{"id":11876,"date":"2013-12-27T00:20:12","date_gmt":"2013-12-27T08:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=11876"},"modified":"2013-12-27T00:20:12","modified_gmt":"2013-12-27T08:20:12","slug":"libertarian-insanitea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/12\/27\/libertarian-insanitea\/","title":{"rendered":"Libertarian InsaniTEA"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is popular among the young today to say they are Libertarian, because Libertarians are typically anti-war and pro-marijuana legalization.  Sadly, most who identify with libertarianism do not realize that it is usually just a front for Republican InsaniTEA.  Here is an article that projects some key Libertarian assumptions forward, so you can see the dystopias that would result.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"1227Libertarian\"These four libertarian\/conservative dystopias are offered, as Rod Serling used to say in "The Twilight Zone," "for your consideration."\u2026<\/p>\n

…1. What if you cut all benefits?<\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve heard it from Sen. Rand Paul and other conservatives this winter: unemployment benefits increase unemployment. It\u2019s an enormously destructive idea, though absurd on its face. It’s like the argument that hospitals create sick people; after all, there are so many of them there.<\/p>\n

We usually consider such thinking "primitive" in modern societies.<\/p>\n

Yet that’s exactly what libertarian\/conservatives are arguing when they say that unemployment benefits increased or extend unemployment. There is no credible evidence to suggest that this is true. There is overwhelming evidence suggesting that unemployment is caused by other factors, including poor consumer demand and lack of business confidence.<\/p>\n

Right now there are nearly three job seekers for every job opening. That means there are no jobs available for two out of the three. They will not \u201cgo out and find work\u201d once their unemployment benefits stop. They will simply plunge into deeper economic misery. They will become like accident victims who are denied hospital care because it would \u201cfoster an attitude of dependency.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, as absurd and unkind as this thinking is, there\u2019s something even more frightening about it: This kind of thinking never ends. If you believe that unemployment benefits cause unemployment, you\u2019ll cut those benefits off. That could throw millions of people onto the welfare rolls. But if you believe that welfare causes dependency, you\u2019ll cut those benefits off, too. That will leave people utterly dependent on programs like heating oil subsidies, food assistance, and even homeless shelters.<\/p>\n

But if you believe that those programs create dependency, too….<\/p>\n

It never stops: Close down the homeless shelters. Shut down the Salvation Army. Make it illegal to throw a starving person a coin or toss a blanket over them as they lay on the sidewalk. This logic only ends one way: in a hellish dystopia where the underclass is starving, homeless and dying in droves.<\/p>\n

If that seems melodramatic, ask a libertarian\/conservative this question: When will you know that your theory is wrong?\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Alternet<\/a>><\/p>\n

I have given you just one of the four scenarios that the article presents, so I urge you to click through for the other three.  While Libertarianism talks of individual rights above all, they ignore the consequences of situations in which the rights of one person or group impinge on the rights of others.  When they do, Republicans call it freedom.  I call it InsaniTEA.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is popular among the young today to say they are Libertarian, because Libertarians are typically anti-war and pro-marijuana legalization.  Sadly, most who identify with libertarianism do not realize that it is usually just a front for Republican InsaniTEA.  Here is an article that projects some key Libertarian assumptions forward, so you can see the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}