater than liberal revolutions. Moreover, the August coup attempt resulted in a standoff between mechanized military personnel and about 3,000 protesters, many of whom were armed. Three fatalities occurred, but this is damning to any claim that liberal revolutions are peaceful, because had the coup not been aborted by its leaders at the last minute vastly more casualties could have resulted.
The example wasn’t fictional, but I suppose whether it is or not isn’t terribly relevent, unless you are trying to suggest that liberal revolutions do not harm those deemed collaborators with the enemy. And, since you seem to be unaware of this, people aren’t especially likely to flee unless they have reason to believe that they are in danger of being persecuted, injured or killed (I just asked the guy about it, and he confirmed that not only did they fear for their lives, they also had their property stolen - he also said it was okay for me to use him as an example, but that it would be better to just call you a “dumb bitch” for your insinuation). Let’s not forget that the war was hardly a bloodless affair.
Actually you’ve just shown yourself to be capable of making tragically ill-informed statements, but whatever. Revolution: “the overthrow of a government by those who are governed” or “a radical and pervasive change in society and the social structure, esp. one made suddenly and often accompanied by violence.” Revolution might be a poor choice of words if you are trying to argue that liberal ones are nonviolent. But let’s assume the interpretation most charitable to your position, and discuss democratic revolutions that -have the consent of the previous leader- (which is such a severe constraint as to render the discussion somewhat absurd). Turns out these can still result in violence. One needn’t look further than Lithuanian history for an example of this; the king wanted to give greater power to the peasants (probably based on the model of the constitution that had just a few years prior been implemented in the United States) but the nobility were extremely unhappy with this, so they requested foreign intervention (which was forthcoming, given that these ideas could be dangerous to them if allowed to spread). War ensued, and the constitution was revoked after the defeat of those in favor of it.
Since you seem to be struggling, I’ll try to help you out by coming up with an example that is even _more_ charitable to your position. Bahrain might be a good one, since King Hamad initiated reforms to, among other things, give women the right to vote, and no violence resulted. Unfortunately, this was not in compliance with the ‘will of the people’. Paradoxically, “more than 60 percent of Bahraini women were opposed to the participation of women” (http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=5888). And it would be a pretty tremendous leap to suggest that this is ‘revolutionary’ by any standard, especially since the vote had already been given to women iteratively in Syria (women allowed to vote, with restrictions, in 1949, and those restrictions were lifted in 1953).
“People will die safeguarding their liberal rights”. This is true, but also trivial. People have died defending all sorts of weird things, from their families to personal power to national pride to their lords to racial purity to religion. This is a pitiful argument for the mandating any of these things.
This is clearly false by the definition of ‘revolution’ that makes the rest of your argument remotely plausible; soft socialism has been set up in Sweden (it currently has a tremendous public sector as % of GDP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP ), and this has been done without any significant quantity of bloodshed. In fact Sweden is and has throughout its -recent- history been less violent than many countries with more liberal economies.
November 8th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
So? I don’t think you want to suggest that people protesting something means it is bad. If 80,000 people protest something is an indication that something is bad, 8 million people protesting something must be an indication that it is REALLY bad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15%2C_2003_anti-war_protest
November 8th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Wow! Dan really just got done owning this blog. I don’t know the guy, but wow!! How impressive.
Anyway, since when has Steve argued for dissenters against the government?
November 9th, 2007 at 1:43 am
Like the right to not be spied on without a warrant, or the right to provide “advice or assistance” to whomever you see fit? I agree, a proper liberal revolution _does_ give these rights to everyone.
November 9th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
Color me surprised. Steve gets used and still doesn’t respond. …
November 11th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
I’m impressed. So many words and yet hardly even touches what i’m talking about.
To be clear, you would argue that on average liberal revolutions results in the same amount of bloodshed as socialist revolutions?
November 11th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
“socialistic revolutions will always result in more bloodshed then liberal revolutions.”
“Oh I’m afraid your wrong. You are wrong on a very basic and profound level. By definition socialistic revolutions must kill people. Liberal revolutions do not need to kill people and the is very often the case.”
These were the centerpieces of your post, and I presented an argument against them, as well as directly addressing many silly or poorly informed pieces of evidence you provided as support. Note the use of the words “always”, and “must” in your post.
Don’t: be disingenuous and try to go back and say your argument was something it wasn’t.
Do: yourself a favor before you put your foot in your mouth and do a ctrl+f for ‘average’. It’s not listed anywhere in your original post.
I’m assuming that by “the is very often the case” you mean that liberal revolutions very often do not kill people. By twisting the definition of ‘revolution’ to make this remotely plausible your absolute statements about socialist revolutions are false. I fail to see how this does not address your argument directly and comprehensively.
If you want to make a new post that changes your position in light of my arguments, fine. But don’t go back and imply “I was really talking about averages, and since you didn’t talk about averages you didn’t address my point” when there is written evidence that you were not talking about averages.
And in response to your question, I wouldn’t argue that. Why? Because averages hardly even touch on what you were talking about!
But aside from that your post was a treasure trove of flagrantly poor arguments, like “A proper liberal revolution gives these rights to everyone including the people running the current regime reducing even further the likelihood that bloodshed will result.” I can see the liberal now, saying: ‘Yes, we’ll give you all the same rights as the filthy peasants you currently rule over! Doesn’t that make you happy with our proposed system!?’ Even you yourself have advocated that sometimes these people just need to die in order for the people to be free. And despite that, you say the likelihood of bloodshed will be ‘reduced even further’, implying it was already quite low…?
You are the one who is wrong on a very basic and profound level. Liberal revolutions -are- in the business of redistributing things, specifically redistributing power from an elite cabal to the common people, much as socialistic revolutions do for wealth. Are you honestly suggesting that monetary elites are going to violently oppose having their wealth taken but power elites are going to ignore having power taken away from them?
November 11th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
I could only make it about half way through. Does your response actually answer my question?