My own bogosity story

[Lord T Hawkeye]

Do be warned, this is kind of a depressing story.

Found this site after stumbling upon Shane's vids and loving them.  I used to be all "let government take care of it all" years ago but time has changed that.  I've been a libertarian for a while now and naturally it has earned me the unending ire of many people.  What really tested it was the day it happened with a close friend of mine...

Now, this friend of mine, I had known him for a good 7 years or so.  We met online and have met in person a few times and became close.  At one point, he came out as a transexual and I was one of the first people he told it to.  I was cool about it and helped him work up the courage to tell his parents.

Good times but then one day...

He showed me this article he had been mocking.  It was talking about regulations against harrassment of gays and such in the workplace.  The article writer was opposed to them and stated several reasons why.  First that it too often served to drive the wedge in further rather than promote tolerance.

"Hey everyone, your free speech rights just got trampled and you have the gays to thank for it!"
Yeah, I can see his point there...

Second was the fact that it undermines someone's right to his own property.  He argued that if say, you owned a business and refused to hire blacks, that's your right as long as you're willing to accept that you're likely to lose business that way.

As a libertarian, I also agreed with that.

Anyways, when I stated that I actually agreed with it, I was lambasted with some truly hurtful accusations including the implication that I was on the same level as people who beat up gays in the street for kicks.  (when you look at my history with him, you can see how absurd that is)

I brought up the fact that similar laws have been attempted with women, blacks and the handicapped and all of them backfired horribly.  Nobody wanted to hire those people because they were afraid of getting sued.  I told him it would be the same story with gays if they made laws like that.  He was having none of it.  I was just making excuses to justify discrimination.  -_-

The worst part is he knows that's a lie.  My history with him is proof enough of that.  I have spoken out for legalizing gay marriage many many times and couldn't say enough how proud I was when we did finally legalize it (I'm Canadian).

I haven't spoken to him in weeks.  He's blocked me but his name remains on my AIM list in the hope that he might wise up.

I have to know, why the hate against libertarians?  What is it about us that people hate enough to throw away friendships and even simple logic itself?  I seriously have had people blatantly contradict themselves just to distance themselves from libertarianism.
(I once asked someone to say what he agreed with all the presidential canditates with and he did most of them no problem.  When I brought up Ron Paul, he said "nothing" instantly with absolutely no hesitation.
"Uh...yes you do.  Just to name one, he opposes gun control, so do you."
"No, nothing!"

I try to stick with it but stuff like this can be very discouraging.  It makes me want to just stop trying and just wait for everything to burn down so I can sit on my porch and smugly go "I warned you but did anyone listen to me?  Oh no!"

Anyways, hi, nice to meet you all!

[MrBogosity]

As I've repeatedly said: someone's political agenda often becomes a dogma, and they defend it as vehemently as anyone defending their religion. And that's without having the intense personal connection to it your friend does!

[Travis Retriever]

Lord T Hawkeye,

I can honestly say I know how you feel.  I have a friend who thinks that Libertarianism is "naive" because of what I think about health care and acts as if I'm ignorant, yet who called HMO's "capitalism".

Another socialist friend is convinced that we can get electric cars to be more cost efficient simply by plugging them into other people's outlets (or the ones at the gas station: no joke). He also thinks this will be good for the environment. He considers me stupid for even considering the idea of voting third party ("It's a wasted vote!!"). He's the reason I was so happy to see that video of Shane's about the subject: I can rebut anyone who says that crap to me now.

Here's the video in case you're wondering:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjUtYQ1dvuA ("Does your vote matter?" [6:00] by Shane Killian)

[Tom S. Fox]

This reminds me of the episode of The Simpsons where they vote an evil alien for president because they didn't want to waste their vote for a third party.

[MrBogosity]

That was great! Treehouse of Horror III, if I remember correctly. And then at the end, Kang is elected and enslaves humanity, Marge is complaining, and Homer says, "Don't blame me--I voted for Kodos!"

[11mc22]

heh...

I just uploaded some videos on a facebook group and one of them appeared on the facebook home page stream for some reason.
All my friends were like "what the fuck is this" or "you know nobody is going to watch this" and some sarcastic things.

Do you guys know how to keep videos from appearing on the home stream page?
Even though I deleted the history on my channel its still on the home stream page

Thats a problem Facebook will have to fix.

[MrBogosity]

I thought you could go directly to the home page and remove it there.

[Travis Retriever]

I try to stick with it but stuff like this can be very discouraging.  It makes me want to just stop trying and just wait for everything to burn down so I can sit on my porch and smugly go "I warned you but did anyone listen to me?  Oh no!"

LOL I know how that feels.  I just checked back at an Atheist Group I was at in LJ and saw an entry where the person whined calling me an Anarchist: "Except that if you had any clue what libertarianism is, you'd know that it is, quite definitively, anarchism. The terms were literally used synonymously until fairly recently; they were synonymous when both terms were coined and when the grounding philosophy was established. Modern libertarian philosophy is anarchistic. If you don't like the term, maybe you're neither.
There's good reason not to like the philosophies, of course-- they're asinine.
The boldfaced ignorance is yours, anarchist."

I saw this among other things in the post and fumed.  I can't help but fantasize about us Libertarians forming our own sovereign state, with Harry Browne and Dr. Mary J. Ruwart's Libertarian policies.  We'd work to create an economic superpower that would put even China to Shame, while they all fizzle out and wonder why their statist nonsense isn't working.

PS:  Sorry Hawkeye if I stole the attention of the thread to myself.  I just thought I give out the idea. I mean, just imagine...a country/nation/society where the only rule of government is to protect against the initiation of force/fraud from other people.  That would be something.

[MrBogosity]

Here's a question: if libertarianism and anarchism were synonymous until recently, then how come in 1971 libertarians FORMED A POLITICAL PARTY???

[Travis Retriever]

This person and I have a less than glamorous history, of which, I'll spare you the details of.  I'll go as far to say in this large post (where I got the above quote from), he goes on to say that "I"m smarter than you." and other crap to me, and claims I blocked him from replying back (he was showing what a reply to a PM I sent him would be), which was BS: I never did.  I'll also say he's an extremely dogmatic/extremist Atheist Democrat.  In the post, he goes on about me "strawmanning him" (if he wanted the references to which I found what I pointed out, he could have asked why I didn't provide them), and yet he's the one brutally strawmanning and misrepresenting Libertarianism and can't seem to make a valid point about it aside from fallacious logic, and personal attacks and even libel.  So smarter than me, no.  More verbally manipulative, dogmatic and more of a douche, definitely.

[Lord T Hawkeye]

I saw this among other things in the post and fumed.  I can't help but fantasize about us Libertarians forming our own sovereign state, with Harry Browne and Dr. Mary J. Ruwart's Libertarian policies.  We'd work to create an economic superpower that would put even China to Shame, while they all fizzle out and wonder why their statist nonsense isn't working.

Like they did in the city of Rapture in the game Bioshock?  :p

Some people like to point to that as evidence of how a libertarian society would fail but if you look closely, it was the one UN-libertarian thing Andrew Ryan did that ended up causing his downfall.  Ie: closing off outside contact and thus outside trade.

[Real Captain Olimar]

That was great! Treehouse of Horror III, if I remember correctly. And then at the end, Kang is elected and enslaves humanity, Marge is complaining, and Homer says, "Don't blame me--I voted for Kodos!"

Grampa still likes Ike!

[Travis Retriever]

Like they did in the city of Rapture in the game Bioshock?  :p

Some people like to point to that as evidence of how a libertarian society would fail but if you look closely, it was the one UN-libertarian thing Andrew Ryan did that ended up causing his downfall.  Ie: closing off outside contact and thus outside trade.

No, like how the we formed the USA; minus the slavery and the like.