Thursday, February 14, 2008

The difference between a Ronbot "libertarian" and a real libertarian

A Ronbot, if you challenge his beliefs on his blog, will ban you. A real libertarian, on the other hand, will engage you in discourse. Ronbots (psuedo-libertarians who are part of a cult of personality) either don't have a comments section at all on their blog, or have their comments section moderated so that they can delete dissenting views before they appear on their blog. A real libertarian, on the other hand, has an open unmoderated comments policy because he always welcomes alternate views, even ones that he does not agree with.

There is a reason why my comments are unmoderated. I have very occasionally needed to remove a comment because it engaged in a personal attack rather than addressing the issue at hand, but I have never, ever, deleted a comment because the poster of that comment expressed an opinion that I didn't agree with. But right-wing zealots have no such tolerance for dissenting views. If you do not agree with their opinions, you are a "left wing idiot" regardless of your actual political beliefs. Rather than address your points, they will ban you.

That, in the end, is the difference between intelligent people and people with delusions of intelligence. Intelligent people like hearing dissenting views, and do not censor or ban folks with dissenting views. People with delusions of intelligence... not so much.

-- Badtux the Libertarian Penguin

5 comments:

  1. There is a difference? We all jump all over the chart.

    ReplyDelete
  2. i don't know of many libertarians who would stand for the intrusion of government into the office during a meeting between a doctor and a patient. ron paul's all for personal liberty until your choices don't jibe with his. fuck. that.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I disagree. I mean, if you want to have unmoderated comments, good on ya, mate, but I myself got so tired of stupidity and mendacity that I decided to moderate and reject a fair amount of dumbass bullshit.

    There are plenty of ways for people to have their say: blogger and wordpress are still free. I don't think it's the sine qua non of even small-ell libertarianism that I have to provide a platform for others' idiocy.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I prefer to mock and abuse idiots rather than delete their idiocies, Bum. Else BBC wouldn't still be posting here :-).

    The only time I zap their stupidity is if it strays from the subject at hand and turns into name calling. Only one penguin gets to engage in personal abuse on this blog. Call it a perogative of ownership :-).

    - Badtux the Nasty Abusive Penguin

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ron Paul isn't a libertarian. He is an antebellum rightist.

    ReplyDelete

Ground rules: Comments that consist solely of insults, fact-free talking points, are off-topic, or simply spam the same argument over and over will be deleted. The penguin is the only one allowed to be an ass here. All viewpoints, however, are welcomed, even if I disagree vehemently with you.

WARNING: You are entitled to create your own arguments, but you are NOT entitled to create your own facts. If you spew scientific denialism, or insist that the sky is purple, or otherwise insist that your made-up universe of pink unicorns and cotton candy trees is "real", well -- expect the banhammer.

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