Why do teabagger signs have far worse spelling than anti-war signs?

[tpfkaw]

Silly leftists.  Didn't you get the memo?  Your attacks on tea partiers are supposed to be anti-intellectual now.

[tpfkaw]

Silly leftists.  Didn't you get the memo?  Your attacks on tea partiers are supposed to be anti-intellectual now.

Come on, the predictions set out and implied in the Road to Serfdom have not come true at all.

They're all coming true, and with increasing rapidity.

[tpfkaw]

1. Funny, I was going to use the UK as the prime example.

2. No, I think the Democrats have learned their lesson with guns for now.

[tpfkaw]

Well, when I went there two years ago, I noticed the not one but two security cameras in my small hotel elevator, not to mention the dozens on every street, and the large posters informing me that knives are illegal and that "SELF DEFENSE IS NO DEFENSE."

[tpfkaw]

Well, the USSR did have (one-party) democratic elections, and its leader (after Stalin) only had about as much decision-making power as a western European prime minister.  I think few would argue that it was in any way as free a country as a nondemocracy like, say, Hong Kong.

Yes, I do think there are some rights more fundamental than the right to vote (although if the right to vote is taken away, the power of decision-making must be decentralized), and the right to defend oneself would be one of those rights I consider more fundamental.

[tpfkaw]

Well, when I went there two years ago, I noticed the not one but two security cameras in my small hotel elevator, not to mention the dozens on every street, and the large posters informing me that knives are illegal and that "SELF DEFENSE IS NO DEFENSE."

     While the UK is a much worse place than the US, it really isn't what one could call totalitarian.

Of course not, but that's the trend.

[tpfkaw]

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This is true, but the example really wouldn't apply to multi party governments. Would Hong Kong or some other theoretical liberal dictatorship, with the lack of a right to vote but arguably more freedom in other more laissez-faire economic ways, be more free than the UK where the Multi-Party System continues to flourish? I suppose its arguable although I probably disagree with that conclusion.

It obviously depends on the other rights given to the people in these hypothetical multi-party democracies and liberal nondemocracies, but I'd be inclined to say that property rights are generally more important than voting rights.

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Well, the primary reason why the road to serfdom is a road to serfdom is because it is so popular with people.  If I were to wear a shirt with Augusto Pinochet on it to class, I would be thrown out.  If I were to wear a shirt with a picture of Chairman Mao (who was a thousand times more murderous than Pinochet ever was) to class, I'd merely be "edgy."  Indeed, you could likely get away with Stalin.

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Interesting. So in your belief, without the right to vote, how would such decentralization work?[/quote]

Well, it would require that broad executive authority not be vested in one single individual, but dispersed among many different persons of differing interests.  The US before Jackson extended the broad franchise would be the idea.

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I'd say given how many industries in the UK have been de-nationalized and markets de-regulated that the trend is precisely the opposite.
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There's been a small (and, I believe, temporary) uptick in economic liberty compared to a massive decrease in personal liberty (banning guns and now knives. "self defense is no defense," banning "hate speech" etc.).

[tpfkaw]

(one-party) democratic elections

That's an oxymoron.

Well, they were often multi-candidate, but every candidate was from the CPSU.

[tpfkaw]

Well, when I went there two years ago, I noticed the not one but two security cameras in my small hotel elevator, not to mention the dozens on every street, and the large posters informing me that knives are illegal and that "SELF DEFENSE IS NO DEFENSE."

I agree, it's a pretty appalling assault on civil liberties.

But you seem to be getting knives confused with pocket knives.

Yes, I know it's pocket knives (or, rather, carrying a knife outside one's residence).  I received my first pocket knife at age 7, in my quiet little liberal suburb in Massachusetts.  I somehow managed to avoid injuring myself or others.