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To-do list for Hans-Hermann Hoppe: edit · history · watch · refresh · Updated 2013-11-05


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Biased (and unnecessary) section headers back again

I unwatched the article cause I was tired of fighting with biased editors, but I noticed in researching something else that the biased section headers are back; I reverted them, though I'm sure the biased versions will return as long as highly partisan editors continue to use the article to advance their agendas.

  • Here Steeletrap changed "Controversial passage" to "Controversial passage on homosexuality", even though homosexuals not only group mentioned there (as discussed repeatedly at talk) and after we had a whole RfC on Steeletrap insisting homosexuality be the only issue mentioned in a section header about an academic freedom debate.
  • And here created a section from a single short paragraph he titles in WP:OR fashion "Racial implications of Hoppe's immigration policy" when there's one critical comment on Latinos and immigration. This section is unnecessary and just a POV attempt to bring attention to an issue. I believe I never have checked the sources here so who knows if it's even an accurate rendition... Anyway have tagged as too many sections.

Another editor brought User:Steeletrap to WP:BLPN for biased section headers on another article last month. How long can this go on? User:Carolmooredc 12:43, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

By the way, re: the statements that the RfC presented a consensus, I don't think we can forget that:
  • it was never formally closed, and certainly not by an outside and neutral editor; since was the first RfC I fully participated in from start to finish, I was not aware how important it was to formally close, and with an outside closer;
  • There was canvassing to questionably related groups, fear of which led me for one to jump to support having both in the title, thinking more canvassed individuals would appear who would support "attack on homosexuals" or something regarding an academic comment about time preferences for various types of individuals
  • There remain questions about BLP concerns given that once again Misplaced Pages possibly is being used by advocates to highlight in a WP:Undue fashion an issue already trumped up by other advocacy groups.
So I don't think people should rely too much on that RfC. User:Carolmooredc 14:22, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
Why should your biased opinion matter? AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:29, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
I am not the one who has declared and defended biases, they only have been inferred from my editing, something I got my only block for doing a couple years back due to merely asking about what it meant that someone edited frequently and almost entirely on one (adjective removed) topic. The fact that editors who have done RfCs start-to-finish didn't even mention formal closing, not to mention by an outside person, did not help. Next time I'll read about RfCs start to finish before engaging in an important one!! Working within the rules makes RfCs credible. User:Carolmooredc 15:09, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
Carol, I thought you got that block for stalking another editor off-Wiki? SPECIFICO talk 15:24, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
I forgot that the complainant was outraged both that I asked the question and that I cross posted an anonymous description of my question/speculation to a Wikia geekfeminism page which I thought was a part of Misplaced Pages because Wales involved in both. It looks like I removed it from Wikia. Hardly what is called "stalking". I apologized - and enjoyed the week off. (We should all be put on such vacations from time to time ;-)
Of course shortly after that the Wikimedia Foundation created a number of "legal" places to discuss such issues generally, and even specifically. I'd probably be a lot happier if I put one new section a day on sexism revealed by WP:RS in one new male BLP a day. But such chronic negativity is not my thing. Plus considering someone elses' "Allegations of sexual misconduct" section header was recently deleted from accused groper and rapist Bill Clinton's article, and the issue stuffed under "Public image", such sections doubtless would get deleted.
So it can be annoying to see hyped up POV section headers on covenant communities and time preferences. It's not like Hoppe was out violently attacking homosexuals and it ended up in one or two sentences under public image. Then there would be a cause for outrage. User:Carolmooredc 16:18, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
Hoppe is an academic, and a libertarian theorist. His comments regarding 'covenant communities' were made as an academic, and as a libertarian theorist. What exactly is 'biased' about reporting the reactions of fellow academics and libertarians to his remarks? AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:25, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
When editors who repeatedly have expressed a strong negative POV about individuals, groups of individuals, ideological positions, etc., put in WP:Unude amounts of negative material in articles, it's a problem. It would be a problem too if people who proclaimed homosexuals were fringe individuals with a silly philosophy and then went around to all the gay activist articles and drudged up every little scandal they could find and turned them into major sections I'm sure people would be saying "POV WP:Undue" as well. Or am I being too consistent in expressing policy. User:Carolmooredc 00:02, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
Is that intended to be a response to my comments? If so, it singularly fails to address them. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:10, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
@carolmooredc: "fringe individuals" ??? Nearly every post from you the past 2 months has contributed nothing other than to build a file which documents your incompetence to edit on Misplaced Pages. SPECIFICO talk 15:47, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Above, I see another incidence of incompetent editing from User:Carolmooredc. By insinuating that Hoppe's remarks on physically removing the gays from society do not merit "outrage," Carol is injecting her personal values into an issue of content. Whether she supports, opposes or is neutral towards Doc Hoppe's admonition to "physically remove" homosexuals from society is irrelevant; what's relevant is how RS responded to that remark.

In this regard (and in stark contrast to the dearth of RS discussion of this "economist"'s contributions to his alleged field of research), it appears that Hoppe's "ban the gays" bit has received much attention from RS. This not only includes criticism from his co-workers at the Mises Institute (such as Doc. Block, who has written else that he "abhors" homosexuality (1), yet still (per the cited piece in the Hoppe article) finds the "ban the gays" proposal unpalatable), but also includes a few figures outside of the Misesian walled garden, a rarity in these articles. With so many reliable sources addressing Hoppe's remarks, it is clear that they should be laid out fully, accessibly, and proudly. Our readers ought to see for themselves the grand academic debate this man's scholarship has provoked. Steeletrap (talk) 07:44, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

If I'm incompetent, take it to the relevant venue and see how many editors argue just the opposite just by reading your claims and my (as usual necessary) correction to them. Otherwise stop saying it or it's just a personal attack and I'm not in the mood for taking those engaging in it WP:ANI again this week. I'm too busy. User:Carolmooredc 05:06, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Property & Freedom Society

The Property & Freedom Society might be a topic for its own article, but tying in PFS details into this article is a poor course of action. PFS has had various meetings in the past and it would not be appropriate for WP to list these meetings in a BLP simply because HHH was the chief organizer/promoter. Moreover, listing any meeting(s) with very selective seminar topics or presenter topics gives rise to undue or POV editing. – S. Rich (talk) 15:52, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Exactly. We cannot have a Misplaced Pages editor cherry-picking seminar titles and placing them in Hoppe's biography with the end result of Hoppe being connected to the seminar titles (which are conceived by others.) This is synthesis, POV, undue weight for tangential facts. Binksternet (talk) 16:15, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
This editor has been told this sort of thing over and over again. WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT rides again. User:Carolmooredc 18:00, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

BRD re proper section heading text

Time for a BRD on these edits: . Steeletrap, please state your case as the first remark. – S. Rich (talk) 23:37, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Why "Physical Removal of Homosexuals" is appropriate section title

This is the main point of the section, as it's specifically what the RS are responding to. It is non-neutral OR to read the primary source and create our own interpretation, that the passage's main point is that libertarian communities are restrictive. The passage is relevant to RS and therefore relevant to Misplaced Pages specifically because of the fact that, for Hoppe, the libertarian order will physically remove homosexuals. Steeletrap (talk) 15:05, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Let me first thank you for doing what Binkersnet refused to, which is to bring the topic up here. That's the right way to go. I told him to take it to talk, but he prefers to edit war and then leave false accusations on my talk page.
On the real topic, I have to agree that the alternative title isn't neutral or complete. MilesMoney (talk) 15:12, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Hoppe's most famous book, Democracy – the God That Failed, is about Hoppe's take on democracy; everything in it relates to his view that democracy does not work and should be replaced by libertarianism. The part about covenant communities (gated communities based on residential agreements) is mainly about how democracy cannot work in such places. Hoppe's view is that they should operate under the direction of an elite group of members. Hoppe says "majority rule" has no place in such communities, nor is there any place for those who "advocate egalitarian sentiments", meaning socialists and communists. This is the main point; all other issues are tangential. Any emphasis on gays being ejected from covenant communities is a misrepresentation of the book, and thus a violation of WP:NPOV.
So far, under the direction of Steeletrap with enabling support from SPECIFICO, our article on Hoppe avoids telling the reader that he was writing emphatically about how democracy must not be allowed to thrive in a covenant community. The book actually says the following:

In a covenant concluded among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one's own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very purpose of the covenant of preserving and protecting private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They—the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism—will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.

— Democracy – the God That Failed, page 218. ISBN 1412815290

(Emphasis mine.) What Steeletrap has done ever since adding a cherry-picked portion in April 2013 ("Anti-Gay Views and Allegations of Racism") is to emphasize the homosexuality aspect in an unwarranted fashion. Steeletrap has pointedly ignored the anti-democracy theme which is Hoppe's main point.
An argument can be made that critics of Hoppe have fastened on the "physical removal" aspect where those who advocate homosexuality would be ousted. Yes, some critics have commented on this, but others have commented on the anti-democracy element and the differing libertarian viewpoints which are not encompassed by Hoppe. In his paper "Plumb-Line Libertarianism: A Critique of Hoppe", Walter Block commented on the "physical removal" aspect without making any observation about homosexuals being removed. Block notes that Hoppe's view of fully libertarian towns includes the likelihood of widespread intolerance, that one would likely find signs at the edges of towns giving warnings such as "no beggars, bums, or homeless, but also no homosexuals, drug users, Jews, Moslems, Germans, or Zulus." (Note that Hoppe is German so he anticipates that intolerance might be aimed at his way.) Block says Hoppe contradicts himself because elsewhere he says a covenant community could be highly heterogeneous, that it could be as diverse as a "rowdy Greenwich Village-type" neighborhood. Block is not hung up on just the homosexuality aspect, he mentions Jews and Zulus and others; his main point in the essay is that Hoppe should not ignore left-wing libertarians and should instead advocate a sort of path-of-least-resistance libertarianism which he calls "plumb line" (perhaps he felt fall line was already taken.)
Stephan Kinsella also comments on the picture Hoppe paints of covenant communities. Kinsella says in his article "Hoppe on Covenant Communities and Advocates of Alternative Lifestyles" that Hoppe is very often controversial. Kinsella answers the question of Hoppe's controversial view of homosexuals by discussing various instances of controversy, one of these being the popular Hoppe book Democracy – the God That Failed. Kinsella zeroes in on the fact that Hoppe is mainly saying covenant communities should not allow democracy within their walls; unlike our own Steeletrap he quotes the Hoppe sentence "There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order." Kinsella prints a Hoppe rebuttal in which Hoppe says his statements about who is to be excluded from a covenant community are being taken out of context. Kinsella says that neither he nor Hoppe are homophobic. Kinsella presents his own interpretation of Hoppe's writings such that homosexuals in a covenant community as envisioned by Hoppe would likely be allowed to stay if they did not "openly and habitually advocate incompatible lifestyles" which undermined the stated purpose of the covenant community. Kinsella points to page 212 in Hoppe's book where Hoppe says that what gays do in their own privacy is their own business. Kinsella quotes Hoppe's more tolerant picture of what covenant communities might look like:

With every locale and neighborhood owned by private firms, corporations, or contractual communities, true diversity would reign, in accordance with the preferences of each community. Some neighborhoods would be ethnically or economically diverse, while others would be ethnically or economically homogeneous. Some localities would permit pornography or prostitution or drugs or abortion, others would prohibit any or all of them.

— Hoppe, "Nations By Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State"


Journalist/analyst Matt Bruenig writing in September 2013 for Demos (U.S. think tank) in an article titled "Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Libertarian Extraordinaire" says that "Hoppe is a huge fan of discrimination of basically all sorts: racist, sexist, classist, and all the others." Like Block, he points to the discrimination that would likely arise in a world according to Hoppe. He quotes Hoppe imagining that there would be warning signs against bums and Jews, homosexuals and Zulus, etc. Bruenig says that Hoppe worries about "vulgarity, obscenity, profanity, drug use, promiscuity, pornography, prostitution, homosexuality, polygamy, pedophilia or any other conceivable perversity or abnormality." In this manner, Bruenig does not emphasize homosexuality in the same way that Steeletrap does—he folds that issue in with all the others. The quote which Steeletrap takes as primarily one about homosexuality is a quote that Bruenig characterizes as being against free speech. Bruenig highlights the following portion of the Hoppe quote with bold text: "There can be no tolerance towards democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society." This emphasis on Hoppe's ban on free speech and democracy is counter to what we see brought to Misplaced Pages by Steeletrap.
In the Daily Kos, a writer going by DowneastDem wrote in June 2010 about Hoppe's ideas including covenant communities: "Anarcho-fascism: the libertarian endgame". DowneastDem said that Hoppe's community would exclude democrats who "are no better than communists" in this context because they do not intrinsically respect private property. DowneastDem emphasizes the fact that democrats and communists would be "physically separated and expelled" from Hoppe's utopian vision. DowneastDem does not emphasize homosexuals removed by force but he mentioned that Hoppe encountered "difficulties at the university where he teaches with gay students who took offense at his blatant homophobia."
I think we have a case here of Steeletrap latching on to one aspect of a complex subject and pushing that aspect to the exclusion of neutrality in coverage, a violation of WP:NPOV. The literature points to Hoppe's "physical removal" of democrats and communists first, along with a laundry list of others. It does not give a balanced view if we cherry-pick the parts that make us angriest while ignoring the fact that the media are focusing on other parts. I think that the header "Restrictive libertarian covenant communities" is a good representation; another possibility for the section header is "Intolerance in libertarian covenant communities". For a month or so, this material (however cherry-picked and inadequately covered) fell under a section with a header which was simply the name of Hoppe's best known book. That changed on May 24 when Steeletrap set the covenant text apart under the header "Controversial remarks on homosexuals". This is the start of the problem with this header, a problem which focused on homosexuality rather than free speech and democracy in covenant communities. On the same day, User:Carolmooredc removed the biased header with the edit summary, "please don't impose Your particular POV on this; democrats and communists also might want a section header here". That is, Carolmooredc recognized that the material was about democracy and communism not allowed in covenant communities. Steeletrap soon reverted, saying that the header "isn't my opinion, but a matter of what the RS were responding to; they were responding *specifically* to the gay comment, which is why homosexuality heading appropriate." Unfortunately, Steeletrap was picking and choosing sources which emphasized this one issue. Carolmooredc removed it again the next day. On May 28, Steeletrap removed the "no tolerance toward democrats and communists" part of the Hoppe quote, the part that was the main focus of Hoppe. Steeletrap explained this shocking removal with the edit summary "Deleted segment about democrats/communists, which caused no controversy (no cited authors responded to all, while all of them respond to homosexuality -- Hoppe himself homosexuality bit is what caused controversy." Of course, Steeletrap had been picking and choosing sources which emphasized the homosexuality aspect, not the anti-democracy theme of Hoppe's book. Steeletrap followed that change with a new header for the covenant section: "Criticism". Carolmooredc soon removed the Criticism header. A month later, Steeletrap was back at it, this time putting in a subsection header titled "Controversial passage". Another month goes by and Steeletrap changes the header to "Controversial passage on homosexuality". Two weeks later Carolmooredc changed this to "Comments on covenant communities".
Other editors who have tried to put more neutral section headers include User:Gamaliel ("Covenant communities"), myself, User:Johnuniq ("Covenant communities"), and User:Srich32977 ("Restrictive libertarian covenant communities"). I think it is high time that a neutral header was put in place. Binksternet (talk) 02:30, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

TL;DR. All I got out of that is that we can't pick on him for being hostile to gays because he was just as hostile to other groups. Is that basically it? MilesMoney (talk) 02:37, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
Fuck that, lemme make this easy on you. Here is Hans admitting that Steeletrap is not guilty of original research or undue focus. Read it and chuckle. We can all share a laugh together, and then you can drop this waste of time forever. MilesMoney (talk) 02:43, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
If your understanding of the issue is that shallow you may want to excuse yourself from the discussion while you study it. Hoppe plainly says he was talking about banning democracy from covenant communities—you can confirm that in the same link you posted just now. Have fun reading up. Binksternet (talk) 02:52, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
Your comment reads more like a personal attack than anything constructive. Since you didn't say a thing about the article I linked to, I gotta assume you agree that it exonerates poor Steeletrap of those false accusations. If not, cut the personal attacks and actually say something relevant to the article. MilesMoney (talk) 03:34, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
You have some nerve to say I'm attacking you personally after attacking me and Srich four times a few minutes ago at the Murray Rothbard talk page , a clear violation of WP:NPA. My observation that you should read up on the subject before taking part in the discussion still holds true.
In your link Hoppe defends himself by saying "For instance, on p. 218, I wrote 'in a covenant concluded among proprietors and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, … no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very purpose of the covenant … such as democracy and communism.'" (Emphasis mine.) Hoppe continues by saying that in context his observations "are hardly more offensive than saying that the Catholic Church should excommunicate those violating its fundamental precepts or that a nudist colony should expel those insisting on wearing bathing suits." Hoppe says the context is crucial to understanding his point. Of course his book's main theme is anti-democratic, not anti-homosexual. There's the context. Binksternet (talk) 04:13, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
Pointing out that you're edit-warring is not an attack, and removing my talk page comments is. As for the rest, it's noise. MilesMoney (talk) 04:40, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
I've given up on Misplaced Pages because obviously "neutral" editors refuses to support its policies on various noticeboards - in this case it would be WP:ORN or WP:NPOVN. What source talks about physical removal? What source says he's hostile? That's all my time I'll contribute to this project today. User:Carolmooredc 03:31, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Biased edit

Remembered physically removed used, but it's just a typical stupid and biased edit which supports banning the editor from these articles. Unwatching talk page now. User:Carolmooredc 02:48, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

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