Posted on 11/23/2001 5:19:03 PM PST by Liberty Teeth
This description/term is thrown around quite a bit on FR. What is your definition of a Statist?
stat·ism [stáy tìzzm ] noun
centralized political control:
the theory, or its practice, that economic and political power should be controlled by a central government leaving regional government and the individual with relatively little say in political matters.
This is a definition from Encarta.
My definition of a Statist is someone who is satisfied with the status quo. What say you?
A Statist is someone who believes that the state is more important than the rights or life of an individual.
Tehillim (Psalm) 119:105 Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.
XeniaSt
Statism is the doctrine that maintains that your life, money and property are not yours, but the property of the state. A statist is any individual who upholds this doctrine and/or supports its implementation.
A statist knows that he cannot get away with—at least, not yet—openly declaring that your life, money and property are not yours, so he advances these ideas by implicit means.
Statists enact laws that forbid you from taking certain actions altogether or only if you have their permission—and the idea is: if you may only act by permission, you do not have a right to your life. Statists, through their regulations, determine how much of your money you will be allowed to keep—and the idea is: if you do not have the right to decide how your money is spent, your money is not yours. Statists issue decrees restricting how you may use your property—and the idea is: if you do not have the right to control the use and disposal of your property, your property is not yours. These are the indirect means by which statists promote and implement their ideas.
An adult statist is grown up, physically, but in a state of self-arrested, stunted, mental development. His worldview is that of a child who can only do what his parents permit and who is dependent on his parents for everything. In the adult world, he seeks to forcibly impose this view on others. You are the child and the state, run by statists, is the parent. The statist may do anything he wants, while you may only do what the statist permits—bringing us a complete reversal of the way it should be. In fact, you should be free to do whatever you want (so long as you do not violate the right of another to do the same), while government officials should only be able to do what the law specifically permits—and no more.
The irony of it all is the fact that statists, left to their own devices, are impotent, powerless to harm you. The power that they wield comes from the willing support of their victims, from the very individuals they control, from any and all who earn a living and produce the financial and material means statists use to regulate others. All that it would take for statists to lose this power over you is for their victims, the productive, to stop supporting them. A statist’s greatest fear is your discovery of this fact.
In his impotence, a statist seeks to escape the terror of facing reality by ruling the competent, the capable—those who do face reality. In a free society, statists would only be able to rise to the level of their ability, which, for most, would not be very far. In a statist society, their ability to produce is irrelevant. They can rise to the extent to which they are able to forcibly harness others—taking statists to heights impossible to them in a free society.
A statist hates self-reliance, so he forces you to rely on others and others to rely on you. He will use anyone and anything to control you and force you into dependence: your children, your elderly parents, your neighbors who have fallen on hard times, your friends who are ill. Every human problem or disaster is an opportunity to be capitalized upon by a statist—another chance to enlarge his powers.
A statist is that schoolyard bully, or his spiritual equivalent, of your childhood. But now he is grown up, all dressed up in a suit. The only way he can allay his constant anxiety and dread is through the control and intimidation of others. He doesn’t want to conquer nature, but other men. He wants to cheat reality, not abide by it. He wants to get away with living, not live his life on his own.
A statist only has self-identity if the eyes of others are focused on him. He only feels alive if is he is part of some group, so he forces others into adoring, dependent herds who must curry his favor in order to survive.
A statist hates the independent mind, since he doesn’t have one of his own. He can’t really think, he can only manipulate words, ideas cut off from reality, emotions and other people—these are his only reality. To a statist, reality is not real—thus, the truth doesn’t matter. Lies, deception—and the truth, on occasion—are interchangeable tools, one as valid as another, to be used to pander to the worst in man: the desire for the unearned.
A statist is that mooching relative, now a bureaucrat, for whom there can never be enough handouts. He is a panhandler with a gun, who despises your charity as an insult, but claims your money as a right. He is a criminal who has gone from bad to worse: an armed robber doesn’t try to convince you that he is taking your money for your own good, but a statist politician does.
Such is the face and soul of a statist..
Fulton Huxtable
June 7, 1999
Some Republicans are statists; however today all Democrats are both collectivists and statists.
This is from a former Southern Democrat, one who still believes in a constitutional republic.
We have but one King in America: King Jesus.
XeniaSt
Amen! Maranatha !
XeniaSt
You're thinking of STASIS
But this seems to apply to today also:
Stasis
1. motionless state: a state in which there is neither motion nor development, often resulting from opposing forces balancing each other.
Their answer will tell you all you need to know.
If this country has a problem with perversity and drugs and all the other manifestations of our cultural decay, it's not because we don't have enough laws and government. It's because the Christian conception of how people should act is getting the stew kicked out of it in the martketplace of ideas. If you think the Republican Party is the solution to our cultural problems, then I believe you are quite mistaken.
I think there's a small but growing number of Christian conservatives who are seeing the light and realizing that the Republican Party is just a slower and slightly classier ride to the same destination that the Democrats are steering us towards. It's an eye opening excercise to study the Constitution and compare the type of government outlined it with the type of government that our "conservative" leadership has in mind.
--- Whoa right there! The trouble with your statement is, that NO ONE has mentioned libertarians. Why do you? - To bait us into flaming you. Bad boy! You should get a time out. - Or a warning.
they think that our founding fathers thought that you should be free to practice whatever sexual perversion you desire while strung out on drugs and abrogate your responsibility by placing it on the unborn child who must die for their indiscretions.
--- Absolute BS. Rank baiting. Not a libertarian on this forum has EVER advocated such crap. -- Name one. Post a quote.
If you do not feel that to be the case then you're a Statist Nazi Talaban type of throwback with a tendency to join the KKK. Now the fact that none of that is true will make no difference and if you're a Christian then that will just prove their point.
-- "the fact that none of this is true". -- Yep, that alone is true, out of your context.
1. Bill O'Rielly
2. Ross Perot
3. John McCain
Virginia Postrel, a libertarian writer, has tinkered with words to produce "staticist," a person who favors keeping things as they are. She sees herself as a "dynamist," in favor of constant change. Somehow she doesn't convince me that "dynamism" is always a good thing and "staticism" always a bad thing.
Two points:
1) Conservative opposition to "statism" or "collectivism" arose in the age of socialism. For over a century, individualism was seen as a bulwark against socialism. During the same century, one of the dominant oppositions in society was the opposition between class-based socialism and the nationalist idea of the state.
Now that socialism isn't so much of a threat, and markets appear once again to be the dominant force in society -- now that the global market seems to weaken the hold of nationality over people -- it's natural that some conservatives will have second thoughts about whether statism is the chief or only enemy. It's second nature to conservatives to question the wave of the future, so some may grow disillusioned with global market individualism. Admittedly, this is still a fringe phenomenon.
2) The opposition between statism and individualism is complicated by other alternatives -- real or imaginary. On the left, "communitarianism" is advanced as an alternative to both rights-based individualism and hard or harsh statist collectivism. For most people on the right and libertarians, "communitarianism" is seen as a "soft statism," that advances state worship, but clothes it in a "touchy feely" vocabulary.
But there has also been a distinction on the right and center between rights-based individualism and the Christian idea of the "person." The "person" is not so alone as the "individual" because he is a part of various groups and communities and relationships. This idea of the "person" came under attack from the statist ideologies of the 20th century, communism, fascism, and national socialism. But it doesn't achieve its fulfillment in the individual of market libertarianism, either, at least according to some religious thinkers.
---------- ON FREEDOM -----------
Freedom is the ability to act without the initiation of force (or its threat) being used against you. You have a right to freedom because your life is your property, yours to live as you see fit (as long as you do not violate the right to life and liberty of another).
If you are free, you have the unfettered ability to pursue your own happiness, to make those choices needed for the sustenance of your own life. In a semi-free society, such as we have today, your options are forcibly limited by statist politicians on the implicit claim that your life is not your own. But take special note of this important fact: your ability, in a free society, to make unfettered choices is the consequence of being unfettered, i.e., of being unconstrained by the initiation of force. "Having choices" is not the definition of freedom, it is simply one of the consequences of being free. Now, consider your definition of freedom. Is your definition corrupted, even if slightly, by the definition of freedom which has been put forth by statist politicians?
Statists define freedom as "having a choice," the kind of choices only available to an armed thug or a statist politician. Consider the role this definition of "freedom" has played, and continues to play, in the rise of America's welfare state—more accurately characterized as America's parasite state, one in which some forcibly feed off of the earnings of others. Having successfully substituted the statist definition of "freedom" in the minds of most, statists argue, to quote from Fatal Blindness, "that children of poor parents do not have the 'freedom' to attend the college of their choice or the 'freedom' to receive the very best medical care because of a lack of funds or that some struggling artists do not have 'freedom' of expression because they lack money…." The logic of such arguments has driven, and continues to drive, statism's rapacious growth, bringing us statist programs that forcibly take your money in order to provide others with more "freedom," all at the expense of forcibly denying you the freedom to decide how your money is to be spent.
Statists are all over the place offering new "freedoms," new choices made available through the initiation of government force. By means of compulsion, statists make options available to some by denying free choice to others (which is what statists are attempting to do in the case of Microsoft in their attempt to force Microsoft to include Netscape in Windows 98). In the name of "freedom," statists destroy actual freedom. In the name of "choice," statists destroy actual, free choice.
We now have statists claiming that poor children are being denied equal access to the Internet, that we must provide them with the same "freedom" enjoyed by others, that you are to be forced to pay for computers for these poor children—which means: you are going to be forcibly denied the freedom to refuse to pay for such computers.
And now we have our chief statist, Clinton, pushing for a patient's "bill of rights," for a new set of "freedoms" that will be acquired by means of the initiation of force, either forcing certain individuals to do certain things or forcibly forbidding them from doing some things—which means: certain individuals will be forcibly prevented from interacting voluntarily with others, destroying real freedom. And if they can do it to these individuals, they can do it to you.
If actual freedom is to be secured for ourselves and future generations, it must be clearly defined. As I have stated on more than one occasion, you cannot defend what you cannot define. If the statist definition of "freedom" continues to be accepted by a majority, freedom will continue its decline—and that is why it is so important to loudly proclaim the real meaning of freedom. Only then can you defend your right to it by declaring what should be the bumper sticker of your life: "My Life Is Mine. Persuade Me, Don't Force Me. Give Up Your Government Guns."
Fulton Huxtable
May 31, 1998
Betrayal
I am not the cynic, I am a realist
I'm obviously not making it clear
for you to get my gist
I'll try once again, so here
I'll restate my case
explaining what I've seen in my 68
Political betrayals are the norm
when dealing with buddies from the dorm
They pretend to be on our side
and then take us for a ride
they tell us what we want to hear
then they put us to sleep
after they win it becomes clear
once again, they fooled the sheep
So here's what I want to say
I look forward to each day
knowing that man has his flaws
and can only administer laws
I hope you get my gist
man cannot dispense justice
Copyright(c) 2001 By John J.Lindsay.All Rights Reserved.
November 22, 2001
...Harry Browne is making an a$$ out of himself daily with his silly comments about the War on Terrorism. Here is a person who thinks we should do nothing about terrorism, but keep open borders so that terrorists get into the US. He looked like Noam Chomsky the other day on the "Factor".
To try to define a term by claiming only a certain group uses it really doesn't get the job done, does it?
Many on this board refuse to separate libertarians from Libertarians. IF libertarians use the term "statist" more often than others do, maybe it's because they recognize a statist when they see one.
To me, a "statist" is anyone,regardless of political idealology, who believes; they "know what's best", they have the "right" to determine how others live their own lives, and they show a willingness to use the power of government to ensure *everyone* toes the line.
"Statists" are the ONLY ones who say, "There ought to be a LAW!", in response to every problem that arises in society.
Tell me, is that a fair generalization?
Regards
Which is anyone who rejects their purile rantings?
If all GOPers, here, decided one day, to call Libertarians, or anyone else who didn't agree with them, picture frames, that would be ridiculous ! I purposly chose two words, that were senseless, to make a point. The misuse and corruption of any word, is a way to destroy a language. When people use the same word, but imagine that it has a meaning, other than the one it usually does, then communication breaks apart.
Freepers know exactly what those who call others , " statists " mean. That is because it is so blatently misused here. Use it that way with a non-FREEPER, and you lose the value of the word entirely.
As a "small l" libertarian, I prefer to deal with others as individuals. I try not to lump people together and "assume" anything. Anyone is free to disagree with me about anything, at any time. I reserve the right to do the same.
Simple disagreement and differences in philosophy isn't the problem. A willingness to use the power of government to force everybody to "conform" is a problem.
Just MHO.
Regards
Like age of consent laws?
Makes sense that one who advocates "statism" is a "statist", doesn't it?
As far as the term being used as an "insult", I've seen "libertarian" used in the same manner. Of course we all know that ALL "libertarians" are drug using, sexual hedonists, who are really nothing more than self centered and self serving anarchists, don't we? So, I guess the folks who do consider themselves "libertarians" shouldn't be troubled when they get slammed by those who see "no problem" with government intruding into every aspect of our lives.
It seems that those who are bothered by the term "statist" or find it "insulting" might want to consider what they truly believe.
It's getting late. We'll have to resume the discussion at some other time. Good night.
Regards
Your upset, at what others ( I have called no names, heaped calumny on no person ) have called Libertarians, is a red herring. It also doesn't further, in any way, the simple discusion of the use and abuse of the English language.
In most instances, you don't get locked up for not "conforming", you just have to pay "fees" and "fines", generating more government revenue.
Personally, I think the "age of consent" and the "age of majority" should be one and the same. Eighteen years old.
Regards and Good Night
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