3 Inconvenient Facts That Make Libertarians Heads Explode

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by Tom Joad

He's here to derail threads.

And he has a pretty good track record in that regard.

Hence all the "Tar Baby" references.

You go after him and you get "stuck in it", talking about what he wants to talk about and talking about on his terms.

John

[4-2-7]

Originally Posted by Boreas

Hence all the "Tar Baby" references.

You go after him and you get "stuck in it", talking about what he wants to talk about and talking about on his terms.

John

No I make comments on the threads a just like this quoted post of yours you drift off on me as the topic. Then I respond lol.

Get a life the whole world does not agree with your babble.

[4-2-7]

Originally Posted by Pukka Sahib;202378[B

]Libertarianism would be a perfect political ideology but for one flaw: it doesn’t work. The problem is that it is not based on reality.[/B] It is a construct as advanced in works of philosophy and fiction, e.g., Utopia, Thomas Moore (1516); Island, Aldous Huxley (1962). It simply fails to take human nature into account. In W. Somerset Maugham’s novel The Moon and Sixpence, a roman à clef based loosely on the life of the artist Paul Gauguin, the narrator asks the principal character Charles Strickland about his views on Kant’s categorical imperative: "Act so that every one of your actions is capable of being made into a universal rule." To which Strickland. replies, "I never heard it before, but it's rotten nonsense."

That's kind of funny since all politics today are built on deception and lies. Or can you say otherwise?

[4-2-7]

Originally Posted by Pukka Sahib

“A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.”
- Ronald Reagan (1987)

There are many forms of deceit from the little white lies we tell in our private lives to the blackest calumny in the councils of public affairs. Deception infects every aspect of human intercourse. Some lies are told for the sake of oneself, some for the sake of others, and all for the sake of convenience, which is the bastard child of corruption. Even so, no lie can live alone; it must be supported by a whole family of falsehoods. But the most foolish deception of all, that of oneself; for in believing our own lies, we are fooling no one but ourselves.

I see it more these days that the will to believe the lies told is strongest. It doesn't mater if facts are present it's still a falsehood.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by 4-2-7

I see it more these days that the will to believe the lies told is strongest. It doesn't mater if facts are present it's still a falsehood.

Explain in plain English.

[merrylander]

Originally Posted by finnbow

Explain in plain English.

Good luck with that.

[donquixote99]

Originally Posted by 4-2-7

That's kind of funny since all politics today are built on deception and lies. Or can you say otherwise?

You pretty much have to keep telling yourself that, don't you--being a cog in the lie machine.

[merrylander]

Originally Posted by Pukka Sahib

"Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt."
- Julius Caesar, Gallic War, III:18.
. . .

It is not in our nature to see things for what they are. We prefer to believe in fanciful notions that are untrue. Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia 1431-1501) once said that men are so simple they will believe anything. The Borgia Pope, while the spiritual leader of the Church, was, if anything, a homme du monde; and, for all his faults, a keen observer of human nature, noting that it is a defect in the human character that we would rather listen to lies than believe the truth we can see with our own eyes. Even when forced to confront the facts, we deny them and make up excuses.

In The Prince (modeled after Pope Alexander’s son, Cesare Borgia), Niccolo Machiavelli wrote about the state and its rule as it is rather than as it should be, for which, after five centuries of experience, he continues to be roundly condemned. It is a social preference for what we choose to believe, though false, over what is in fact true. Great Caesar was right when he wrote: "Men willingly believe what they wish to be true."

Having lived long I can recall a time when this statement was probably true of many, perhaps all, of us, but it is not necessarily a permanent condition. Perhaps Barnum hit closer to the mark.

[4-2-7]

Originally Posted by Pukka Sahib

"Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt."
- Julius Caesar, Gallic War, III:18.
. . .

It is not in our nature to see things for what they are. We prefer to believe in fanciful notions that are untrue. Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia 1431-1501) once said that men are so simple they will believe anything. The Borgia Pope, while the spiritual leader of the Church, was, if anything, a homme du monde; and, for all his faults, a keen observer of human nature, noting that it is a defect in the human character that we would rather listen to lies than believe the truth we can see with our own eyes. Even when forced to confront the facts, we deny them and make up excuses.

In The Prince (modeled after Pope Alexander’s son, Cesare Borgia), Niccolo Machiavelli wrote about the state and its rule as it is rather than as it should be, for which, after five centuries of experience, he continues to be roundly condemned. It is a social preference for what we choose to believe, though false, over what is in fact true. Great Caesar was right when he wrote: "Men willingly believe what they wish to be true."

That quote would be awesome in the above Political Chat banner.

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by merrylander

Having lived long I can recall a time when this statement was probably true of many, perhaps all, of us, but it is not necessarily a permanent condition. Perhaps Barnum hit closer to the mark.

Rob, I think Barnum, Caesar and the Borgia Pope were all on the same page. It's just that the old showman was a bit cruder in expressing what the others had said. We believe what we want to believe, whether it's that the lady really was sawn in half or that there are WMD in Iraq..... or that the Fascists in Ukraine carried out a democratic revolution. If the carnival barkers and political pitchmen tell us something that confirms what we want to believe about ourselves or others, we're all over it, whether it be true or otherwise.

John