"A group of fascists military officers deposited the democratically elected president of the Honduras." (BW)
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"Deposited"... or did you mean DEPOSED?
"Fascism sucks"?
Why do so many here in America (including yourself) support so much of that here - regulations that benefit and protect established companies over ruthless upstarts seeking to rip off niche markets from those slower moving, more bureaucratic entities, tax policies that exclude the "truly wealthy" (the richest 2% of Americans who don't rely on income for their wealth), a social welfare system that responds to the lowered productivity under authoritarian regimes by paying people NOT to work.....those are the kinds of things that ALL "fascist" (more accurately termed AUTHORITARIAN) regimes engage in.
So again, why do so many people support such policies right here in the U.S.???
JMK,
Thanks for the typo. I meant deposed. And coming from you, a Pinochet/Friedman apologist, your opinion regarding fascism is highly questionable.
You may not realize it, but subconsciously you admire fascism and oligarchy. That is your ideology, sorry.
Actually you don't know what your talking about.
I've explained "economic fascism" (Corporatism" - the regulated market-based economy that is the "economy of default in Western Europe, the USA, Japan, etc) vs "political fascism" (the authoritarian strain of politics rooted in a naive utopianism that cloaks a "command conformity and a "do-gooder" ethos that punishes the productive to "care for"/reward the unproductive) like that of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and Mugabe.
Pinochet WOULD HAVE BEEN a typical fascist thug if it were not for his listening to "America's Economist" and Nobel Laureate, Milton Friedman and adopted an economic freedom that created "the Chilean miracle".
Friedman's economic policies were also instituted by another tyrant named Suharto in the Phillipines.
A LOVE of "freedom" means only ONE thing, a love for the policies that allow for the unfettered free-for-all of human activity that results in, as Aristotle presciently observed over a millenia ago, "Where the strong take advantage of the weak and the clever take advantage of the strong".
That is what I, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin ALL ascribe to...and since you now seem to laud "freedom", dare I count yourself among our number as well!
I;m not merely dismissing Aristotle's criticism of the downside of freedom. In essence, he's quite right, but given that the ONLY alternative to freedom is the coerced control, command-conformity and a myriad other abuses enacted by the authoritarian centralized (fascist) state, there's nothing we can really do for the weak.....as the Nixon character in Hunter Thompson's great "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" allegedly said, "Fuck the doomed"!
Spoken like a true Keynesian.
JMK,
You just proved my point. You keep praising the murderous thug Pinochet, his enabler Friedman, and their "economic miracle". You adore corporate fascism and that sucks.
"Pinochet WOULD HAVE BEEN a typical fascist thug if it were not for his listening to "America's Economist" and Nobel Laureate, Milton Friedman and adopted an economic freedom that created "the Chilean miracle". is NOT "praise.
Milton Friedman transcended Left Right and is acknowledged by virtually ALL contemporary economists to be "America's GREATEST economist".
The Left has the goofey Paul Krugman, who can't even find work as an economist. Krugman has been reduced to a commentary columnist.
America's Founders were ALL in line with the views of Milton Friedman....I've sought out ANYone who'd refute that, but have some up empty.
IF you can find anyone who can make the case that Freidman's views were not completely compatible with Franklin's and Jefferson's let me know.....I'd love to see such a refutation.
Friedman's economic freedom policies transformed TWO dictatorships (Pinochet's and Suharto's) FROM the authoritarian tyrannies they were otherwise destined to become into economically free and incredibly dynamic economies.
I wouldn't assert such things if they weren't true.
JMK,
Are you drunk? Paul Krugman just got a Nobel price. Is n't that good enough for you? Or is the nobel committee a bunch of leftist conspirators? Wake up. Stop making weird statements.
As for Friedman, I dont care if he was smart. He supported on of the monsters of history. I dont care what was the outcome of this efforts. Fascism sucks and people who support fascism suck as well. I have the lowest of opinions of Friedman and his support for fascism in order to gratify his ego. He was some sort of a low life.
Krugman is a dope....a devoted Keynesian who actually believes that some sort of "equality" is more important than freedom/Liberty.
Fact is America's Founders all were closer to Friedman than to Krugman.
I'm quite fond of Friedman myself. The fact that he was at least partially responsible for injecting a certain amount of economic freedom into a repressive regime hardly speaks ill of him in my book.
Barry,
He collaborated with a monster like Pinochet to do that. His hands had blood after that. You can not support mass murderers no matter what the outcome. Just my opinion.
He didn't "Collaborate" with Pinochet or Suharto (who ALLEGEDLY killed over 1 MILLION communists..."not a bad start" as some might say....their adherence to Friedman's views actually DID, as Barry noted, inject some freedom into TWO otherwise authoritarian regimes.
ANYONE who respects human freedom, as LIBERTY, reveres the likes of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.
He didn't "Collaborate" with Pinochet or Suharto (who ALLEGEDLY killed over 1 MILLION communists..."not a bad start" as some might say....
JMK,
Your words are another proof that you support horrible dictators that were mass murderers. You have no shame? Just checking. You think it is ok that Suharto killed 1 million humans because they were "communists"? No shame whatsoever?
Communists are economic terrorists.
Leftists of all stripes are basically misanthropes (people haters) at heart. They are to me, what the "infidel" is to the jihadist.
But that's a personal matter BW.
Milton Friedman never annunciated my view on Communists. Milton Friedman preferred to convert those who disagreed with him and opposed freedom by the power of his arguments.
He was a great man.
I understand the futility of looking to convert a devoted misanthrope.
Friedman's economic policies were as diametrically opposed to fascism as it's possible to get. The fact that he was able to move Pinochet in that direction was to his credit, IMO.
He moved Pinochet? How did he move him? Pinochet kept killing pro-democracy Chileans and massively torturing tens of thousands of them. At the same time he was legitimized by Friedman. Economic freedom is worthless when there is no personal freedom.
Of course we should also not forget history. The coup that installed Pinochet those days was orchestrated by Henry Kissinger who is a war criminal himself.
Conformity and equality are hallmarks of authoritarianism/fascism.
The command economy is the default economy of tyrants.
Friedman spent less than an hour with Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet’s advisors were, in fact, Chileans who’d attended the University of Chicago.
"Pinochet’s economic advisers were thus University of Chicago-trained, and known as the “Chicago Boys.” But Friedman’s only direct connection was when he was invited by fellow Chicago professor Arnold Harberger--who was most closely involved with the Chilean program--to give a week of lectures and public talks in Chile in 1975.
"While there, Friedman did have one meeting with Pinochet, for less than an hour. Pinochet asked Friedman to write him a letter about his judgments on what Chilean economic policy should be, which Friedman did . He advocated quick and severe cuts in government spending and inflation, as well as instituting more open international trade policies—and to “provide for the relief of any cases of real hardship and severe distress among the poorest classes.”
"But that was the extent of his involvement with the Chilean regime—and it fit with a recurring pattern in Friedman’s career of advising with an even hand all who would listen to him. It was not a sign of approval of military authoritarianism. Friedman, in defending himself against accusations of complicity with or approval of Pinochet, noted in a 1975 letter to the University of Chicago school newspaper that he “has never heard complaints” about giving aid and comfort to the communist governments to which he had spoken, and that “I approve of none of these authoritarian regimes—neither the Communist regimes of Russia and Yugoslavia nor the military juntas of Chile and Brazil. But I believe I can learn from observing them and that, insofar as my personal analysis of their economic situation enables them to improve their economic performance, that is likely to promote not retard a movement toward greater liberalism and freedom.”
http://www.reason.com/news/show/...how/
117278.html
There is ONLY LIBERTY/freedom or tyranny/coerced equality and conformity…Friedman, like Franklin, Jefferson, von Mises and Hayek were all on the side of LIBERTY and squarely AGAINST tyranny and equality.
JMK,
You are confused more than ever. I am sorry that you support fascism. It is really unfortunate.
>Economic freedom is worthless when there is no personal freedom.
Economic freedom is often a harbinger for greater civil liberties (as was the case in Chile, BTW.)
No, it was not the case in Chile. It is just your wishful thinking that things evolved like that, but they did not. Pinochet remained criminal and brutal through his term. The eventual "transition" of power there was not unique to Chile. It happened to many dictatorships globally in countries with terrible economies as well. The problem with Friedman's actions is two fold:
1. His actions somehow legitimized one of the monsters of history.
2. The fact that he needed a repressed fascist society to apply his economic principles, shows how inconsistent with real democracy and freedom "extreme" free market economy can be.
"The fact that he needed a repressed fascist society to apply his economic principles, shows how inconsistent with real democracy and freedom "extreme" free market economy can be." (BW)
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Again your entire belief system is based on contradictory beliefs.
Friedman's economic policies = ECONOMIC LIBERTY/freedom.
Economic LIBERTY is the ONLY economic model that is consistent with a free society...and by a "free society" we mean one based on private property rights, a "fend-for-yourself Liberty or "self-ownership and limited, localized governance.
How could it be otherwise?
How can economic freedom be inconsistent with fredom or a "free society"?
Likewise the ONLY economic model consistent with authoritarianism (from Hitler to Stalin to Mao to Pol Pot) is the Command Economy - the vile economic model that seeks to put "economic justice" or "fairness and equality" ("no one having too little and no one having too much") ahead of productivity and prosperity.
No where on earth do you find people rising up AGAINST "the innate unfairness of the fre market".
You DO see them rise up against authoritarian regimes....and as I presciently noted, almost always with ill results.
JMK,
Go and have a drink. You need it.
I'll have that drink if JMK doesn't want it.
And don't underestimate the connection between economic freedom and political freedom. It's happened again and again throughout history that when a people gain a taste of economic freedom and prosperity, the will eventually demand political freedoms as well.
Regardless, I still like Friedman... for exactly the same reason I dislike dictators like Pinochet -- he was a champion of liberty.
" I still like Friedman... for exactly the same reason I dislike dictators like Pinochet -- he was a champion of liberty." (BNJ)
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Nope, to BW's simplistic way of thinking "if you support Friedman, you support Pinochet and authoritarianism".....it's an ideological bigotry rooted in blind ignorance and that's proven by the fact that BW is never bale to make an affirmative argument for the Liberalism he claims to believe in.
There is absolutely NO personal connection between Milton friedman and Augusto Pinochet.
Friedman delivered a series of lectures in Chile, then met with Pinochet for less than an hour. Pinochet reportedly asked him to write a letter outlining his view on how the Chilean economy could be improved....and miraculously enough Pinochet instituted many of Friedman's suggestions.
THOSE SUGGESTIONS transformed the Allende basketcase, with over 40% unemployment and 34% of the people living below the poverty line into "the jewel of South America"!
I do give BW credit for accepting that "equality" is incompatible with LIBERTY/freedom.
Free people are simply NOT equal in any ways.
ALL authoritarian regimes champion "fairness" and "equality" as a ruse to undermine freedom/self-ownership and to move toward universal slavery or "State ownership of the people".
And don't underestimate the connection between economic freedom and political freedom. It's happened again and again throughout history that when a people gain a taste of economic freedom and prosperity, the will eventually demand political freedoms as well.
Barry,
Can you give some examples? Pinochet is certainly not one of them.
You and I agree strongly in our dislike of religious fundamentalism and dictators of any sort and, socially, my ideas are very "libertarian". But your statement that economic freedom leads to personal freedom does not really stand. An example is China. I have been there. They have much more economic freedom now, while at the same time they have a fascist terrible regime as bad, if not worse, as the original Stalinist-Maoist regime that controlled the country in the 50s and 60s. Can you give an example of the opposite situation?
BW, I hate to break this to you, but you're NOT remotely Libertarian at all.
You are, in essence, an authoritarian.
I've seen you happily support trans fat bans, bicycle helmet laws, seat-belt laws, higher taxes (that punish/burden productive working people in order to support/reward those who will not and cannot produce), which are ALL based on the authoritarian view that "the people BELONG to the state and the State cannot allow people to take undue risks with government property".
True Libertarians oppose BOTH the "welfare" AND "warfare" state.
I am an irreligious, somewhat amoral, former Libertarian, and although I still hold a VERY strong fear of ANY and ALL centralized governmental control, I have seen Bill Bratton's miraculous crime reversal WORK in NYC (bringing the murder rate DOWN from a high of nearly 2600/year under the incompetent David Dinkins TO under 600/year under Guiliani)....after 9/11, I recognized that, among other things, the Jamie Gorelick policy that erected a wall btw the CIA and the FBI was "ineffectual and impractical within the parameters of the contemporary world".
So recent evidence suggests to me that there is more need for the "security" or "warfare" portion than conventional Libertarianism suggests. So, I have struggled to accept the conclusions that evidence has led to.
If you can't even think of a single case of ECONOMIC Liberty leading to more political freedom, that only proves how antithetical you are toward the Libertarian viewpoint. Currently China is undergoing a political transformation, because has become, as Ted Koppel's called it "the People's Republic of Capitalism" for the past decade.
JMK,
I told you to have a drink. Trust me you need it. If you can not have a drink, learn how to read. I wrote I am "libertarian" socially. On social issues. I am ultra-liberal socially and that is how most libertarians are socially. Of course and I am not libertarian on economic issues. I am ultra-liberal there as well.
YOU are NOT a “social Libertarian”, you ARE “social-emotionalist”, driven to reflexively believe that the thing that SOUNDS the most compassionate is the best policy.
Social Libertarians believe, among other things that no two people are “equal” in any appreciable measure, they believe that violent crime is rooted in a misanthropic hatred of other humans and a desire for power and control over others and NOT “the poor rebelling against the unfairness of the rich”.
You don’t seem to believe in ANY of those things, so you are NOT a Libertarian, social or otherwise.
ALL Libertarianism is rooted in the inalienable and self-evident SELF-OWNERSHIP of ALL men. As such, THAT is primarily and centrally an economic philosophy. America’s Founders were ALL true Libertarians. To put it in the vernacular, NONE of them “would spit on you if you were on fire”.
Even Hamilton, the most federalist of the group, wrote a severe rebuke for a New England town having the temerity to ask for aid after being decimated by a freak hurricane.
Ironically enough, that common sense social Libertarian viewpoint today is often misnamed “social Conservatism”.
America’s Founders were all delightfully irreligious, though, like myself, were all deeply spiritual. Like me, they were, for the most part non-denominational Deists.
They were UNLIKE myself, very averse to the strengthening of the “security” state, despite the fact that LIKE myself, they believed in the ample and widespread use of Capital punishment.
For the record, I DON’T believe in the death penalty for horse thievery/car theft as they did, BUT I DO support the death penalty for repeat child rapists.
Today, people who support trans fats bans, seat-belt laws, bicycle helmet laws, while OPPOSING random DWI stops, online pedophile stings and the NSA surveillance program are NOT “social Libertarians”, they aren’t even good “Leftists”, they are basically just naïve, common-sense challenged dopes who approach critical issues EMOTIOALLY, rather than rationally.
>I wrote I am "libertarian" socially.
Me too. And I had thought that two good things about an Obama presidency would be a stronger position on gay rights and a softening of the drug war. Looks like I got neither. Oh well.
Once again, I'll have JMK's drink if he doesn't want it.
You can certainly have JMK's drink. Even if he drinks it, it wont touch him.
Where's this acrimony coming from BW?
After all, we seem to agree on some very fundmental things!
I take your not expressing outright disagreement with facts such as Friedman neither met extensively with, nor endorsed Pinochet, that LIBERTY/freedom is antithetical to "equality" and "fairness", that America's Founders were all economic LIbertarians and would today be mistakenly called "social Conservatives", as well as the fact that Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Washington and Paine were, like Albert Einstein NON-DENOMINATIONAL DEISTS, that is they believed, as Einstein did, that while there is certainly an almost certainly "Divine order to life" and thus a "Creator" or God, manmade religions are largely allegorical in their approach to spirituality....as de facto agreement.
So, after agreeing on so many things, where's your acrimony coming from?
Okay, now that we've wasted thirty posts discussing Milton Friedman, perhaps it's worth addressing the topic at hand.
Blue, if I were you I'd do some more research into exactly what's going on in Honduras. If you're capable of moving beyond the "military = bad" mindset, you might find it's not quite what you think.
You mean Manuel Zelaya's violating Honduras' Constitution in seeking another term that their Constitution dd not permit?
Somehow, I don't see that being that much of a big deal with BW......after all, Zelaya is a Chavez ally, so I think BW sees Zelaya as being a "good guy" despite that violation of "the rule of law" because he's on "the Left team".
At least that's my guess here....
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