I just got banned by Stephan Kinsella


sjw

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See for yourself:

Hopefully he doesn't cowardly delete the context here.

I was trying to get Stephan to break through his Rothbardian dogma and see a little nuance here and there, to no avail.

Shayne

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"God, I love the block function."--Stephan Kinsella, after banning me for reasonable and polite criticism of his viewpoint.

"I don't know if you have had previous encounters with him, but judging just from the comments on this post, he has shown no idiocy. I don't agree with him, but the way you respond to him is childish. Calling your responses ad hominem attacks is a friendly way of saying you're beeing a stubborn dick, Stephan. But again, I do agree with your point, if you actually made it, instead of just calling him an idiot all the time."--A remark by someone friendly to Kinsella's viewpoint.

I've seen this many times before. Kinsella and other people in positions of authority can't afford the kind of criticism I give them -- criticism that goes to the very fundamentals of their viewpoint. It's "the emperor has no clothes" kind of a thing. So they posture and pretend that my remarks are idiotic, and when that doesn't work, I get censored.

I have seen this with ARI, obviously, but with many other "libertarian" organizations as well. No one who is in any kind of position of leadership in the libertarian movement likes any kind of boat-rocking. Which is ironic given the alleged nature and purpose of these organizations. Which makes me think that their true purpose is not their officially stated one.

When I first wrote my book, For Individual Rights ( http://www.amazon.com/Individual-Rights-Treatise-Human-Relations/dp/0984587004/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278694389&sr=8-1 ), before publication I tried getting feedback from some of these authoritarian organizations (you can guess just by listing libertarian-leaning organizations). I won't go publicly into details at this time, but the basic feedback I got was: they were not interested in principle in a book from someone who was not a sanctioned author at one of their organizations. They didn't even want to see a draft copy. Others were even more general in their disinterest, as in they had no interest in a book on natural rights as such (even though the long-dead individual they name their organization after clearly supported natural rights). Given that natural rights are at the very core of the difference between liberty-loving and liberty-despising, at the time I found this rather astonishing.

Shayne

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  • 3 weeks later...

Rich:

You have clearly identified the representatives of North and South Korea with this secret photo, but what are these crafty devils planning?

Adam

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Shane, you picked a fight you could not win with someone whose good will would have benefited you. It's the Howard Roark Syndrome. We all suffer from it to some extent. The True Believer by Eric Hoffer made that point, also. Success with your book would make you happy. Failing that, though, you are happy enough to have enemies in your own camp.

I reviewed some submissions for Kinsella's Libertarian Papers. I also had a book review published there. I chose wisely. I could have accepted a similar offer and made the same submission elsewhere. Stephan seemed like an OK guy trying to a tough job.

You never come across like that. You got the argument you wanted. You made it ad hominem. You lost. What other outcome did you expect?

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I don't know what Michael's problem is or why he is so viciously, gleefully happy to attack me or relish failures he thinks he perceives. Clearly there is no point in interacting with him, but I do want to make one thing clear. Because Stephan cowardly deleted the context of the conversation, no one can now go back and see that Michael is actually lying through his teeth about what happened in that thread. As it happens I was perfectly polite, and there was no ad hominem or attack of any kind on Kinsella; on the contrary he was the one attacking me, merely for adding an important qualification to his own attack on Georgists. This is why one of his own buddies came out in defense of me, not Kinsella, and is probably why the thread got deleted -- it made Kinsella look bad (but it was not misrepresentative of Kinsella's true nature).

I have never been able to avoid having enemies in "my own camp," because as it happens, I have no "camp", I think for myself. All it takes to create enemies among acolytes is to think, and then to dare express what you have thought. Unfortunately, Ayn Rand was right about that.

Shayne

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All it takes to create enemies among acolytes is to think, and then to dare express what you have thought. Unfortunately, Ayn Rand was right about that.

The sad thing is that Objectivism qua movement hasn't created a "gulch", all it has done is to create a microcosm of the culture at large.

Shayne

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Anyone posting on such a site doesn't have much room for complaint with the endemic and arbitrary moderation.

--Brant

That's like saying that I can't complain about Apple's "Terms of Service" when I buy their products. Yep, I sure can, and I will. I reserve the right to criticize what I deem to be wrong. Imagine that.

Also, the point wasn't about G+, it was about Stephan Kinsella as a person. If he hadn't deleted the thread, you'd be able to observe his fragile authoritarian psyche in action.

Shayne

Edited by sjw
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The fundamental issue Brant is this: if you're going to be a leader of rational, pro-rights people, then you must be quite open to rational criticism of what you say. And if you're going to be a rational follower, then you have to demand this standard of those you choose to follow. This is the central problem with ARI, Kinsella, and practically all the rest of these liberty-oriented movements. Neither the leaders nor the followers care to follow such a standard. I don't know what they think they are up to, but it definitely is not about a rational approach to political-social issues.

A "Galt's Gulch" approach to liberty would be quite different from what is actually manifest in reality.

Shayne

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The fundamental issue Brant is this: if you're going to be a leader of rational, pro-rights people, then you must be quite open to rational criticism of what you say. And if you're going to be a rational follower, then you have to demand this standard of those you choose to follow. This is the central problem with ARI, Kinsella, and practically all the rest of these liberty-oriented movements. Neither the leaders nor the followers care to follow such a standard. I don't know what they think they are up to, but it definitely is not about a rational approach to political-social issues.

A "Galt's Gulch" approach to liberty would be quite different from what is actually manifest in reality.

Shayne

Well, it does expose them for what they are.

--Brant

bullseye

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Also, the point wasn't about G+, it was about Stephan Kinsella as a person. If he hadn't deleted the thread, you'd be able to observe his fragile authoritarian psyche in action.

I don't know that people would need to see any deleted material from a blog or whatever in order to "observe his fragile authoritarian psyche in action." I thought that his threats against Ghs over the McElroy stuff were more than sufficient in that regard.

J

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I don't know that people would need to see any deleted material from a blog or whatever in order to "observe his fragile authoritarian psyche in action." I thought that his threats against Ghs over the McElroy stuff were more than sufficient in that regard.

J

But they would have to mine through a lot of data. In the thread that was deleted, it was a very clear-cut case of him making broad negative remarks about Georgists, while at the same time not being able to come to terms with some of the very good points Georgists have raised regarding fiat claims to land, and that Thomas Paine himself tried to rectify (in the wrong manner, but the problem remains a problem). I pointed out some facts and he was absurdly defensive, hostile, and irrational. This is surely rooted in Rothbard's own dogma regarding perpetual property rights in de facto abandoned land.

I didn't follow George's thread, did Kinsella make legal threats recently, or is this part of the saga that George was elaborating about?

Shayne

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But they would have to mine through a lot of data. In the thread that was deleted, it was a very clear-cut case of him making broad negative remarks about Georgists, while at the same time not being able to come to terms with some of the very good points Georgists have raised regarding fiat claims to land, and that Thomas Paine himself tried to rectify (in the wrong manner, but the problem remains a problem). I pointed out some facts and he was absurdly defensive, hostile, and irrational. This is surely rooted in Rothbard's own dogma regarding perpetual property rights in de facto abandoned land.

I understand your frustration. I've sometimes dealt with the same type of crap in various Objectivist or libertarian fora. Some nitwit will delete my posts, or block new ones or whatever, leaving one false impression or another. It can be a bit irritating, and it can feel good to vent about it, but I guess I generally tend to look at it as not being all that important, and even quite comical. I see it as the equivalent of being banned from some kids' tree house, or like discovering that the official record of their tree house club log book mischaracterizes my views on one subject or another. Who really gives a fuck? It's not as if their doing so is going to have any effect whatsoever out in the real world.

I guess what I'm saying is that I feel your pain, and thanks for telling us about the childish shit that Kinsella tries to pull in his stupid little tree house. It's worth a good laugh.

I didn't follow George's thread, did Kinsella make legal threats recently, or is this part of the saga that George was elaborating about?

Yeah, it's part of the saga that George was elaborating on.

J

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