We are plagued today by all sorts of people who have differing and conflicting goals. But the ones who make things the worst for us, aren't our "enemies," they are our careless "friends and allies," who demand extreme responses to challenges, out of a misguided notion that being self-righteous is a virtue.

Carelessness is what turns Freedom movements into Oppression movements. It is what turns Justice causes into lynchings.

Carelessness is what leads to laws meant to free up entrepreneurial spirits, to be written as licenses to steal, and laws written to enhance competition, to be written as limitations on that very competition instead.

Whenever someone pushes the idea that it's all or nothing, that's a prime signal to watch, as they try to turn careless extremism into a virtue.

"a misguided notion that being self-righteous is a virtue." IF

Thank you IF for making this important distinction between righteousness (beneficial), and self-righteousness (detrimental).

"as they try to turn careless extremism into a virtue." IF


If I understand your topic IF, the idea of Libertarianism is reduce limits on citizens to a functional (viable) minimum, thus accommodating the liberty of the most.
That in turn is a concept called utilitarianism.

Makes sense to me.

I don't know about Libertarianism. Every time I've come across someone touting it, they were really just trying to get me to sign on for a world where they get to do whatever THEY want, and everyone else has to suck it up and put up with the consequences. I have zero support for that kind of selfishness.

What I'm trying to get at, is that it isn't a matter of Liberal or Conservative or Moderate. This, and most of the other forums I have either read or participated in, are full of people who love to call for over-simplified, prejudice-based measures to deal with complex problems. Lots of people point to current measures which are clearly NOT working, and pretend that this proves that their extreme proposal going the other way, will result in heaven on earth.

We have extremists arguing that Capitalism should have NO regulation, because some of the regulations already in place are defective. They want to replace CARELESSLY WRITTEN laws, with even MORE carelessly tossed out elimination of ALL laws.

Same thing with concerns about drugs. Because SOME drug control laws are badly written, the opponents want to do away with ALL laws.

Same thing again, with gun-related laws. Write a bad law to try to deal with the real problems of insane people killing children, and someone will demand that Hitler will rise from the grave tomorrow and take all our guns away.

All these claims of Left and Right wingers, seem to be based on a desire to deal with one kind of sloppiness, by indulging in even MORE sloppy thinking.

The greatest threat to liberty is a Nation of Sheep. Think for yourself. Don't accept that someone is right just because they are in a leadership role.

I know I'm going to be more careful, especially around sheep. Baa?

Ba Ba Baby Ba Baa

You know I am right Alleoop

Of course you are my dear.

The greatest threat could be political correctness.

It puts an evil twist on just about anything that gets in the way of a specific agenda.

In my experience in forums it's usually a small percentage of the overall forum participants or population that actually do this.

Look at how many people read a forum vs. how many actually respond in a forum. This one has 57 views and 7 replies. And even over the next few days if there are a ton of responses it's going to be the same people going back and forth.

And on the forums there are far more that turn threads into meaningless conversation and general pointless banter about sammiches, socks, flirting, honey badgers, melmacians, naked picture exchange, battles of the sexes, etc. or simplistic responses like (insert emoticon here) or, "lol."

But that's kind of expected on dating site forums. Or should be.
As most people come to them in order to find a personal connection with someone, anyone, which can include finding people of a like mind, or just feeling like the online strangers are friends or a social group which they can feel safe venting at, or ejaculating their opinion onto.

It feels better to get things off your chest when it's to other people as opposed to just spouting your spleen on a blank wall all alone sitting in your house.


When most people just interact within the groups they feel comfortable with, they don't use a lot of critical thinking.

You've never had friends that said something like "I'd hit that!"
or anything that showed sloppy thinking in the interest of emotional expression?


What are you expecting from online forums or comment sections used more and more by people whose entire social lives revolve around sound bites, dwindling attention spans, getting news from comedians, headlines only having never read an entire article, and soundbites?


So IMO you're wrong.

That's not true.
The ones who make things the worst are those that make things the worst for themselves by reading forums, spending a lot of time on forums and discussion boards and comments sections and coming to believe these are indicative in any way of the larger population or are statistically significant in any way.

Gotta be careful with that. I hope you realize, that "political correctness" is just the new name for what has also been referred to as "patriotism"?? Or "politeness"??

When people AGREE with the particular "PC" labels being dealt with, they call it something positive instead. When they don't, suddenly it becomes Political Correctness, and it's a bad thing.