So they were little more than script kiddies after all


scriptkiddie

The Hacking Team, a notoriously sleazy and unscrupulous gang of malware-spreading, privacy-violating goons, has been hacked. The irony is delicious. I’m pleased to see that perfectly appropriate comeuppance.

Even more hilariously, their own passwords were exposed.

The root passwords for Hacking Team’s servers were inexplicably weak for their purpose. One of the passwords was simply “P4ssword,” which would’ve taken any advanced password cracker just minutes to crack.

Other passwords grabbed from Hacking Team founder Christian Pozzi included “wolverine” and “universo,” and other variations of dictionary words like “Passw0rd”.

It’s the power of dumbassery!


Oh, boy. More info: many of their customers were right wing fascist entities, and they made a big mistake.

To make matters worse, every copy of Hacking Team’s Galileo software is watermarked, according to the source, which means Hacking Team, and now everyone with access to this data dump, can find out who operates it and who they’re targeting with it.

It’s one thing to have dissatisfied customers. It’s another to have dissatisfied customers with death squads. I don’t think the company is going to survive this.

Sounds like someone ought to be running and hiding right now.

Comments

  1. Alverant says

    No no no! It’s reverse psychology. See everyone would expect them to have really complicated passwords so no one would even think to try PassW0rd at all!

  2. frankniddy says

    “Someone didn’t bother reading my carefully prepared memo on commonly-used passwords. Now, then, as I so meticulously pointed out, the four most-used passwords are: love, sex, secret, and god.” – ‘Hackers’

  3. Al Dente says

    What I hate is when IT or some software company demands that passwords have upper and lower case letters, numbers, special characters, be 15 characters long, and be changed every month. I have a notebook in my desk drawer with passwords and the corresponding software labeled because I can’t remember 92Xc^8491!sGr&M for a piece of software I use once or twice a week. Writing down passwords defeats the whole idea of having passwords.

  4. says

    Normally, I would think that any break in and theft is reprehensible, but this time? Not so much. (No doubt law enforcement is compelled to roll in and some state prosecutor will likely pursue it.)

    Also, “minutes”?? Excuse me, but, depending on the security policy (timeouts, etc), a password like, “P4ssword” or, really, any variation on a single word would be cracked by a bot in about one second. Who knows, maybe that’s how they were compromised in the first place, long ago. They just didn’t find out ’til now. Word to the wise.

  5. carlie says

    PZ – having just reread Night Watch yesterday for the dozenth or so time, I heartily approve of your password choice.

  6. throwaway, butcher of tongues, mauler of metaphor says

    Al Dente @6

    What I hate is when IT or some software company demands that passwords have upper and lower case letters, numbers, special characters, be 15 characters long, and be changed every month. I have a notebook in my desk drawer with passwords and the corresponding software labeled because I can’t remember 92Xc^8491!sGr&M for a piece of software I use once or twice a week. Writing down passwords defeats the whole idea of having passwords.

    I use a consecutive keys approach to long passwords, alternating shift in a 1010 or 110100 pattern, or some other variation. This allows me to choose virtually the same password each time, as far as muscle memory is concerned, and then I only need to write down the pattern of my shift presses in binary.

  7. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    current advice is to change passwords to passphrase.
    E.G. my passphrase is slitheytovesdidgyreandgimbal (as if)
    difficult to guess by bruteforce, easy to remember, long enough to meet length minima, etc., etc. perfect alternative to a long sequence of random alfanumbricks that cannot be remembered without being written down.

  8. Alverant says

    Al Dente @6
    I have to do a similar thing. It’s worse because I’m in the IT department mine has to be more complicated. I have to think of phrases that are enough characters long to qualify. Then I mix in some L33T speak and the day of the month of my favorite sci-fi convention this year for the number. That’s usually enough. It doesn’t have to be a random collection of symbols.

  9. azpaul3 says

    Well, if no one else is going to do it …

    I can’t remember 92Xc^8491!sGr&M for a piece of software…

    Hey, Al, where’d you get my bank password?!

  10. says

    @9, carlie:

    PZ – having just reread Night Watch yesterday for the dozenth or so time, I heartily approve of your password choice.

    I find it moderately annoying that other Pratchett fans don’t realize — or at least never, ever credit — that that’s a reference to the speakeasy scene from the Marx Brothers movie Horsefeathers.

  11. kevinv says

    @11
    current advice is to change passwords to passphrase.
    E.G. my passphrase is slitheytovesdidgyreandgimbal (as if)
    difficult to guess by bruteforce, easy to remember, long enough to meet length minima, etc., etc. perfect alternative to a long sequence of random alfanumbricks that cannot be remembered without being written down.

    Nope. I suggest everyone making suggestions on passwords read Ars Technica article on how passwords are cracked. http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/how-crackers-make-minced-meat-out-of-your-passwords/

    Attack above will fall quickly to a combinator attack that tests mixes of straight words together. It’ll fall quickly because it’s all lower case and that’s usually the first round of combinator attacks. “slithey” might save you since it’s misspelled but they now build word lists for this attack from Wikipedia articles and Jabberwocky is in there.

    elite speak will always fail.

    Honestly if you want passwords that won’t fall I suggest getting 1Password or LastPass and using completely random passwords. Mine are typically between 14 and 24 characters long.

    This won’t work for passwords that you can’t copy/paste to (i.e. the one you login to your computer with or unlock your phone with) but for those I suggest padding a phrase/long word with 5-6 random characters.

    If you write a password down (not always a bad idea as far more passwords are hacked then stolen on paper and hard to remember is better than easily guessed) then don’t leave it at your computer. Put it on a sticky in your wallet. Misspell it or but a few bogus characters in the middle.

  12. kevinv says

    crud, i didn’t mean to use the quoting method that uses comic sans on that last message. I’m not trying to make fun of the reply, it’s common wisdom these days nothing wrong with it other than it doesn’t always work.

  13. K E Decilon says

    Steve Gibson often draws a lot of flack, but I think he may be smarter than someone that would use p4ssword to secure a login.

    I find his article on secure passwords interesting.

    https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm

    I know there are some hi tech folks here, could anyone comment on his discussion of “Entropy”?

    The main concept can be understood by answering this question:

    Which of the following two passwords is stronger,
    more secure, and more difficult to crack?

    D0g…………………

    PrXyc.N(n4k77#L!eVdAfp9

    You probably know this is a trick question, but the answer is: Despite the fact that the first password is HUGELY easier to use and more memorable, it is also the stronger of the two! In fact, since it is one character longer and contains uppercase, lowercase, a number and special characters, that first password would take an attacker approximately 95 times longer to find by searching than the second impossible-to-remember-or-type password!

    ENTROPY: If you are mathematically inclined, or if you have some security knowledge and training, you may be familiar with the idea of the “entropy” or the randomness and unpredictability of data. If so, you’ll have noticed that the first, stronger password has much less entropy than the second (weaker) password. Virtually everyone has always believed or been told that passwords derived their strength from having “high entropy”. But as we see now, when the only available attack is guessing, that long-standing common wisdom . . . is . . . not . . . correct!

    But wouldn’t something like “D0g” be in a dictionary, even with the ‘o’ being a zero?

    Sure, it might be. But that doesn’t matter, because the attacker is totally blind to the way your passwords look. The old expression “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades” applies here. The only thing an attacker can know is whether a password guess was an exact match . . . or not. The attacker doesn’t know how long the password is, nor anything about what it might look like. So after exhausting all of the standard password cracking lists, databases and dictionaries, the attacker has no option other than to either give up and move on to someone else, or start guessing every possible password.

    And here’s the key insight of this page, and “Password Padding”:
    Once an exhaustive password search begins,
    the most important factor is password length!

    The password doesn’t need to have “complex length”, because “simple length” is just as unknown to the attacker and must be searched for, just the same.
    “Simple length”, which is easily created by padding an easily memorized password with equally easy to remember (and enter) padding creates unbreakable passwords that are also easy to use.
    And note that simple padding also defeats all dictionary lookups, since even the otherwise weak phrase “Password”, once it is padded with additional characters of any sort, will not match a standard password guess of just “Password.”

    Now myself, I sometimes use birthdays of friends and family, or addresses and/or telephone numbers from Lake Woebegone.

    Anyone remember the IVanhoe, TUrner, EDgewood, FEderal system of phone exchanges?

    My theory is that writing them out in roman numerals also helps to confuse the Russians.

  14. karpad says

    ha, you goobs. My password is “Hi, my name is Werner Brandes. My voice is my passport.”

  15. Menyambal says

    K E Decilon, I’m thinking that if simple padding gets popular, the search pattern for it would be easy to write.

    Myself, I use phrases that have meaning to me, related to the site, but with some substitutions (not L33t, much). I put in any foreign words I know. My favorite is to start spelling one word and switch to another midway: “terrapinnae” is one I recall.

    I read that taking the first letters of words in poetry was a good letter generator that was easy to recall.

  16. K E Decilon says

    Meyambal 22

    I read that taking the first letters of words in poetry was a good letter generator that was easy to recall.

    Or song lyrics. Pretty easy to get 20 or 30 pseudo random characters that you can remember.

  17. K E Decilon says

    Writing down passwords, either on a piece of paper or in a computer file, works very well if you use something that only you can associate with a password.

    If I write down “password is Stinson Road”, it reminds me of a telephone number from 1957. Only 3 people left alive knew that phone number, and the other 2 have probably forgotten it.

    OTOH, I don’t recommend being older than dirt as a way to generate effective passwords.

  18. Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y says

    Anyone aware of any method of estimating the number of possible grammatical English phrases containing a given number of words?

  19. says

    …many of their customers were right wing fascist entities…

    Once again: ‘right wing’ and ‘fascist’ are, in the American polical system, polar opposites.

    This, from the linked article, is a partial list of their customers:

    Azerbaijan, Colombia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Oman, Panama, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, and Uzbekistan

    I’m not an expert on the politics of these countries, but I’m almost certain that less government intrusion (a defining ‘right wing’ characterisic in the US) is not popular political rhetoric in almost all them.

    The ‘fascist’ charcterization is closer to accurate (Italy, the birthplace of fascism!) but without the “right wing” modifier. If you’re going to place fascism at some point on the American political spectrum, it is correctly placed on the far left.

  20. Saganite, a haunter of demons says

    @#26 Tom Weiss
    I’m aware that various American right-wingers talk about less government intrusion, but in reality they are in favour of big government control, are they not? Abortion restrictions, forced vaginal ultrasounds, legislation preventing gays from marrying, increased national security to the detriment of privacy rights (although the Obama administration likes that one a whole bunch, too, to be fair). I dunno, as an outsider, I always considered the social conservative right-wingers to be the big government proponents and the Liberals the people in favour of more individual liberty.

  21. Dunc says

    Use a password manager and random passwords, people. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best solution currently available.

  22. opposablethumbs says

    Once again: ‘right wing’ and ‘fascist’ are, in the American polical system, polar opposites.

    And once again, the US is an outlier. In normal English-language usage in almost every country in the world, facism is of course correctly identified as an extreme right-wing ideology.

    PZ has an international readership.

    (eh, they also call their national hand-egg game “football” and have a “World Series” in a sport played at international level in barely a couple of dozen countries world-wide, if that ;-) They have just won the World Cup, though)

  23. Dunc says

    @29: The XKCD passphrase approach works if you only have a small number of passwords to remember, but how many of us is that true for? I have nearly 200 passwords in my password manager, and there’s a good argument that the biggest security risk is password reuse.

  24. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    @ Tom Weiss #26

    ‘right wing’ and ‘fascist’ are, in the American political system, polar opposites

    Hah!

    Oh, fuck me, you’re serious.

    Fascism is a form of authoritarian nationalism characterized by xenophobia and militarism. There are loads of fascists associated with “the right” in the US. It’s true that the American right also has a strong libertarian streak, but that doesn’t mean that fascism isn’t right wing; it merely demonstrates the inadequacies of the traditional left/right spectrum. Any system that lumps libertarianism and fascism together on one end and Liberalism and Communism together at the other is clearly not reflective of the true complexities of politics. The Political compass is much better. “The Right” is not synonymous with Randian Libertarianism, even in America.

  25. Gen, Uppity Ingrate and Ilk says

    “right wing” is only interested in less and smaller government when it comes to actually helping people and providing them with the means for basic human dignity. In other matters, such as who may sleep with who, who may decide what goes on inside their bodies and who may choose what to worship, just as a few examples, they are very much for BIG government interference and prescription.

  26. says

    Fascism is a form of authoritarian nationalism characterized by xenophobia and militarism. There are loads of fascists associated with “the right” in the US. It’s true that the American right also has a strong libertarian streak, but that doesn’t mean that fascism isn’t right wing; it merely demonstrates the inadequacies of the traditional left/right spectrum. Any system that lumps libertarianism and fascism together on one end and Liberalism and Communism together at the other is clearly not reflective of the true complexities of politics. The Political compass is much better. “The Right” is not synonymous with Randian Libertarianism, even in America.

    Authoritarian is the operative word in your definition of fascism above, and because of that I agree that any system lumping libertarianism and fascism together is ludicrous – on the question of authoritarianism the two philosophies are polar opposites. They are not compatible, at all. Facism can’t exist without authoritarianism and Libertarians want to severly limit the power of the state – it is in fact the defining characteristic of Libertarianism.

    Your political compass site is, in my opinion, not reliable at all. The “libertarian left” reading list includes Piketty (which made me laugh out loud) Zinn and Klein among others. These people are not Libertarian, in fact they are the opposite of Libertarian. I agree that the traditional left-right poles aren’t adequate for many discussions but this site isn’t the answer.

    So here’s the question you have to answer if you wish to place “fascism” on the “right wing” of US politics: what characteristics do both share in common? In almost every category, I would argue, fascism finds more common ground with those on the left.

    Abortion restrictions, forced vaginal ultrasounds, legislation preventing gays from marrying, increased national security to the detriment of privacy rights (although the Obama administration likes that one a whole bunch, too, to be fair). I dunno, as an outsider, I always considered the social conservative right-wingers to be the big government proponents and the Liberals the people in favour of more individual liberty.

    In the US the situation is reversed. Yes there are social conservatives who oppose abortion and gay marriage, but libertarians generally do not. There are foreign policy hawks in both parties here (as you rightly point out in many ways the Obama administration has been a foreign policy continuation of the Bush admin) but libertarians are generally very dovish.
    In the US it is progressives who are big government proponents – for every societal ill there is a government fix. Some conservatives aren’t much better on specific subjects, but on the whole are in favor of less government intrusion. Progressives want the government involved in every facet of everyone’s lives (see “Life of Julia” from Obama’s last campaign) and, lately, are more worried about regulating people’s sex lives than the nuns who instructed me in middle school.

  27. Zeppelin says

    Tom Weiss:
    You’re making the mistake of believing rhetoric as opposed to looking at actions.
    The actual goal of US (and European) conservative policy is to create a nanny state for corporations and the rich by exploiting social wedge issues like religion and race to get poor people to vote against their own interests.
    Fascism exploits social wedge issues…to promote imperialist policies benefitting corporations and the rich. There’s a reason Henry Ford loved Hitler.

    What these two ideologies have in common, and what makes them “right-wing” by most reasonable definitions, is their focus on using state power for the benefit of a wealthy elite, considered inherently Worthy due to their elite status, and social control achieved through reactionary scapegoating.

    Also, an attempt at actual contribution beyond dogpiling on Tom Weiss:

    I sometimes think this sharp divide between rhetoric and actual goals is a defining feature of modern reactionary right-wing politics — like, the nazis were for the most part upfront about who they hated and why, and I’d say they had a genuine interest in their stated goal of creating some sort of elysian unified racially pure German people all of one heart and one mind (within the bounds of their inherently elitist ideology), however creepy that vision is.
    But now authoritarians feel compelled to come up with all sorts of smokescreens to disguise christian supremacists or racist or sexist values, which THEMSELVES are, in the context of the greater ideology, only a smokescreen for classist values, not that their voting base generally realises that.
    AND they’re so mendacious they refuse to believe that others DON’T have ulterior motives, hence all the conspiracy theories —
    they believe everyone else’s publicly stated goals must be a smokescreen, because they know through introspection that their own invariably are. So they get really nervous when they can’t figure out the power-mad authoritarian angle to a progressive policy goal. The harder it gets for them to find an ulterior motive — what possible cynical motivation could I have to be in favour of gay marriage, unless I sell wedding cakes or something — the more they descend into paranoia. Because the Enemy must have a REALLY SCARY ulterior motive if they’re hiding it that well. So we see this spiral of paranoia after every progressive victory.

  28. Zeppelin says

    ^^^
    Tom Weiss – The above post was written before your second comment, so it doesn’t directly address your arguments there, sorry about that.

  29. says

    What I hate is when IT or some software company demands that passwords have upper and lower case letters, numbers, special characters, be 15 characters long, and be changed every month. I have a notebook in my desk drawer with passwords and the corresponding software labeled because I can’t remember 92Xc^8491!sGr&M for a piece of software I use once or twice a week. Writing down passwords defeats the whole idea of having passwords.

    Download the free open source program “password safe”
    It not only saves all of these long passwords so you don’t have to remember them and can just copy them over with a mouse-click, it will generate strong passwords for you. You only have to remember one password – the one to open your passwords file.

    It has android and apple versions, so you can have your password file everywhere, synced by placing it on dropbox or a similar service. It lets you keep passwords in categories, and store other things too,

    If your work won’t let you install it on machines, that doesn’t matter either, you can put it on a thumb drive and run it off of there. So you can even use it at libraries, on borrowed laptops, etc.

  30. Zeppelin says

    Libertarians in american politics are useful idiots for the statist right wingers who actually control conservative policy. They’re True Believers who get wheeled out occasionally to argue against social security programmes or whatever. None of their goals will actually get implemented by conservative politicians unless they also further the goal of siphoning money from individuals to corporations and the rich. (Isn’t it weird how american conservatives are all libertarian when it comes to medical care or unemployment, but then turn around and pump trillions into the military, or use state power to safeguard monopolies for US corporations? It’s almost as if their objective is to put money in the pockets of their obscenely wealthy bosses and not to actually achieve libertarian goals.)

  31. rietpluim says

    This comment is great: “I wonder who got the job of phoning up those customers and telling them that their contract info is out in the open and also the software sold to them had watermarks. I have dealt with some pissed off clients in the past but never ones who have their own death squads.”

  32. Athywren, Social Justice Weretribble says

    This is why I can’t wait for the day when password prompts just scan your body and analyse you against your stored biometrics.
    It’d be much more s-
    TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF MY EYEBALL!
    -much more secure.

  33. alanuk says

    How many had similar feelings when they learnt that Sony had been hacked?

  34. Reginald Selkirk says

    Writing down passwords defeats the whole idea of having passwords.

    Not necessarily. Today, the primary threat is over the Internet. If you are a normal person logging in from home, and you are not hiding nuclear missiles or a large stash of drugs there, writing your password down on a piece of paper near your usual computing location would be fairly safe.

  35. says

    The actual goal of US (and European) conservative policy is to create a nanny state for corporations and the rich by exploiting social wedge issues like religion and race to get poor people to vote against their own interests.
    Fascism exploits social wedge issues…to promote imperialist policies benefitting corporations and the rich. There’s a reason Henry Ford loved Hitler.

    I would argue that the true goal of any organization can be demonstrated by what it does – i.e. bills introduced into the legislature. There are elements of the left and right which are empathetic to large corporations (which means something different to me, I suspect, than it does to you) take a look at Hillary Clinton’s major donors throughout the years as an example of this phenomenon on the Left. But if you define the far left and right as, say, Bernie Sanders on the left and Rand Paul on the right, it then becomes clear that at the extremes the only the left desires to establish a “nanny state” for corporations. As for voting against their own interests, I would argue that a healthy portion of liberal voters do that every time they pull the handle marked ‘D’.

    Fascism has in the past exploited “wedge” issues to the benefit of the state. Sure there were other people who benefited under fascism and many of them were in business, but the prime beneficiary was the state who controlled all that business. In the past when I’ve had this argument people have said “Hitler disbanded the unions!” and then stopped as if they’ve made an argument. Hitler did disband the unions, but he then recreated them under the auspices of his government. Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, this is the fascist motto.

    And this is why fascists are, from the standpoint of American politics, a phenomenon of the left.

  36. Menyambal says

    Heh. After reading some of the linked articles, it turns out my strongest password is the one for this site.

    Writing down passwords does make sense if the greatest threat is from internet attacks, but you can’t just tape the list near the computer. Nor can you drop it in a computer lab (I found one card full, one day). You have to encrypt the list, with reminders and hints, as was suggested.

  37. says

    I love how Tom Weiss thinks he can equivocate his way out of everything. He equates libertarianism with the right when he needs to prove the right is not fascist, but he excludes libertarians from the right when it becomes inconvenient when it’s poitned out that the right favors more surveillance or more military funding. The fact that Obama often sides with the right on surveillance is cited as evidence that progressives must support surveillance, rather than that Obama isn’t really all that progressive. And of course, big government is equated with authoritarianism, as if there is no difference between wanting the government to provide a stronger safety net, or wanting them to provide a stronger police and military force.

    By the way, fascism is also highly nationalistic, and I would *really* love to see Tom Weiss try and argue that the US right is less nationalistic than the US left.

  38. fusilier says

    IUPAC names.

    Just try to find them in a dictionary.

    fusilier
    James 2:24

  39. Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y says

    and, lately, are more worried about regulating people’s sex lives than the nuns who instructed me in middle school.

    Citation Fucking Needed.

    Oh, wait, is this about the whole “affirmative consent” thing?

  40. Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y says

    If you are a normal person logging in from home, and you are not hiding nuclear missiles or a large stash of drugs there,

    ….and if you’re absolutely certain you’ll never inadvertently date someone petty and entitled for a few months before you figure them out…

  41. frog says

    karpad@12: Huh, quite by coincidence, mine is, “We’re the US government. We don’t do that sort of thing.”

    (A ridiculous movie, but such fun.)

  42. frog says

    karpad at 21, not 12.

    And now I’m unintentionally making Rush references. Time for more coffee.

  43. says

    Once again: ‘right wing’ and ‘fascist’ are, in the American polical system, polar opposites.

    Once again, you’re completely full of shit, and this has been pointed out to you every time you try to trot out this talking-point.

    Right-wingers and libertarians support the old status-quo where state, local, religious and corporate authoritarians had unchecked power over people. That is what makes them comparable to fascists. The only “authoritarianism” they oppose is FEDERAL government action to actually enforce individual rights against the encroachments of those authoritarians. This intentional misuse of words like “authoritarian” and “fascist” is just the latest iteration of a right-wing anti-progressive lie that’s almost as old as the USA itself.

    Using state power to enforce individual rights is not “fascism.” Neither is using police power to control violent crime. Neither is waging war to liberate slaves or abolish slavery. Slaveowners are fascists; an army that moves in to break up the plantations and free their slaves is not. Anyone who denies either of those statements is either an idiot or a liar. And I kinda suspect Tom Weiss is both.

  44. says

    BTW, Weiss, you seem to be completely (and, most likely, deliberately) forgetting which party is making concerted efforts to strip people of their basic right to vote. Hint: it’s not the “leftist” party. And using state power to deprive people of their basic rights is more “fascist” than ANYTHING the Democrats have EVER proposed.

    But facts like that probably mean nothing to Republitarians like Weiss, who have, at least since 1978, done nothing but stick their heads up their spoiled sheltered white asses and pretend that liberals are fascists, people who try to fight racism are the real racists, backward authoritarianism is liberty, enforcement of individual rights is tyranny, black is white, war is peace, freedom is slavery, etc. The sooner we see through their malicious con-artistry and kick them all to the curb, the better off we all will be.

  45. says

    In the US the situation is reversed. Yes there are social conservatives who oppose abortion and gay marriage, but libertarians generally do not.

    Libertarians do not explicitly oppose abortion or gay marriage — they just support the “rights” of state and local governments to ban those things, and more, without regard to the US Constitution. Also, libertarians have NEVER publicly broken with their right-wing allies over either of those issues. So for all practical purposes, yes, libertarians do oppose abortion, gay marriage, access to birth control, decent sex-ed, and other personal liberties.

    …but libertarians are generally very dovish.

    Libertarians are indifferent and uncaring. That’s not the same thing as being “dovish.” Yes, libertarians oppose military intervention; but they also oppose just about every other form of government intervention, even when it has a good chance of PREVENTING war by giving people a peaceful means of meeting their basic needs or upholding their basic rights. That’s not a “dovish” position at all.

    “Dovish” libertarians wanted to sit back and let Hitler and Stalin divide Europe and exterminate whoever they wanted. The peoples of Western Europe are now among the world’s freest and most prosperous peoples today partly because Progressive “fascist” FDR overruled those “dovish” Hitler-supporters and led a “fascist” campaign to crush fascism in Europe and build stable democracies in its place.

  46. K E Decilon says

    Menyambal #22

    K E Decilon, I’m thinking that if simple padding gets popular, the search pattern for it would be easy to write.

    Well, you can use simple padding before the keyword, after the keyword, or stick the keyword somewhere in the middle. There are 128 characters you can use to pad.

    Easy to write something, but it would still have a lot of work to do. I have no idea how much it would increase the success of an attack.

    [[[[[[[[[[[4Tran l00p]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]

    Probably could write down the reminder “[11/13]fortran loop” on paper. NSA spooks might figure that out, but not a co-worker or room mate.

  47. Dunc says

    NSA spooks might figure that out

    NSA spooks aren’t trying to guess your passwords. They have far more effective intrusion techniques available to them.

  48. Marshall says

    @KE Decilon #56: Entropy is something that requires context. For example, the password “AAAAAAAA,” if all alphanumeric characters are equally likely, has the same entropy as “V83M4ALZ,” although the latter is most likely harder to crack. However, what we have here is some context: password creators are more likely to use repetition, and therefore in a sequence XX, the second X is more likely than the first (since it was preceded by an X) and therefore carries fewer bits. Similarly, in a sequence with many A’s, one might apply pattern recognition to passwords that individuals use and realize that, if we have a sequence of n A’s, then the probability that character n+1 is equal to A is much higher (and thus carries fewer bits).

    The point I’m trying to make here is that, if we really wanted to measure the entropy of passwords, we can’t just treat each character as independent and identically distributed; they must be taken in the context of the user’s language, and in common patterns of human behavior with respect to password generation.

  49. K E Decilon says

    Dunc #57

    NSA spooks aren’t trying to guess your passwords. They have far more effective intrusion techniques available to them.

    I’m sure you’re right. But if your lawyers can make them refrain from using XKCD’s $5 wrench on you, there are some effective options.

    http://www.techworld.com/news/security/fbi-hackers-fail-to-crack-truecrypt-3228701/

    And yes, I know, the Truecrypt boys have bailed out. Most security folks still doubt that anyone can break Truecrypt 7.1.

  50. sammy96604 says

    Since someone already brought in XKCD, I have to let The Oatmeal have a word on the subject of passwords: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/shopping_cart

    I cannot stand when websites require me to have some dumbass Fort Knox password. C’mon, is my Pizza Hut account really in danger of being cracked?

  51. Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y says

    And yes, I know, the Truecrypt boys have bailed out. Most security folks still doubt that anyone can break Truecrypt 7.1.

    With all the apocalyptic warnings on the download page about how THIS VERSION ISN’T SECURE?

  52. sammy96604 says

    I don’t see it, but if it bothers others here, then I retract the link and apologize. I’m sorry.

  53. damiki says

    I won’t be comfortable with biometrics until it includes verification of viability (i.e., the scanned retina is still attached to a functioning eyeball that’s still inside the head of a living being).

  54. unclefrogy says

    I see no problem at all of keeping a password notebook handy to right things in I see no reason it is not the same notebook I keep my other configuration info in. If there was a danger of “bad guys” getting access to the notebook I could always write it in code. Seriously though with all the break-ins & hacks that have been made public does anyone believe that there have not been some that have not been made public? Th spooks have always had much more direct ways to get the info they want it is using it sensibly and wisely that is the problem clearly.
    The big things they pay are ways to do what they want some easy way (which does not actually work) while spending vast amounts of money with their friends and former colleagues.
    I suspect that the identity theft the destroys people is likely to be more random like burglary or auto theft.
    The truly massive crime would be to “take” pennies from all transactions and everyone online. It could be completely automated it would be nu-noticed and very hard to trace, no one would even look and for all intents and purposes it would not exist.
    of course the money results would be siphoned off to fund the secret organization that rules the world or is it some old hacker who has been here from the early days? I forget
    Oh by the way T.W. you are full of cow dung
    uncle frogy

  55. K E Decilon says

    Marshall #58

    The point I’m trying to make here is that, if we really wanted to measure the entropy of passwords, we can’t just treat each character as independent and identically distributed; they must be taken in the context of the user’s language, and in common patterns of human behavior with respect to password generation.

    Well, OK, but I don’t intend to tip my hand about my common patterns of behavior.

    Steve Gibson @ https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm

    The old expression “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades” applies here. The only thing an attacker can know is whether a password guess was an exact match . . . or not. The attacker doesn’t know how long the password is, nor anything about what it might look like.

    Padding is of course not restricted in the slightest to single characters. Phrases like (!), ~{;>), I:::I, or my aunt Sally’s maiden name work just as well, and can be repeated in a password with little trouble.

    Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y #61

    With all the apocalyptic warnings on the download page about how THIS VERSION ISN’T SECURE?

    Well, they also want to send you to the welcoming arms of Micro$stuff, and their proprietary BitLocker. Did the NSA boys use XKCD’s $5 wrench on them?

    I said “most security folks” I have seen several experts I trust that think it is still fine. The “insecurities” were some vague reference to vulnerabilities under newer Operating Systems, IIRC. An audit has been done, no backdoors or “insecurities” found, and there are plans for an open source fork.

  56. Rich Woods says

    @Raging Bee #55:

    The peoples of Western Europe are now among the world’s freest and most prosperous peoples today partly because Progressive “fascist” FDR overruled those “dovish” Hitler-supporters and led a “fascist” campaign to crush fascism in Europe and build stable democracies in its place.

    I have to take issue with this. I accept that FDR and his cross-party allies such as Henry Stimson felt it their moral duty to get the US involved in WW2 (and struggled to do so before Pearl Harbour, although with honourable results such as Lend-Lease), but to say that they then led the campaign against Hitler in Europe is a claim too far. Sadly, Stalin comes closest to leading any such campaign, and in having the greatest effect against the Nazis (he wasn’t entirely dependant upon British and US gold). The fact that he expanded the Soviet Union so far into Europe makes this clear.

    FDR certainly did try to bring democracy to other countries outside Western Europe: he acted to reduce Britain’s influence over its Empire, for example. As a post-Empire Brit myself, I don’t have a problem with that in principle, but then you have to weigh that result against the resulting American hegemony which saw US military bases appearing in a slew of countries, NATO members or otherwise. To give one example, I doubt the Chagos Islanders would find their situation a particularly compelling example of freedom and democracy.

  57. kevinv says

    IUPAC names.
    Just try to find them in a dictionary.
    fusilier
    James 2:24

    They aren’t using off the shelf dicitionaries anymore, they construct them. With words and phrases from Google, and especially Wikipedia. Fusilier is on wikipedia. So are a hell of a lot of IUPAC names.

    And bible verse call outs? Yeah, no. They not only test with the chapter/verse notation but the actual verse text itself.

    The password:
    Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn1.
    has been broken because that phrase is on wikipedia.

    http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/08/thereisnofatebutwhatwemake-turbo-charged-cracking-comes-to-long-passwords/

  58. caseloweraz says

    I’m a fan of Steve Gibson and GRC. He’s written some damn good software.

    K. E. Decilon (#20): Steve Gibson often draws a lot of flack, but I think he may be smarter than someone that would use p4ssword to secure a login.

    I’ll also agree with that. However, it’s not a very high bar. I take issue with this advice from Gibson:

    You probably know this is a trick question, but the answer is: Despite the fact that the first password is HUGELY easier to use and more memorable, it is also the stronger of the two! In fact, since it is one character longer and contains uppercase, lowercase, a number and special characters, that first password would take an attacker approximately 95 times longer to find by searching than the second impossible-to-remember-or-type password!

    The second password (“PrXyc.N(n4k77#L!eVdAfp9”) also contains upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. The first password will be stronger because it is one character longer, multiplying the time for success of an already protracted brute-force attack, but not because it mixes letters, numbers and symbols.

    I also disagree with Gibson’s estimate of a multiplier. Each character of a password can be:
    * One of 26 upper-case letters
    * One of 26 lower-case letters
    * One of 10 digits
    * One of 32 symbols (per my laptop’s keyboard)

    Thus, the number of brute-force guesses for each character is 16,640 (26*26*10*32), and the multiplier for each additional character in the password is that same number, not 95.

    Gibson may derive his figure from the assumption that the first password is padded with a single character (in this case, the “.”). But I don’t see how he does it, if so.

    I think he overstates the value of padding. Most users would take their padding character from a small set — probably [.-_ ] — greatly shortening the time required to guess their padded passwords. Sure, they might vary the padding characters. That would strengthen the password, but also make it harder to remember. In the limiting case it reverts to a complex password like Gibson’s second one.

  59. K E Decilon says

    caseloweraz #71

    Thus, the number of brute-force guesses for each character is 16,640 (26*26*10*32), and the multiplier for each additional character in the password is that same number, not 95.

    Sorry, you lost me. If the multiplier for reach additional character is 16k instead of 95, that would make one hella strong password, I would think. Did I miss something?

    At the top of the page I linked to, Steve has a toy password strength tester. He explains what it does, and how it calculates the estimates. He is also careful to explain its limits. See what he has to say about where he gets his numbers.

    I think he overstates the value of padding. Most users would take their padding character from a small set — probably [.-_ ] — greatly shortening the time required to guess their padded passwords. Sure, they might vary the padding characters. That would strengthen the password, but also make it harder to remember. In the limiting case it reverts to a complex password like Gibson’s second one.

    Right. You get what you pay for. Did you see my quote above about repeating Aunt Sally’s maiden name? Nothing about the concept limits the character set you use for repetition.

    I agree that password cracking programs could use algorithms to test for padding. Used correctly, you would have to have more imagination than to use p4ssword to secure anything, or to pad with a single character for padding to give you the benefit of making passwords easier to remember, which is what Steve’s point is.

    Meanwhile, I doubt that the technique will gain enough popularity in the near future to think that the programmers of PW Cracking programs are rushing to come up with new algorithms for a while yet. We have 25 years of websites hammering home that the only secure password is one that you cannot possibly remember.

  60. K E Decilon says

    For those interested in other types of fairly easy to use encryption, there is lots of fun stuff here –>

    http://www.fourmilab.ch/javascrypt/

    I have used these tools to encrypt stuff to be stored at Google Keep, and in the cloud.

    Also generators for random passwords, pass phrase generator, steganography, and other tools for the terminally paranoid.

    I have used this for a couple years, and when I became intereste in this thread, I finally checked the Home Page for the site.

    http://www.fourmilab.ch/

    Turns out it is the personal web site of John Walker, a programming pioneer that was a co-author of Autodesk, AutoCAD, and several other high rent graphics tools.

    He has lived in Switzerland for some time. He is no fan of the US Gummint, and probably relocated to get his millions out of reach of the US Tax Code, of which there is a complete copy available on another page at that site.

    Just enough of an eccentric that he has made encryption a hobby. Apparently, you can download source code for most everything there. The Browser encryption tool claims that all encrypt/decrypt functions take place in the browser on your local machine, nothing ever goes to the Internet. You can download the code to run the javascript encryption standalone, if you like.

  61. says

    @Tom Weiss

    Once again: ‘right wing’ and ‘fascist’ are, in the American polical system, polar opposites.

    Absolute bullshit. Even ignoring the many, many traits which are identified as “fascist” based on behavior (such as authoritarianism), which are uniformly held by the right wing in America, the defining trait of Fascism from the start — taken right from Benito Mussolini, who literally Wrote The Book — was a merging of state and corporate power. That’s what the right wing in the U.S. is constantly pushing for.

  62. kevinv says

    Thus, the number of brute-force guesses for each character is 16,640 (26*26*10*32), and the multiplier for each additional character in the password is that same number, not 95.

    No. There are 95 characters to pull from (btw, the iPhone unlock code can contain accented characters plus the regular 95). Each character in a password can be one of those characters.

    A 1 character password would take at most 95 guesses.
    To guess a 2 character password you need to test each of the 95 characters for the first character with each of the 95 possible characters from the second password so 95 * 95 or 9025 tests (max).
    To guess a 3 character password you need to test each character with 95 characters of first password with 95 characters of second with 95 of third, or 95 * 95 * 95 or 857,375 guesses.

    each character adds 95 times as many tries as the previous attempt.

  63. says

    @75, kevinv:

    There are 95 characters to pull from (btw, the iPhone unlock code can contain accented characters plus the regular 95). Each character in a password can be one of those characters.

    This is a number which is system-dependent — a good programmer, who is correctly using libraries which are publicly available and who also is using a method which has reliable user input, will permit any Unicode string as a password, which means each character could be any of around 100000 choices. Unfortunately, programmers are by no means universally “good”, and one of the most common flaws among bad programmers is the desire to reinvent the wheel, so a lot of online systems have their own password-handling code which fails on some significant subset of Unicode — or even of ASCII. And, of course, passwords which are being sent via the web rely on both the not-very-reliable methods which web browsers use to transmit non-ASCII character sets and the not-very-reliable methods which some programming languages use to interpret the incoming signals. If you’re talking about passwords for user accounts on a local machine, though, where everything is handled internally, then you can usually use any Unicode you can type. (Mac OS X supports full Unicode passwords everywhere the system has passwords, iOS technically supports full Unicode but the text input schemes are so limited that you can’t type most of it, I’m not entirely sure about Windows — Windows Unicode support is a bit strange, using UTF-8 in some places and UTF-16 in others, without any particular notice about which parts are which — but I would be very surprised if it didn’t support full Unicode passwords. Linux, as usual, may possibly do it but may possibly not, and since any Linux system is a suppurating pile of barely-compatible hacked-together shims, using non-ASCII characters in a password would probably cause breakage at some point.)

    The following things are signs that a bad programmer designed the system:
    – An upper limit on the number of characters which is not in the hundreds. (A good programmer will hash the password almost immediately on receiving it, permanently store only hashes, and only compare hashes from that point onward. Since hashing methods always have either a fixed-length output or a fixed-upper-limit-length output, there is no reason to limit the number of characters in the password itself… unless the programmer is going to be permanently storing the raw password, which is automatically a bad practice and a sign that the system is not really secure.)
    – Any negative restrictions whatsoever on what characters can be in the password. (It’s fine if the programmer forces you to use a specific thing, like punctuation or digits or a mix of cases, but if you see something like “passwords cannot contain spaces” it is a sign that not only is the programmer not hashing your password ASAP, but they’re doing something with it which is probably vulnerable to a Little Bobby Tables attack.) (Unfortunately XKCD gets it wrong, here — sanitizing does not really work, it just makes such an attack more difficult, not impossible, and a programmer who thinks their sanitizing routines have made them safe from hackers is a programmer who is suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect. Only parameterization solves the problem correctly.)
    – Any offer to send you your existing password via e-mail. (If they can do this, it means they have stored your password somewhere without hashing it. Run away! It is, however, semi-acceptable to set a new password and send it to you. Not secure, given e-mail systems and the NSA admittedly spying on absolutely everyone everywhere and so on and so on, but less insecure, particularly if logging in with the new password will force you to set a new password immediately.)

  64. says

    @74

    Even ignoring the many, many traits which are identified as “fascist” based on behavior (such as authoritarianism), which are uniformly held by the right wing in America, the defining trait of Fascism from the start — taken right from Benito Mussolini, who literally Wrote The Book — was a merging of state and corporate power. That’s what the right wing in the U.S. is constantly pushing for.

    Are Libertarians on the right? Nearly every popular taxonomy of political beliefs in the US today put Libertarians on the far right end of the political spectrum, with Republicans being closer to the center, Democrats on the left, and socialist/progressives to the far left. Leaving aside the many problems with this generalization and the issues which show some overlap or areas of agreement between the far right and far left, it is this spectrum to which I refer to when I say “right” and “left”.

    If that scale correctly puts Libertarians on the right, then that scale cannot simultaneously have fascists also on the right. Libertarians are not – repeat not – authoritarian. They are precisely the opposite. They oppose far reaching state power at all levels (are you reading Raging Bee?) not just the federal government. Fascists must, repeat must, have state power to implement their agenda. The only people actually pushing to merge state and corporate power in this day and age are on the Left. Think Obamacare – the merging of state taxation and enforcement power with the corporate power of insurance companies. Quite literally no Republicans voted for that bill.

    I would urge to to examine your own premises.

    @53

    Right-wingers and libertarians support the old status-quo where state, local, religious and corporate authoritarians had unchecked power over people.

    I see you’ve learned nothing since our last encounter. This sentence above is absolute rubbish – except for the part where you equate libertarians with the right wing (a point I’ve been trying to make here). First of all, what are corporate authoritarians? Is Apple, the biggest company in the world, authoritarian? How does their power manifest itself? And what enforcement power do they have?

    I would argue that Apple is a powerful company – today – they were on the brink of going broke not too long ago. And whatever power they have is a direct result of the hardware and software they’ve created – stuff that lots of people like. But their power is dwarfed by the power of the federal government, who enjoys a monopoly on the use of force. Don’t like Apple products? Buy Samsung or Dell or Windows or any number of other competitors. Don’t like Obamacare? Tough shit. You have to comply or else the government will enforce the law at the point of a gun. Libertarians want to create a world with options. Progressive want to create a world with government mandated solutions – where compliance is enforced by the full weight and power of the government. If that isn’t authoritarian, I’m not quite sure what is.

    @49

    Citation Fucking Needed.

    Oh, wait, is this about the whole “affirmative consent” thing?

    That’s exactly what I was referring to. When I was growing up it was the left who – correctly – accused the right of wanting to legislate what goes on in the bedroom. Now it is the other way around. This is part of the reason I have trouble understanding why many progressives try to distance themselves from authoritarianism. If it is all for the greater good and you believe in what you’re doing why wouldn’t you embrace the measures you’re taking to force people into compliance?

  65. says

    Are Libertarians on the right?

    Post-high-school age ones are. The high-school age ones are often dumb enough to believe the older ones when they lie and claim otherwise.

    Nearly every popular taxonomy of political beliefs in the US today put Libertarians on the far right end of the political spectrum, with Republicans being closer to the center, Democrats on the left, and socialist/progressives to the far left.

    And they have all of those groups except the Libertarians a little too far to the left, since the Democrats are right of center (see, for example, Bill Clinton enthusiastically signing NAFTA and the repeal of Glass-Stegall, Hillary Clinton voting for the Iraq AUMF, Obama drone bombing, Obama agreeing that the banks should give their management bonuses while being bailed out, etc. etc. etc.) and the mainstream Republicans are merely more honest about their goals than the big-L Libertarians (and thus should be as far right as the Libertarians are).

    Libertarians are not – repeat not – authoritarian.

    Yes they are. They merely don’t want the authority to be democratically elected. That’s the crux of it. Were the Libertarian agenda carried out, governmental oversight of the very rich and large corporations would be ended, and most of us — nearly all of us — would be forced to do as those two groups say, and neither one is either trustworthy or benevolent. Too old or sick to work? Libertarians would like you to starve to death. Differ from your boss in skin color, gender, sexual preference, or religion? Libertarians would love for your boss to be able to fire you for that — heck, they’d love to let people refuse to do business with you. Under Libertarians, gay people (just to pick one group) would be blackballed into starvation in most of the country.

    Obviously, an enacted Libertarian agenda would very quickly replace any vestige of democracy with a dictatorship of wealth — which is why they are, quite obviously, both fascist (the government would be corporations, which is what Mussolini was pushing for, and thus: fascism) and authoritarian (since there would be no effective way for the larger part of the population to resist). (Funny how Libertarians profess horror of “coercion” as long as it’s enforcing rules set by voting, but they’re perfectly happy with the idea that the rich should be permitted to force other people to succumb to their will by blackmail or violence.)

    The only Libertarians who are genuinely against curtailing the freedom of the majority are those who are too young or too stupid to follow the ideas through to the obvious — really, really obvious; there are plenty of historical examples of times when Libertarian ideas have been implemented, and they are uniformly failures — conclusions. The big names know quite well what they’re doing, which is why they court big corporations and the very rich so hard.

    Fascists must, repeat must, have state power to implement their agenda.

    Under Libertarian policies, the whim of the corporate CEO becomes state power, because there is nothing to oppose it.

    The only people actually pushing to merge state and corporate power in this day and age are on the Left. Think Obamacare – the merging of state taxation and enforcement power with the corporate power of insurance companies. Quite literally no Republicans voted for that bill.

    Which last fact is funny, because the structure of it was designed by a Republican think tank and first enacted by Mitt Romney as governor of Massachusetts. The only differences between Romneycare and the Affordable Care Act were regulatory restrictions on insurance companies to force them to provide a certain standard of care in exchange for this. Several Republicans admitted at the time that they were against it only because they didn’t want Obama to have any major accomplishments. (Which is largely rooted in racism, but that’s another debate.)

    Meanwhile, the right is now pushing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would permit corporations to override governmental environmental, labor, and food safety regulations, while simultaneously criminalizing free speech on the subject of corporate power, implementing CISPA-like Internet censorship. (It is, to put it bluntly, seriously creepy shit. Our representatives in Congress are being put under heavy pressure to keep it entirely secret, to the extent of not being permitted to receive personal copies or take notes when they read it.) Corporate power becomes the state, that’s what the right wants, and the Libertarians are right on board with it.

  66. Ariaflame, BSc, BF, PhD says

    Exactly who on the left is attempting to force *anyone* to do anything in particular in the bedroom? As far as I can tell the only aim is to prevent legislation aimed at restricting what two consenting adults do in private, and to make any consequences thereof fully controllable by the adult concerned.

    If only one person wants to do something in the bedroom but it requires two people to do it (at least) then it shouldn’t happen.

  67. says

    Think Obamacare – the merging of state taxation and enforcement power with the corporate power of insurance companies.

    Uhm, you do remember that Obamacare was based on Romneycare, incorporating many right-wing ideas? This was supposed to be the center-right proposal. It was explicitly pitched as the plan the right could get behind. The progressives all wanted single payer. The fact that no Republican voted for it had more to do with them trying to block Obama at everything than with the program being a massive government take-over. Republicans still like to claim it is, but since by all projections it’s actually saving the government money, while simultaneously giving millions of people options they’ve never had, in a way it’s actually shrinking the government and increasing liberty.

  68. says

    The only people actually pushing to merge state and corporate power in this day and age are on the Left.

    Actually, the only people to use state power to oppose corporate power are on the Left. Think Obamacare, which takes the power to decide who lives and who dies away from health insurance corporations – and indirectly, takes away the power from employers to hold workers with pre-existing conditions captive with health insurance. Think the EPA. Think the CFPD, Dodd-Frank – on and on and on.

  69. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    When I was growing up it was the left who – correctly – accused the right of wanting to legislate what goes on in the bedroom.

    No, it wasn’t the left. It was people who said biblical morality should be kept in the bible, not no law books. You are one stupid asshole.

    Now it is the other way around.

    Don’t know what you are talking about. Your point is utterly stupid.

    This is part of the reason I have trouble understanding why many progressives try to distance themselves from authoritarianism.

    Ditto, you are too stupid to understand what is happening. Those who use the authority of the babble are the authoritarians, not those who say “get out of my bedroom and contraceptions”. Your slogans are

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics

    . Stop believing them, as they are all bullshit.

  70. caseloweraz says

    K. E. Decilon: Sorry, you lost me. If the multiplier for reach additional character is 16k instead of 95, that would make one hella strong password, I would think. Did I miss something?

    No, I did — a blatantly obvious something. Well, it wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last.

  71. says

    If that scale correctly puts Libertarians on the right, then that scale cannot simultaneously have fascists also on the right.

    If libertarians and fascists tend to support similar policies, or show similar mindsets, then yes, it can.

    Libertarians are not – repeat not – authoritarian. They are precisely the opposite. They oppose far reaching state power at all levels (are you reading Raging Bee?) not just the federal government.

    Your statement is flatly disproven by the observed behavior of libertarians in the real world. Libertarians consistently oppose all Federal efforts to enforce the US Constitution against authoritarians at all levels: examples include (but are not at all limited to) Federal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act against racist state and local officials, Federal school desegregation against the same racist state and local officials, Federal enforcement of Roe vs. Wade, Federal legalization of collective bargaining against corporate authoritarians, Federal anti-discrimination regs, Federal environmental regs, Federal product-safety regs, Federal banking/financial regs, and Federal rules against injecting religion into education and other public policy areas. In all of these instances, libertarians have taken the side of the state, local, corporate and religious authoritarians by OPPOSING all meaningful checks on their power over individuals. So yes, libertarians do indeed support all manner of backward authoritarianism, by opposing — consistently and reliably — all meaningful efforts to rein it in.

    I would urge [you(?)] to examine your own premises.

    I would urge YOU to examine real events in the real world, instead of playing childish word-games and blithering abstractions. NOTHING in the real world supports any of your stupid-assed claims, however many times you may repeat them without modification. I really don’t know how to make that point any more simply. Our arguments are based on real-world experience, yours are based on abstractions, word-games, obvious flat-Earther-level denial, and willful ignorance. If you can’t live on your own outside your momma’s basement, at least try to read some books written by people who do. It’s not that hard, if your brain is functioning at all normally.

    First of all, what are corporate authoritarians?

    If you really have to ask that question, you’re either too stupid, or too willfully dishonest, to participate in a grownup debate.

    When I was growing up it was the left who – correctly – accused the right of wanting to legislate what goes on in the bedroom. Now it is the other way around.

    You were asked to cite at least one example of anyone on “the left” “wanting to legislate what goes on in the bedroom.” You failed to do so, even as you quoted the request for such a citation. There’s absolutely no substance to any of your arguments. They’re nothing but vaporware — sort of like a fart in a Russian space station, which you keep on recycling over and over instead of letting any fresh air in.

  72. says

    Think Obamacare – the merging of state taxation and enforcement power with the corporate power of insurance companies.

    After all this time and controversy, you’re still too stupid to understand the history of the ACA. That says a lot about you and your libertarian mindset.

  73. says

    Don’t like Obamacare? Tough shit. You have to comply or else the government will enforce the law at the point of a gun.

    And once again, a libertarian pretends to be different from the loony far right, while sounding exactly like the loony far right. ZOMG OBAMACARE DEATH PANELS ARE GONNA KILL OUR GRANNIES IF WE DON’T SIGN UP AT THE FEMA CAMPS!!! What a fucking joke. Libertarianism is nothing but a scam, just like everything else the far right have given us.

  74. says

    PS: Whatever happened to “SUBORNATION TO FALSE MUSTER!!!!!!”? Those were the good ole days, when Republitarian silliness was at least kept relatively harmless.

  75. says

    @78

    They merely don’t want the authority to be democratically elected. That’s the crux of it. Were the Libertarian agenda carried out, governmental oversight of the very rich and large corporations would be ended, and most of us — nearly all of us — would be forced to do as those two groups say, and neither one is either trustworthy or benevolent. Too old or sick to work? Libertarians would like you to starve to death. Differ from your boss in skin color, gender, sexual preference, or religion? Libertarians would love for your boss to be able to fire you for that — heck, they’d love to let people refuse to do business with you. Under Libertarians, gay people (just to pick one group) would be blackballed into starvation in most of the country.

    This is quite possibly the most outrageous and unbelievably wrong thing I’ve ever read from someone who wasn’t deliberately trying to be stupid or funny. How, exactly, would the “very rich” or “large corporations” force you to do what they say? What’s the mechanism there, how would that work? Apple isn’t forcing anyone to do what they say, they offer a product and people either choose to buy it or choose to not buy it. Ditto for Amazon or Wal-Mart or whatever other large corporation the left is having a problem with this week. What a horrible villain Apple would make in a movie…their kryptonite would be me walking into the Windows store next door.

    “Libertarians would like you to starve to death.” Bullshit, and by any standard of measure completely ahistorical and wrong. Who’s staving to death in the world right now? People in North Korea…Venezuela…lots of places in Africa and Asia. None of those places follow libertarian political principles. None of them. The freer a country is the more prosperous its people are. The more authoritarian, the more socialist, the more communist, the greater your chance of starving to death.

    “Under Libertarians, gay people (just to pick one group) would be blackballed into starvation in most of the country.” So let me get this straight…the only thing (!) keeping gays from being blackballed (is this an African American gay man we’re talking about?) is the government?? Are you seriously that deluded? Our culture, in a very short period of time historically speaking, has become very welcoming of gays. I am a libertarian-leaning person, and I’d pick up a weapon and fight to protect gays from being blackballed (unless they wanted to) or starved to death.

    And one more time…

    Under Libertarian policies, the whim of the corporate CEO becomes state power, because there is nothing to oppose it.

    You oppose coporate power each time you make a buying decision. All by yourself.

    Buying a cup of coffee in the morning means making a choice between corporate CEOs who are vying for your business. Be it Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts or McDonalds or someone else, they are all trying to create a product which will tempt you to give up some of your hard earned cash. None of them are sending police to your door with guns and frogmarching you down to one of their retail locations. None of these corporations have the power of the state. None of them.

    You can’t resist the power of the state – if the state declares that you either must do or cannot do something, that declaration is enforced by force. You can’t go to a competitor – unless you move.

    Which last fact is funny, because the structure of it was designed by a Republican think tank and first enacted by Mitt Romney as governor of Massachusetts. The only differences between Romneycare and the Affordable Care Act were regulatory restrictions on insurance companies to force them to provide a certain standard of care in exchange for this.

    I’m not sure how any of this undermines my argument – it is debateable whether Romney is a conservative and he most certainly was the governor of a liberal state. Oh by the way Romneycare didn’t work very well…something which its big brother Obamacare is presently repeating on a larger scale.

  76. says

    Sadly, Stalin comes closest to leading any such campaign…

    Stalin TRIED to get Britain, France and the US to join him against Hitler; but the Western powers (led by people and interest-groups whose agenda would today be called at least partially libertarian) chose instead to let Hitler be their “bulwark” against communism, atheism, uppity workers, liberals, freethinkers, Jews, blacks, and whoever else they saw as a threat to the old order they were intent on preserving. But yeah, point taken — I was concentrating on the US liberals who overruled and disproved the US libertarians, in response to Weiss’s bullshit ahistorical arguments. There’s plenty more complex history stuff that I didn’t have time, and Weiss doesn’t have the brains, to deal with.

  77. says

    This is quite possibly the most outrageous and unbelievably wrong thing I’ve ever read from someone who wasn’t deliberately trying to be stupid or funny. How, exactly, would the “very rich” or “large corporations” force you to do what they say? What’s the mechanism there, how would that work?

    So now you want us to do all your research and basic education for you? Should we read you the news every day for decades? If you had ANY understanding of real-world events, you would not have to be asking these questions.

    You oppose coporate power each time you make a buying decision. All by yourself.

    This statement is so childish and simpleminded as to imply that there’s no use talking to you like an adult. Out here in the real world, us grownups — even the ones with more money — understand that our “buying decisions” are seriously constrained by corporate decisions and lots of other factors an honest person can see even from his momma’s basement. No, little boy, our buying decisions do not “oppose” corporate power in any significant way. Real life is not that simple. Now fuck off to bed and stop pretending you’re smarter than people with real-world experience. We don’t know everything, but we do know enough to see you’re totally full of shit and totally dishonest.

  78. says

    You can’t resist the power of the state…

    Um…ever heard of something called “voting?” It’s something the Republicans are trying to undermine, using state power. And something the libertarians are doing NOTHING to protect.

    It never ceases to amaze (or disgust) me what stupid cynical dishonest uncaring sacks of shit libertarians can be.

  79. says

    Bee

    If you really have to ask that question, you’re either too stupid, or too willfully dishonest, to participate in a grownup debate.

    I’m not sure it’s possible for us to have a debate. You either refuse to acknowledge the plain language of the points I’m making or simply can’t understand them. I went on for a paragraph or so after the line you responded to with the sentence above. I explained how to very idea of corporate authoritarians is silly and I asked what you meant by it. We can’t have a debate if I can’t understand the terms you use and you refuse to even acknowledge the words I write.

    Take this for example:

    In all of these instances, libertarians have taken the side of the state, local, corporate and religious authoritarians by OPPOSING all meaningful checks on their power over individuals. So yes, libertarians do indeed support all manner of backward authoritarianism, by opposing — consistently and reliably — all meaningful efforts to rein it in.

    Right before this paragraph you list a huge number of federal regulations and laws that you say libertarians opposed – I disagree with this characterization but for the sake of argument lets assume you’re right (in general, libertarians are opposed to increasing the power of government).

    You see authoritarianism coming from state, local, corporate and religious authorities. By my definition of authoritarianism, only the first two – state and local authorities – can be authoritarian. Corporations can’t be authoritarian and neither can religious groups. Why not? Because they cannot use force to compel you to do anything. The Catholic Church can’t compel you to go to confession or attend church or even contribute to the collection plate when you do attend church. Your participation in any religious endeavor with the Catholic Church is completely of your own free will. If you think local religious groups have too much influence in the school system, you should be free to send your children elsewhere but people like you have opposed school choice for decades.

    Corporations can’t be authoritarian either. McDonalds isn’t forcing you at the point of a gun to buy a big mac and fries. A great number of people walk into their restaurants on a daily basis of their own free will.

    The only group of people that can be authoritarian are those in government – whether federal, state or local – those who can use the full power of government to enforce their laws and regulations at the point of a gun. The things you listed may be very good ideas, and we can find areas of agreement and disagreement, but the enforcement of them is authoritarian. The enforement of any rule (bedtime for your children, speed limits, etc.) is authoritarian. The only antidote to authoritarianism is choice. And corporations are much more responsive to consumer choice than politicians.

    If you’d like to debate further perhaps we can use this as a starting point, but if you keep on like you have been then I’m simply going to ignore your comments as they are becoming increasingly belligerent.

  80. says

    Who’s staving to death in the world right now? People in North Korea…Venezuela…lots of places in Africa and Asia. None of those places follow libertarian political principles. None of them.

    What policies do libertarians advocate, or practice, to see that those people are fed? (Oh, and “lots of places in Africa and Asia?” Vague on the facts as usual, eh?)

    Also, there’s lots of places where libertarian principles are flatly repudiated, and practically NO ONE is starving, partly because governments take reasonable measures to ensure that their poorest people don’t starve. Examples include Western Europe. And lots of other places in Africa and Asia.

    The freer a country is the more prosperous its people are.

    What policies do libertarians advocate to ensure or enhance anyone’s freedoms? Can you show us any part of the world where libertarian principles are in practice and people are freer than Americans or West-Europeans?

  81. says

    By my definition of authoritarianism…

    That’s the problem right there: you’re using a definition that fails to account for the ways in which non-state entities can exert authority and diminish people’s freedom. In effect, you’re redefining a word to pretend that certain forms of authoritarianism simply aren’t real. That’s dishonest and it shows your total disengagement from the real world.

    If you’d like to debate further perhaps we can use this as a starting point, but if you keep on like you have been then I’m simply going to ignore your comments as they are becoming increasingly belligerent.

    You’ve been ignoring my comments from day one, and ignoring huge chunks of observable reality as well. As for my tone, I’ll say two things: a) when you’re faced with consistent dishonesty and stupidity, belligerence is an appropriate response, so if you don’t like my response, then stop earning it; and b) your tone-policing, after ignoring the substance of my arguments, can be taken as an admission that you’ve lost the argument. Buh-bye.

  82. says

    Bee

    Um…ever heard of something called “voting?” It’s something the Republicans are trying to undermine, using state power. And something the libertarians are doing NOTHING to protect.

    I wondered if you’d bring this up. First off, the right is protecting voting rights, its the left which is trying to undermine them. Secondly, once the police are at your door, you literally cannot resist the power of the state.

    But that aside, government is much less responsive to the will of the people than a corporation is. We generally have only two choices to vote for, and those politicians may or may not do what I’d like them to do on a specific issue. Take the farm bill for example, something that isn’t in the news a whole lot. It’s a multi-billion dollar subsidy for farmers in the midwest that is passed year after year. What if that’s something I despise and want to get rid of? I have to convince a whole lot of my fellow voters to do the same – this is democracy and I fully understand why it is supposed to be this hard. And this is also why the larger the government gets the harder it becomes to change – there are a million things government is doing today that are probably unnecessary but they’re not getting any market signals telling them they can get rid of that function.

    Not so with a corporation – preferences can change quickly and companies have to be agile. If they’re not they don’t stay in business long. What happened to Blackberry? They underestimated the iPhone and it killed them. If Blackberry were the government we’d still all be walking around with awkward clicking physical keyboards because they’d mandate that we buy those phones.

  83. says

    @Tom Weiss 92

    Corporations can’t be authoritarian and neither can religious groups. Why not? Because they cannot use force to compel you to do anything. The Catholic Church can’t compel you to go to confession or attend church or even contribute to the collection plate when you do attend church. Your participation in any religious endeavor with the Catholic Church is completely of your own free will. If you think local religious groups have too much influence in the school system, you should be free to send your children elsewhere but people like you have opposed school choice for decades.

    Corporations can’t be authoritarian either. McDonalds isn’t forcing you at the point of a gun to buy a big mac and fries. A great number of people walk into their restaurants on a daily basis of their own free will.

    You realize that the word “force” applies to more than physical force right? Saying that religious groups can’t be authoritarian seems to fly in the face of history to me because as time goes on they tend to create a social structure that leaves you no alternative but doing things their way. If not by the sword then by the way bigotry functionally works. In that vein corporations do the same thing as they tend to take actions that structure society around themselves such that you have to play by their rules.

    I would like to see your definition of authoritarian.

  84. says

    That’s the problem right there: you’re using a definition that fails to account for the ways in which non-state entities can exert authority and diminish people’s freedom

    You’ve failed to offer a single example of a non-state entity exerting authority and diminishing someone’s freedom. Please do so.

  85. says

    Corporations can’t be authoritarian and neither can religious groups.

    Once again you show the utter lack of common sense so typical of libertarians. Ever heard of something called “economic dependency?” If large numbers of people have no choice but to work for a certain company, or a certain set of companies, or see their families starve, then yes, their employers can indeed be authoritarian. And if they’re allied with a religious group, then yes, the religious group has that much more ability to be authoritarian too. This is — how many times will I have to repeat this? — an observable and verifiable fact, and all of your arguments fail because they ignore and contradict such observable and verifiable facts. Face the facts, boy — YOU AND YOUR LIBERTARIAN TALKING-POINTS ARE OBJECTIVELY AND DEMONSTRABLY WRONG. Period.

  86. says

    First off, the right is protecting voting rights, its the left which is trying to undermine them.

    Of all the voter-purge campaigns going on in the US today, please give examples of such campaigns being waged by anyone other than the right.

  87. says

    You’ve failed to offer a single example of a non-state entity exerting authority and diminishing someone’s freedom. Please do so.

    Easy: An insurance company denying health care because of a pre-existing condition.

  88. says

    You’ve failed to offer a single example of a non-state entity exerting authority and diminishing someone’s freedom. Please do so.

    Sure thing, boy, soon as I’m done bringing proof that the Earth is round to your doorstep.

  89. says

    BTW, Weiss, I’ve given you plenty of examples of such things as the US government using state power to enhance people’s freedom — and you completely ignored all of them. That alone proves that your demands for examples are dishonest and in bad faith. You’re the one whose statements have been consistently and demonstrably wrong, so the burden of proof is on you, not on us.

  90. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    OT

    I’d really like to reply to Tom Weiss’ comment directed at me in #34, but for some reason can’t highlight any text in order to copy and paste. This is happening a lot recently; anyone else experiencing this problem?

    /OT

  91. says

    Thumper: I have this problem — and worse — intermittently on all FtBs. I’m pretty sure it’s the adware — it’s intermittent because some ads have worse malware than others. The owners of this space really need to take more responsibility for the malware they allow on their property.

    Weiss: I apologize for the double-take, but in reference to this comment of yours:

    If you’d like to debate further perhaps we can use this as a starting point, but if you keep on like you have been then I’m simply going to ignore your comments as they are becoming increasingly belligerent.

    I wasn’t being belligerent, I was being contemptuous. Either you can’t tell the difference, which once again shows your lack of common sense; or you’re deliberately confusing criticism with hateful persecution, which once again shows how similar you are to the crybaby right-wing authoritarians you pretend to oppose.

  92. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    A couple of refreshes later and it appears to be working. How odd.

    So, Tom Weiss #34

    Authoritarian is the operative word in your definition of fascism above, and because of that I agree that any system lumping libertarianism and fascism together is ludicrous – on the question of authoritarianism the two philosophies are polar opposites. They are not compatible, at all. Facism can’t exist without authoritarianism and Libertarians want to severly limit the power of the state – it is in fact the defining characteristic of Libertarianism.

    Agreed.

    Your political compass site is, in my opinion, not reliable at all. The “libertarian left” reading list includes Piketty (which made me laugh out loud) Zinn and Klein among others. These people are not Libertarian, in fact they are the opposite of Libertarian. I agree that the traditional left-right poles aren’t adequate for many discussions but this site isn’t the answer.

    The fact you disagree with their categorization of three politicians in no way invalidates the whole website. Regardless, I linked to it merely to show you the two-axis system, which I think is much more accurate. Where on that graph certain people choose to place certain politicians is irrelevant to the efficacy of the graph itself.

    Secondly, I think you may be ignoring the axis labels. In this context, they are using Libertarian in it’s traditional sense to refer to purely social policies. “Left”, in this context, refers to someone in favour of higher governmental economic control; put simply, more corporate regulation. I don’t know the people in question, but I would hazard a guess that they are not too friendly to neo-liberal economic policies, and it is on this basis that you believe them to be “not Libertarians”.

    So here’s the question you have to answer if you wish to place “fascism” on the “right wing” of US politics: what characteristics do both share in common? In almost every category, I would argue, fascism finds more common ground with those on the left.

    Firstly, I don’t wish to place it there, as I have already stated I believe the traditional left/right spectrum to be inadequate. Secondly, “right wing” isn’t a thing on it’s own. As already mentioned and agreed by both of us, it’s common use can refer to Fascists or Libertarians, and is therefore useless. However, in common useage Fascism is always placed on the right, and it is only your strange insistence, entirely unique to you in my experience, that “the right” is synonymous with Libertarianism that makes that choice invalid. If forced to choose, I personally would put Libertarianism on the left, since Authoritarianism is traditionally placed on the right, meaning that the logical choice for it’s opposite would be the left; but there you are.

    Equally, “left wing” is a useless term. People use left wing to refer to Communists, for example, which is technically an economic position which favours higher regulation and state ownership, and also to refer to Liberalism, which is technically a purely social position which favours a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties. To say “the left have more in common with fascism” is meaningless.

    The problem we have of course is that the left/right spectrum can refer to either economic policy (neo-Liberalism on the right and Communism on the left) or social positions (Authoritarianism on the right and Libertarianism, in it’s traditional sense, on the left). These obviously have little to no bearing on each other, and yet the two scales are used interchangeably without anyone bothering to define which policies they are discussing.

    Your problem is that you are trying to force Randian Libertarianism (essentially a mash-up of traditional Libertarianism and neo-Liberalism) onto a left/right scale, and it doesn’t work.

  93. says

    So here’s the question you have to answer if you wish to place “fascism” on the “right wing” of US politics: what characteristics do both share in common?

    General answer: rejection of recent advances in social justice and individual freedoms, and a general desire — driven partly by nostalgia and mythmaking, partly by the desire to retake control of the liberated peoples — to roll back all such advances and return to an idealized vision of a “golden age” past, which may or may not have any relation to the real past, where the “right” people and institutions made all the decisions with no modern checks or balances.

    Longer answer: rejection of such dangerous newfangled ideas as racial equality, women’s rights, sexual freedom, regulation of business, banking and environmental management, separation of church and state, secular governance, worker rights, modern education that doesn’t contradict fundamental religious beliefs or other popular/ethnic/national mythology…that’s just a start, at least. Does that answer satisfy you?

  94. says

    I think some of our comments got dropped from this page — there’s things I remember saying here that I can’t find anymore. Not sure what’s going on, but I have had problems with this site allegedly going “off-line.” Maybe the ad/malware problem is worse than Thumper and I thought it was.

  95. zenlike says

    Apparently, Tom Weiss has never heard of monopolies. Is this guy even worth debating when his grasp on reality is so weak?

  96. anteprepro says

    Tom Weiss does this routine a lot. And it is ridiculously asinine. No, right-wing and libertarian are not synonyms. The two axis political description that Thumper has linked to perfectly explains why, and Tom Weiss dismisses it for absurd reasons, because it is inconvenient to him. He gives Ron Paul as an example of someone extremely far right, because Tom Weiss simply cannot imagine anyway to stop assuming that libertarian means right-wing, and right-wing means libertarian. Ron Paul is a hard-right libertarian, he is both things, but he is not MORE right-wing because of his libertarianism, or more libertarian because of his right-wingness. Most self labeled libertarians dismiss Paul as No True Libertarian, and to think that he is extremely right-wing is completely absurd. That would be the theocrats. Because right-wingness, because conservativism, is not just about economics, it is about social issues as well, and Troo Libertarians, supposedly, allegedly, are either supposed to vehemently disagree with regressive, authoritarian hard right policies in the name of Liberty. They don’t, which helps in Tom’s crusade to deliberately confuse the issue, but still.

    I believe we’ve been chastised by people before for not listening to what libertarians actually say about their own positions. Which was just a tactic to dismiss criticism, like crying “straw man” without bothering to outline what the actual alleged misrepresentations actually were. And yet, I must say, Tom Weiss may well be a true example of someone who talks about libertarians without knowing what the fuck other libertarians actually say or believe. Someone who spouts off about politics without knowing much of fucking anything, and yet who will never budge from their position, no matter how illogical or groundless it is. Someone whose only purpose is to distort and muddle and confuse, so insistent, stubborn, and overconfident while arguing for the exact opposite of what is actually known to be true, you wonder if they came from Bizarro World or are just simply trying to disrupt and gaslight the pesky lefties.

    Here’s just some random facts while I am driving through, because it is what I do:

    Here is another way of understanding American politics, by imagining even more sub-groups: http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/26/the-political-typology-beyond-red-vs-blue/

    Regarding parties and corporations:

    Citizens United decided by: Justices Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy.

    [Fun-fact: Citizens United, who the case was decided in favor of, was itself a conservative non-profit (specifically, a lobbying group) that wanted to air ads for their anti-Hillary Clinton movie.]

    This overturned an earlier ruling, McConnell vs. FEC. As in Mitch McConnell, suing for the First Amendment Rights of corporations on a team with the NRA. Decided by: Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, O’Connor, Stevens, and Souter.

    Here’s a comparison of campaign contributions based on industry in 2014: (note, Democrats received more money than Republicans)
    https://www.opensecrets.org/parties/indus.php?cycle=2014&cmte=RPC
    https://www.opensecrets.org/parties/indus.php?cycle=2014&cmte=DPC

    Looking at the graphs:
    Democrats get more from Electronics, Labor, Lawyers/Lobbyists, and Other Business.

    Republicans get MUCH more from the energy industry, from finance/real estate, “Misc. Business”, and Transportation.

    The list of more specific top industries, here are the ones listed that are distinct for Republicans: Gas and Oil, Insurance, Automotive, Banks, Contractors, Building Equipment.
    For Democrats: TV/Music/Movies, Non-profits, Printing and Publishing, Civil Servants, Hospitals/Nursing Homes.

    It’s amazing, the story that a simple glance at the facts will tell you.

  97. says

    I believe we’ve been chastised by people before for not listening to what libertarians actually say about their own positions.

    Libertarians have lied about nearly everything else, so why should we trust them on this subject? They’ve said they believe X, but then deny it when you point out the consequences of X. They’ve also been known to deny believing a certain thing, even though other libertarians have said that’s what they believe.

    And when a libertarian chastises you for not listening to “what libertarians actually believe,” it’s normally in response to your debunking of what some other libertarian has actually said. Or even something the person chastising you has said.

    Libertarians play shell-games with their own talking-points, and constantly maintain plausible deniability between their stated ideology (“libertarianism”) and the consequences of that stated ideology in practice (“that’s not libertarianism!!!”). Sort of like a Communist ideologue insisting that Stalin was not a “True Communist,” and neither was Mao, Ho, Pol Pot, Castro, Ortega, Tito, Chavez… oh, wait, the True Communists gave up that game long before Chavez showed up.

    And yet, I must say, Tom Weiss may well be a true example of someone who talks about libertarians without knowing what the fuck other libertarians actually say or believe. Someone who spouts off about politics without knowing much of fucking anything, and yet who will never budge from their position, no matter how illogical or groundless it is. Someone whose only purpose is to distort and muddle and confuse, so insistent, stubborn, and overconfident while arguing for the exact opposite of what is actually known to be true, you wonder if they came from Bizarro World or are just simply trying to disrupt and gaslight the pesky lefties.

    All of which is pretty much part of the libertarians’ playbook. Which, yes, includes plenty of libertarians not having a clue what their ideology really is, or what it means in real-world terms. See “plausible deniability” above.

  98. Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y says

    Citation Fucking Needed.

    Oh, wait, is this about the whole “affirmative consent” thing?

    That’s exactly what I was referring to. When I was growing up it was the left who – correctly – accused the right of wanting to legislate what goes on in the bedroom. Now it is the other way around. This is part of the reason I have trouble understanding why many progressives try to distance themselves from authoritarianism. If it is all for the greater good and you believe in what you’re doing why wouldn’t you embrace the measures you’re taking to force people into compliance?

    You consider “trying to stop people from being raped” to be “authoritarian?”

    That’s all I need to know about you. Fuck off, you despicable piece of shit.

  99. Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y says

    (…great. Now I feel the need to go take seven consecutive showers and we’re in a drought zone.)

    (PS: The “fuck you” above was not an extension of consent. Scumbag.)

  100. Amphiox says

    You’ve failed to offer a single example of a non-state entity exerting authority and diminishing someone’s freedom. Please do so.

    Every single employer that imposes a dress code on their employees.

  101. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    You’ve failed to offer a single example of a non-state entity exerting authority and diminishing someone’s freedom. Please do so.

    While on company time, the company can control the content of your speech. For example, we have an SOP on how we must talk to the FDA. Only abjectly stupid liberturds make such ridiculous easily refuted claims, because they don’t believe in checking sources for their claims. TW, every claim you make should be accompanied by a link to relevant data to support your stupidity. And if you can’t find something to link to, shut the fuck up.

  102. ck, the Irate Lump says

    The Vicar (via Freethoughtblogs) wrote:

    I’m not entirely sure about Windows — Windows Unicode support is a bit strange, using UTF-8 in some places and UTF-16 in others, without any particular notice about which parts are which — but I would be very surprised if it didn’t support full Unicode passwords.

    Windows since NT has supported UCS2 encoding (a 16-bit word length precursor to UTF-16 encoding), and UTF-16 since Windows 2000. The confusion arises because there are often two APIs for most functions Windows provides. The functions that use the ANSI code pages with 8-bit characters are denoted by function names that end with “A”, and the UCS2/UTF16 functions end with “W” for wide. The “A” functions basically came from the old 16-bit platforms which had little or no Unicode support, and have been carried around ever since for backwards compatibility. This often made worse by ported libraries from other platforms that use 8-bit character encoding, which introduces problems when the programmer accepts UTF-8 or UTF-7 input and tries to use APIs with the 1252 ANSI code page to decode it, producing nonsense.

  103. ck, the Irate Lump says

    Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y wrote:

    You consider “trying to stop people from being raped” to be “authoritarian?”

    It’s not even really about trying to stop people from being raped, but making sure it’s possible to prosecute rapes rather than having some asshole judge/lawyer say that they asked for it by being dressed that way or didn’t fight back hard enough or any of the other billion rationalizations and getting the entire thing dismissed. It’s not intruding into the bedroom, but rather erasing a long-standing loophole.

  104. says

    Tom,

    If you seriously can’t understand how a corporation or religion can be authoritarian, it’s only because you have the good fortune to have been born in a time and place where government power has been used for generations, even centuries to limit such power, and are apparently ignorant of or ignoring that history.

    You ask for examples of corporate authority; here are just a few historical examples:

    Are you at all aware of the history of monopolies, cartels, and anti-trust laws? When unregulated by government, monopolies are the inevitable end of capitalism, as the larger corporations use their economic power to squeeze out smaller companies, depriving the “free market” of the competition you say gives individuals freedom. We know that to be a fact, because that’s what actually happened in our own history. US oil, railroads, coal, manufacturing, and many other sectors of the economy were taken over by powerful corporations who squeezed out all but a few minor competitors. Was it libertarianism that rose up against that or was it the free market or competition? No.

    You have the luxury of choosing between the Apple store and the Windows store, as you put it, ONLY because progressive voters, suffering under abuses of corporate authority voted in progressive politicians who changed the laws to use government power to restrict corporate power and prevent monopolies.

    Ever hear of company towns? Towns where a company owns everything from the stores to the homes, and force their employees to live and shop there as a condition of employment, prohibiting goods form outside, and setting the prices higher than wages earned, so that their employees would be prevented by their inevitable debts from leaving? Was that ended by competition, or by the invisible hand of free market forces? No, again, it was progressives changing the laws and using government power to prohibit such practices that ended it and expanded individual freedom.

    How about union busters? Ever heard of them? Corporate security forces, little private armies that would bust up workers meeting to fight for their rights, break up strikes, and prevent them from submitting grievances. Often using that “force” which you think government has a monopoly on, up to and including murder and massacres. Again, it was a rising tide of progressives changing the laws to use government force against the corporations that enforced individual liberty against corporate power.

    To be fair, in all those cases state power was also coerced or co-opted by the corporations and religions to enforce their authoritarian power. But also, in all those cases, there was NO recourse for individuals to resist within the corporations themselves, or the free market. There was no libertarian solution. The ONLY solution was to change the laws to not only prevent government authority and force from being used to support religious and corporate power, but to make it the government’s duty to oppose it.

    Libertarianism does not work to increase individual liberty, and never has. It only leaves corporations and other non-governmental forces free to abuse, restrict and deny individual liberty. The only reason you can sit here and ask us to “offer a single example of a non-state entity exerting authority and diminishing someone’s freedom”, as if there are no such examples, is because you are ignoring or are ignorant of the history of exactly such abuses back when the libertarian policies you support were the rule.

  105. says

    Thumper:

    The problem we have of course is that the left/right spectrum can refer to either economic policy (neo-Liberalism on the right and Communism on the left) or social positions (Authoritarianism on the right and Libertarianism, in it’s traditional sense, on the left). These obviously have little to no bearing on each other, and yet the two scales are used interchangeably without anyone bothering to define which policies they are discussing.

    I agree with much of what you wrote, but this is the part I have perhaps the most trouble with. I don’t believe your description of social positions on the left and right is valid anymore. The left today is more authoritarian on social issues than ever. For example: Michelle Obama’s school lunch program, NYC’s ban on large sodas, forcing beliefs on gay marriage, climate change, environmentalism, etc. The left uses the rhetoric of libertarianism for discreet issues like abortion – my body, my choice – but that is an outlier. It has to be, because if that logic were extended to other rights or to economic issues much of the left’s platform would self destruct.

    I think the only real political spectrum that matters anymore – and the one that most accurately describes left and right – is the authoritarian spectrum. Social conservatives want specific authoritarian policies. Social liberals want specific authoritarian policies as well. Economically the lines are drawn as you describe them above, more authoritarian on the left and more free on the right. This is why fascism must be on the left of the political spectrum.

    However, in common useage Fascism is always placed on the right, and it is only your strange insistence, entirely unique to you in my experience, that “the right” is synonymous with Libertarianism that makes that choice invalid.

    My views are not unique to many others, but it doesn’t mean I’m wrong. As a general definition of libertarian for debating purposes, I use the wikipedia definition: “a political philosophy that upholds liberty as its principal objective. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and freedom of choice, emphasizing political freedom, voluntary association and the primacy of individual judgment.”
    As politics have evolved in the past half century, the right has trended toward the libertarian while the left has trended the opposite way. If you’d like to argue that the left is in any way libertarian, aside from abortion which I’ve identified as an outlier, please do so because I can’t figure it out. Once again, on this scale fascism can only be placed on the left, it is impossible for it to reside on the right unless we simply remove all meaning from both words.

  106. says

    @118

    You have the luxury of choosing between the Apple store and the Windows store, as you put it, ONLY because progressive voters, suffering under abuses of corporate authority voted in progressive politicians who changed the laws to use government power to restrict corporate power and prevent monopolies.

    I’m so glad you used this example because it so perfectly undermines your entire argument. I have the luxury of choosing between the Apple Store and the Windows store because of the innovation of one man, Steve Jobs. Apple and Microsoft started at roughly the same time but took different trajectories as companies and by the late 90s Apple was almost dead in the water. Lots of people chose to use Windows computers because of the ease of use and interoperability. Many liberals in the 90s were wailing about the Microsoft monopoly on computing. The government even brought suit against Microsoft for bundling their internet browser with their computer software.

    So what did Steve Jobs do? He re-imagined computing. No one’s talking much about the Microsoft monopoly anymore. Sure the bulk of personal computers still use Windows, but the personal computer is largely becoming a thing of the past. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised to see Microsoft either sold or re-branded within the next 20 years, that’s how quickly things can change.

    Government can, on occasion, break up monopolies but what they’re extremely good at is creating them. Take taxi service, for example. In many cities it is a government created monopoly for the benefit of a few, rich, companies who take advantage of political connections for profit. Uber is having so much trouble with some markets precisely because they are threatening this government created monopoly. Monopolies are not absolutely not the logical outcome of capitalism – they are not only the logical outcome but also the only outcome of government controlled economies.

    Libertarianism does not work to increase individual liberty, and never has. It only leaves corporations and other non-governmental forces free to abuse, restrict and deny individual liberty.

    This is a complete inversion of reality, as is much of your reasoning. You brought up many examples – in the distant past, and I’m not sure any of them are accurate – of companies abusing workers after either co-opting government forces or in the absence of a government force to prevent the coercion. In libertarianism the government is not powerless – it exists precisely to prevent the situations you describe, to prevent someone from imposing their will on someone else. I’m not entirely sure what sources you’re using to learn about libertarianism, but I’d suggest a reputable one like CATO.

  107. Ragutis says

    This is why fascism must be on the left of the political spectrum.

    Who the hell is this clown?

    So feeding kids healthy food is authoritarian? Giving LGBTQ people equal status under the law is authoritarian? Basing environmental policy on established science is authoritarian? See, libertarians want to be free to slowly poison the next generation. They want to be free to discriminate and exclude. They want to be free to pollute the planet’s water and air, wring it dry of every resource . It’s always the same damn thing: “Fuck you, I’ve got mine.” It’s always about your liberty, at everyone else’s expense.

    Nobody’s gonna force you to feed your kid quinoa and kale, but the schools are responsible for their well-being from 7 to 2, and that includes lunch. . Nobody is going to make you gay marry someone, or even go to a gay wedding, let alone force you to approve, but the government has a responsibility to treat all of it’s citizens as equal. No one’s going to force you to accept climate change, or evolution, or the Big Bang, or that vaccines are safe, but governments have (again) to be responsible to the best interests of all of their citizens, not pander to the loons or cave to the demands of select industries.

    Is responsibility such a difficult concept to understand? Is the idea that what helps us all helps us as individuals so slippery to the libertarian mind? You want to stand alone against the universe? Go build yourself a rocket ship and get the fuck out of our way. The rest of us realize that we’re in this together and there’s lots of work to do.

  108. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    @ Tom Weiss #119

    The left today is more authoritarian on social issues than ever. For example: Michelle Obama’s school lunch program, NYC’s ban on large sodas, forcing beliefs on gay marriage, climate change, environmentalism, etc. The left uses the rhetoric of libertarianism for discreet issues like abortion – my body, my choice – but that is an outlier. It has to be, because if that logic were extended to other rights or to economic issues much of the left’s platform would self destruct.

    Authoritarian: “Favouring or enforcing strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom”.
    – How on Earth does a school lunch programme erode personal freedom in preference to obedience to the state?
    – Large sodas I’ll give you. While I can see the logic behind it, I would and always have characterized it as an authoritarian move, though hardly a large one in the grand scheme of things.
    – You’re going to have to explain what you mean by “forcing beliefs on gay marriage”, since on the face of it that phrase makes no sense.
    – The last two can presumably be lumped into one category; what about policies regarding climate change and the environment, which have been put in place by left-wing politicians, can be characterized as Authoritarian?

    I think the only real political spectrum that matters anymore – and the one that most accurately describes left and right – is the authoritarian spectrum.

    I disagree entirely. Economic policy is just as important to the definition of a political position as social policy, and while it’s possible to spot correlations between the two, the fact that someone is socially authoritarian has no definite bearing on their position on economic policy.

    Social conservatives want specific authoritarian policies. Social liberals want specific authoritarian policies as well. Economically the lines are drawn as you describe them above, more authoritarian on the left and more free on the right. This is why fascism must be on the left of the political spectrum.

    Firstly, you just said that the “Authoriatarian spectrum” is the only one that matters any more, and now you’re trying to justify placing fascism on the left through an economic scale. Make your mind up.

    Secondly, Fascism is a social position. It is strongly correlated with economic protectionism, which logically follows from the extreme nationalism which characterizes it; but it’s not necessary to the definition of the word, so any attempt to categorise it on an economic basis is doomed to fail.

    My views are not unique to many others, but it doesn’t mean I’m wrong. As a general definition of libertarian for debating purposes, I use the wikipedia definition: “a political philosophy that upholds liberty as its principal objective. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and freedom of choice, emphasizing political freedom, voluntary association and the primacy of individual judgment.”
    As politics have evolved in the past half century, the right has trended toward the libertarian while the left has trended the opposite way.

    I disagree that the right is necessarily more Libertarian in the sense that you are using the word. I think that the modern USA tend to define the right wing more by their economic stance than their social stance. The Right in the USA are neo-liberals, but have wide and varying social positions. A sizeable percentage are Randian libertarians, who are basically minarchists who believe in deregulating everything; a position that includes putting as little restriction on personal choices and behavior as possible. But a sizeable percentage of them are also very authoritarian; you need look no further than attempts to take away women’s choices in terms of abortion for proof of that. Ditto attempts to ensure gay marriage remains illegal (unarguably an attempt to deprive gay people of the choice of being married). Both are unarguably positions associated with the American right, and not the left.

    If you’d like to argue that the left is in any way libertarian, aside from abortion which I’ve identified as an outlier, please do so because I can’t figure it out. Once again, on this scale fascism can only be placed on the left, it is impossible for it to reside on the right unless we simply remove all meaning from both words.

    You’re confusing neo-liberalism with Libertarianism. The whole way through this conversation you have shown an inability to distinguish between social and economic positions. And you are still insisting on using a simplistic left/right scale when we’ve both agreed that it is simplistic and useless. “The Left” can refer to a whole range of positions, it doesn’t refer to some weird political monolith any more than “the Right” does. If you’re talking about specific political positions traditionally labeled as leftist, then you’re going to have to lay out what those policies are before this becomes a question worth answering, or even possible to answer.

  109. says

    Go build yourself a rocket ship and get the fuck out of our way. The rest of us realize that we’re in this together and there’s lots of work to do…

    …so have said authoritarians throughout history, right before or right after nudging the muzzle of a gun into someone’s back.

    So feeding kids healthy food is authoritarian?

    Forcing (the operative word) children to eat food they don’t want is authoritarian.

    Giving LGBTQ people equal status under the law is authoritarian?

    Forcing (the operative word) people to violate their religious beliefs is authoritarian.

    Basing environmental policy on established science is authoritarian?

    Forcing (the operative word) undeveloped and underdeveloped countries to forgo growth and prosperity on the increasingly weak predictions of a preponderance of climate scientists for catastrophic climate change effects several decades from now is authoritarian.

    They want to be free to discriminate and exclude.

    You are free to discriminate and exclude, and you do it on a daily basis. So does everyone else. This is the essence of freedom.

    governments have (again) to be responsible to the best interests of all of their citizens, not pander to the loons or cave to the demands of select industries

    This is the source of the rest of your confusion. Mao thought he was acting in the best interests of his citizens. So did Stalin. Hitler. Castro. Chavez. Etc. This is the rallying cry of all authoritarians – it’s for “the good of the people.” And if history has taught us nothing, it should have taught us that this impulse must be resisted.

    The citizens themsleves are the best arbiter of what is in their interest. The farther away we get from that principle the closer we get to events like the Holocaust. Governments should exist primarily to ensure their citizen’s liberty.

    Unfortunately, you wouldn’t have to build a rocket ship to find like minded individuals, there are authoritarians all over the world who think just like you.

  110. says

    – How on Earth does a school lunch programme erode personal freedom in preference to obedience to the state?

    Students are forced, if they eat lunch, to eat things proscribed by the state. Or am I missing something? The left also has in the past also proposed a tax on fast food as a way to influence behaviour. And the logical continuation of Obamacare or a subsequent single payer health care system is a federal government directly concerned with the food its citizen’s consume.

    – You’re going to have to explain what you mean by “forcing beliefs on gay marriage”, since on the face of it that phrase makes no sense.

    I phrased it poorly. What I meant to say is the left wants to force people philosophically or religiously opposed to gay marriage to cater weddings, bake cakes, etc. I agree with the left on gay marriage but I have lots of trouble with the forcing.

    Firstly, you just said that the “Authoriatarian spectrum” is the only one that matters any more, and now you’re trying to justify placing fascism on the left through an economic scale. Make your mind up.

    Secondly, Fascism is a social position. It is strongly correlated with economic protectionism, which logically follows from the extreme nationalism which characterizes it; but it’s not necessary to the definition of the word, so any attempt to categorise it on an economic basis is doomed to fail.

    Fascism itself is as difficult to define at times as libertarianism, but here is Wikipedia (again): a form of radical authoritarian nationalism. Fascism encompasses both social and economic issues as each must be seen through the lens of, and work towards the betterment of, the state. I’m not sure what fascism would look like without economic authoritariansim, as most of the things citizens do on a daily basis relate to economics in some way shape or form. I would imagine it as rather toothless fascism.

    …you need look no further than attempts to take away women’s choices in terms of abortion for proof of that. Ditto attempts to ensure gay marriage remains illegal (unarguably an attempt to deprive gay people of the choice of being married). Both are unarguably positions associated with the American right, and not the left.

    Criminalizing abortion is indeed a conservative position, but it is based on the idea that an unborn fetus deserves the same rights and protections as a child the minute its born. They don’t see it as taking away the freedom of the woman, but of taking away the freedom of the unborn child. I’m not arguing the position, I’m simply framing it in terms that the right would understand. A related position on the right is that there is no constitutional right to abortion (a position I do agree with) and that in lieu of a constitutional amendment (which I would support) legalizing abortion it should be left to the states to decide.

    The gay marriage argument unfolds along similar lines, with the latter point above being more prominent. They argue there is no right to gay marriage in the constitution (and I agree here as well) so either an amendment should be passed or the states should decide. Religious people generally don’t much care if gay people marry (and they span the political spectrum, consider the current Pope, who is talking an awful lot like a socialist) although some are quite vociferous in their opposition. I’d be more willing to grant you this one as a point toward authoritarianism on the right, but as I explained above that cuts both ways on this specific subject.

    And you are still insisting on using a simplistic left/right scale when we’ve both agreed that it is simplistic and useless. “The Left” can refer to a whole range of positions, it doesn’t refer to some weird political monolith any more than “the Right” does.

    I didn’t say the spectrum was useless, but I agree it is inadequate. And the original point of my post was to argue against placing fascism on that simplistic scale on the right, and I think I’ve demonstrated adequately that it doesn’t belong on that end of the simplistic scale we both don’t like.

  111. Ariaflame, BSc, BF, PhD says

    So do you also believe that people have a right to refuse to bake cakes for them black folks?

    Do they actually force the food down the students throats through tubes? What the fuck are you talking about?

  112. Ragutis says

    Oh, they’re force-feeding the kids now? I just thought they were getting rid of junk food and replacing them with healthier alternatives. Clearly, I was wrong. Michelle Obama must have a devious plan to kidnap millions of American children and harvest their livers. Step One: Force feed the children. Step Two: Make Foie Gras illegal. Step Three: Profit!!!1!

    How exactly are people being forced to violate their religious beliefs? The same way the Supreme Court made millions “violate their religious beliefs” in Loving v. Virginia or are they using mind control waves this time? *gasp* Have they found a way to circumvent tinfoil hat technology?

    Umm, you do know that most un and underdeveloped nations are the loudest voices shouting at us lumbering flatulent industrial behemoths to change our ways, since they will be the ones suffering first and most? Not a lot of countries will be upset if American, European or Chinese companies help them set up a renewable energy infrastructure vs. a fossil fuel one.

    I may be free to discriminate and exclude, but I do my best not to. It’s called empathy.

    Do I really need to post a list of modern social democracies or do you concede that your list of list of dictators was stupid and not at all an argument against the value of people working together for the common good? Look at the Happiness or Prosperity indexes and notice how many of the nations ranking higher than the U.S. are quite a bit to our left, and also manage to do far better in the personal freedom department. Not a single one of the 20 that rank higher have a government anyone sane would call Libertarian, nor do I hear CATO or Heritage citing any of them as nations we should emulate. Pretty sure I’ve never heard, nor ever will hear Rand Paul say we should be more like Sweden or Denmark.

  113. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    (Apologies if this is difficult to read, I can’t copy/paste again.)

    1- No, they are not forced to do anything. They are well within their rights to bring in their own lunch. If they choose to eat school lunches, they have to choose from what’s on offer. If that’s “forcing” them, then by the same logic every restaurant and cafeteria in the country is also guilty of the same thing.

    2- The government’s position is that private businesses do not have the right to refuse service on the grounds of sexuality. If you choose to open a business, you do so on the understanding that there are certain rules and laws you have to follow. By your logic hygiene laws are eroding the business owner’s personal liberty by “forcing” them to take reasonable measures to ensure they don’t make people ill.

    And unless you also believe that private businesses ought to have the right to refuse service on the grounds of race, gender, religion etc., then your position on this is illogical.

    – No, fascism isn’t difficult to define; I provided a full definition earlier. Your definition is accurate if incomplete, but once again you are failing to distinguish between social and economic policy. There is no such thing as “economic authoritarianism”; authoritarianism is a social position referring to a government’s regulation of individual’s freedoms and behavior.

    – I understand their logic (and disagree with it), but it is undeniable that their position deprives the woman of a choice.

    – It doesn’t cut both ways; a couple’s right to be married has no bearing on whether or not homosexuals are a protected class in terms of discrimination legislation. These are two separate arguments.

    – I don’t think you’ve demonstrated that at all, because you have consistently failed to define what that left/right scale is measuring. The traditional left/right scale places greater social regulation on the right, and less on the left; and greater economic regulation on the left, and less on the right. Perhaps describing the scale itself as useless is painting with too broad a brush, since the failure, in my view, comes from the ambiguous way people use the terms and a consistent failure to distinguish between economic and social positions, leading to the current situation where describing a person as “right” or “left” is completely meaningless without further clarification. You keep claiming that left = more regulation and so fascism belongs on the left but, as already mentioned Dog knows how many times, this position fails to differentiate between social and economic policies. I don’t know how many more times I can repeat this rather simple fact without losing the will to live.

  114. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Forcing (the operative word) undeveloped and underdeveloped countries to forgo growth and prosperity on the increasingly weak predictions of a preponderance of climate scientists for catastrophic climate change effects several decades from now is authoritarian.

    Only to a stupid, pressuppositonal delusional fool like yourself. Your unsupported word is give the consideration it should have. NONE FROM A PROVEN LIAR AND BULLSHITTER.
    Why are you still here? We are laughing at you and your idiotology.

  115. Snoof says

    Who cares about insignificant things like monopolies and company towns and the Pinkertons and the Congo Free State when there’s the terror that is school lunches?

  116. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    Oh lord, I should have read #123 first.

    – I’ve already covered this in my previous post, but it bears repeating: they are in no way being forced to eat certain foods.
    – Firstly, they are not being forced to violate their religious beliefs, they are being forced to choose between their religious beliefs and running a business. Secondly, despite what many Christian bigots say, there is no justification in the Christian religion for hating on gays. The Doctrine of the New Covenant is central to Christianity, and states that when Jesus died for our sins it created a new covenant with God. As a result, we no longer have to follow the mitzvot (the 613 Rabbinical laws laid out in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Judges and Numbers) and instead must abide only by the Ten commandments. This is the reason Christians are allowed to eat pork, even though it says right there in Leviticus that you can’t.

    The biblical passage oft-cited as the religious justification for hating gays is Leviticus 20:13, and guess what? It’s a mitvah. Christians can’t have it both ways; either the New Covenant applies, in which case there’s no commandment against being gay, or it doesn’t, in which case they can’t eat pork or shellfish, or wear clothing of mixed fibres (no poly-blends for you!), or cut their beards or the hair on the sides of their heads (seriously, Leviticus 19:27), or any of the other countless silly laws laid out in the Deuteronomical History.

    – Fossil fuels are not necessary for economic growth or prosperity, and besides, no one’s forcing anyone not to use them. What on Earth are you on about?

    – It’s telling that you think the fundamental essence of freedom is the right to discriminate against and exclude others. It’s a sad and bitter existence which holds this right above any other.

    – “Government’s should exist primarily to ensure their citizen’s liberty”.

    Agreed in principle, but I get the feeling you and me have a very different idea of what liberty entails. For example, what do you think of the phrase, “Your right to swing your arms ends where my nose begins”?

    You have the right to swing your arms around, but I have a right not to be punched in the face. How do you reconcile these two contradictory rights?

  117. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Not surprising, our liberturd shows a remarkable lack of empathy.
    Empathy toward your fellow human beings why anti-discrimination laws are in effect, and why a social safety net is provided so people don’t starve.
    Liberturds don’t give a shit about anybody else. It is all about them and their freedom.
    Selfish ignorant people they are.
    Thank you for reminding the lurkers of that Tom Weiss. You are a prime example of what not to be.

  118. says

    @Tom Weiss:

    Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and freedom of choice

    So as an opponent of Obamacare, what choice are you offering someone with a pre-existing condition? See, that is why I’m a socialist liberal, not a libertarian: I believe in the freedom to choose, but I also believe that that freedom is useless without any real choices – so we have an obligation to provide choices.

    I have the luxury of choosing between the Apple Store and the Windows store because of the innovation of one man, Steve Jobs.

    So companies are not authoritarian, but they are ruled by one man? And everyone else in that company is subservient to the will of this one man? Sounds pretty authoritarian to me. And if you think “it’s not authoritarian, because the workers can always quit”, see below.

    So feeding kids healthy food is authoritarian?

    Forcing (the operative word) children to eat food they don’t want is authoritarian.

    Forcing them to eat crappy food is authoritarian too, and evil to boot.

    Forcing (the operative word) people to violate their religious beliefs is authoritarian.

    Nobody is forcing anyone to change their beliefs. You can keep your beliefs. Of course, if you happen to work for the government, you may no longer be able to act on all of your beliefs, because you’re required to do what your employer wants, like issuing marriage certificates to gay couples. But that’s no different than when you work for any other employer. And if you wanted to argue that Apple can’t be authoritarian, because Apple workers can always quit, well, so can government employees.

    I mean, it’s not like Apple is allowing their employees to decide whether Grindr will run on iPhones or not, why should the government allow its workers to decide what marriage licenses they will and won’t provide? Apple is at least as authoritarian to its workers as the government is, if not more. After all, Apple won’t let its workers vote who runs it, or by what statutes.

  119. says

    No, they are not forced to do anything. They are well within their rights to bring in their own lunch. If they choose to eat school lunches, they have to choose from what’s on offer. If that’s “forcing” them, then by the same logic every restaurant and cafeteria in the country is also guilty of the same thing.

    http://www.unionleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20141130/OPINION01/141139989/0/island03

    “If there ever were a testament to the federal government’s power to screw up a good thing, it is the school lunch program. Created to provide nutriutious meals for children who were so poor their parents could not afford to feed them, the program has grown into a gargantuan bureaucracy that dictates the menu for every child in virtually every public school in America.”

    And unless you also believe that private businesses ought to have the right to refuse service on the grounds of race, gender, religion etc., then your position on this is illogical.

    Apples and oranges. There are no religious beliefs, as far as I know, that preclude interaction with specific races or genders. And again I’m not arguing that Christians who don’t want to participate in gay marriage celebrations are correct for doing so, religiously or otherwise. I don’t get to determine what their beliefs are, but the government should not get to determine that either.

    Here’s a corollary: Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays for religious reasons. Should the government force the chain to open its doors on that day? Should the government force Jews to work on the Sabbath? Or should people be allowed the freedom to work and associate however they please?

    There is no such thing as “economic authoritarianism”; authoritarianism is a social position referring to a government’s regulation of individual’s freedoms and behavior.

    I’m afraid you’ve lost me again. Are not communists “economic authoritarians”?

    – I understand their logic (and disagree with it), but it is undeniable that their position deprives the woman of a choice.

    It is equally undeniable, from their perspective, that abortion deprives the fetus of life.

    – It doesn’t cut both ways; a couple’s right to be married has no bearing on whether or not homosexuals are a protected class in terms of discrimination legislation. These are two separate arguments.

    A couple’s right to be married also has no bearing on a Christian’s right not to participate in that marriage, yet the left is trying to force them to do so.

    Umm, you do know that most un and underdeveloped nations are the loudest voices shouting at us lumbering flatulent industrial behemoths to change our ways, since they will be the ones suffering first and most? Not a lot of countries will be upset if American, European or Chinese companies help them set up a renewable energy infrastructure vs. a fossil fuel one.

    I’m fairly certain all of them would be upset, becuase renewable energy infrastructures are unreliable, inefficient, and costly. Developing nations need cheap energy to expand and prosper, not wind and solar. They’re shouting at us because they believe a global climate treaty will lead to a wealth transfer – they’re after money.

    Do I really need to post a list of modern social democracies or do you concede that your list of list of dictators was stupid and not at all an argument against the value of people working together for the common good?

    Would these be the same social democracies which have been relying, since WWII, on the US for security? Democracies like Greece which is currently on the brink of bankrupcy? Or any of the several other European countries ready to follow suit? All of your social democracies will, at some point like Greece, begin to run out of other people’s money.

  120. K E Decilon says

    Tom Weiss #134

    Here’s a corollary: Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays for religious reasons. Should the government force the chain to open its doors on that day? Should the government force Jews to work on the Sabbath? Or should people be allowed the freedom to work and associate however they please?

    So where are any of these things actually happening? What if a frog had wings, they would no longer bump their ass every time they land!

    Please give us some examples where those authoritarian gummints are actually interfering with religious beliefs, not “What ifs” from your fevered imagination.

    And don’t wave access to abortion at us. It is becoming increasingly clear to those of us on the left that a woman’s right to own her body trumps anybody’s bullshit religious beliefs.

  121. Snoof says

    There are no religious beliefs, as far as I know, that preclude interaction with specific races or genders.

    Then you can add religious beliefs to the list of things you’re ignorant about.

  122. says

    There are no religious beliefs, as far as I know, that preclude interaction with specific races or genders.

    “As far as you know” must mean about two centimeters past your eyeballs. Look past that dense fog of pure stupidity, and you’ll see PLENTY of religious beliefs that have been overtly used to justify separatism, enslavement, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and eliminationist ethnic warfare. What painfully obvious reality are you going to pretend not to see next? The fucking Holocaust? Fuck off and die, you stupid denialist walking sewer-main. (In case you’re still unclear on the difference between contempt and belligerence, this is a bit of both.)

    …forcing beliefs on gay marriage, climate change, environmentalism, etc…

    Okay, I think it’s safe to conclude that Tom Weiss is nothing but yet another right-wing moron, spouting the same incoherent stale-ass whinery about Big Gummint “forcing” objective reality down our throats and not allowing us to stay in the private bubble-verses our Founders fought to create for us at Lexington and Yorktown or whatever. I’m willing to bet Galileo heard similar hateful nonsense in his time too — quite possibly the same shit word for word. Seriously, anyone who accuses advocates of tolerance or sensible public policy of “forcing” anything on anyone is a right-wing idiot who can’t handle the present-day reality.

    I’m tempted to keep on debunking Weiss’s horseshit, because it really does need to be debunked and kicked aside; but I have things to do in the real world, and arguing with a bling bigoted moron, who keeps on pushing arguments he (and everyone else) knows have been disproven, can’t really be expected to accomplish anything.

    This is what libertarianism is, folks: right-wing fools and con-artists who know they’ve been proven wrong about everything, and who try to dress up their wrongness in a shiny new-looking ad-campaign-disguised-as-a-movement and a lot of Founding-Fathersy tripe about “Liberty” — and it’s nothing but the same old bigoted stupid obsolete bullshit all the way down.

  123. says

    “If there ever were a testament to the federal government’s power to screw up a good thing, it is the school lunch program. Created to provide nutriutious meals for children who were so poor their parents could not afford to feed them, the program has grown into a gargantuan bureaucracy that dictates the menu for every child in virtually every public school in America.”

    Funny, that paragraph you quote doesn’t actually say the school-lunch program failed to achieve its stated objective.

    And yes, of course they “dictate” what kids eat. That’s what parents and caregivers ALWAYS have to do to ensure their kids eat right. Or would you rather have taxpayer money spent on crappy non-nourishing food? (A belly full of mass-produced candy bars probably costs more than a belly full of veggies.)

    Seriously, are you even thinking at all about the complaints you recite from that decades-old script of yours? Do you really even give a shit about either hungry kids or taxpayer money?

  124. says

    PS: Speaking of decades-old scripts, I blame PZ for this stupid libertard’s presence here. He used the phrase “script kiddies” in the title of this post, so at least one libertard was bound to think it was about them. Kiddies with scripts — who else could that refer to if not libertarians or Christian evangelists?

  125. says

    It is equally undeniable, from their perspective, that abortion deprives the fetus of life.

    It is equally undeniable, from the flat-Earthers’ perspective, that the Earth can’t possibly be round.

  126. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    A couple’s right to be married also has no bearing on a Christian’s right not to participate in that marriage, yet the left is trying to force them to do so.

    If you sell cakes, you sell to ALL the people. You can’t pick and chose who you sell to. That is called bigotry. Our liberturd is defending bigotry. Typical. They like the defacto bigotry provided by the idiotology. It still means they are bigots.
    Which is more authoritarian? Government saying all car lots must be closed on Sunday? Or allowing car lots, if they desire, to be open on Sunday? From any perspective, the former is authoritarian, the imposition of religious values into the secular work place by fiat; the latter is freedom of choice. Same with allowing abortion and/or contraception. Freedom of choice by individuals, not religious fuckwits.

  127. says

    A couple’s right to be married also has no bearing on a Christian’s right not to participate in that marriage, yet the left is trying to force them to do so.

    By the same token, a black family’s right to eat breakfast in a restaurant also has “no bearing” on a White Southern Baptist restaurant-owner’s right not to do anything to support that meal — yet the left is trying to force them to do so. Agree or disagree?

    Also by the same token, a black family’s right to put their kids in a good public school, right alongside their white neighbors’ kids, has “no bearing” on a White Southern Baptist teacher’s right not to participate in that kid’s education — yet again, the left is forcing them to do so. Agree or disagree?

  128. says

    …becuase renewable energy infrastructures are unreliable, inefficient, and costly. Developing nations need cheap energy to expand and prosper, not wind and solar.

    And once again, the libertarian pretends to be the energy and environment expert, and promptly shows he has no clue what he’s talking about, and hasn’t updated his reactionary pro-big-oil talking points since about the 1970s. Use the government-created ARPANET to look up “Solar Mamas” someday — you brave libertarian innovation-supporters aren’t as smart, or as innovative, as you think you are.

  129. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    @ Tom Weiss #134

    – I’m not sure what you think that link proves, other than someone somewhere agrees with you. Again, no one’s forcing them to eat anything, so it can’t logically be called fascistic.

    – The fact you know of no religion that prohibits this is irrelevant. Religious rules have been interpreted in this fashion before, most famously to support anti-miscegenation law in America.
    Secondly, no one’s being forced to participate in gay marriages.
    Thirdly, no one’s determining anyone else’s religious beliefs. that’s not even possible, let alone happening.
    Fourthly, we do not currently have the freedom to work and associate as we please, not due to government but due to private business. Or are there companies out there in the US which allow Muslims to have Friday off because it’s their Sabbath? There’s no law against it. Government doesn’t force Muslims to work on their Sabbath, businesses do. Jews Sabbath is Saturday, but Jews in the catering or retail industries quite often have to work on their Sabbath; again not due to government but private businesses. Are they fascist? Furthermore, Chick-fil-a closing on a Sunday does not deprive any one specific group of it’s services. It’s not discriminatory. So no, I wouldn’t make them open on a Sunday.

    – “Are not Communists economic authoritarians?”

    No. Once again, that’s not a thing. I’m fast beginning to believe you don’t actually understand what authoritarian means.

    – I know that’s their perspective. Their perspective is wrong. A foetus is alive in only the most shallow sense of the word. Moe importantly, we once again run into a situation of conflicting rights. They have given primacy to a bunch of cells supposed right to be born, a right which exists nowhere except in their heads, over the well established right of an existing person to bodily autonomy. They are wrong.

    – No one’s forcing anyone to participate in a gay marriage. Firstly, I would argue that selling someone a cake hardly counts as participating, but I understand they don’t see it that way. But we run into the same problem here as we did earlier; no one is forcing them to contribute to a gay wedding, they are being presented with a choice: either own and operate a business which abides by the law, or don’t own and operate a business. When you open a business you know what will be required of you, you don’t get to open one and then whinge about the laws you knew you’d have to follow. They are not being forced to do anything.

  130. toska says

    So apparently the libertarian position on school lunches is about like this: Giving school children shitty, unhealthy foods = FREEDOM! Giving school children healthy, nutritious meals = FASCISM!

    How is providing healthy food taking away choice while providing unhealthy food is somehow not taking away choice? You know what, nevermind. I’ve seen enough already.