Comments on: They got one thing right

By: Club Troppo » Missing Link Daily

Club Troppo » Missing Link Daily — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:59:16 +0000

[...] at the demand for petrol, while Terje Petersen and various others love the GetUp YouTube video on Rudd’s FuelWatch scheme.Should small-l liberals defect to the ALP? Mark Bahnisch is [...]

By: TimT

TimT — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:26:29 +0000

Thanks David, but I’m thinking groups that have political interests but are independent of the political process.

In order to agitate for smaller government, and for greater responsibility by individual citizens for their freedoms, beyond the demands of the welfare state, I think it is necessary to have individuals working outside the political process. There’s no point in fighting for greater freedom from an interventionist government if no-one does anything with that freedom.

By: Mark Hill

Mark Hill — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:26:41 +0000

How is Ben Buckley going in the Gippsland by-election, BTW?

By: DavidLeyonhjelm

DavidLeyonhjelm — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:58:39 +0000

There probably is room for a libertarian version of GetUp though. I’d join that.

Ahem. The LDP?

By: TimT

TimT — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:34:30 +0000

There probably is room for a libertarian version of GetUp though. I’d join that.

By: TimT

TimT — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:34:05 +0000

I think GetUp are probably best defined as a political activism group who aim to get leftist governments in power and keep them in power, while continuing to lobby them for their own pet causes.

This makes them in practice, if not in theory, a Labor front.

By: Papachango

Papachango — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 07:11:38 +0000

While a libertarian version would be nice, there aren’t enough libertarians. It’s difficult enough to fill up a few groups and one political party…

Comment by Temujin | June 21, 2008

I reckon you’d be surprised if you got out there and spread the message a bit more. You might find a fair few who are libertarians without knowing it.

Here you need to take a leaf from Getup’s book.

It’s ironic really, for an organisation that generally opposes the marketing practices of corporates (and possibly marketing in general as a tool of capitalism), the one thing that GetUp does quite well is market itself.

By: Temujin

Temujin — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 06:10:31 +0000

Just because GetUp is bottom-up and issues-based, doesn’t mean they don’t hold political positions that can be identified. They have clearly and consistently supported policies which involve more government involvement and a distrust of voluntary coordination. That means they are interventionist. It is therefore not surprising that many GetUp members are Green/ALP supporters.

While a libertarian version would be nice, there aren’t enough libertarians. It’s difficult enough to fill up a few groups and one political party… let alone proposing that we spread our efforts even thinner. If libertarians want to help they should support a current group, not create yet another micro-group.

By: Alphonse

Alphonse — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 05:11:26 +0000

People here seeing GetUp through left-right, capitalist-socialist, lib-lab, libertarian-interventionist prisms are sprouting the kinds of C20 nonsense that has got us as far up shit creek as we are.

All we’ve seen here is rational video, timely and well-made, from an organisation that is is more issues-based than ideological and (relatively) more bottom-up than top-down.

By: Papachango

Papachango — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 04:49:02 +0000

I don’t think GetUp are a Labor front, at least not explicitly. I would call them more of a socialist front.

They probably have a few Labor people in there, but I reckon many more would be Greens and Socialist Alliance supporters.

They campaigned pretty hard for Labor in the leadup to the election because they hated Howard, but now Rudd’s in he’s not socialist enough for them.