8 Comments

  1. LR

    I’m lost for words. We are not worthy. You are the King. You’ve got him to admit he made a mistake! And it’s not long since you were telling DK he was wasting his time. You sly old dog!

    What made me laugh the most was this bit,

    “I’ve given myself the green light to be as rude as I like to anyone who took his side in that discussion.”

    Like anyone else is responsible for what DK says except DK.

    Respect.

  2. Actually, he had a point – to the outsider looking in, my position did appear inconsistent. It wasn’t immediately obvious why I was so annoyed.

  4. Indeed. There is a lesson in communication in there, though. One of the things I emphasise to trainees is that the written word loses nuance usually conveyed by body language and tone of voice. A light touch is often misinterpreted.

    Despite my careful use of language, it’s happened to me…

  5. Peter,

    I do recall that quite a few people jumped into DK’s post – the one that I think it was reasonable to be offended by – and took his side without any qualification. When you do that, you stop being an impartial bystander. If I were to write a post calling you something obnoxious, and someone else agreed with my post without pulling me up on the personal elements of it, then I would say that the commenter would lose the right to complain about being insulted – don’t you agree?

    I’m surprised that libertarians are so supportive of DK when he does this. When you don’t pull him up on it, it makes the whole position look like a cranky one. He’s hardly an actual libertarian in any recognisable sense – he’s largely just a very very right wing fanatic who shows no clue of understanding how the world works. It’s quite confusing the way that he uses that ‘stupidity’ tag on so many of his posts. Subject or object?

    One thing that the left is beginning to realise is that ‘my enemy’s enemy isn’t always my friend.’ Since I got involved in that bloggertarian spat, I’ve found a few libertarians who appear to know what the word really means – but for the most part, the most noticeable self-proclaimed representatives of that perspective seem to be people who just charge around calling politicians (and Polly T) a cunt all the time.

    You’ll all get tarred with the same brush (though as I’m not much of a libertarian, I suppose this shouldn’t bother me that much).

    (There’s that berk with the Auschwitz photoshopping on his blog as well – don’t you sometimes feel the urge to ask him not to link to you until he gets rid of that?)

  6. Actually, DK does understand what libertarianism is, indeed, he understands very well. He is, however, the epitome of the tactless man who voices what the rest of us are secretly thinking; Mr Angry from Tunbridge Well personified. You either find this amusing or you don’t. I might not call Polly Toynbee a cunt, but I am appalled by her totalitarian outlook; that the state should be involved in every facet of our lives.

    Libertarianism is a simple enough philosophy, it is that we should be free to live our lives as we see fit. Negative liberty. I do not subscribe to the concept of positive liberty – it is not for the state to give us liberty as it is not theirs to give. Of course there is going to be compromise; it takes a pretty extreme type to argue that all taxation is theft while at the same time arguing for the rule of law and robust defence of the nation, for example. What we need to achieve collectively, needs to be paid for, after all.

    I appreciate now that you made a mistake, and accept that, but at the time, you had attributed to me a series of positions that I do not take – so, it was reasonable of me to be tetchy given that you had not (or appeared not to have) read what I have actually written. Hence my comment on DK’s post.

    Yes, DK is much further to the right economically than I am, so I will frequently disagree with him, yet still find him amusing. The crankiness is part of the style – and that is all it is. Unless you think we really plan to string up our elected representatives from the nearest lamp post? What we are doing here may be hyperbole, and done for effect, but the sense of disenfranchisement is real enough, hence the angry tone and the expletive ridden prose. When we see someone jumping onto the regulation bandwagon, whether it is a journalist, blogger or medico, we see yet again someone trying to tell us how we should live our lives. This, frankly, is what pisses us off. One common theme running through the libertarian philosophy is that people should leave us alone. It’s why the Libertarian Party is a non-starter. You just can’t organise people who are so individualist and independently minded.

    I’m not aware if the Auchwitz chap links to me or not, but if he does, I don’t plan to do anything about it. I link to people with whom I disagree and sometimes disapprove.

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