On 9/7/19 3:02 PM, Punk wrote:
On Sat, 07 Sep 2019 08:20:26 -0700 Razer <g2s@riseup.net> wrote:
Because libertarians don't meet her ethical or erotic standards
isn't assange a libertarian?
That "is" business presents lots of pitfalls, especially when applied to humans. Assange certainly represents himself as anti-authoritarian, and his actions speak way louder than his words on that front. But our Libertarians present as crypto-fascists, given that implementing their utopian visions would only remove the few restraints on our present rulers, shifting the balance of power in society even further in their direction. Note that by "rulers" I mean folks like the 500 billionaires who presently own 1/2 the capital assets in the United States, population 360 million or so. "It takes about 3/4 million peasants to support one dominant billionaire." Not shocked yet? Check out this simple graph of U.S. income distribution, scaled relative to familiar physical objects: http://lcurve.org Assange does pay attention to political power in a process oriented perspective. See his "The non linear effects of leaks on unjust systems of governance" ( https://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf ). So I doubt he could identify with the "Rand Fan" version of Libertarianism. That leaves Anarchism. Some anarchists do call themselves Libertarian, to avoid personal blowback from the demonization of anarchists - one of the few propaganda lines /all/ repressive States agree on - but somehow that don't sound like our Mendax. He does seem to favor the rights of local communities over those of absentee landlords, which strikes me as an anti-Libertarian position. Like the Marxists before them, Libertarians present their proposed changes as a bridge to Utopian anarchy. But a familiar model involving Lucy, Charlie Brown and a football seems to fit both cases... :o/