On Friday, 26 August 2016 9:21:28 PM AEST Rick Moen via luv-talk wrote:

Quoting Russell Coker (russell@coker.com.au):

...

Libertarianism aims to stop this. To give parents full liberty they should be allowed to starve theor children. Also the Libertarian party in the US wants to legalise child porn.

Uh... [citation needed]

A quick Google of Mary Rewart will do. You know this of course, why do you even ask that? https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2012/01/even-with-gary-johnson-the-libe... The above is one of many articles that summarises this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ruwart Mary has been active in the LP for a long time in senior positions including representing them in a senate race.

(Disclosure: I am indeed a Yank, but for the record consider the USA Libertarian Party to be a mixture of loons and corporatist shills. I am a member of the USA Democratic Party, and deemed a liberal. I consider myself neither a large-L or small-l libertarian.)

The US Libertarian Party is accurately representing Libertarians then.

After a ~10 minute search, I find zero support for the above allegation. I find a claim that in 2008 the USA Libertarian Party considered but passed over for nomination an anarchist candidate named Murray Rothbard who favoured legalising child pornography, but find nothing else suggesting what Russell asserts.

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/mutual-aid-parecon-right-stealing-lib... You are being ridiculous here in describing Murray Rothbard as "an anarchist candidate". A better (and quite commonly used) description of him is "Mr Libertarian". He claims personal responsibility for stealing the word "Libertarian" from the left, see the above article which is one of many about this. Google indicates that the book "Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography on the Internet" describes Libertarians as being active on pedophile forums on the net.

To the contrary, I also find a Quora debunking of the claim: https://www.quora.com/Why-has-the-U-S-Libertarian-Party-never-advocated-lega lization-of-child-pornography-possession-and-distribution

Quora is not working now. Mary Ruwart wrote in her book "Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision". When a senate candidate from a party makes such a claim in writing (on many occasions) you can't seriously claim that it goes against the party in question.

Thus, USA Libertarian Party is one of several _incredibly tiny_ (fringe, nutcase) USA political parties. _And yet_, it appears to be incorrect to assert that it 'wants to legalise child porn.

It's a fringe nutcase party that has a significant influence on the Republican party. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

I wrote:

...

Google indicates that the book "Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography on the Internet" describes Libertarians as being active on pedophile forums on the net.

No, it doesn't. It merely says on page 97 that the Internet has a 'libertarian ethos', and that unnamed 'other Internet users' imposed a fierce reaction after the manager of a small California ISP discovered in 1998 a child porn Web site, reported that site to legal authorites, and investigated in an attempt to discover more information about the site's operators.

For thoroughness: In addition to the page 97, reference, the word 'libertarian' also occurs on 10 _other_ pages in this book, which we will now go through individually: Page 4: Many other forms of deviant behavior have their reputable defenders or at least libertarians who assert that these activities should not be severely penalized: drug use has its defenders, as do exhibitionism, public sex, and even bestiatiy. For child pornography, however, there is no such tolerance.... Page 9: [The author, speaking of himself as someone raising the problem of child porn:] This is a curious position for someone who defines himself as a libertarian, who fits poorly into most existing schemes of political affiliations. As a general principle, I believe that criminal law should be kept as far removed as possible from issues of personal morality.... Page 35: Contrary to public impression, "obscenity" is and always has been illegal in the United States, but in order to be prohibited, material has to be truly obscene rather than merely indecent, and this fact is difficult to prove in court. At least since the libertarian Supreme Court decisions of the 1950s, nudity per se rarely made a picture obscene where adult subjects were.... Page 121: [Speaking of 'pedo boards':] The boards regularly feature lengthy discussion about the ethics of the traffic, in which participants generally assert a libertarian value system Page 122: The politicization of the subculture should not be exaggerated, since the long discussions are often interrupted by protests from those simply demanding more URLs, more dirty pictures, and rejecting the philosophizing as irrelevant to the real nature of the board. Yet ethical and political themes do surface very frequently and usually remain within a broad libertarian context. Feminism is particular castigated for its role in demanding anti-pornography laws and creating a climate of puritanism.... Page 123: Sometimes, political ideologies expressed go much further than mere libertarianism to a kind of right-wing anarchism, which rejects both police authoritarianism and the various manifestations of political correctness.... Page 137: Whenever this photo set appears, as it does regularly, some commentators will invariably denounce it as sick and contrary to the whole libertarian purpose of the boards.... Page 157: In theory, the combined efforts of the FBI, NSA, GTAC, and alied units should be able to detect most illicit porn traffic on the Web, in a stunning example of global law enforcement cooperation. In addition to alarming civil libertarians, these developments sparked panic on the pedo boards: pornographers are well aware of the new ice age in which they operate and of the dangers of intensified international police cooperation.... Page 191: An international desire to curb child exploitation overseas has led to new legal devices in Europe itself, including countries that once had been regarded as libertarian havens.... Page 252: [footnote:] ...-ing, "New Encryption Rules Lave Civil Libertarians Unhappy", NYI, January 18, 2000.... Not a single one of these in any way concerns the Libertarian Party.

Quoting russell@coker.com.au (russell@coker.com.au):

I should have just said "Libertarians" instead of "Libertarian party" when referring to the legalising of child porn.

Libertarianism aims to be a logical consistent way of running society.

I tend to think in operational terms, and the USA Libertarian Party seems to have only erratic and inconsistent adherence to any specific theoretical framework for 'libertarianism'. The latter term is so ill defined in USA political discourse that a slightly different term, 'civil libertarian' arose in contradiction, meaning someone protective of fundamental liberties. But in contrast, 'libertarian' (in USA discourse) is just a political football and means any of a variety of rather different things depending on the speaker. And most _particularly_, the biggest problem about talking about small-L libertarians is that it becomes an all-purpose vague descriptor for anyone who favours more freedom of action in any area. Thus, it's basically meaningless. As to political parties, it is in my experience more useful to classify them according to what they _do_ rather than what they profess to believe, for lots of reasons including the professed beliefs often being given only lip service. Unfortunately, it is difficult to judge the USA Libertarian Party by that metric, because to my knowledge its candidates have won exactly zero national offices, and only a few hundred state and local ones in its entire history. Of course, it can be equally objected that it's not clear what the two _major_ USA parties stand for. Of the two, the Republican Party is the one that's always stood for an ideology, though the ideology it stumps for has changed repeatedly and drastically over its 162 years. By contrast, the Democratic Party (mine) really has never had a unifying ideology. It's always, over its 188 year history, been a disparate coalition of interests, some of them sectional. But anyway, _no_ party in the USA, major or minor, has ever endorsed legalisation of child porn, and it doesn't signify what you feel is the logical extension of any of their programmes.

Quoting russell@coker.com.au (russell@coker.com.au):

It seems to be usually about liberty for the powerful people to oppress others and almost never about liberty for the less powerful people to not be oppressed. An example is the discussions about freedom for business owners to discriminate against some customers.

No, as I said, AFAIK it's in USA discourse just a political football, meaning almost anything at all depending on the whim of the speaker. It's effectively duckspeak, hence functionally a useless term.

Doesn't Ron Paul count?

Ron Paul has always, consistently, served in the US House of Representatives (and likewise in his failed run for the US Senate) as a member of the Republican Party for the state of Texas.

Both the main parties are stumping for the rich quite effectively.

Sure. True electoral reform will require getting the money out of politics, which means meaningful public financing for (at least) national-office campaigns and overturning of the very harmful 2009 US Supreme Court decision Citizens United, Appellant v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310, in which the five-member corporatist majority banned the rest of the Federal government from restricting so-called independent political expenditures by corporations, citing 1st Amendment freedom of speech. Now that Justice Antonin Scalia performed his one unequivocal service to the republic (dying, six months ago), the latter reform is suddenly possible if Ms. Clinton ascends to the Presidency after the Nov. 8th general election. (For those who don't know, the US Supreme Court has remained deadlocked at 4 votes to 4 votes, since Scalia's death -- which is on the one hand a disabiling of that institution and on the other an improvement in the eyes of many of us.) Back in 1982, the late Gore Vidal ran to be junior senator for California (my state) and rather charmingly asserted that he was running for the 'Democratic wing of the Property Party'. He got my vote, of course. Quoting Vidal's May 1975 essay 'The State of the Union' (_Esquire_ magazine): There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party... and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt – until recently... and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties. There now _is_ a difference between the parties even to someone of the late Mr. Vidal's jaundiced eyes -- on account of the bizarre eruptions among the Republicans, and signs of the left wing of the Democratic Party reviving some power at the same time. Perhaps I will post some speculations on those matters here soon.

Quoting russell@coker.com.au (russell@coker.com.au):

You could say the same about most political terms.

But with huge and critical differences in degree.

If you were to rule out all words that could be considered to be political footballs then it would be impossible to have a discussion about politics.

I'll take care not to do that, then. ;->

Getting money out of politics is like trying to prevent politicians from lying.

Sanders's campaign proved it's still possible in 2016 to have a highly credible big for a major-party USA Presidential candidate, without big funding. This actually surprised a lot of people.

It's a good aim to work towords but it's not an objective you are likely to achieve.

They said that to Bernie Sanders about even making a creditable showing against Clinton, too. ;-> It's indeed serious work -- but not impossible.

Having a stated aim of an organisation matters. The Democratic party claims to be a left-wing party and attracts left-wing voters.

No, it doesn't. There is no meaningful statement of mission for that party. (There are party platforms fought over at both major parties' nominating conventions, but they're utterly without meaning.) Speaking for myself, I'm perfectly happy with the fact that the Democratic Party has never had a coherent ideology. IMO, it's been better for that.

Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck@gmail.com):

Rick Moen via luv-talk wrote:

...

True electoral reform will require getting the money out of politics, which means meaningful public financing for (at least) national-office campaigns and overturning of the very harmful 2009 US Supreme Court decision Citizens United, Appellant v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310, in which the five-member corporatist majority banned the rest of the Federal government from restricting so-called independent political expenditures by corporations, citing 1st Amendment freedom of speech.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the rationale was something like this:

1. corporations are people. 2. corporations can't vote or go to rallies like human people. 3. therefore, to exercise their first amendment right to free speech, they NEED to be able to pour funding into political entities that promote their pro-corporate, anti-human agenda.

I think not so, because I believe it was decided more narrowly. I'll confess lameness, here: This is one of the recent USSC cases I've not actually read, only the summaries of the court's holding. I often rely on SCOTUSblog, but in this case they had a bunch of links rather than unified coverage, so these might be good enough: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/politics/22scotus.html?pagewanted=all http://reclaimdemocracy.org/who-are-citizens-united/ It was one of the classic 5-4 decisions that _now_ would deadlock, following Scalia's blessed demise. Quoting the second link: The Court majority argued: 1. barring independent political spending amounts to squelching free speech protected by the First Amendment. 2. the First Amendment protects not just a person’s right to speak, but the act of speech itself, regardless of the speaker. Therefore the First Amendment protects the speech of corporations and unions, whether we consider them people or not. 3. although government has the authority to prevent corruption or “the appearance of corruption,” it has no place in determining whether large political expenditures are either of those things, so it may not impose spending limits on that basis. 4. the public has the right to hear all available information, and spending limits prevent information from reaching the public. In any event, it tops most people's list of Most Awful USSC Decision Since Plessy v. Ferguson, and there's a widely felt desire to erase it through either USSC or Congressional action, whichever works soonest.

Cf. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/02/political-failure-modes-...

With hilarious Mencius Moldbug rejoinder buried in the comment section.

Charlie is very much One of Us in lots of ways (technical, and I also like his politics). Strangely, a couple of times in person at SF conventions, I got the impression that he thought I was some sort of reactionary, perhaps because Eric Raymond is a friend of mine (despite politics and economics, e.g. he's Austrian School and I'm a neo-Keynesian), perhaps because I grew up in a British colony and he thinks I'm one of those unspeakable people nostalgic for empire. Or maybe he just finds American liberals boring. No offence taken. I'll still read everything he writes. I'll readily admit to being politically unreliable. ;-> And one of the reasons for that is I'll talk to just about anyone who's not actually trying to kill me.

Trent W. Buck via luv-talk wrote:

Rick Moen via luv-talk wrote:

...

I tend to think in operational terms, and the USA Libertarian Party seems to have only erratic and inconsistent adherence to any specific theoretical framework for 'libertarianism'. The latter term is so ill defined in USA political discourse [...]

[...] 'libertarian' (in USA discourse) is just a political football and means any of a variety of rather different things depending on the speaker. Cf.

The word "Fascism" has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable'. -- George Orwell in "Politics and the English Language"

Productive intercourse is impossible with people using such terms.

Some (me for example) would claim that Continental philosophy is rife with such terms; not to mention much idiosyncratic jargon and scholasticism. So though I sympathise with Hume's complaint: “If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance;........." eg :http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7327-if-we-take-in-our-hand-any-volume-of-di... The subsequent attempt in Positivism and Analytical Philosophy to restrict discourse to objective langauge; seems to have had the effect of reducing philosophy to the aridity of symbolic logic Perhaps the problem is that if the word 'science' is used in the narrow sense of an "objectively falsifiable theory"; then a science of langauge (the claim of linguitics.) is not strictly possible since words as the fundamental, contituents of language, consist of objective symbols AND an associated phenomenological (ie subjective) meaning. If one comes from a scientific or technical background ; the suggestion that a dictionary definition is a theory ; which SHOULD be a: "Concise, precise, exhaustive and reductive description of prefered usage(s) in a given demographic " probably doesn't seem all that contraversial. What would seem contraversial is my suggestion that the thing it describes (ie the meaning); is a phenomenological category ! ........but I digress from the serious matter of politics !:-) regards Rohan McLeod