Francis Porretto:

Posted on April 11, 2015 by KG

“…..Americans’ rights are gone. We’ve given ground before the encroachments of government and the relentlessness of the Left’s propaganda, such that merely an accusing word is enough to start us backing away from the defense of our rights. The underlying malady is the desire for others’ approval: the need to be seen as “nice guys” even by those who hate us passionately and always will.”      Link

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32 Responses to Francis Porretto:

  1. Wombat says:
    April 11, 2015 at 22:11

    Okay. This is going to be annoying but I have to do it because I’m sick of hearing otherwise smart men regurgitating marxist terminology that has obviously escaped their bullcrap filter.

    I will copy and paste what follows this paragraph to the comments section in every article that contains the term “left” in reference to a political persuasion. Feel free to delete it or punt it to the bottom of the comments thread or… whatever.

    The “Left vs Right” principle of politics is a divide-and-conquer strategy used by our collectivist would-be masters to pit us against each other.

    It’s a con. A sham. A hoax with the sole purpose of convincing you to make enemies of people you would otherwise have no quarrel with.

    Is that guy over there gay? If he is, he’s on the left and therefore my enemy!
    Is that guy a middle-class middle-aged white guy? If so, he’s on the right and therefore my enemy!

    It’s utter, utter nonsense.

    If you gather up every person in the nation who wants to aggressively control every other person then you’d have a pitifully small percentage of the population accounted for.
    If we had our damned eyes open then every problem would therefore become a question of “should the government interfere or not” and the answer would almost invariably be “no”.

    But because we’d been brainwashed into this nonsensical “left vs right” paradigm we’re instantly conscripted into a fight, not against government control, but against our manufactured, conscripted enemy. And guess what the “winner” always gets?

    That’s right. More government control!

    Anyone promoting the left/right paradigm is guilty of short-selling the capacity of mankind to embrace freedom. In choosing their enemy they swap a pitifully small and weak force of aggressive collectivists for a massive force of half of the population or more, who tragically often want the exact same outcome. Freedom!

    If you promote the idea of left vs right instead of promoting freedom vs tyranny then you’re playing into the hands of the people who would enslave the so called “right” and the so called “left” at the very same time.

    I get it. It’s so easy just to write someone off as “that leftist bastard”. Well go the extra mile. Break your programming. Call a thing what it is. Libertarian or collectivist.

    Otherwise you’re playing their game by their rules for the team they choose.

    • Wombat says:
      April 11, 2015 at 22:13

      Scratch that. I’ll post a link to it rather than copy/pasting the entire thing. It’s longer than I thought. :oops:

      • Cadwallader says:
        April 12, 2015 at 10:30

        Thanks. I find that the collectivists still apply the label “Tory” with abandon. I think the use of such a Dickensian term is amusing as it implies their collective brain stopped working back in the 19th century.

    • The Gantt Guy says:
      April 11, 2015 at 23:00

      I agree with most of what you’ve written, wombat, but I take issue with the paradigm being “libertarian vs collectivist”. The “libertarian” movement – at least the modern interpretation of it – is perversely just as collectivist as the progressives. Most libertarians I’ve met promote a clown-car version of genuine individual liberty, reducing the entire liberty movement down to the three pillars of libertarian religiosity: drugs, buggery and open borders (e.g. Paultards).

      The fact is, whatever labels we dream up will either be fundamentally wrong at source, or will be co-opted and bastardised by our enemy. Left vs right is just as wrong (and just as right) as libertarian vs collectivist, as progressive vs conservative, as any other combination of labels.

      I – and most others I know – rely on left vs right because it’s a crayon-drawing version that our enemy can understand. Basically, for me at least, it comes down to this:

      You want to stick your pecker in some other guy’s arse? Go for your life. Just don’t expect me to stand and clap while you do it. Don’t expect me to treat you any differently than a normal person (but don’t expect me to consider your behaviour “normal”). And for damned certain don’t try and tell me or – especially – my children that your behaviour is normal.

      You want to marry someone of the same sex? Or your lawn chair, or TV? Knock yourself out you whacked-out freak. But don’t demand that I attend your “wedding”, and for damned certain don’t think for a second the weaponry of government is going to force me to bake a cake, a pizza or print the invitations.

      You want to snort stuff up your nose, smoke the sticky herb, or stick a needle in your arm? Rip into it. As much as you can, as fast as you can. But don’t ask or expect me to pay for your healthcare.

      And, to the third religious pillar of modern libertarianism, if someone wants to be my neighbour, then let him enter the country legally, let him assimilate into the culture already-present and let him learn the fucking language so I can have a beer with him over the back fence on a hot Saturday afternoon. Don’t tell me I have to learn Portuguese, Farsi, Hindi, Arabic or fucking Chinese. Don’t tell me I can’t cook bacon on my barbecue because it is “haram” and offends your religion and don’t fucking tell me I can’t have a beer in my own back yard on a hot Saturday afternoon. If you want those rules, fuck off to Syria, Iran or Saudi Arabia (or Dandenong, Melbourne).

      See, I firmly believe that your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. Any form of coercion is a violation of my right to swing my fist, so long as I stop swinging before your nose begins.

      My entire political philosophy…

      • Darin says:
        April 12, 2015 at 00:15

        http://falfn.com/CrusaderRabbit/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_good.gif

        Modern libertarianism is a basket case of half baked beliefs.For instance I take issue with the policy of non-intervention.We in the US would be speaking German right now if we hadn’t gotten involved.

        • G P says:
          April 12, 2015 at 01:33

          Or would never have drawn breath.

        • andy5759 says:
          April 13, 2015 at 08:19

          Frightening fact: a vote after the War of Independence of the representatives of the original thirteen states to choose a national language resulted in English being chosen over German by one vote. Phew, that was a close call. Anyway, guten nacht mein freunden bis heute.

      • Wombat says:
        April 12, 2015 at 01:45

        I agree with the vast majority of what you’re saying, though I’ve obviously had a much different experience speaking with libertarians.

        • Darin says:
          April 12, 2015 at 05:37

          It depends on the person.The different political viewpoints have been muddied up to the point where many people,over here anyway have no firm grasp on what they are.
          I have a friend for instance who is confused in his terms.He claims to be Libertarian,but supports most of what Obama and his ilk do,which obviously makes him a Prog Liberal.

          • Wombat says:
            April 12, 2015 at 10:24

            liberal
            [ ˈlɪb(ə)r(ə)l ]
            ADJECTIVE
            adjective: liberal
            1.willing to respect or accept behaviour or opinions different from one’s own; open to new ideas:
            “liberal views towards divorce”
            synonyms: unbiased · unprejudiced · prejudice-free · accepting ·

            Emphasis added.

            • Darin says:
              April 12, 2015 at 11:35

              “Liberalism can be understood in two very different ways. Liberalism, or what some call “classical liberalism,” is a political philosophy based on individual liberty and limited government. Over the last century, however, liberalism has come to take on a different meaning. The contemporary understanding of liberalism is based not on individual liberty, but on the use of government to grant benefits and advantages in order to give everyone the ability to achieve a certain standard of living and reduce inequalities. Therefore, modern liberalism encourages an extensive network of interest groups that receive benefits from government and organize in order to preserve those benefits.
              Modern liberalism grows out of the Progressive rejection of American constitutionalism and an embrace of a new conception of freedom, anchored in big government. There are however certain significant differences between Progressivism and modern liberalism.
              Whereas modern liberalism exalts freedom of self-expression, especially sexual liberation, most Progressives embraced traditional morals. Liberals are also obsessed with equality of outcomes in ways that the Progressives were not. Today, liberalism has lost the faith in progress that characterized Progressivism, mostly because of a loss of confidence in the inevitability of progress and the creeping effects of having embraced relativism from the start of the Progressive movement.

              More here-
              http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/progressivism-and-liberalism

              • Wombat says:
                April 12, 2015 at 12:01

                Good stuff. The word has lost all meaning these days. How many self described “liberals” have any idea what the term means?

                Few, I’d wager.

      • Barry says:
        April 12, 2015 at 13:36

        Gantt Guy, this whole comment of yours is brilliant! Thank you for it!

  2. KG says:
    April 12, 2015 at 01:45

    Mostly, we use the left/right labels in comments and posts because in the context of the story/comment it’s understood by our fellows that the terms aren’t rigidly defined, merely a convenient shorthand.
    Anybody and anything I call as being of the “left” belongs on that side of the politic/economic/behavioural spectrum as far as I’m concerned, and very few people seem to have a problem with understanding my meaning.

  3. KG says:
    April 12, 2015 at 01:47

    Libertarianism lost me at open borders.

    • Darin says:
      April 12, 2015 at 05:30

      Ironically the US had open borders until the turn of the last century.We didn’t really have any problems with that policy either,until social welfare was introduced.

      Take any group of illegal aliens,asylum seekers,refugees you name it and barring social welfare see how far they make it.When they have to work,produce and pay their own way it’s a much different picture.I like to remind people that when Nikola Tesla first set foot in this country he worked as a ditch digger for $.80/day.In any western country under the old system you were free to be all you could be,but only if you could be.

      • Ronbo says:
        April 12, 2015 at 08:08

        I see the basis for a compromise between the American Left and Right – The Right agrees on Open Borders if the Left agrees to end welfare benefits for the first generation of new immigrants. ;-)

        Yes, I know the Left would never agree, so my fall back position would be to end all immigration – except for a small number of certified political/religious types facing death and/or imprisonment in their countries of origin…like Christians from the Middle East.

        • Wombat says:
          April 12, 2015 at 10:31

          This is the thing, isn’t it?

          Trying to fix this mess is like trying to unscramble an egg. Everything is intrinsically linked. Every good thread of the tapestry is interwoven with the rotten ones.

          I live first for my kids, and second for the day we burn the law-books until nothing but ash and common-law remains.

          • Darin says:
            April 12, 2015 at 11:28

            Yup,pretty much,honestly if I could find a quiet corner in some nearly isolated region with moderate weather where a man could get lost and stay that way I would move there,dig in like a Tick and finish out my days watching the world burn.

    • Warren Tooley says:
      April 12, 2015 at 19:29

      KG, when I say right wing, it means more responsibility by the individual, when I say left, more power to the state. Does this agree with your definition. Still I do understand Wombat’s arguement, and unfortunately people on the right and left. Some of them are pawns, who create problems that take away our rights.

      • KG says:
        April 12, 2015 at 19:53

        That’s very close to my position, Warren. :grin:

        • Warren Tooley says:
          April 12, 2015 at 19:58

          Thanks KG, that’s the way I was taught since the age of 13, only now do I know about the Hegelian Dialect, where you use pawns from the left and right side of the chessboard, to implement changes.

  4. Warren Tooley says:
    April 12, 2015 at 18:30

    Wombat, in regards to what you started off saying. I’ve been reading about the Hegelian Dialect. That you created a conflict between one extreme and the other, and then you resolve it by implementing what it is that you want to achieve. Now, the same author also stated that Hegel was German, so was Marx, and almost so was Hitler.

    And in the German Hegelian philosophy you don’t have inalienable rights. You have privileges and obligations to the state, and the state is like a god. And its about what is the best for everybody. But to get to this sort of system you need to create conflict. So that their will be resolutions where people give up their rights, like the terrorist attacks.

    • Wombat says:
      April 12, 2015 at 22:33

      Indeed. Create the problem. Be the solution. Repeat endlessly.

      As for right and left, my experience is that most people would (unwittingly) equate the right with pro-government conservatives (please, oh mighty state, protect us from the future) and the left with pro-government progressives (please, oh mighty state, protect us from the past).

      This is how most people I’ve asked describe the two “factions”.

      And truly most people fall into neither category except when pushed by one into the other.

  5. Warren Tooley says:
    April 13, 2015 at 21:51

    Now Wombat, I have to know, your source. I’ve read 6 Barry Smith books, and Barry Smith, talked about the Hegelian Dialect, which is where opposing forces, force a solution to happen. I’ve read Antony Sutton who also talks about the Hegelian Dialect. And I’m reading another book called Pawns in the game which explains that the real elite start up all of these extremist organisations, with the purpose of saying we can solve all of these problems.

    I know that Barry Smith used to come into Australia all the time, so my first guess would be that, but their are other sources saying the same thing. So, where does this come from.

    • Wombat says:
      April 14, 2015 at 00:54

      To sum it up, the blogroll on the right hand side of the screen and a healthy dose of critical thinking. :mrgreen: