[Fasces]

You are willing to violently spread your ideology then?

[JohnRawls]

I see your progressing very well on the pofo road to libertarian enlightment. (Taxizen)

Libertarian(FREEDOM TO ALL,GOVERMENT IS EVIL) ---> Quazi-Libertarian(FREEDOM TO AMERICA,GOVERNMENT IS EVIL!) ---> NEOCON(FREEDOM TO AMERICA,GOVERNMENT IS GOOD!) ---> Fascism/Communism (Whatever you prefer more) ---> ENLIGHTMENT(ONLY ATTAINED BY QATZ, THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF UNDERSTANDING!)

[Pants-of-dog]

Yeah it would such a pity if local systems of self-government like the khmer rouge were to be replaced with something benign. oh my! oh how horrible. Nasty white people! Nice to see what you are really made of POD. Racism and genocide.

Why are you claiming that local systems of self-governance in Canada are like the Khmer Rouge?

[Rei Murasame]

In an ironic way maybe what he is saying does in fact stand within libertarian ideology. Taxizen is just applying the libertarian 'non-aggression principle' on a planetary basis, and then refusing to recognise the sovereignty of other governments unless they are libertarian.

This has the side effect however of transforming him into a world policeman, but a world policeman must get its funding from somewhere, and under libertarian ideology it becomes pretty clear where that funding will be coming from, and thus, by proxy, whose interests will be invoked to decide who it is expedient to attack.

So what I'd like to know is who would decide what country it is expedient to attack? For example, I'd like the price of rare earths to go down so let's attack North Korea. Also, North Korea is a massive human rights abuser, so let's also attack it for that reason too. Also, removing North Korea would be a strategic gain for various countries, so that's a good reason to also attack North Korea.

However, that kind of perfect synchronisation doesn't happen everywhere. So Taxizen hasn't explained how this would work with examples where, say, there are no natural resources to get access to, or there is no readily-apparent strategic gain from toppling a government, or an example where say, people inside Taxizen's state are making money off the human-rights-abusing foreign government that he wants to attack, but are simultaneously in his government.

Also, another problem would come from semi-feudalist wars. Under libertarian logic, if peasants turn socialist and revolt against semi-federalist landowners in some country somewhere, would Taxizen's 'Benevolent Bellicosity' be directed toward helping the landowners, or the peasants? If he chooses to side with the landowners to defend their property rights, what if the landowners start raping the peasants to intimidate them, and what if they start shooting non-combatants? Is he forced to change sides, or does he have to accept that the war has undisciplined soldiers in it and then call for them to be disciplined? And if his sole purpose is to secure human rights, what weighting would the main goal of securing property rights have, against the possible crimes that may be committed against those rights in the process of trying to defend those same rights?

[SolarCross]

Rei - It doesn't have to be so ugly. That's not my vision at all. I know realpolitik, game theory all that Machiavellian stuff, I get it, I can do it, but I am looking to do something enlightened and good. Politics is such an ugly, ignoble business but it doesn't have to be, not if better men take part.

[mikema63]

And thus monarchism?!?!?!

[SolarCross]

And thus monarchism?!?!?!

Yeah, monarchy is one step smaller than a minarchy, and it works. Anarchy is untried, republics are failure prone, democracies are nonsensical. What else is there? Apart from anything else they are usually popular, in a way republics never are. You are an American so you can't understand. You actually know nothing of the world or of history. You don't realise that the US is an unusually successful republic the rest are a fucking mess.

[Pants-of-dog]

Your statements only make sense if you pretend that developed democracies are just as oppressive as the most violently oppressive military dictatorships of the developing world.

[SolarCross]

Your statements only make sense if you pretend that developed democracies are just as oppressive as the most violently oppressive military dictatorships of the developing world.

Don't kid yourself. "developed" democracies are a circus of imbeciles and shysters. All the magic that makes the world go round is the market economy, the democracy is just dead weight.

[JohnRawls]

Thats some Fascist cool aid right there Taxizen. Perhaps sound communistic also but you approach it from the other side of the prosperity spectrum.

[Pants-of-dog]

Don't kid yourself. "developed" democracies are a circus of imbeciles and shysters. All the magic that makes the world go round is the market economy, the democracy is just dead weight.

What does that have to do with the argument?

Do you just completely forget the topic of conversation and randomly respond to certain key words?

[SolarCross]

Thats some Fascist cool aid right there Taxizen. Perhaps sound communistic also but you approach it from the other side of the prosperity spectrum.

All my life i have been searching for a Great Work, finally I have found it. The knighthood will indeed be somewhat communistic, not in the dismal and shabby way of the marxist but in the romantic and holy way of the churchman. Huzzah!

[slybaldguy]

Yes. This time you would magically not land on our shores, plant your flag, take our resources, enslave our people and destroy local systems of self-governance, just like every other group of Europeans who were trying to "help" us.

Who is 'us'? Aren't you a white Canadian of European origin, p-o-d?

[Pants-of-dog]

Who is 'us'? Aren't you a white Canadian of European origin, p-o-d?

What does that have to do with the argument?

[slybaldguy]

Since when were you advancing an argument? You appear to be just spreading white liberal guilt around the place.

[Pants-of-dog]

Since when were you advancing an argument? You appear to be just spreading white liberal guilt around the place.

So it has nothing to do with the argument.

Okay, now that we have that cleared up, what are you doing in this thread? Trolling me because I'm not racist and sexist enough for you?

[Lightman]

European constitutional monarchies are functionally identical to their republican counterparts.

[Harmattan]

Thus is the doctrine of Benevolent Bellicosity: it is a moral imperative for those able to develop martial capability to do so and to use it actively to seek out and destroy malevolent practice.

Is this different from the "humanitarian intervention" (aka "responsibility to protect") theorized by Bernard Kouchner in the early 2k's and that he failed to make the UN adopt?

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

This is progressing fairly rapidly towards fascist imperialism. Heisenberg, among others, have pointed out the moral ambiguities of your supposed ideological stance on interventionism, Taxizen, and I noticed you had nothing more than some vague comments and interestingly a few specific examples when Heisenberg asked you to elaborate on your position. You mentioned Duvalier, Pol Pot, and Mugabe. These men were/are pretty awful and I'd bet most people who on PoFo wouldn't shed a tear when Mugabe dies. Getting rid of Mugabe isn't going to simply solve the problem. As we saw in Uganda when Idi Amin vacated his position and his former rival Obote retook power, it didn't solve Uganda's situation to go through another regime change. Getting rid of Mugabe will not solve Zimbabwe's situation. Zimbabwe's political and economic situation is very complicated and in shambles; a regime change will not sweep away those problems.

How would invading Zimbabwe or pressuring Mugabe to leave solve Zimbabwe's problems? Even if his long time rival Tsvangirai, who is currently PM in a shaky power sharing deal, were to take power, or anyone else, how would the system in Zimbabwe change? It is naive to think it would. Invading Zimbabwe, would leave the occupiers with the task of rebuilding the country. As we've seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, the West is too incompetent at this and unable to do so. Despite constantly reporting on endemic corruption in Iraqi and Afghan culture, our media seems largely unwilling to report on the massive amount of "lost" funds managed by the West meant to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, Iraq is teetering on the brink of complete collapse and Afghanistan is still in the midst of a still-growing Taliban resurgence.

How can the West do a better job of invading countries elsewhere, destroying their institutions and infrastructure, conducting indiscriminate bombing campaigns, and rebuilding them successfully if it has shown it can't do so in the last decade? Why should the working class and middle class of the West continue to fund and support senseless killings and bombings and invasions across the world, and the continued destabilization of regions around the world by corrupt, incompetent Western governments? This failed mentality of Western interventionism and cultural superiority needs to be reexamined. Unless the goal is to deliberately destabilize every region we involve ourselves in militarily (which goes contrary to your claimed positions), it is an utter waste of money and lives.

And of course when I say "the West" I am meaning American-backed military alliances. The UK does not have the power projection to launch invasions of places today like Cambodia, much less Zimbabwe, Syria, Saudi Arabia (an absolute dictatorship/monarchy marked by extreme repression, violence, brutality, and lack of civil freedoms), China, Belarus, etc. Who else besides Mugabe is on a current list of "bad people" you think the UK/Western powers should overthrow in the name of morality? Western leaders like Bush, Blair, etc are responsible for the senseless killing of hundreds of thousands of people: do Western leaders get free passes for killing countless people simply because they are Western like yourself? And if you were somehow in power and able to invade countries as freely as the US has throughout the last century, surely you would be aware you are knowingly causing the deaths of countless thousands, or millions, of innocent civilians: this means you could need to be removed from power and held accountable for your actions and your crimes, right? Or is it OK for Western leaders to kill people indiscriminately?

[SolarCross]

Is this different from the "humanitarian intervention" (aka "responsibility to protect") theorized by Bernard Kouchner in the early 2k's and that he failed to make the UN adopt?

I am not greatly familiar with this theory or its author so I am not sure. I have googled him and I note he is a co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde, so probably yes there is quite a high degree of similarity.

When we are talking of humanitarian intervention on the level of states rather than that of individuals a troublesome concept comes up "sovereignty". To my mind there is no such thing, governments are corporations essentially, just legal fictions, human beings have sovereignty, legal fictions are lesser not superior. The actual human beings that operate the legal fiction of the government should only have their sovereignty respected in so far as they respect the sovereignty of other human beings. This I call the mandate of heaven. To the extent that they have violated the sovereignty of human beings those governors lose the mandate of heaven and may be rightfully deposed by anyone that can. Naturally anyone that does depose them is no less subject to the mandate of heaven.