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The Republican Crack-Up Revisited

Posted by khalling 9 years, 3 months ago to Politics
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Very interesting analysis of the struggles within the GOP to stay as a meaningful party. From the article: "Put another way, there has been no basis for Republican unity in principle, except perhaps for a strong national defense. However, on matters of domestic policy, constitutional limitations on government power, economics, immigration, trade, civil liberties, individual rights...on just about everything you can name, Republicans are all over the map. There's no single principle, let alone broader political philosophy, that holds the party factions together."


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  • -1
    Posted by $ jbrenner 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I do not believe that all humans are inherently evil. The original sin argument is the weakest of all Catholic doctrine. That being said, I have yet to meet anyone who has lived a perfect life. My opinion of humanity is that humans are capable of being heroic as Rand defined in her definition of Objectivism, but that humans typically fail to consistently live up to their own ethical codes, let alone anyone else's. Humans live up to their own ethical codes the vast majority of the time, but the cases people remember are the cases in which humans do not live up to their own ethical codes. I think that my view of humanity is neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but rather realistic.
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  • Posted by dbhalling 9 years, 3 months ago
    Ultimately both the R and D party are based on David Hume's philosophical ideas. The D's diverted along the Hume, Kant, Marx line and the R's along the Hume, Burke, Hayek line. This means that the Rs and Ds ultimately agree about fundamental principles, just not about the details. The key to real change is to eliminate Hume's philosophy from respectable company.

    However this is difficult even here in the gulch.
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  • Posted by term2 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I am not hoping that somehow objectivist principles will be adopted by Trump or any of the other remotely electable candidates actually.

    It will take a lot of education of a LOT of people before that would could happen. BUT, in the meantime all we can do is use our votes to pick the least bad politicians, and perhaps ones who would cut down the use of government to further the aims of the misguided socialist types
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  • Posted by dbhalling 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes the environmentalists do not agree with the unions, who do not agree with the feminists, who do not agree with the one world government people.
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  • Posted by richrobinson 9 years, 3 months ago
    I honestly feel a similar divide is happening on the Democrat side. Each party has has their "base" which is too small to win a general election so they try to buy the rest of the votes they need. After years of this the moochers are now able to control the two parties. A total mess.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 9 years, 3 months ago
    What I have asserted for nearly a year is that the problem of the Republican Party is one of classical marketing: their failure results from the attempt to be something ideologically to everyone. The Democrats have shifted ideologically further left with each decade so that now they are indistinguishable from socialists (neither Hillary Clinton nor Debbie Wasserman-Shultz has been able to differentiate). One of the results (intentional or not) is that they have a very targeted message, a very defined ideology, and can therefore rely on a loyal base while they seek to persuade others.

    What that has done is left much of the rest of the country looking for representation. Instead of focusing on their core constituency (conservatives), however, the Republicans have attempted to mold an ideological message which appeals to many ideologically separate groups. And this has utterly failed. In marketing, focusing one's message is key to driving both retention of existing customers and the development of new ones. If one wants to attract a new market, one creates a new product line (see for example Toyota and Lexus).

    Take the appellation "RINO" for instance. That term only started to appear after Bill Clinton assumed office and began driving the Democratic Party towards the Progressive/Socialist mantra, disenfranchising the socially liberal but fiscally conservative base which used to form the backbone of the Democratic Party. Because there was still a sizeable contingent of voters with these values, prospective representatives of these districts adopted these same values. Because they weren't Progressive enough for the Democrats, however, they couldn't get funding in these areas from the Democratic Party so they appealed to the Republicans, who saw only a chance to finally compete in areas they had not been able to get a foothold in previously. The problem is that the Republicans failed to see the common marketing problem of "brand dilution" which results when a company tries to be everything to everyone (see Microsoft) and the resulting product problems which result. I would also point out that in times when the conservative base of the Republican Party has risen up (Contract with America, Paul Ryan's budget proposals, etc.) that they have been tremendously popular and been supported by an energetic base.

    This still, however, only accounts for between 30-40% of Americans today, with a similar quotient on the Progressive side, which leaves a not-insubstantial "moderate" or "independent" middle ground that are largely the ones who determine election outcomes. What I'd like to see is the Republican Party split and either assume the mantle of the Libertarians or take back up the mantle now largely seen as the Tea Party movement. If the Republican Party does not focus on a platform, however, they will merely continue to hemorrhage voter support because of their lack of consistent core principles.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    True, but Greek civilization was probably the first society worthy of such inventions.
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  • Posted by wiggys 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    he is wrong. I find it virtually impossible to tell the difference between the parties with respect to the actions that they take. Just don't listen but observe what they do as Ayn Rand did and wrote about years ago. yesterday I believe some one on the forum commented about something Ayn Rand wrote about many years ago which rings true today as does virtually everything she wrote.
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  • Posted by $ Snezzy 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Archimedes was an inventor, as was the creator of the Antikythera mechanism. Antiquity surely had others as well.
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  • Posted by jabuttrick 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Galt would not want to be President. As for Trump, you can always hope, but the chance that he will suddenly adopt any philosophical principles and apply them to politics is dim at best.
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  • Posted by term2 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    When the people are ready, the leaders will emerge. I am hoping that Trump is responding to at least some people seeing the cracks in our governmental system and will expose them to the light of day. Perhaps not in a principled way, but at least we get to see whats going on without political correctness getting in the way.

    If John Galt ran for president today, he would be soundly defeated as the people are not ready for him and probably wont be during our lifetimes (at least mine).
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  • Posted by Abaco 9 years, 3 months ago
    Wow, that's very good. The party is fractured and we certainly need to get back to championing individualism first. My own observation several years ago was that the GOP had become statist. That ended it for me as it goes against everything I believe. Apparently, there are enough like me to have really corroded the party with our departures.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The error in your logic is that you have much too positive a view of humanity. The world has once again become subhuman, or at least unfit for invention.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    If you are referring to me, you have discovered how I think I have already shrugged. Becoming a professor, instead of being an entrepeneur as I once was, pays just enough bills to subsist until invention is once again, if ever again, properly rewarded.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I suggest you re-read one of your own blogs, and consider why I have shrugged. You may not think I have shrugged, but I do.

    http://hallingblog.com/2011/07/30/atl...

    Dictators and demagogues arise in societies devoid of ideas, and in places where force trumps ideas. That would be everywhere in the world at this time. The world has once again become subhuman.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The vast majority of the world is still quite primitive and ruled by those using force rather than ideas. If the converse was true, woudn't the world be a more peaceful, productive place?

    Newton couldn't have existed in China or Africa. That is correct. As it was, both he and Galileo were persecuted. Galileo's persecution is infamous. Rand was correct in saying that the one commonality of new ideas is that they are ... opposed.

    Interestingly, Newton's persecution still happens to this day, particularly here in the Gulch over his "mysticism". He called it science, or at least discovery. Now it is derided as "alchemy".

    I do not deny the power of ideas. Ideas resulting in positive reality changes only occur in cultures that are prepared for them. You yourself have asked, db, "Why has inventing been concentrated in the last two centuries in relatively small populations of the U.S. and western countries?"

    Rand was right, and you were in a different thread. As you say in your own blog:
    http://hallingblog.com/2011/07/30/atl...

    "51) Loc 22594 “…when I worked in your world, I was an inventor. I was one of a profession that came last in human history and will be first to vanish on the way back to the sub-human. An inventor is a man who asks ‘Why?’ of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.”

    It is interesting that Rand points out that being an “inventor” was one of the last professions in human history. Perhaps the first person to take on the profession of a being an inventor was Galileo, who lived in Venice. Venice passed the first modern patent laws in 1474. The U.S. has been the preeminent producer of people who made their living as inventors. The America Invents Act is another step along the path of ensuring that no one will make a living as an inventor in the U.S. anymore.

    In fact, whenever you see great periods of prosperity, you see large numbers of new inventions. Whenever you see a lack of inventors inventing, you can be assured we are stagnating economically."

    We will continue to disagree about dictators and demagogues. They ARE leaders, but only in places DEVOID of ideas and full of ANTI-IDEAS.

    What allowed Lenin to start a revolution in Russia?
    1) Financial backing of JP Morgan et al, the Rothschild heirs, etc., all of whom were heavily invested in the perpetuation of war;
    2) the "ideas" of Karl Marx, which should properly be characterized as "anti-ideas" because they REQUIRE envy of achievement and subjugation of would be inventors; and
    3) the presence of an existing war (WW1) that the Russian serfs cared nothing about.

    You and many in the Gulch underestimate the power of those who use force to accomplish their objectives. While I am not endorsing a Star Wars philosophy, you and others underestimate "the power of the Dark Side".

    The fact that so many of us are here is testimony to the fact that I have "vanished" from the world of invention and that the world has once again become "subhuman".

    Know that I am working on inventions, but that they will not be seen by the outside world until that world is once again fit for me to exist.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Look at the utter inability to use reason that results as DB pointed out. Students supporting everything Trump is trumpeting then opposed to him in favor of someone who is the focal nexus of the same philosophy.

    Guess it depends which professor is the campus darling this month.
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  • Posted by dbhalling 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    J what is amazing is that you work with ideas every day and you see the power of those ideas to create things. Then you make statements like the one above denying the power of ideas.

    What allowed Lenin to start a revolution in Russia? Marx. What allowed Marx to get away with his philosophy? Kant. Who provided the ideas that allowed a Kant? Hume.

    You are also the product of ideas (philosophy) at least at work. You are the direct product of Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and Locke. Of course that is not to say that you have not accomplished amazing things in engineering (not philosophy), but a Newton could never have existed if he had be born and grew up in China or Africa.

    Dictators and Demagogues are not leaders, they are followers. They require a world in which many people have accepted the underlying ideas even if they have never hear of Kant, Hume, Aristotle or Locke.
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  • Posted by dbhalling 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Where do you think these dictators come from or get their following. Politicians are just pawns of philosophers. And you are being one of those practical men. Time to read Rand's Philosophy Who Needs It. Here is the Lecture she gave to West point by the same name. http://howardlaughed.com/2015/09/phil...
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I didn't say that Objectivism was a political party. Political parties, however, should have a philosophical core set of values.

    Keynes was way off base on this quote, as he was with most of his philosophy and economics. The world is largely ruled by dictators and demagogues, rather than the ideas of economists and political philosophers. If the world were largely ruled by economists and political philosophers, it might be a better place, depending on the economist and/or political philosopher.
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