Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Where’s Your Hill?
When Roy Moore was in the process of being brought down in the Alabama Senate race last December, the standard response from the establishment side of the GOP was, “Look, Moore is a nutcase. This is not a court of law. There is no due process or presumption of innocence. He’s not the hill you want to die on.”
When Alex Jones was purged off of social media the response was, “This is not a government action, but the actions of private individuals. Besides, he’s a nutcase and this is not the hill you want to die on.”
Enter Brett Kavanaugh. As his reputation is destroyed by the minority party suddenly the establishment is appalled. Why? Well, primarily because even though he was nominated to SCOTUS by Donald Trump, Kavanaugh is seen as “one of us,” one of the good chaps whose pedigree of private high schools, Yale and all the right government clerkships and appointments was beyond question.
Is this the hill now? When you surrendered all of that territory before, when you tucked your collective tails between your legs and ran like scalded dogs, now you want to turn and fight? Look what you gave up before. Like the Alabama race, proceedings in the Senate Judiciary Committee are not the equivalent of a court of law. The ideas of due process and presumed innocence you gave away in December are a little hard to reclaim now. When you look at all of the private, non-government entities behind this smear job, how can you rebuke them?
Principles are funny things. If you don’t apply them to the people you dislike then they are unlikely to be of any use when you really need them.
Published in Politics
And that, my friend, is the whole point of this stupid thing.
LOL. I got your point exactly. You missed mine.
I thought the basis of libertarianism was the nonaggression principle. I thought good libertarians thought any voluntary behavior between two individuals was moral. Or are you about to start laying down good old Judeo Christian morality as a guide?
I think that it is very unfair and inappropriate to lump together all “Republicans” here.
The President has good, bad, and ugly qualities. Early in the primaries, a significant majority of Republican primary voters did not support him. He was very, very low in the polls here at Ricochet, as I recall. I was aghast at his success.
He had, and has, some impressive qualities. He effectively fights back against the smears and tactics of the Left. And yes, I know, he sometimes employs the same tactics, which I did not like during the primaries and still do not like, on occasion.
Many of us made the logical and practical choice, given the options presented, and decided to first vote for, and now support, the President. On a policy front, he has done far better than I expected or hoped. There is often broad agreement about this, even with folks in the NeverTrump camp. It does certainly not mean that we approve of the President’s bad and immoral sexual behavior in the past. I simply prefer the President to the alternative, which was a second President Clinton.
Further, I was not quiet about the President’s flaws, nor are other good Conservatives and Republicans who support him, though we see little reason to keep repeating our objections constantly, because that only empowers our political opponents. Which, by the way, seems to be exactly what you’re doing when you import the discussion of the President’s sexual immorality into a thread about Judge Kavanaugh.
So no, I reject your argument that if I support a candidate, it must mean that I have no objection to anything that he’s ever done. Wrong. And darn it, Fred, you must know that full well.
Please stop smearing good people. The Left doesn’t need any more help in that regard.
You thought wrong.
Libertarianism is about man’s relation to the state. It has nothing to say about who should have voluntary sex with whom other than that it’s not the business of the state.
Also, no Republican has ever stripped at a convention.
Nor Democrat.
But a Libertarian did. And nothing can ever change that.
Hahahahaha
There in is the issue then. Government is not just about Man and State, but Man and Man. Too weak a government cannot protect us from each other.
And boy, we need that too.
“If this hadn’t happened to Moore, this wouldn’t be happening to Kavanaugh”. Like climate change, it’s a bold statement that can’t be proven or disproven. Like it’s our fault Alabama picked that loser. Or that if we all clapped our hands, like kids bringing Tinkerbell back to life, that we could have saved Moore.
Customs do differ around the country. In my old neighborhood, if a 35 year old tried to date someone’s teenage daughter, he’d get his jaw broken. I think Moore’s eager defenders should recognize there’s going to be no great feelings of guilt in the rest of the GOP because he couldn’t persuade his own state to elect him.
Sure they are. They are ahead by at least by one less drowning girl.
And freed the slaves.
That’s not quite the thrust of my post. The thrust is that the lack of a response, the timidity in which the national party met those unsubstantiated allegations, gave the Democrats confidence that it could be repeated with impunity.
And yes, no matter what you personally think of Moore and his politics, there are common threads. Both charges are so old as to be unprovable forensically or with eyewitnesses. It served as template. The Democrats were certain that the GOP would do now what they did then, turn tail and run.
It’s reasonable to find some common threads, and I appreciate the response (damn, this is a busy thread. Kudos for that.) I still wouldn’t lump Alex Jones in, because that’s a different case altogether.
But okay, let’s look at the GOP response to Moore. What, exactly, were we supposed to do? For one thing the allegations looked, and look, true. Moore’s whole selling point his entire career has been social conservatism, Mr. Holier-than-thou. To most of the rest of the country, what was described was immoral behavior. Not illegal; but repellent just the same.
Actually, this is another of those areas where there is a massive double standard. I recall a case while I was in NYC of a 17 year old boy and his 42 year old boyfriend up a tree naked in Central Park for an extended period as a protest against the disapproval shown by the kid’s parents. The main topic of discussion was not the age difference, but how hateful and bigoted the parents were.
So back to today’s events, YES, Kavanaugh IS the hill on which I am willing to die. If Republicans abandon him and give into this despicable, craven and repugnant – and now we know media coordinated – attack, then I say screw it! What’s the point of having Republicans represent us when they don’t stand for anything anyway? I mean, are we seriously entertaining claims of a gang-rape initiative at Georgetown Prep in the 80s? Are we really at this point? This is Bork and Thomas and UVA and Duke Lacrosse and “mattress girl” all rolled into one! Words fail to describe the intensity of my anger over this situation as I think about my husband and my three sons (not to mention my two daughters who have to navigate this toxic culture and hopefully find men willing to have relationships given that the social rules change every 5 minutes). End this GOP. End it.
One small disadvantage of having something like 12 million people is that obvious fact that you get plenty of kooks as well. Regardless of what it says in the Village Voice (now defunct, BTW), try the Blacks of Harlem, the Latinos of the lower east side, the Italians of Bensonhurst or the Irish of Bayside for NYC’s real opinion. Speak to the fathers of teenage girls in any of those groups and describe Roy Moore’s behavior, and you’re not gonna get “Well, they do things different down there, I suppose”.
I think they should have emphasized that there is a process for dealing with this these kinds of things, even post election.
It may have been a stupid thing for the primary voters to give him the nomination but at the same time, it’s kinda stupid for the party not to support their voters. After the tepid-to-at-times hostile response national party figures gave to their presidential nominee it reinforced the idea that D.C. Republicans were actively working against their own base. That is a whole different level of destructive force. Loyalty, support and trust are all two-way streets. At some time (like right now) you need to rally the base. They won’t rally if they feel betrayed.
As for Alex Jones, I totally acknowledge that he’s an idiot. I cringe every time Drudge links to InfoWars. But at the same time, there exists such a chasam on what is and is not acceptable discourse and exactly who gets to decide that, I choose the market. Let him prattle on and offend his way into oblivion. He will become, like others before him, his own worst enemy. But once you acquiesce to their definition of “hate speech” and become comfortable with the idea that political censorship is fine as long as it’s outsourced to private entities, it may be entirely too late for us to maintain a space in the public arena.
315 comments.
My goodness.
Odd. I thought it also dealt with peoples interactions with each other. As long as they didn’t cause that other person harm.
“Libertarians believe that each person owns his own life and property and has the right to make his own choices as to how he lives his life and uses his property – as long as he simply respects the equal right of others to do the same.”
Don’t see “government” mentioned in there anywhere.
Fair enough. Here’s my disagreements:
By a process for dealing with the Moore case after the election, I’m guessing that you mean the idea, floated at the time, that Moore could be elected and then the Senate would have to deal with the charges. I don’t see why that would have been good for the GOP. It would put us in exactly the position we’re in now, except for one semi-lethal difference: the women would be credible, and the candidate/Senator wouldn’t.
Second, by the base, I’m supposing you mean the party in Alabama. The base of Trump voters that I know of were indifferent to Moore or laughed him off. There isn’t one unified national base to get outraged, especially now that we have a president with few ties to conventional Jeb-n-Mitt politics.
Jones is a tough case. Despite what some people have said, non-conservatives have and do get kicked off the media platforms; Palestinian activists, for example. I don’t know how free speech absolutist I want to get. For me, at least, Jones stepped out of the free speech arena with Sandy Hook. That’s libel and/or slander, which has no protection. Bang, done, finished. But if he hadn’t done that I’d have had a far harder time pulling the chain on him.
The accusers have been under the influence of mob mentality since Jan 20th 2017. They have been told repeatedly that it is a virtue to hate Trump, that he is Hitler, that any activity that undermines his authority is good and decent.
Along with the above tenets of The New Faith of The Progressive Movement is the tenet that women have been oppressed for so long in such horrific ways that no woman should ever not be believed, even if there is no evidence. Because women are to be honored, no matter what.
When you have Jimmy Fallon standing on a stage and telling a nation wide audience that should Kavanaugh be approved by the Senate to go on to the Supreme Court, that he Fallon will accept that, as long as the next activity after that approval is the removal of Kavanaugh’s penis, you realize how little sanity these people possess. And right now an oath sworn to a God Who so many of these non-believers deride for being patriarchal means absolutely nothing…
Prove it.
A flawed person can support moral standards, even if he doesn’t meet them himself.
Are Libertarians, then?
November 9th, 2016.
Yeah. They kicked that clown out of the party.
The Republicans, by contrast, made theirs President.
I’d add a “Hahahahaha,” but that’s obnoxious. And, of course, the joke is on all of us.
I’m not trying to.
And yet, you are.
Okay, so just to clarify, I’m not interested in smearing good people. There were millions of people who pulled the lever for Donald Trump because, despite how horrible a man he is, they thought they had no alternative. I fully accept that.
My comments were in response to smug crowing about how Republicans are somehow morally superior.
Don’t know how long he was on it, but Twitter has been around since 2006. Sandy Hook happened in 2012. If it was indeed handled when it was said, I’d say “right on.” But not six years after the fact. It’s not suddenly inappropriate.
I’m not comfortable with censorship just because it’s outsourced. And if it’s libel then sue him into oblivion.
Which takes us back to the question of publisher or common carrier.
The only joke is on those who still whine about the outcome of the last presidential election and provide rhetorical cover for the left’s perpetual clown show.
He didn’t strip. In fact, he has put into place a number of conservative advances. Far more effective than the Libertarian. Furthermore, I have seen the Libertarian convention, and a bigger bunch of freaks are hard to find outside a BDSM convention. Really, Fred, your party is a party of weridoes. Thought to be fair, you libertarians all seem to disavow the Libertarian party. How sad is that?
Then again, libertarians, small or big “L” never seem to get power. Maybe there is something wrong with what you are selling? Hard to tell since all you seem to care about is moral victories. How things actually turn out never seems to be a big deal.
Oh wait, unless a more conservative man you don’t like is elected over a leftist woman who has defended her husband against anything you can throw at Trump. Who did you vote for Fred? The Pot dealer? Maybe it was the man who did not pay his campaign staff? You sure can pick them. I find it amazing you adopt a holier than thou attitude, and yet had no man or woman of purity to point the person you voted for.
Freed the slaves.
Did the libertarians free the slaves? We know the Democrats fought to keep slaves.
But that is in the past. How about the Republicans are against murdering unborn children and the Democrats are for the murder of unborn children.
I’d say that is worth moral preening.