Obama (on Leno) just said that the problem with the boom was that it was based on “paper money.” Then he quickly corrected himself and said “paper profits” instead.
Tags: Lapsus Linguae, Left-Libertarian, Praxeology
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He certainly has been thinking about libertarians often enough.
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I didn’t get the impression Obama had any great awareness of libertarians in particular, unless perhaps he considers Ronald Reagan to epitomize the label. Can you provide a link of some kind?
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He makes broad references to theoretical opponents who hold libertarian ideas, e.g. Some people believe that we shouldn’t interfere with the economy… or Some people believe that government doesn’t have a role to play… etc. The strawman libertarian position is a springboard for a part of almost every speech I’ve heard from him.
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Obama’s rhetorical strategy seems to be: a) My conservative opponents are wild-eyed libertarians; but b) their wild-eyed libertarian policies are what caused this mess in the first place, and c) their criticisms of me are hypocritical since they never governed in a wild-eyed libertarian way themselves, therefore d) I can dismiss their arguments.
He seems not to notice that (b) and (c) are mutually inconsistent. And, of course, that a-c-d by itself is fallacious.
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I was aware of his vague references to “those who believe that government shouldn’t interfere in the economy”, but I assumed he meant (and everyone understood him to mean) republicans when he said that. After all, nominally the republican party does stand for “free enterprise”.
Incidentally wikipedia calls that kind of statement (“There are some who say…”) weasel language, since it doesn’t identify which people or groups support the viewpoint in question. I think Randians call it the “ambiguous collective” fallacy.
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Any Austrian who was paying attention should’ve noticed that slip. It does make me wonder…
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There is any private recorded vid uploaded? It will be a matter of time till someone gets one out from their VCR
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full episode there. Slip at 12:21 (countdown way)
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Transcript: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/20/obama-on-tonight-show-wit_n_177206.html
In the video link above, it’s at -12:21 (the time counts down in the display).
1st link (previous comment) was wrong
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Great, now you have me wondering how “Misesian” would be properly said…
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I’m sure there’s somebody out there (probably British) who says “Mye-SEE-zhun” but I usually hear either “Miss-SEZ-ee-yun” or “Miz-ESS-ee-yun.” The latter is arguably more accurate (since the correct German pronunciation of “Mises” is “MEEZ-ess” rather than “MEESE-ez”).
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About Roderick T. Long
The Empirical Me
I’m Roderick T. Long, Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. I’m an Aristotelean/Wittgensteinian in philosophy and a left-libertarian market anarchist in social theory. (More about me here.) This blog, Austro-Athenian Empire, is a continuation of my earlier blog, archived here.
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