CalJunket

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Atlas Sucked

So I'm still batting around a Smart Ass article idea involving that dreaded menace: The Pseudotarians. That is, those people who call themselves libertarians when they really just mean they hate liberals and they want to reduce the powers of the liberal parts of the government. George Bush's desire to strip people of their citizenship and send them off to jail without judicial over site or habeas corpus barely registers their interest. Pseudotarians will tell you "I'm a libertarian, but oh no, I don't want to do away with the Federal reserve system or any crazy thing like that! I just prefer the free market and want government out of our personal lives". Jeese, that sounds a lot like liberalism to me. I mean, hell, if we didn't prefer free markets we'd call ourselves socialists, right? I don't know what compels people to become Pseudotarians. Maybe it's just a defense against the cognitive dissonance of being a non-rich non-religious Republican (I had no problem since, being a first generation American and a mainstream catholic I was pretty preordained to be a Democrat).

I'm so unfair! How dare I make such generalization about your deeply held belief system! Save it for the comments thread, bub.

Anyhow, this article presents problems since both Pseudotarians and actual libertarians are pretty much fools of the highest order. Libertarians for joining socialists and communists in making how we distribute goods a moral choice instead of a pragmatic one. Pseudotarians for not having the balls to admit that they want to protect us anti-trust legislation and environmental laws, not a police state.

The trouble with any article is coming up with a good name for it. Fortunately, I've already done a little work on that front because of a joking suggestion by Paul Bruno that we join forces on a anti-libertarian website. I said we better wait till we get a good name for it and I suggested "Atlas Sucked" and "Firefighters and public roads". Kevin Deenihan suggested "Randy".

I think I might go for "Invasion of the ideological name snatchers!".

update: it looks like comments are going haywire. Rebecca, could you take a look at it with your magical comments password?



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