Thread by @mhbx

@tommy_pane @TimothyDSnyder At what point have you, or anyone you are aware of, been conscribed from said voluntary exchange?

I often get the sense that "libertarians" are fighting a strenuous battle against things that are not happening, while being blissfully unaware of what is.

@tommy_pane @TimothyDSnyder 2/ Re yours: Institutions are like any other thing or function. Of course they are oppresive, if allowed and organized to be so. But it is as true, perhaps moreso, that those principles you adhere to, liberty, freedom, etc, are only had and sustained by properly founded &

@tommy_pane @TimothyDSnyder 3/ functioning institutions. This is what I take to be the point Snyder is making.
The "problem" I have w so called 'libertarians' (not sure if you took on that classification?) is it seems to base its outlook, not on first principles, but on the derived consequence of them, &

@tommy_pane @TimothyDSnyder 4/ from the position of having a foundation that their principles cannot create, much less sustain, start sniping at them, declaming them for being bad and wrong.

I am not making this point well. Not good for a tw/post.

Point: You can talk about liberty all you want..but if you

@tommy_pane @TimothyDSnyder 5/ do not have a functioning judicial system -- itself founded on core values and principles such as 'rule of law', and follow the evidence wherever it leads -- then you have no possibility of having contracts, thus agreements of any kind, thus no actual 'voluntary' exchange

@tommy_pane @TimothyDSnyder 6/ The contracts/agreements become a function of power, not law.
And then there is the institution of the police/justice depts.
Same point, just a diff facet of society.

The struggle is always between power & principle.

So sure. Institutions that are overtaken by malvolent

@tommy_pane @TimothyDSnyder 7/ forces will become oppressive. I suggest Snyder's comment is to realize that the step from a person/group (like Trump, and now the GOP as an organization- an institution) moves in and starts shaking things up, not for the good of the country, or underlying principle or value

@tommy_pane @TimothyDSnyder 8/ but for his own (and the GOP's) purposes. The battle then is exactly this: Do the institutions have enough foundational grounding that is not sick and rotted to a) be able to detect the systemic threat and b) respond to it.
Or, will it be subsumed into the service of the

@tommy_pane @TimothyDSnyder 9/ malvolent, foreign power? I see the entire Tr admin as a working out of this question.Trump has managed to unleash a complex multi-front war on America, attacking these institutions at the level of their purpose & existence.
Take any agency as an example. None have been spared

@tommy_pane @TimothyDSnyder 10/ This argument, POV, needs to be much better articulated than a quick first draft twitter response...To take that last point and detail & example it is the work of books and full on essays. But the topical sentences are scattered all over. It would not be hard to research.

@tommy_pane @TimothyDSnyder 11/ Certainly, some love the attack, and the effort of dismantling essential functions. And they use the easy rationale of observing the excesses and divergence from original purpose of the agency as justification.
And I can easily agree with the notions that our institutions

@tommy_pane @TimothyDSnyder 12/ have become ossified and often stray too far beyond their purpose and charter. That they need to be rethought and etc.
But such review needs to be done by someone who cares for the purpose of the institutions, who has the good of the country as the driving principle for the

@tommy_pane @TimothyDSnyder 13/ effort. Trump, for example, our current working example and issue with which we have to contend, does not have this value.
As such everything, everything he does, even those things that are "good", are bad. Or will turn out to be.

And again, examples multiply themselves.

@tommy_pane @TimothyDSnyder 14/ Back to the book & the point.
To the degree that Tr is competent, and thankfully he is profoundly childish & incompetent, he wants to amass power to himself. He would be a tyrant if he could.

With Tr we are being given an opportunity to see who we are, and how disabled we

@tommy_pane @TimothyDSnyder 15/ have become, such that someone like a Trump could possibly ever emerge into the position he has.
In the hands of someone less egotistical and narcissistic (and here historical lessons begin to bear on the convo) who had a purpose greater than himself - which Trump does not -

@tommy_pane @TimothyDSnyder 16/ Someone more competent would have been able to leverage the "rot in the system" to a better advantage and been able to even more radically & effectively attack the system.

From this POV, it is a wake up call. The question before us as citizens, & institutions, is whether we

@tommy_pane @TimothyDSnyder 17/ hear, or can hear, the alarm going off.
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I am aware that this discussion has far more tendrills and complexities that surfaced here. Maybe a beginning....