I came across a link some months back from a Disqus comment somewhere that has stuck in my mind and I've kept the article bookmarked because it's important.
It was written back in October, before the 'Stop Watching Us' rally that more or less fizzled out in DC. It was interesting who exactly was behind that rally. It was as astro-turfed as any Tea Party rally ever was and by the same group, the brothers Koch.
It's almost embarrassing how Libertarianism has slowly etched its way into the left but it's been calculated and it's 35 years in the making. According to Mark Ames, one needs only look at back issues of Reason Magazine. It's more or less a how to manual to get the earnest left to buy into Libertarianism, without knowing they are doing so.
The rally was first noted by Salon writer Tom Watson who according this Mark Ames article wrote:
the event is "fatally compromised by the prominent leadership and participation of the Libertarian Party and other libertarian student groups [who stand] in direct opposition to almost everything I believe in as a social democrat."
As I wrote above, this isn't merely calculated, it's 35 years in the making.
So how did the Koch's and Reason Magazines earliest subscribers and true believers decide to infiltrate the left? By packaging it up, they considering it selling a product and using any deceptive means at their disposal to do so.
Libertarianism for justice and freedom fighters. You will find this individual in the left radical movement, fighting for what he was told is freedom and against what he was told is slavery. So assure him that you are just against one thing: enslavement. Assure him that you are just for one thing: social justice. Having this agreement, start to communicate to him the true meaning of slavery—and why taxation, controls, draft, are slavery. (Start with draft, because he is already against that.)
Libertarianism for hippies. The hippie has the right to take marijuana, walk naked on the beach, and have his own sex without anybody interfering, hasn‘t he? Isn’t that just what libertarianism is all about? Libertarianism was created to free him from the oppression of a conformist, square society, imposed on him at the point of a gun.
According to Ames, and I find this telling (though Maher no longer considers himself a Libertarian),
The next thing you know, Bill Maher, South Park’s creators, Hefner and the like are all running around smugly describing themselves as "libertarians" and feeling like they’re really sticking it to The Man in saying so.
Another feel good quote straight from
Reason Magazine says,
Every point of view is based on recognition of some real problem and grasp of some truth. It involves, usually, many falsifications of facts.
The point, however, is that you can make an individual a libertarian on the basis, almost, of whatever point of view he possesses—if you communicate the idea to him in his own frame of reference, based on his own fundamental convictions, in his own terms and words... Your problem, as a libertarian, is to create a libertarian society. To do that, you need many, many new libertarians. Their other convictions, whatever they are, are none of your business. They concern you only insofar as you use them—as the basis for your sale of libertarianism.
Egads!
Ames aptly put it that it's something some liberals should keep in mind as they find themselves nuzzling over certain issues with Libertarian outfits like Freedom Works, The Competitive Enterprise Institution, Generation Opportunity and Students for Liberty.
Reason magazine goes on to say:
There are ways of making political cross-dressing even more effective. One is called "left drawer/right drawer." It consists of cross-dressing issues while alternating left- and right-wing conclusions....Observe the pattern: left-wing reasons for free-market mail delivery, right-wing reasons for gay rights, left-wing grounds for opposing gun control, right-wing arguments for legalizing all drugs, and so on.
"Left drawer/right drawer" produces some interesting results. First, it prevents the average person from classifying libertarianism as "left" or "right."....Second, by appealing to the right and left at the same time, the libertarian confuses the left/right spectrum.
Because the approach is refreshing and original, people are often motivated to rethink their positions. And because the arguments are new and unusual, they get exposure. The working press appreciates hearing something different. So does the public.
And as Ames puts its at later in his article:
As you can see from some of the more honest libertarian writings, that makes the Left a perfect mark, should the libertarians and FreedomWorks and the Kochs have thought their politics through already. Not to mention what Google’s interest is, given the fact that Google is the chief funder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an outfit that’s been busted on numerous occasions over the years as an undisclosed lobby front for Google, Facebook and other Silicon Valley corporations, and given the fact that Google "stores more personal data from more sources than any entity in history."
To get a sense of what the libertarians leading this movement might be up to, just look at the last time the Left got in bed with them over the TSA. A few years ago, the media was in hysterics over the so-called TSA “Gestapo.” In hindsight it looks rather embarrassing; but at the time, the hysteria over the TSA "Gestapo" was relentless, generated by the same libertarian-right front groups out of DC that are leading the StopWatching.us rally—the same lobbyists, the same assholes who "tricked" a good portion of the Left into agreeing with them that TSA airport gate security posed the greatest threat to our civil liberties, our privacy, our Fourth Amendment rights—since the Revolution.
https://www.nsfwcorp.com/...
To those of you who are unaware The Electronic Freedom Foundation recently hailed The Tea Party movement as foundational to our freedom along with Larry Klayman (he who said that Obama should put down his Quran and has openly discussed 'overthrowing' the President).