Thursday, September 22, 2022

Responding to Wolf's Head

 

A smart libertarian who signs himself Wolf's Head trolls my posts on WatWatch, and though I don't generally respond to his provocations (why's such a conservative dude like you attached like a pilot fish to this bleeding-heart liberal blog?), I do pay attention to him. Wolf's Head is educated, writes like he respects the language, and he's a flatout intellectual. He has a vision of the world and can articulate it. I think he deserves a conversation. (As to his/her/their gender, I say he for convenience. I don't know Wolf's gender and don't care. I use the gendered pronoun for convenience. Sue me.)


Recently down column I wrote that accepting election-denying Trumpists like Ted Budd would be the end of our democracy. Wolf's Head jumped on that: "We don't have a democracy; we have a Republic." Well, yeah, I get that, but I know where you're headed, to that strawhorse target, "pure democracies mean mob control," and who knows but the mob will want to eat you?

 

Wolf's Head rests his case against democracy by mentioning when Black people took over and oppressed white people: "Representative democracy? Like the Democratic Republic of the Congo? No thank you" -- bringing up a notorious case when suddenly freed Black people began lording it over whites and killing them. I'll leave the Google research to you about the reality and the hype of "the Congo Crisis," 1960-62, and just acknowledge that Wolf has made his white superiority breath-takingly obvious in other blog threads.

 

But he doesn't even respect representative democracy. Man, that's extreme.

 

He then explained himself in a long post:

 

Democracy means Might Makes Right.

Majority gets their way, Irregardless of what it does to the minority. As with most liberals I meet, you think such a system would only be done altruistically. Conservatives and libertarians beg to differ.

What I have seen in my life is this: Democracy is wanted by altruistic, caring, well-intentioned but ultimately self-righteous people who think everyone would believe what they do if only the opposition knew how wrong they were.

But, it is also desired by those who think they can manipulate those feelings of altruism and caring into giving themselves more power by getting more votes. 

THAT is the great danger.

People use your emotions, your desire to make things better, into power over others.

That is what democracy is all about, power over those less powerful, or less numerous, then you.

So, if someone is brilliant, capable and works hard to support themselves, their families, their employees and community, the majority might be jealous of that. It's a recurring liberal theme and they want to tax or regulate his wealth because the majority isn't capable of achieving what this individual has, and therefore thinks it's 'NOT FAIR!!!'

This happens every effing day.

So, it's easier to vote with the majority to take from someone else, than to achieve it on your own.

Democrats will call the achiever 'greedy' or 'selfish' for creating and keeping his wealth.

But really, who is greedier. the man who works for his achievements or the majority who want to take it for their own benefit?

 

He doesn't mention "tax and regulation" until late, but I get the subtext: Wolf devoutly believes taxation is theft and that government regulation is mainly harassment aimed at prosperous people because of liberal jealousy about conservative wealth. Clearly, Wolf's Head is a guy who does not believe in the "social contract." (The social contract, which should and can and does produce civic virtue, establishes the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual for the good of the community.) 

 

Social contract? I do believe in it, which is the basis for my belief in democracy. I grew up with it, the cohesion of a community of equals (farmers who knew how to do everything almost but needed help in crisis times, who got help when they needed it from their neighbors, and depended on Roosevelt socialism that brought the "shelter belts" of trees to break up the winds that were lifting the topsoil and taking it to Arkansas. It was more socialism that electrified the countryside. Locally, and before my time, democratic impulses wanted to see every child enlightened and potentially ennobled, so those early, capable, tough white Europeans who settled the Panhandle of Texas decided to tax themselves and build schools -- including many one-room satellite schools in far-flung sections where poor farm kids who had no way to get to town could learn to read and grow up to write a blog, maybe. "We'll solve that with school buses," which I rode through every grade into high school. Everybody got taxed for all of that, for the good that full and free education brings. And they elected a school board who ran it and county commissioners who worked for free and made sure the muddy roads that became rutted canyonlands got smoothed out. Yes, some probably groused, especially about the school tax: "I don't even have kids in school! Why should I pay?" But simple, good-hearted, civic-minded democratic consensus won out. Later, after government began paving more and more dirt roads (the wonderful socialism that helped farmers get their capitalist goods from farm to store), and at some point some other democrats in Austin decided that "vocational agriculture" should be a thing in rural schools (I took it!), proving that legitimate government could help farmers keep their investments intact by educating their children in the arts of rural survival.


I was a poor kid, but you couldn't tell the poor kids from the rich ones. We all wore the same farming-country dungarees with worn knees. I wore shirts made from cotton sacks. My father owned no land. He worked another man's wheat stubble, and we lived in that owner's houses -- two different ones over a couple of decades. The good will of men (and women) I didn't even know, who weren't kin to me, enabled me to get educated, and then Christian socialist aid got me further to a college we could afford (a Baptist one, which was even in the '50s already fully integrated, where the religion didn't take for me but the world of history and philosophy and literature did). That's why I'm a democrat and also a Democrat.


Yes, I try to win elections. I try to convince people of my truth. It's the social contract if they agree and elect my guys and also if they don't agree and reject my guys and elect theirs. The social contract demands I accept the will of the people in either case. If their guys go wrong in office, I'll try to eject them, and if I can convince others to change course, we will.

 

The part of Wolf's dissertation that wounded me most:

 

People [politicians] use your emotions, your desire to make things better, into power over others.

That is what democracy is all about, power over those less powerful, or less numerous, then you.

 

If I understand his point here, and I believe I do because I understand English -- the very impulse toward altruism -- seeing a need and urging government to do something about it -- that impulse is itself the problem. Dude, that's a dark place. That's a world libertarians seem to live in, and welcome to it. Wolf's gospel that altruism itself -- charity, government help, socialism -- is really only about getting power over people in order to control them -- that's a version of reality that belongs not to the world I know and have known and still actually believe in.


11 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:08 PM

    Libertarians are like cats. Completely dependent on others while being firmly convinced of their own superiority and independence.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If JW will permit, I'd like to respond to his posting about myself and what he says are my views in a couple of separate postings to prevent muddling the issues.

    I am NOT a libertarian. The ones I've met are usually small government types. Many are dope smoking conservatives, tax protesters or, mostly, cowards, unwilling to take a real stand on anything.

    I despise republicans even more than you democrats do. Backstabbing, treasonous, manipulative, thieving, elitist sonsabitches is about the mildest I can say about them.

    And you lefties don't even know they are on YOUR side. HAH!

    As to why I post here, the first reason is boredom, the second is to present the readers views they either have no effing idea even exist, or studiously avoid, or wish to exterminate. These views are held by a majority of the people I know, and I'm not a recluse by any means.

    And to, perhaps, edge you towards an honest, unemotional but reasoned analysis of your positions.

    I am most definitely NOT an intellectual. I did spend 5 years to get an Associate of Arts degree from a podunk community college while working full time and I PAYED MY OWN WAY. (I had a 'C' average in both High School and college)

    I consider myself somewhat well read as it used to be called. I remember when I was 16 our English teacher brought in a list of '100 recommended books for the well educated college graduate' put out by the NY Times. I had read 87 of them before entering High School.

    And I lived in a time and place where there were NO book stores. I either ordered books from the Scholastic Reader (WHAT A GOD SEND), borrowed from our school libraries (They were WELL stocked and not with gender/queer/commie/trash), or I would ride my bicycle 6 miles into town to the county library (Also well stocked).

    I'm sure Democratus Rex/Shyster/Misanthrope Libtard will post it was all fascist/bigot/homophobe/racist/nazi propaganda.

    I am appreciative of JW allowing my posts here. I think I had been banned before, but it's his site, he may do as he wishes. As far as I know he had nothing to do with the takeover of the Watauga Conservative a few years back. I never knew who ran that, although I did know some of those who posted there.

    When it occurred I had a desperate email from the blog's founder about it, but I was unable to contact him after that.

    Assuming whoever did that is a reader here, I will say that depriving Blogger, an elderly man, of the blog he founded then claiming you came by it honest means proved to its readers the extent the left is willing to go to silence opposition, even in a little backwater mountain county. I don't know if Blogger is alive, but I would have liked to have met him.

    I do hope nothing of the sort happens to this blog. JW does every one a service by having this blog, although he seems overly preoccupied with elections rather than issues.

    As for deserving a conversation, that is up to you all. I had a job where I drove for 6 to 10 hours a day. I would listen to Rush Limbaugh, but not always. I will tell you that Limbaugh was a liberal compared to the people I know, and he was slavishly devoted to the republicans. See my comments above about them.

    AND I would listen to the Mouth of Sauron, otherwise known as NPR for hours. Absolute bigoted, elitist, ignorant, arrogant, condescending morons that they are.

    Why? Opposition research.

    How many of you consider yourselves to be enlightened, compassionate and fair although you never listen to what other people say?

    From my viewpoint, which is not as extreme as many, many other people I know, there is very little common ground between the left and the right in this country. I see no basis for coexistence other than separation or forceful subjugation.

    So, sit back and enjoy the ride, it'll be a wild one.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wolf's Head6:31 PM

    RACIST, RACIST,RACIST!!!!!!

    I mentioned the Congo as an example of a democratic republic because it is a giant clusterfu*k , not because of the blacks against whites I mean, come'on man, it was the BELGIANS.

    Congo is full of murder, rape, child sex trafficking, theft and environmental destruction, and that's just by the UN Peacekeeper forces.

    I do think Western Civilization, as it has evolved over 5 millennia, is the finest, most accomplished, advanced and liberating culture to ever exist.

    PROVE ME WRONG.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "He doesn't mention "tax and regulation" until late, but I get the subtext: Wolf devoutly believes taxation is theft and that government regulation is mainly harassment aimed at prosperous people because of liberal jealousy about conservative wealth. Clearly, Wolf's Head is a guy who does not believe in the "social contract." (The social contract, which should and can and does produce civic virtue, establishes the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual for the good of the community.) "

    Wrong.

    Taxation for government expenditures that the government is not empowered to do by the Constitution is theft, and always for the benefit of the politicians, corporate cronies, and foreign elites. Taxation for Constitutional government functions is fine.

    Thinking I give a eff about the rich is ludicrous. I'm concerned about ME being taxed, and I'm only wealthy by Ethiopian standards. Government regulation is all about control. Controlling some interests for the benefit of other interests with better lobbyists and campaign donations.

    There is no 'social contract'. I would never agree to something so stupid. I believe in voluntary, uncoerced interactions between individuals. Liberals do not. The 'social contract' is the construct of thieves and power-hungry parasites who wish to place some ethereal claim of 'community' on everyone else for their own benefit.

    See 'Taxation' above.

    ReplyDelete
  5. "f I understand his point here, and I believe I do because I understand English -- the very impulse toward altruism -- seeing a need and urging government to do something about it -- that impulse is itself the problem."

    Wrong. Altruism is great, be as altruistic as you want. As I wrote most lefties I meet are well intentioned, caring folks.

    HOWEVER, the desire to 'do good' will often lead folks to vote for politicians who they think are as altruistic and virtuous as they are.

    THOSE politicians have no qualm about using the power of government to force everyone else into doing and paying for things that they don't agree to. Forced altruism isn't altruism, it's making someone do what you want to make YOU feel better.

    Sounds like theft, doesn't it?

    SO, sorry if I wounded JW so badly. Charity is great, be kind, be generous, but out of YOUR time, YOUR money, YOUR resources, YOUR labor.

    And for Gods' sake let me and everyone else be.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous10:36 AM

    "The 'social contract' is the construct of thieves and power-hungry parasites who wish to place some ethereal claim of 'community' on everyone else for their own benefit."

    "I do think Western Civilization, as it has evolved over 5 millennia, is the finest, most accomplished, advanced and liberating culture to ever exist."

    These two statements appear to be in conflict pursuant to the colonization of Africa by "Western Civilization".

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous2:35 PM

    Three quotes from Wolfshead:

    1. I am NOT a libertarian. The ones I've met are usually small government types. Many are dope smoking conservatives, tax protesters or, mostly, cowards, unwilling to take a real stand on anything.

    2. I despise republicans even more than you democrats do. Backstabbing, treasonous, manipulative, thieving, elitist sonsabitches is about the mildest I can say about them.

    3. I'm sure Democratus Rex/Shyster/Misanthrope Libtard will post it was all fascist/bigot/homophobe/racist/nazi propaganda.

    My comment: Folks who lump people together and put labels on them are not too bright, in my opinion. I prefer to debate ideas, rather than labeling people.

    ReplyDelete
  8. That's because you're not thinking.

    Africa is not the fictional 'Wakanda' in the Marvel movies.

    It is a vast continent with VAST natural riches and resources.

    Not that they can make use of it. Even John Kerry has told them not they can't have a western level of civilization.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous10:12 AM

    "Western Civilization", as presented, is in conflict. Dismissing altruism and embracing individualism, while determining that others unfortunate to not meet the cultural approval of the West, should have their resources stolen through colonization.

    Africa had the first evidences of humankind and advanced civilization long before the west.

    ReplyDelete
  10. "My comment: Folks who lump people together and put labels on them are not too bright, in my opinion. I prefer to debate ideas, rather than labeling people.

    2:35 PM anon"

    Oh really? Does that apply to how you treat repubs, anti-abortion proponents, tax protesters, gun owners, home schoolers, conservatives, rural folk, Christians, especially fundamentalist Christians, heterosexuals, anti-vaxxers, or for a real test, Trump and his supporters, even the election deniers? Those are labels from the left.

    I see lots of labels and lumping from the left, no discussions. Why did the left conspire with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media to eliminate discussion.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous7:43 AM

    If Wolf’s Head uses the non-word word, “irregardless,” as you quote, he/she/they/it is not quite the intellectual you have posited.

    ReplyDelete