Anyway... they were discussing The Green Party. One person was mentioning how the Green Party supports "depopulation", while the others were defending the Green Party by saying that, no, they are not advocates of depopulation, but of "sustainability".
I have heard of the Greens for years and assumed they were simply socialists, but had never looked into them. Perhaps they could be allies. So, I found their website.
Nope. Not allies. Not a chance in Hades!
I started looking over their platform and- WOW! I don't know where to begin.
I originally thought I might go through their platform and drag the truth out of it sentence by sentence, but I soon realized that it is a VERY long platform and every sentence contains "problems".
I did get a tiny bit into the first point ("Democracy") and will share what I found in the first paragraph:
"Our nation was born as the first great experiment in modern democracy."
And, like the majority of experiments the premise was disproved. Time to try something different.
"We seek to rescue that heritage from the erosion of citizen participation."
Why? When smart people discover that something doesn't work they don't keep doing it. Only idiots do that.
"Moreover, we seek to dissolve the grip of the ideology, intoned by big-money interests for more than twenty years, that government is intrinsically undesirable and destructive of liberty and that elected officials should rightly 'starve the beast' by slashing all spending on social program, in the name of freedom."
"Big money interests", at least the dishonest ones that are a problem, desire big government. They also despise liberty. "Starving the beast" means forcing government to support itself with donations, not by stealing. If it can't do that it needs to die. It isn't up to elected officials to be responsible by not spending money that isn't theirs to spend. Crooks won't ever be responsible. It is up to you and me to do the right thing and force the theft to end. "Social program" [sic] destroy freedom. It isn't "generous" to give away money that is not yours to give- that is theft. Theft is anti-freedom, and more importantly, it is anti-LIBERTY. Charity is great; "social programs" financed through theft and coercion are evil.
"We challenge that tactic by calling on all Americans to think deeply about the meaning of government of the people, by the people, and for the people."
Government can be "of the people", it can even be "by the people", but it can never be "for the people". It is always for the government. The people- individuals- always lose out to the collective that seeks to live at the expense of those who actually produce. That "collective" is a sad feature of humans wherein they feel empowered by the anonymity of a large group to do things they know are wrong if they did them on their own. They may know it is wrong to steal from others, but put them in a group where someone else is actually looking into the eyes of the children as they take away the property they depend on, and it is easy to shirk the blame. But the blame rests on each individual who advocates theft. Government lives for power, and the corrupt individuals who hold that power know that the best way to hold onto the power they possess, and gain more power, is to promise to give voters and supporters "stuff". "Entitlements" are bribes paid by politicians to people who generally won't do the stealing in person, but are more than happy to receive stolen goods as long as they don't witness the theft first-hand.
"In a democracy, individuals come together to form structures of governance that protect and advance the common good."
Structures of governance? What is "governance"? It is control and coercion. It is forcing people to do things they know are not in their best interest, because otherwise they would do them without being forced. Governance, other than self-governance, is mob rule. It is a violation of liberty. When those "structures" and "the common good" hurt individuals it is time to stop. There is NO SUCH THING as "the common good". If it hurts individuals it hurts society. Society is nothing without the individuals that comprise it. You can't violate property rights of the individuals and then claim it helps "the common good" without exposing yourself as a liar.
"We the citizens are the government, and we the citizens can direct it to fulfill its finest goals and purposes."
The word "citizen" is disgusting; implying that you belong to the government that claims the land you live on or were born on. But, moving right along... What are the government's "finest goals and purposes"? The only possible justification for government is to protect the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the people who live under it.
.....
And so on. And that's not even the whole first paragraph. Next to these people, Republocrats seem almost honest and respectable. They are almost as bad as the "Government is Good" goons- maybe the same people are behind both spectacles.
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I've said for years that "Green" is the new "Red".
ReplyDeleteThey sound like recycled commies to me...
I have also heard that. I never had actually looked into them for myself. I have now. I'm not even sure about the "recycled" part. How can they be against "big business" and yet so supportive of the only thing that actually makes "big business" a threat? Because they are delusional.
ReplyDeleteAlso known as "watermelons" - green on the outside, red on the inside...
ReplyDeleteKent - I have looked at the Green platform many times over the years. While I agree with most of your assessment, there ARE aspects of "governance" that can transcend the usual statist-government hogwash: decision-by-consensus, free movement in and out of such agreements, and an ability to grow and change as conditions warrant.
ReplyDeleteThere are also some Greens who actually get the concept of liberty; I know a few of them personally in the Nashville area. I'd also say that the ethos created by Stephen Gaskin's "The Farm" in Summerville, TN is an example of how a Green approach (he should have been their 2000 nominee instead of Nader) can be compatible with liberty and voluntarism (Folks who go to the Farm do so of their own free will, commit to a period of service and community while there, and may leave when their contractual commitments are fulfilled -- or when they decide it's not for them any longer.)
oh, one more thing: the Greens hatred of "big business" is the same as the libertarian despising of "corporatism" -- we just identify it more clearly (Somethin' to do with understanding basic economics, I suspect?)
ReplyDeleteSteve- as long as the "decision-by-consensus" operates by unanimous consent, and allows dissenters to opt out without being forced to abandon their homes, then I'd be fine with it. Unfortunately what I generally see in that case is "we have come to a consensus for you, and you'll now go along with us- or else".
ReplyDeleteA woman I used to date, during my Ron Paul illusions of voting for freedom, was just beginning to see, along with me, the inherent immorality of monopoly public government. Eventually we both moved on in our relationships. I recently ran into her and she was positively gushing about how great the Green Party is and how it was the nations only hope. I could only sigh and walk on. To have come so close and then to have fallen so far. It was sad.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with comparing "big business" with "corporations" is that one of them requires government intervention and a grant of limited liability.
ReplyDeleteWhat the Greens never can seem to grasp is that their objections are founded on the problems of government intervention. This willful blindness allows them to assert that the answer to all these problems is, ready?, MORE government intervention.
But, as noted in Kent's quotes, intervention by the RIGHT people, for the RIGHT reasons, this time, really, we promise.
This is exactly the same claim made by every Socialist: Since Socialism has failed every time it's been tried, then Socialism has never really been tried, because it didn't work. So it wasn't Socialism, by definition!
The Greens fail to allow themselves to see the environmental destruction by the Soviets and Chinese, that the overwhelming majority of all the "Superfund" sites are GOVERNMENT INSTALLATIONS!
But of course, that's not Socialism, because it failed.
The Greens seem to harbor as many internal contradictions as the republicans and democrats. All it proves to me is that people are reluctant to rethink their premises - in spite of an unvarying descent from 'good intentions' to force and coercion as a matter of principle.
ReplyDeleteSo, they are no different than the big 'parties' except that, like the libertarian party - they can't raise enough money to put flashy ads on TV.
I've wasted enough bandwidth on those clowns too.