Name Someone From "The Other Side" Whom You Admire

Rand Paul and his pops.

McCain and his huge racked daughter

I have an odd respect for Trump. I truely believe he thinks he’s doing the right thing but he’s just blinded from his lifestyle and upbringing. On the other hand, that dude needs some major therapy and for someone to take away his twitter account. Jesus Christ.
 
I'm left wing and a Communist but Milton Friedman was intelligent and could articulate his point of view.

Oddly enough I don't think the Right wing really believes his ideas anymore. That goes for the leadership like Paul Ryan and the average Trump voter. The right wing leadership no longer care if markets work well or not, and the base never really cared or understood market economics/ Chicago school.

You are a communist that posts on a capitalists message board that is part of a massive cooperation financed by advertisement?
I am just glad Lenin isn't alive to see what is considered a communist today.
 
Rand Paul and his pops.

McCain and his huge racked daughter

I have an odd respect for Trump. I truely believe he thinks he’s doing the right thing but he’s just blinded from his lifestyle and upbringing. On the other hand, that dude needs some major therapy and for someone to take away his twitter account. Jesus Christ.
Take away twitter and what would these people bitch about daily? That’s how good life is here. Tweeting is now the worst thing on the planet.
 
Take away twitter and what would these people bitch about daily? That’s how good life is here. Tweeting is now the worst thing on the planet.

Dude throws emotional temper tantrums daily on twitter and he’s suppose to be our leader. Makes him look weak, and us by default.
 
Dude throws emotional temper tantrums daily on twitter and he’s suppose to be our leader. Makes him look weak, and us by default.
His goal with the twitter thing is to appear like a normal person and talk to people like they talk. It is an act of course but it hits its target. As long as people are crying about his Twitter he can just go on about his policy ideas without and resistance from his opponents because they wasted their outrage on him calling someone something and nobody is listening
 
His goal with the twitter thing is to appear like a normal person and talk to people like they talk. It is an act of course but it hits its target. As long as people are crying about his Twitter he can just go on about his policy ideas without and resistance from his opponents because they wasted their outrage on him calling someone something and nobody is listening

Oh I’ll agree with that, definitely makes him more favorable to his fanbase as well when he goes on tirades. His anger/passion is what landed him in office in the first place.
 
Oh I’ll agree with that, definitely makes him more favorable to his fanbase as well when he goes on tirades. His anger/passion is what landed him in office in the first place.
Hopefully somebody worth a shit runs next time. If not we’ll get trjmp again if he wants it
 
I admired Scalia for having a good sense of humor being a total goomba, even though I hated his decisions.

I think Jonah Goldberg's a good, funny writer.

I think Paul Ryan has dreamy eyes.
 
On a personal, very visceral level, Joseph Stalin. On an ideological level, J. Edgar Hoover.

Stalin? Really? I would really like to hear your reasoning.

By most of the stuff I've read, he was either directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of up to 20-50+ million people. And caused the misery of many more with his dictator collectivism policies and paranoia about his political enemies.

Of course this is just from what I've read. So I'd love hear why you admire him.
 
Many people on the far left, particularly involved with Marxism, can be admirable in that they have a real respect for theory, they understand the power of ideas, they respect ideas, and have the intellectual firepower to struggle and engage with ideas on the level that most people just never go to.
 
Stalin? Really? I would really like to hear your reasoning.

By most of the stuff I've read, he was either directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of up to 20-50+ million people. And caused the misery of many more with his dictator collectivism policies and paranoia about his political enemies.

Of course this is just from what I've read. So I'd love hear why you admire him.

Those policies that killed 20-25M people were abhorrent, but there's good reason to believe that it wasn't the intended outcome. Not saying that to absolve Stalin, but to put his predicament into perspective. How many people would you be willing to sacrifice for the greater good? While those millions died, the Soviet Union was dragged by its throat through the process of industrialization in a very short time. Living standards went up, education became much better, society became more egalitarian, and it prepared them wholesale for the impending horrors of World War 2. It was a rousing success overall, which is why Mao thought he could do it with the Great Leap Forward.

If I were to be in the position of making that choice, i'm not sure I would be able to go through with it, hence my admiration. We can vilify Stalin on basically everything else, but it's worth saying that even though he might have been a ruthless tyrant who used communism as a front to spread his cult of personality, that he might have actually been good for the Soviets as a leader. Compare this to later premiers like Brezhnev, Andropov, and Gorbachev, and it becomes even more obvious.
 
tomi lahren.. good looking lady.. dumb as rocks..

<Goldie11>
 
You are a communist that posts on a capitalists message board that is part of a massive cooperation financed by advertisement?
I am just glad Lenin isn't alive to see what is considered a communist today.

haha Lenin would have gladly wrote his message where people could read it. He would be very active on facebook and social media etc

He didn't like writing for a small audience in an underground newspaper.
 
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Trump.

I'm liberal, and I HATE how most liberals (both politicians and civilians) act so spineless. Compare someone like John Boehner to Harry Reid, who's withering away. And compare the stereotypical conservative (tough, independent, hard working) to a stereotypical liberal (SJW, girly, metrosexual).

Trump is hilarious, confrontational, and tough. I disagree with him policy-wise A LOT, but I wish liberals acted like him.

Imagine Bernie Sanders with the toughness of Trump. Unbeatable.
 
I don't mind listening to Dave Rubin

and even though I don't like quite a few of his policies, I'd vote for Gavin Newsome over any other DEM on the state or national level
 
That's hard for me as I identify my political ideologies as a economic progressive and social libertarian. I'm not even sure if I could identify other historical people that shared this view, nevermind an opposition.

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How about every anarchist and every pre-Lenin Marxist thinker?

Peter Kropotkin?

Mikhail Bakunin?

Emma Goldman?

Rosa Luxemborg?

Or you could just point to modern leftists like Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, and Jill Stein: they are all firmly libertarian-left.


Truthfully, there has never been much authoritarian leftist ideology outside of Lenin and subsequent proponents of the USSR. Organically, leftism is a naturally libertarian ideology.
 
Before I get into this, I just want to say that I'm not trying to bridge any ideological gaps and get us all singing kumba-fucking-ya. If that's even possible in the WR, I'm not the person to do it, and I'm not interested in doing so at any rate. I'm not trying to get anyone to engage in some Hegelian dialectic. I'm just trying to see if posters in here can look through their own ideological biases for a second.

So, that said, I'd be interested in seeing people:
1) Identify their own ideology as well as they can
2) Identify someone as diametrically opposed to them as possible whom they admire (be it a writer, politician, w/e.)
3) Explain why
4) If possible, recommend something to watch or read.

So, for myself:
1) I'm, by and large, a Socialist, though I tend to be skeptical of both revolutionary Socialism and reform-based approaches. I'm sympathetic to Luxemburgism, for those in the know about these sorts of things, which is to say that I am critical of Leninism, and completely opposed to Stalinism (and similar totalitarian ideologies), but I also think Democratic Socialists are a bunch of pussies.

2) Yukio Mishima
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima
For the TL;DR version: Post-war Japanese novelist/playwright/actor/director/model/right-wing militia leader. Tried to instigate a coup of the Japanese government. Failed. Committed seppuku.

3) First off, all politics aside, he was just a fantastic writer. The guy could make a three page long description of a cargo ship pulling into port compelling. And beyond that, he wrote such wonderfully complex characters. Even if you hate the protagonist of any of his works, you can at least understand where they're coming from.

As far as the politics go though, there are a few things about his work (and him as a person) that I find appealing. Firstly, I don't know that I've ever read anyone go captures the gut-level appeal of nationalism the way he does. I'm pretty solidly anti-nationalistic, but after reading Runaway Horses, I get it. I don't agree with it, but I do get it. Admittedly, the fact that he was writing about (and for) an extremely ethnically homogeneous audience means that he can go full-scale ultra-nationalism without getting racist, so I'm not immediately repelled (though I'm not under any illusions. If he'd had his way, it probably would've resulted in the expulsion or extermination of any non-ethnic Japanese in Japan, especially Koreans).

Outside of his writing though, I actually have a bit of a begrudging admiration for Mishima himself. Even though I hate his politics, I admire the fact that his actions and beliefs were, generally speaking, incredibly consistent. He didn't just sit on his ass bitching. He had a vision, and he tried to make it a reality, even though he likely realized the futility of it. That sort congruity of belief and action is rare, regardless of the ideology.

4) As far as his political stuff goes, his short story Patriotism is about as good of a bite-sized sample of what I'm talking about that I can imagine
http://www.mutantfrog.com/patriotism-by-yukio-mishima/

As for something more substantial though, I'd recommend the Sea of Fertility quadrilogy.

I'd also recommend Temple of the Golden Pavilion, but it's not really political at all. Just a really good book.

I like you. You should stick around. Matter of fact, whatchu say we go out to dinner, have some chicken, maybe some sex?
 
I'm a conservative and I admire very few conservatives let alone progressives.
 
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How about every anarchist and every pre-Lenin Marxist thinker?

Peter Kropotkin?

Mikhail Bakunin?

Emma Goldman?

Rosa Luxemborg?

Or you could just point to modern leftists like Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, and Jill Stein: they are all firmly libertarian-left.


Truthfully, there has never been much authoritarian leftist ideology outside of Lenin and subsequent proponents of the USSR. Organically, leftism is a naturally libertarian ideology.


I dunno, the Jacobins were pretty authoritarian and Rousseau is as well.
 
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