In re the U.S. right, it is now clear that some of the people who talk the loudest about individual liberty are among the quickest to support a would-be dictator. Why? I can think of three possibilities.
A. They do not or cannot see the contradiction.
B. They do not mean what they say about liberty.
C. They think they will have more freedom if other people have less, i.e., there's only so much of it to go around. (A variant of C: substitute “happiness” for “freedom” and maybe you can understand why some people, notably kids and young adolescents, spend their lives trying to make some of their peers' lives miserable. See also Israel/Palestine.)
I suspect there's some truth in all three, but right now I'm most interested in C. It could cover quite a few of the neo-nazi and paramilitary types, people with constabulary reflexes or inclinations—would-be enforcers of whichever “New Order” they like. A dictator type exploiting the thuggish reflexes of the stupid and pissed-off young, and not-so-young—it's not unusual. Freikorps, Brownshirts, Red Guards, Trump-campaign-rally bully boys all come to mind. Enemies of freedom, or at least other people's freedom, to a man. Which they would likely deny. But here's the thing: They themselves certainly DON'T feel unfree when they're smashing somebody's face.
And that face-smashing moment: maybe it's kin to the first time an aspiring junkie shoots heroin. I've heard that it's never again as good as that first time, but a junkie, even after he/she sours on addiction, might spend years trying to get back something like that first rush. Similarly, the minions of a Hitler, a Mao, a Trump might well come to realize that they are no freer than the people they hurt, but even so, they'll live to RE-live the feeling of knocking somebody's teeth out for the first time.
Posted by KilltheskyfairySubsidy for price gouging
Posted by KilltheskyfairySubsidy for price gouging
Posted by KilltheskyfairyIt irks me no end that we are still talking about the same things…
Posted by KilltheskyfairyIt irks me no end that we are still talking about the same things…
Posted by KilltheskyfairyIt irks me no end that we are still talking about the same things…
Posted by KilltheskyfairyNot very tolerant at all…
Posted by KilltheskyfairyNot very tolerant at all…
Posted by KilltheskyfairyNot very tolerant at all…
Posted by KilltheskyfairyNot very tolerant at all…
Posted by KilltheskyfairyNot very tolerant at all…
Posted by KilltheskyfairyNot very tolerant at all…
Posted by KilltheskyfairyNot very tolerant at all…
Posted by KilltheskyfairyNot very tolerant at all…
Posted by KilltheskyfairyNot very tolerant at all…
Posted by KilltheskyfairyNot very tolerant at all…
Posted by KilltheskyfairyI really can’t, can you?