Perhaps.
Always about ideology. Despots are always and everywhere authoritarians and collectivists, but if you scratch the surface, their socialist origins will be evident. I challenge you to find a single libertarian despot.
A silly statement. Think:
Franco.
Pinochet.
The bewildering long list of South American dictators whose names Americans never bother to learn, who spent their time hunting down communists and socialists.
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The word ‘libertarian’ as you use it only came into being in the 1960s. Before that the word has had several other meanings since the 1700s, many mutually contradictory to each other. So to drag the term into the conversation here is useless.
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kind of like a -
Jumbo Shrimp
Honest Politician
gentle torturer
or a constructive participant troll
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Authoritarians? 
Collectivists?
You have to scratch around a bit yourself to find the socialist under the surface.
We have them here. But they are collectivists, sadly.
Also sadly, we had to change and call them ‘shrimps’ so yanks would understand we were talking about what we call prawns. Here’s Hoges inviting you to visit.
Of course you evade the whole point. Nasty dictators are never champions of individual liberty which is what libertarians say … and what I said.
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I found this the other day - Remarkable how both sides, even the extremes, can read this and agree………
For a small amount of perspective during these crazy times, imagine you were an American born in 1900. When you are 14, World War I starts, and ends on your 18th birthday with 22 million people killed. Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until you are 20. Fifty million people die from it in those two years. Yes, 50 million.
When you’re 29, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, global GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy. When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet.
When you’re 41, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war and the Holocaust kills six million. At 52, the Korean War starts and five million perish.
At 64 the Vietnam War begins, and it doesn’t end for many years. Four million people die in that conflict. Approaching your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, could well have ended. Great leaders prevented that from happening.
As you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends. Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How do you survive all of that? A kid in 1985 didn’t think their 85 year old grandparent understood how hard school was. Yet those grandparents (and now great grandparents) survived through everything listed above.
Perspective is an amazing art. Let’s try and keep things in perspective. Let’s be smart, help each other out, and we will get through all of this. In the history of the world, there has never been a storm that lasted. This too, shall pass.
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great piece -
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