Libertarianism and fascism

Modern libertarianism, especially the American variety, has a lot more in common fascism than with the American democratic tradition, in my opinion. Particularly their explicitly anti-democratic elements.

Is your phronema noetic enough?

Are you neptic?

I haven't heard anybody talking in these terms for at least a year, maybe two. Is it because I have not been looking enough, have been too busy to see, am looking for love in all the wrong places, or is this brand of nonsense dying out and being replaced by other forms of self-loathing? "Behold, I make all things new."

In the moment, I am neptic. Not because of any phony elder's blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my nous.

I shouldn't make too much fun, as I don't see people like that and, if I did, at least they're not atheists or Protestants.

Democracy in America

I commented recently on how I considered that the success of the American experiment in democracy had "more to do with its foundations in the English common law tradition than the genius of the authors of the Constitution and Bill of Rights." Of course, "blaming" the apparent success of American democracy on something other than the Constitution is quite well-founded. Toqueville in his On Democracy in America (nobody dared to correct him that we are not a democracy, we are a REPUBLIC, amirite?) attributed the success of the American experiment on the mores, or habits of the mind, of the Americans rather than, for instance, a superior and magical Constitution.

Other names that are great.

Some names are great, but sound odd to actually have in English, but turn out well anyway because there are great nicknames that work. This list is neglecting common Greek or Russian ways of creating nicknames from these names.

• Paraskevi/Paraskeva. You can use Evi, Eva, Petka, or Friday if you're adventurous and enjoy multilingual puns (or perhaps just translating the story). Pyatnitsa if very adventurous.
• Speaking of Friday, there's Hildegard. Hildy is a very usable shortening of it.
• Winifred is uncommon, but she was a marvelous saint and "Winnie" works well.
• Barsanuphius and Barry/Barney/Bart has already been discussed.
• Photini. I can't think of a way to make this less "exotic" other than making it more common.
• Benedict is somewhat uncommon, but Ben works as a short version that obscures the relative oddness of the name - obscuring it is probably less necessary these days, as certain high profile actors have the name.
• Theodosius, Theoderic, Theodoret, Theodotos etc can, like "Theodore", be shortened to Ted.
• Theophilos, Theophanes, and Theognostos can be turned into Theo.
• Amphilochios, Theophilos, and other -phil- names can be, of course, "Phil".
• Maximos is a little odd, according to some, but "Max" is not unprecedented. Makarios could also be similarly shortened.
• Hyacinth could be Jack.
• Turbo. No modification.
• Gerasimos, Germanos, and other modifications could be referred to as "Jerry".
• Nikon, Nikephoros, Nikodemos, Nikander, Nikanor, Nikitas (the Goth), or even Nektarios could all be "Nick". Nektarios could also be "Terry".
• Wilfred or Wilibrord could pass as "Will".
• Remigius is already commonly abbreviated as Rémy, and I think that sounds fine, albeit French.

These are just musings off the top of my head. Overly Greek or Slavic names can be Latinicized if you prefer (eg, -us instead of -os, 'c' instead of 'k', etc). Frankly, there's a fine long English tradition of giving people obscure, long, and foreign (although in that case, typically Hebraic in at least the 19th century among Protestant) names. So why be shy about it now?

I don't think Barsanuphius is such a bad name

It is one of the prototypical names thrown around as one of those "too wacky" saints names to choose, but I don't think it is so bad. You could nickname the kid "Barney" or "Barry".

"Paphnutios", on the other hand, cannot be rescued. It is unfortunate, though, because it is a fantastic name. It was Chebyshev's name, too, by the way.

Chebyshev (or perhaps better transcribed as Chebyshov) was the man who proved that, for any n, there is a prime p such that n < p < 2n. He was also the advisor of Markov.

Anyway! The point remains, the name sounds odd and there's no good way to obscure it with a nickname (unless you want to nickname the kid "antelope").

When looking for more stuff making fun of libertarians...

...I ran into some good mockery of Less Wrong, which is really just about the same thing, right?

It's probably about time I went back to making fun of something other than libertarianism, because I'm running low on content (libertarians just don't have enough ideas to sustain continued mockery). Of course, switching to this entails undertaking the existential risk that I will be tortured for all eternity by a superintelligent AI for not doing everything in my power to bring about superintelligent AI. Still, going this way is tempting. If I could just list every logical fallacy, I would be, like, almost completely rational. On the other hand, though, I like discussing politics and, particularly, making fun of libertarians a lot, and this is literally mental suicide.

I think that's about all, really.