The Great Pollitical Battle of the 21st century...

[thecontributer]

.... will not be between liberalism and conservatism, but between liberalism and libertarianism.

Then again, I think everyone knows this if they spent just one hour in the Spengler forums in the past year or so.

[noddy]

I dont see anyone standing up for libertarianism actually - its universally looked down upon as an indulgence of young and healthy university students with no life experience.

There used to be another word - "Adult" I think it was, that meant something close to libertarian - but not quite.

It also had some associated nonsense with taking responsibility for your life and your place in the world, but I cant remember really - was so long ago that I heard of it.

[AzariLoveIran]

[Tinker]

No, the battle will be between statism and decentralization. It'll be far less ideological than the 21st century. The statists will find more and more that the status quo where the state is supreme is increasingly challenged by the way people organize.

[Demon of Undoing]

[noddy]

Id like to agree Tinker, but I cant see the decentralisation, and I certainly cant see less ideology.

Id call it "statism versus internationalism" and Its going to be ideology heavy because rationalism is tedious and difficult.

decentralisation is for irrelevant tribal types who just want to live the old way, of which I am one.

the brave new future of permenant leisure and no responsibility everyone is so desperate for requires bigger collectives, not smaller ones.

[Endovelico]

Looking at my own navel, I would say that the great political battle in Europe will be around the question of how to build Europe's political union without interfering too much on local/national rights.

[YMix]

Sadly, I'll have to agree with noddy. I don't see decentralization springing from the ballot box or from a coherent ideology. It will continue to be split among various groups with somewhat different agendas: leftists, rightists, environmentalists, various idealists and dissatisfied. The political battle of the 21st century will be the survival of the national state in the West and, probably, political reform in China, should the peasants ever get uppity enough.

Decentralization will get far more help from the development of technologies that can allow the so inclined to live off the grid: sun and wind power, small scale independent manufacturing, communication. And it will probably remain an ideal somewhere in the background.

[Tinker]

[noddy]

[noddy]

[~]

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Try and strike out on yor own

i think we all want to be libertarian, especially if we choose to define it as idealistically and naively as Wiki

But as I grow a little older and learned a little critical thought and a little modern history, I can see that Communism arose as a reaction to a form of libertarianism (held by society's lottery winners), and that most of Ayn Rand's political/economic philosophy was a reaction to growing up under that reaction ( are you listening ST and Caskhades?)

Then I see that nature abhors a vacuum and it really comes down to a true dichotomy of The State vs Unregulated Private Enterprise having The Power, and who am I ultimately more comfortable with? The imposed and artificial balance of Social Democracy seems closest to 18% gray.


"...If I knew Picasso
I'd buy myself a gray guitar and play..."


And I do tend to agree with ALI, DoU, Noddy: A man who tries to truly be self-sufficient will likely find himself in jail sooner than later. I don't know if the Euros/urbanites here can even begin to relate to their thoughts here without a conscious effort, and then only on a theoretical level.

[Tinker]

[noddy]

[Ibrahim]

[Ibrahim]

[Tinker]

[Ibrahim]