All organizations move ever leftwards.
Wikipedia was founded by a conservative libertarian, or conservative Randian, and has been moving progressively leftwards, so that it is now one of the voices of the state, which is to say, one of the voices of the left, one of a thousand megaphones controlled by a single microphone.
People tend to say “all organizations move left except for explicitly right wing organizations”, but that is not so. Libertarian organizations move leftwards on statism, Neo Nazi organizations move leftwards on race and affirmative action, and Christian Right organizations move leftwards on marriage, the family, and homosexuality.
Christianity should be right wing on social issues because the New Testament has a conservative position on marriage, the family, and homosexuality. According to the New Testament:
- Wives must obey their husbands.
- Homosexuals will suffer eternal damnation.
- Men may only divorce their wives for fornication (infidelity or lack of virginity).
- Wives may not divorce their husbands for any reason whatsoever.
- A divorced woman may never remarry, but a divorced man may remarry.
Yet strange to report, today’s Christian right takes a position on marriage and the family that in the fifties would have been perceived as hippy dippy left wing, and 1830 or so would have been considered pretty much demented and far out insane.
So why have Christian organizations been moving left? Well I can tell you why libertarian organizations have been moving left, and presumably the same applies with Neo Nazis, Christians, and whatnot.
The state directly funds and sponsors left wing entryism into anti state organizations, for example “Critical Review”, which is a state funded entryist organization that attempts to move libertarians, and libertarian organizations, leftwards. If you are a libertarian activist, and you cooperate with “Critical Review”, you can get paid. Don’t cooperate? Then you don’t get paid.
Similarly, the blogger “The Agitator” campaigned as a libertarian, but was only libertarian on those issues agreeable to the left. He was opposed to the police and army, but supported all the rest of the state, and opposed the rights of private property, for example he opposed the right to eject a journalist from private property. And in due course, he received a financial reward from the Huffington Post, an organization that runs at a loss dispensing money to left wing activists – basically it launders money from the state, rendering it nominally private, and then dispenses that money to left wing journalists and bloggers. The state does favors to nominally private businesses, which “donate” to the Huffington Post, and the Huffington Post then financially rewards people, such as the blogger, who follow the line.
In addition to the carrot, there is the stick. If your employer is sued for racial or sexual discrimination, the political opinions of his employees constitute evidence of racism, sexism, and whatnot. So, best not to hire people with unsuitable political opinions.
I have a little familiarity with Critical Review and my main impression is that they advocate consequentialism over deontological/teleological conceptions of libertarianism, as well as critiquing democracy as opposed by capitalism by pushing the “voice vs exit” distinction.
“basically it launders money from the state, rendering it nominally private, and then dispenses that money to left wing journalists and bloggers. The state does favors to nominally private businesses”
Is there a site like DiscoverTheNetworks where we can see a trace of the money from the government to folks like Balko?
“declare that for having a bad sense of humor I was not REMOTELY a libertarian”
I only read the post you linked rather than where he back-pedaled, but he did not take it as “bad humor” but a serious belief you held and elaborated previously based on the actions of the government.
Last time I looked, which was a long time ago, they advocated the standard totalitarianism which is the official wisdom of the Ivy League – well to the left of where Obama pretends to be, far more socialist than he in fact is, pretty much in line with Mao and Pol Pot.
Time and time again the writers in CRITICAL REVIEW commend ideas that have a clear and overwhelming historical connection with mass murder, and an obvious logical connection to mass murder, and nobody mentions this inconvenient fact.
Jeffrey Friedman defines liberty as liberty only to do good, not to do “bad”, that is to say, not to take any action in pursuit of ones own desires, tells us what a great moralist was Marx, and contemptuously dismisses all private property rights, all of them, as obviously evil, irrational, and selfish.
Jeffrey Friedman wrote: (Critical Review, Vol. 6. No 1., page 114)
He is a big fan of Marx, he defines “negative liberty” in a way that includes all actual liberty that anyone, including Pat Robertson, would call liberty, and proposes to put an end to it, for the sake of
a higher liberty.
All his references to actual libertarianism in his first article are in scare quotes, as if we ate babies, as if we, not the Marxists, were mass murderers.
He appears to believe that his concept of negative and positive liberty is similar to that of Berlin. I see no connection, but then I do not see much connection between Berlin’s use of the concept of
negative liberty in one paragraph, and Berlin’s use of the concept of negative liberty in another paragraph, so I can hardly criticize Friedman on that account. Berlin was merely incoherent. Friedman is engaged in Stalinist euphemism.
> the blogger “The Agitator” campaigned as a libertarian,
Indeed. When I tweeted a JOKE which was clearly seen as a joke by hundreds of folks, some local leftists up in a snit. The chief of police in my town in MA responded by confiscating my firearms without a warrant (no charges were ever filed, and I was left with a $10k legal bill).
And what did Balko do?
Immediately distance himself and declare that for having a bad sense of humor I was not REMOTELY a libertarian.
http://www.theagitator.com/2011/01/21/questions-for-alex-seitz-wald-and-thinkprogress/
After a half dozen mutual acquaintances gave him grief for this he belatedly back-pedaled and said “OK, maybe he’s sort of a libertarian…but not the polite kind that I’d like to invite to DC area cocktail parties”.
He’s a statist collaborator, whether he acknowledges it or not.