statistsgonnastate asked: “When you believe in peace for the sake of peace, we’ll talk. Until then, let’s not bullshit each other.” Please offer proof that Libertarians do not care about peace. Please recognize that isolationism and non-interventionism are not the same thing. Please offer proof that when/if we ever get out of this war Libertarians will stop caring about peace. If you cannot do these things, then I suggest you revise your blanket statement against Libertarians. Thank you.

evilteabagger:

mohandasgandhi:

anticapitalist:

squashed:

If you would prefer a more qualified statement, let me offer the following:

Having interracted extensively with a broad swath of libertarians I have observed a haste to condemn U.S. actions and involvement coupled by a lack of knowledge or interest in anybody else involved in the conflict. This leads to statements like “We need to leave Afghanistan so its people can live in peace.” The libertarian making this suggestion seemed wholly unaware of both the prolonged internal struggle that won’t end the moment the U.S. leaves and serious controversy within Afghanistan regarding whether, when, and how the U.S. should leave.

Most tellingly, my post criticizing libertarians for appropriating the banner of pacifism drew outraged responses from libertarians who 1) accused me of hypocrisy, and 2) demanded that I “prove” that there weren’t any libertarians who cared about peace beyond the narrow scope of isolationism. Critically, neither of these moves suggests that I’m wrong in my point—and this is one where it would be extremely easy to prove me wrong … if I’m actually wrong. You could show me the fruits of libertarian peacemaking efforts. You could point to the generous libertarians willing to make sacrifices to pave the way for peace. Really, you could point out anything libertarians do besides call for immediate and unilateral withdrawal, consequences to others be damned. Show me the libertarians working to heal rifts between warring factions or to rebuild war ravaged countries. If it’s happening on any scale, this should be easy to find, shouldn’t it?

What are you going to do for peace? Yes, withdraw from Afghanistan, slash military spending, etc.. But then what? Are libertarians willing to affirmatively promote peace? Or are they just tired of seeing tax money spent on things they don’t like?

squashed is slowly becoming one of my favorite blogs.

Granted, my whole internet existence is me fighting with libertarians.

Something I would love to see: A libertarian who calls for U.S. withdrawal in the Middle East and is actually well-versed in regional politics/issues. It would make my day. I’m not implying there’s a reason for the United States to maintain a presence in the Middle East, I just want to hear a libertarian make a well-informed argument not based in the isolationist principles.

Why does the burden of proof fall on the non-interventionists? You tell us we need to have a reason to not interfere in the internal affairs of any (not just the Middle East) region? Why don’t you give us a reason to intervene? If we have a problem with American lives and resources being used to commit acts of violence against a foreign people that somehow makes us uninformed?

What about 9/11? I think that’s a pretty good reason not to be over there. What about the dozens of terrorists that were recruited a few weeks ago when that soldier went off the wall? What about the hundreds of thousands of innocent lives? You notice we didn’t have an issue with the Middle East until we started messing around over there.

I really can’t wrap my head around how much the left has to contort their worldview in order to remain consistent. War is the central piece of both parties now guys. We can’t abandon the Democratic party just because they’ve turned their back on their anti-war principles. We have to disparage the lowly isolationist rubes who don’t want to spend another dollar or commit another life to these unconstitutional and unjustified conflicts.

I already spend too much time on this damn site, so I’m not going to say much.

Not that I care for the ad hominem, strawman, etc leftist BS, but I’d like to say that I can’t tell what y’all are doing to promote peace, either. I mentored inner-city at-risk middle school girls for two years and have fostered and rehomed 40+ dogs who would otherwise have been killed by the city. I spend a lot of time trying to do right by my fellow human beings and other living things and educating people about constructive charities they can contribute to which actually help alleviate suffering and poverty, rather than perpetuate it.

And I would wager that I know quite a lot more about the intricacies of economic development efforts and the failures of SAPs in West Africa than most leftists know about the entirety of the Middle East. Come at me, Bro.

coeus:

disobey:

lepus:

wearethe99percent:

I am 25 years old.

Very lucky to have a college degree and no debt.

But my career is in progressive politics — working for labor unions, campaigns and nonprofits — and I can’t afford to make ends meet in a Big City, on the $30,000 average salaries these jobs pay. Now I’m 1000s in credit card debt.

How can young people like me change the world, stand up for what we believe in, and still get ahead?

I am the 99%.  #occupywallstreet

 Look at your life.  Look at your choices.

This is fascinating. No debt, and having trouble making ends meet on 30,000 a year? Does this young girl have children or outrageous medical bills she forgot to mention? I only make 30K a year and I live pretty comfortably…. What is she squandering her money on that is causing this failure to “make ends meet”?

True story: there was a time when my family of 4 lived on about 13,000 US. Honey, please. 

“How can I change the world and get ahead in life?!” 

I think this is what is called #whitepeopleproblems and ‘I should have taken a class in finance or at least learned how to balance a checkbook while I was in college getting my totally useless degree’.

So let’s ignore the fact that this girl obviously doesn’t realize that non-profit means, um, ‘not for profit’, nor are labour union, campaign, and nonprofit jobs really consistent in goals or necessarily positively affecting the world, and look at that $30,000/yr salary.

First off, ‘these jobs’ is so insanely vague I cannot even begin to understand how she came up with an across-the-board figure.I used to work for a non-profit in high school, earning $8/hr (that’s above minimum wage in Texas; holla’ for skilled labour!) and in recent years looking into for-profit charity, I’ve read that a reasonable salary for CEOs of nonprofits is $100,000-200,000 (not that I think this is reasonable if you want to attract talent, but that goes back to the many reasons I’m for for-profit charity). So that’s a relatively large spectrum.

Working for campaigns. Well. The salaries for this range from $0 (volunteer) to hundreds of thousands, probably even millions for ones running high-profile, well-funded campaigns. That is a huge spectrum.

I don’t know much about the inner-workings of labour unions, because it makes me nauseated, but unions are insanely wealthy and are virtually hemorrhaging money which they extort from unwilling workers in non-right-to-work states (ahem Massachusetts).

If you know anything about mean (average) salary, you probably know that it can be extremely skewed in some cases, and that median salary might be a better reflection of earning potential (not that this girl clarifies whether this is average overall or average starting salary—the latter is pretty much always deceptively low, in most industries, because, uh, you have no experience and are therefore pretty useless). You should also know that there are far more people at the bottom than the top. Obviously, you can’t be the manager of half of a person. That means that the lower salaries drag down the mean, because they ‘count’ more than the higher salaries. This relates to what is called a ‘spread’ blah blah statistics blah blah percentile blah blah di-blah. So yeah, this girl is vague to the point of irrelevance.

I mean, if you want a $50,000/yr starting salary, get a degree in finance, engineering, computer programming, or some related field. But that’s a want, not a need—my dad used to give me that lecture all the time when I was younger, but maybe it takes a MA in Finance to prepare your kids for the real world. When I was considering selling my soul to work on Wall Street for a six figure starting salary, it was because I was planning on being $80,000+ in debt, not because that level of income is at all necessary for financial well-being—I would know, I’m an Economics major (a.k.a. a glorified Finance major with a slightly higher mean starting salary and more Indians/fewer white people).

To put this in perspective, my mother’s income is $12,000/yr, all from the  rental income of one apartment (because my mother cannot afford to support me, I have become financially independent at 19). My mother needs several surgeries, including a knee replacement, correction of a herniated disk in her lower back, and a brain tumor. Her insurance costs alone take up about half of her income. I am a full-time student earning $0/yr and pay all of my own bills, including insurance ($1,200/yr), which I cannot go without because my ADHD (and its comorbid OCD and depression) is too severe for me to forgo my otherwise $2,000/yr Adderall and my chronic (daily) migraines are too debilitating and frequent for me to forgo my otherwise $1,600/yr migraine medication. My rent is $525/mo +electricity. I am living relatively comfortably on the money I’ve saved since high school and while I worry sometimes, I am not complaining. People like the girl in this picture exemplify what is wrong with America; she probably wouldn’t know austerity or actual financial hardship if it hit her in the face.

One last thing: SHE NEVER MENTIONS THE FIELD IN WHICH SHE RECEIVED HER DEGREE. IF IT IS ZOOLOGY, MEDIEVAL WEAPONRY, OR GEOLOGY, SHE PROBABLY SHOULDN’T BE EARNING VERY MUCH IN POLITICS. Not all degrees are created equal. You are not entitled to not being laughed out of an employer’s office. 

(Source: http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/post/11593261584/i-am-25-years-old-very-lucky-to-have-a-college)