Quote: (11-10-2012 03:52 PM)oldnemesis Wrote:
Quote: (11-10-2012 09:24 AM)RandalGraves Wrote:
Lower-case "l" = libertarian, the ideology. Capital "L" = Libertarian the proper noun, aka the Libertarian Party. I was referring to the libertarian ideology, which is much, much broader than the party.
There seem to be no such things as single "libertarian ideology".
It is difficult to get people to understand the idea of "reification," which is confusing a vague, abstract concept with something concrete, and mutually verifiable and observable.
Abstract terms would include "libertarian ideology"; if you ask 20 different people, 20 different answers. There is no such objective thing.
However, a list of the Libertarian Party members in California might be something real, a computer file or printout that two people could both observe and copy. And there may be a book on policy, which will have specific positions, like "abolish the social security old-age pension system by 2015", and be objectively real things. ( And senior poverty woud be way up based on all economic logic I know of).
http://www.nber.org/bah/summer04/w10466.html
Abstract terms can be a practical necessity as shorthand when dealing with the world, for instance "overheating" when referring to a car without a specific temperature is still a useful concept: it can lead to examination of the radiator.
But when politicians use reification terms, it is not to communicate but often to obfuscate and manipulate.
Thus you have guys making $10/hr at Walmart voting for "conservatives" who want to give away the Social Security system to Wall Street; when those Walmart workers will desperately need that money later, and not have it stolen by Wall St. crooks. With bullshit abstraction like "small government" you can get people to act/vote against their own interests.
How many Germans really wanted German to end up like it did at the end of WW2?
Thus "conservatives " borrow trillions to start wars, a very reckless and un-conservative thing, and "liberals" forbid sex between students and professors, and very un-liberal constriction on a student's sex life.
That is why it is important to look at what politicians do as far as:
1) Who do they take money from, and how much ? Workers or oligarchs?
2) Who do they give it to, and how much ? Doctors or arms manufacturers?
These facts are somewhat verifiable in the USA ( who were checks made out to, how much taxes were collected) and help cut through the BS to what the politicians you judge actually want.
All the label abstractions are just noise, there to confuse you and make you vulnerable.