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"A lot of the illusions that I held dear, rugged individualism, individual freedoms, are coming back to bite us in the ass. It seems like getting rid of the gatekeepers gave us Trump as president, and in the same breath, in the same wind, gave us not wearing masks, and maybe gave us a huge unpleasant amount of overt racism."
Hats off to a man willing to admit he made a mistake.
anyone who claims to be "a libertarian" should be forced to watch the libertarian convention which YOU KNOW none of them have ever seen in their lives.
check out the ideas your "party" pushes. real big brain stuff.
there's nothing wrong with freedom, but regulation is necessary. to say otherwise is either ignorance, stupidity, or malice.
to say otherwise is either ignorance, stupidity, or malice
Why not all three?
I am a PJ fan and follower, but I am well aware that he has long been a naive idiot operating from a place of priviledge. He is well insulated from the pitfalls of the ideas he espouses, and it took an UNDENIABLE COLLAPSE into straight up Nazism for him to finally grasp it.
Luv ya Penn, but I ain't giving you any fucking medals
Yeah, but the bar is through the floor at this point. I'll take anything I can get.
And the more people come out and say "oh shit I was wrong" the easier it becomes for others to do the same.
Being wrong admitting it and changing your mind with new information is absolutely amazing and a great character trait. Props to him.
Penn Gilette has always seemed to be driven by a level of honesty and compassion and valued the freedom to choose where to direct that compassion. I think earlier on he viewed other libertarians as having the same level of honest compassion as he does but over time it's become more and more clear that libertarians are overwhelmingly selfish rich white guys who don't want to be called Repuiblicans.
I mean in the early 2000s he was calling bullshit on the hysteria over the vaccine autism link saying the alternative of kids dying to preventable diseases is so much worse. He even gave the tenuous link a benefit of the doubt and accepted that even if they did cause autism,t he alternative is so much worse.
There aren't many people who are willing to evaluate their entire political decisions and come to the conclusion that they were wrong. Even fewer who will admit it publicly. Even fewer still who will accept responsibility and then do something about it.
Of the people I have respectfully disagreed with, the fact that he's come around is a huge testament to his willingness to be humbled and corrected.
he viewed other libertarians as having the same level of honest compassion as he does but over time it’s become more and more clear that libertarians are overwhelmingly selfish rich white guys who don’t want to be called Repuiblicans
I had a similar progression myself when I was in my teens, maybe even early 20s.
The basic principle of libertarianism is appealing: mind your own damn business and I'll mind mine. And I still agree with that in general — it's just that a single generality does not make a complete worldview. It took me a while to realize how common it is for self-identifying libertarians to lack any capacity for nuance. The natural extreme of "libertarianism" is just anarchy and feudalism.
In a sane world, I might still call myself a libertarian. In a sane world, that might mean letting people live their own damn lives, not throwing them to the wolves (or more literally, bears ) and dismantling the government entirely.
I'm all for minding my own business, but I also acknowledge that maintaining a functional society is everybody's business (as much as I occasionally wish I could opt out and go live in a cave).
Penn Jilletet pulled me 100 % onto the vaccine train with his ball and shield demonstration with teller on their bull shit show. Until this day, I still haven't seen any demonstration that was more convincing than that on any subject in the amount of time that they used.
There used to be a time back when libertarianism was anti-capitalist. Then right wingers stole it and turned it into a circus.
The smartest people in the room are those who are willing to admit a mistake, or that their opinions have changed.
I got to meet him in Vegas. He was really nice to a nervous nerd. Now I’m even more impressed he has the courage to change his beliefs in public.
A sign of true intelligence is the ability to change your opinions after consideration and evidence. Penn always struck me as a very intelligent man.
"I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative" - John Stuart Mill
I haven't always agreed with him politically, but Penn Jillette seems like a good dude.
Cool to see the meme applied to someone who genuinely went to clown college!
Self awareness is such a precious thing in people but it is a prerequisite for this type of personal growth. It can be difficult but ultimately it is rewarding and fulfilling to realise there are things that you don't like about yourself and set about correcting them.
As a big fan of P&T, this is a major win.
Not to mention the veganism which is also closely related to rejecting fascism.
https://vegnews.com/magician-penn-jillette-goes-vegan-for-the-animals
(Full disclosure: I saw an interview where Penn says he went vegan for health and weight loss. But maybe he's evolved to animal liberation as well.)
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
John Kenneth Galbraith
I think Penn went there with a different mindset than those occupying the space now.
I've always considered myself a libertarian, but I'm coming to realize I need to find another word. I used to be able to explain that assholes were ruining the name, but now the assholes outnumber people like me by too much.
I think the real turning point was when Jo Jorgensen said, "It is not enough to be passively not racist, we must be actively anti-racist," and then she had to walk it back because the libertarian party was so fucking racist. Like, that's not even a political statement. It's a moral one, and it's one I agree with.
Then when the Libertarian Party changed their stance on abortion, I was done with them. I clung to the lowercase L label, but at this point it doesn't seem worth it anymore.
I just think the government should be limited to things that only the government can handle. Policing? Roads? Business regulations? Those are all things that can only be handled by the government. Restrictions on what kind of stove I can buy? Restrictions on what I can put in my body or how I dress or what my kids can read at school? Those are all bullshit.
I guess it helps that I align with Democrats on most of the major issues now, but I still won't consider myself a Democrat.
Stoves are a great example of why the richest among us want to push libertarianism. You see the freedom to buy a gas stove. They see the freedom to make products that are one penny cheaper but kill their users.
Libertarianism and anarchism in general fail to account for sociopaths who are willing to make others suffer for their own gain.
Conservatives didn't ruin libertarianism. Libertarianism has always been bad.
Restrictions on what kind of stove I can buy?
Stuff like this is a perfect example of the issues with libertarian ideology. They want freedom to continue to destroy the environment.
I considered myself a Libertarian for a few years. I was a disillusioned Republican during the George Bush days and Libertarianism really grew on me. I voted for Gary Johnson twice.
As I became more concerned about climate change, I could not see a viable Libertarian solution to it. Private business is more than happy to keep chugging away with fossil fuels until it's far too late.
For Libertarianism to work, these same private businesses need to do the right thing voluntarily. In Atlas Shrugged, those businessmen and women are doing what is right for their business and it just so happens to be what is right for everyone else, that isn't always the case. All too often, what is right for business goes against what is right for society. Once I realized this, everything unraveled for me.
So anyway, here I am, years later, voting for Democrats because I've got no other option as the GOP became more and more insane since I left.