Donald Douglas: All Dumb is Liberal

Poor, poor Donald Douglas.  In his herculean effort to maintain his belief that liberal=bad and conservative=good, we see posts like this one, about an anarchist who supposedly Twittered to G20 Rioters in order to help them avoid arrest.  Donald goes as far as to title his post "Queens 'Tin Can' Anarchist Held One Pound of Liquid Mercury," based entirely on a claim written in the NY Post that mercury was found in his apartment. 

I guess this is proof of the NY Times liberal-bias, as they failed to mention this important fact completely.  So in typical fever-swamp fashion, Donald takes this factoid and proceeds to explain to us the dangers of explosives and other such toughguy nonsense which all conservatives inherently know since birth.

But here's the funny part: Donald quotes from Mike Gogulski, a completely different anarachist, who writes in his bio:

My political philosophy — which could be variously termed anarchism, anarcho-capitalism or individualist anarchism...

But then Donald writes in a comment:

I call them "anarcho-communists," Mark. They're really the same in my book.

Yeah, self-described "anarcho-capitalists" are "anarcho-communists" in Donald's weird world.  Similarly, people who despise government and actively fight against it are the same as those who support big government and the use of force to ensure government control over people.  Right.  And mind you, Donald Douglas is a professor of Political Science at a college somewhere in California.  Is it any wonder they're in such deep doo-doo right now?

Donald Responds

Oh, and as it turns out, Donald has a response to this.  I had written a brief version of what I wrote above, and he responded with a stellar argument: He insulted me, mentioned a Lenin picture found in the anarachists apartment (which Donald turned into multiple "pictures," which is absolute proof, as the only people who have pictures of Lenin are card-carrying communists), and then cites two links. 

The first link was to his own blog, in which he posts some pictures of the riots; one picture had an anti-capitalist sign in it, while the other had an anti-government, anti-bank sign.  He then quotes one of my fellow "nihilists," who had lambasted the unfairness of the insurance industry.  Apparently, Donald is so clueless about our healthcare system that he imagines it's "anti-capitalist" to decry unfair business practices that kill people.  Apparently, if you've heard of recission, you're a communist. 

As far as I can tell, this post of his is "proof" that anarchists are liberals because  he combined them into the same post.  Sure, the anarchists were protesting government, while the liberal was wanting stronger government; but hey, they both have complaints against corporations, and that makes them equals. 

Oddly, Donald referred to these people as "anti-globalization," yet their sign suggested they were against borders; which I think would put them in the pro-globalization camp.  I mean, who flouts borders more than the international conglomerates these people detest?  But of course, I've generally found these sort of people lack any kind of inner-consistency, so it's quite possible that it was the protesters who were confused about how you can't be both anti-globalization and anti-borders at the same time; and Donald was correct in labeling them as such.

The second link was from a libertarian who asserted that there are extreme communists who have turned to anti-government anarachy because they're so extreme that they've realized that the government supports capitalism.  And while I'm sure that such people exist, as I once had the misfortune of talking to such a person, I fail to see how this is proof that all anarchists are communists.  After all, this article was written in 1970 and I doubt he was directly referring to the G20 protesters.  And while there are commie-anarchists who oppose government because they think it reinforces inequity, there are also capitalist-anarchists who oppose government because it infringes on their freedom.  And most of the anarchists I know are in the pro-freedom side; including the anarchist he quoted.

Oh, and as a late entry, Donald gave another response which asserted that Gogulski MUST be a socialist because he posted at a socialist website and a real capitalist would NEVER do that.  But as I found, he only had the one post there and it was originally posted at his own blog.  The Socialist Webzine Donald linked to had just reprinted what Gogulski wrote at his own blog.  In other words, Donald's "birds of a feather" argument has no wings.

My Rebuttal

And to this abudance of evidence which Donald may have been alluding to when he posted these links, all I have to say is, he quoted an anarchist who describes his beliefs as"anarcho-capitalism."   But if that's not enough, here are a few lines from Gogulski's Anarchist Declaration, and just try to tell me that this couldn't have come straight from your average Tea Partier:

•Where a tyrant, a majority, a plurality, or a minority presume to grant you power over me, or over anyone else, I shall condemn it, resist it, renounce it and denounce it.


•Where there are those who are subjugated beneath the boot heel of power, by “democratic” means or otherwise, I shall support their resistance, their condemnation, their denunciation and their renunciation.

•I shall make no compromise with evil.

Oh, yeah.  This totally sounds like your average liberal to me.  Sure, we believe in a strong government which can regulate industry and force people to buy insurance, while this guy thinks that democracy is illegitmate and doesn't give us power to compel people to act; but hey, those are just flipsides of the same coin.  Because when you get down to it, Donald doesn't like this guy and he doesn't like us, and that means we must be on the same team.  After all, conservative=good and liberal=bad, and never the twain shall meet.