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| Abuse Policy |
| 06.28.05 (2:44 am) [edit] |
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One regualr contributer to the Paleo websites has inundated our message board with abusive messages. We are “psychopathic fuckheads”, “morons”, “cowards”, “idiots”, and more. They are so articulate and mannered. As I said originally my experience in reading their “contributions&rdqu o; to other blogs is that they become totally unhinged and resort to abuse almost immediately. My policy is to remove such posts simply because abusive material like that is rude, abrasive, and offensive to decent people. For all their talk about cultural conservativism and manners, etc, they lack any culture, conservative or otherwise. Whatever they say about things they haven’t changed much in 25 years. These people were out to “smash” anyone or “crush” anyone who stood in the way of their radical vanguard. Things remain the same today. Instead of working with the SDS they have simply moved over to the League of the South. They are still extremists who seem more motivated by the desire to destroy something than the desire to build a free society. Oddly the Paleo blog refuses to allow comments at all. Yet when others allow comments these individuals use it as an opportunity to heap verbal abuse on people. Perhaps they cut off comments on their own blog because they project on to others their own attitudes and behavior. For the record if one posts such messages of abuse about them I’d remove it as well. And when people tried to name specific individuals here for certain things which were not germain to our issue those posts were removed as well even though they basically supported my argument. I do not believe that libertarians need to stoop to level of debate used by the Paleos. It is tempting to leave the comments up just to show the quality of their debating skills but I don't want to contribute to such actions. I figure that abuse is like graffiti. People do it because they enjoy seeing it out there for the world to witness. Remove it and you remove the thrill they get from their dysfuctional behavior. The reward they get is seeing their own abuse in print. Take that away and they may eventually learned to be civilized. Well, one can hope anyway. |
| Rewriting biographies |
| 06.24.05 (1:48 am) [edit] |
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The Paleo web site, LewRockwell.com, has been running intellectual biographies of how people become libertarians and how they develop intellectually. I’ve read many of them and they seemed heavily leaning in the direction of “how Murray Rothbard changed my life.” It reminded me of the satire that Tuccille wrote, “It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand” where he ridiculed Objectivists for saying how Ayn Rand changed their life. It struck me that while Rothbard was an important figure in many ways that this seemed disproportionate to the reality I experienced with many Libertarians. It gave him more prominence than I thought the facts warranted. I just assumed people wrote it that way because the Rothbard Institute (sic) wants it that way or they assumed as much. I didn’t know if this was explicitly required or not. But one contributor, would be, to that site has let the cat out of the bag. Bryan Caplan was asked to write such an intellectual biography. He did and they told him it was not acceptable. Here is how Caplan puts it: http://www.gmu.edu/department... “‘A Note to the Reader: This essay was originally solicited by Walter Block for his forthcoming volume of libertarian autobiographies. Much to my surprise, however, he was only willing to accept it for publication if I heavily edited the content, particularly the sections critical of Murray Rothbard and Austrian economics. His main argument was that if he accepted my essay unchanged, he would have to allow other contributors to reply to my controversial views. I remain puzzled by this idea. It seems to me that the only way to "reply" to an autobiography would be to accuse the author of misrepresenting the story of his life. Unfortunately, Walter and I were unable to reach a mutually acceptable compromise, so I have decided to run the unedited, uncut, no-holds-barred version here on my webpage. Enjoy. - B.C.” |
| Decent and humane killers |
| 06.23.05 (1:37 pm) [edit] |
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There is one thing that this so-called League of the South said which really has been eating at me for a couple of days now. They wrote: “Southerners on both sides who were ‘racist’ by principle were decent and humane in their actual conduct.” http://leagueofthesouth.net/s... What kept this churning over and over in my mind was the recent conviction of fundamentalist minister, and former Klansman, Edgar Killen for helping plan the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. Three young men, with the complicity of racist police officers and Klan officials were taken out and executed. Are we to think that Killen was “decent and humane” in his actual conduct? Killen was a Baptist minister and the owner of a sawmill. When the civil rights workers were arrested by racist Southern sheriffs http://www.law.umkc.edu/facul...;bowers/price&bowers.htm for allegedly speeding and were held in jail until the Klan could organize. Killen, a local Klan official, was notified that the men were being held and would be released at a specific time. Killen did the organizing of the attack and recruited the murderers. The Klan intercepted the men, beat them and shot them to death. In 2002 a 72 year old former Klansman, Bobby Frank Cherry was finally convicted for a bombing of an Alabama church that killed for black girls. Some 38 years after late Klan official Sam Bowers was convicted of a firebombing that killed Vernon Dahmer. What took so long? The moral vision of the American South refused to condemn these men. Not only did it refuse to condemn them but it routinely turned a blind eye to racist atrocities. General racists attitudes were widely embraced and the typical Southern church endorsed them from the pulpit. Thomas Woods is a Mises Institute scholar and a regular writer for LewRockwell.com. He is one of the leading Paleos around. As we discussed already he was a founding member of the League of the South. Mises scholars speak at League functions. League scholars contribute to the Mises Institute and LewRockwell.com. They are quite chummy with one another. Woods is a fan of the Southern culture which allowed these things to happen—or at the very least did little to stop them. Woods quotes one theologian, sympathetically, who claimed the Civil War was not fought between abolitionists and slavers. On the North, he said, “they are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, jacobins” and on the South there are “the friends of order and regulated freedom”. It was, he said, a battleground between Christianity and atheism. Woods own view is that the “destructive trends that continue to ravage our civilization” began in 1865 with “the defeat of the Confederate States of America”. Woods says that the North was best represented by people like Thoreau with “an atheistic philosophy, which refused to recognize any authority to which the individual has not explicitly consented, and which in any case tends to shun collective affiliations of any kind”. Woods refers to this as “the cult of the individual”. Woods said that the League of the South “reminds us that many Southerners are prepared to defend their civilization” and that they have a sense of history and tradition. Those who opposed the South did so because they were atheistic individualists who opposed a “Christian understand of authority, social order and theology itself.” But what kind of Christian order was it? What about that fine tradition of lynching? Not all lynchings took place in the South—just a disproportionately large number of them. According to one source about 90% of all lynchings took place in the Deep South. And about two-thirds of the remaining numbers took place in six states bordering the South. Half of all lynchings ever took place in Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana and Alabama. The only states were lynchings never happened were all in New England. So while not uniquely Southern lynching is predominantly Southern. Nor is it always racial. But it is most of the time. Almost all lynch mobs are white. Over two-thirds of their victims were black and the percentage of white victims declined over the years mean more and more blacks were victims. Records of lynchings from 1882 to 1951 show that numerous reasons were given for this mob execution. About one in 50 were because a white person said he was insulted! About a quarter were given for miscellaneous reasons which included “disputing with a white man”, attempting to register to vote, testifying against a white man and asking a white woman to marry. http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/unit s/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html" title="http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/unit s/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html" target="_blank"http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/cur... Lynchings were not just hangings. Sometimes the victims were shot to death. “However, may were of a more hideous nature—burning at the stake, maiming, dismemberment, castration and other brutal methods of physical torture. Lynching therefore was a cruel combination of racism and sadism, which was utiilized primarily to sustain the caste system in the South. Many white people believe that Negroes could only be controlled by fear. To them, lynching was seen as the most effective means of control.” http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/cur... What is going on in the head of man when he helps found an organization that claims that racists in the South were “decent and humane in their actual conduct.” The three men killed by a mob organized by Killen might disagree. The family members of the four small black girls killed by the bombing attack of Bobby Frank Cherry might have a contrary opinion. Thousands of victims of lynch mobs are testimony to the contrary. Racism in the South was not decent and humane but cruel, paternalistic and vicious. The Jim Crow laws mandated that all businesses adopt the predominant Southern view of blacks and treat them as inferior. It was the back of the bus because that was what the fine Christian culture of the South demanded. It was lynching because this culture allowed it. And when cruel and ignorant men did vicious things white Southern Christian juries refused to convict. That too was part of the tradition. One of Wood’s compatriots in the League of the South, Robert Hayes, said that the South is being invaded by an alien culture “very different from our Southern culture”. These aliens “will almost always work against our best interests. We have allowed too many of these people to get into positions of influence and power. These people are Yankees.” Hayes says that these Northern values are destroying the South. “We have precious little time left to actuate an action plan to stop the loss of our territory and destruction of our Southern, European, Christian Culture.” Well, maybe there has been an invasion. Maybe the old values are dying. Maybe that is why justice is finally being done and vicious killers are finally going to jail. No doubt there were aspects to Southern culture that were benign if not beneficial. It’s racism wasn’t one of them. The League doesn’t see it that way. We can only assume that a founding member of the group wouldn’t have major disagreements with it. But why are some “libertarians&rdquo ; so in love with this man? |
| That's a big confirmation |
| 06.23.05 (3:26 am) [edit] |
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It seems that our posting on countercultural matters and the Paleolibertarians has erupted into a full out donnybrook on another web site. http://www.tomgpalmer.com/arc... I hope we have that out of the way. The comment I made on prostitution and drugs was not a key element of the discussion. I don’t think it should be the focus of our attention. It is not these things the hypocrisy of the Paleos that concerns me as much as the links to racists, bigots and the lunatic fringe of the Right. That is what I think is the issue. And that is what I’m concentrating on. As far as I’m concerned Mr. Stallion and the substance entrepreneurs are a non-issue compared to the advocates of the New Confederacy, theocrats and white supremacists. Concentrating on such consention actions between adults only diverts attention from the real issue -- which may be why some Paleo defenders keep naming names -- which is the Paleo links to very suspect ideologies. Notice: After Mr. Riggenbach posted his confirmation he was called by the individual in question. What was said is known only to them but the result was that Mr. Riggenbach retracted his recollection.
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| Identity: Confirm or Deny? |
| 06.23.05 (2:44 am) [edit] |
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The list of “suspects” as to who is RightWatch grows almost daily. About half a dozen names have been offered so far. That we have seen. Now it is our policy to neither confirm nor deny any such guesses. RightWatch (I,we, us, take your pick) simply assumes that any names offered as suspects are good potential sources for information verifying what we have said. If they weren’t they wouldn’t be named! When such names are posted in our comments section they are deleted as policy, as are the identities of some of the people we talked about (who were not identified in our own article). If a specific name is linked to actions where we did not identify the individual we will not allow others to use this blog to do what we ourselves felt unfair to do. And while several people have emailed confirmation of what we said oddly it is “defenders” of these individuals who want to identify them. I’m not sure about the logic behind that. We appreciate the confirmations, emails of support, etc. Remember if you have material you think of interest or suggestion of areas to look at we appreciate hearing from you. RWtblog.hotmail.com. |
| Some interesting material |
| 06.22.05 (1:14 am) [edit] |
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A couple interesting things have cropped up that I’ll share just as background information. I was happy to see the Rothbard/Hoppe Institute has republished the article that Rothbard wrote for the New Left journal Ramparts. I mentioned that article previously. It starts out: “TWENTY YEARS AGO I was an extreme right-wing Republican, a young and lone "Neanderthal" (as the liberals used to call us) who believed, as one friend pungently put it, that "Senator Taft had sold out to the socialists." Today, I am most likely to be called an extreme leftist, since I favor immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, denounce U.S. imperialism, advocate Black Power and have just joined the new Peace and Freedom Party. And yet my basic political views have not changed by a single iota in these two decades!” http://www.mises.org/story/18... He has my sympathy all over again. Twenty years ago I was considered a right-wing libertarian. My views over that period have gotten more conservative in some ways (as a personal life style choice and as the way I recommend for others but I don’t yearn for the state) but now I’m called a “left libertarian”. But when I’m not a “left libertarian” I’m a “neo-conservative&r dquo;. And what is fun is that the same people who accuse me of being a “neo-con” on one day will accuse me of left-libertarianism the next. In the article Rothbard says with admiration: “A new, younger generation of rightists, of "conservatives," ; began to emerge, who thought that the real problem of the modern world was nothing so ideological as the state vs. individual liberty or government intervention vs. the free market; the real problem, they declared, was the preservation of tradition, order, Christianity and good manners against the modern sins of reason, license, atheism and boorishness.” He is lamenting this. But it strikes me that the Paleo-libertarians today have also said that the real problem with libertarianism is that we “left libertarians” weren’t working for the “preservation of tradition, order, Christianity and good manners against the sins of reason, license, atheism and boorishness.” Rothbard made it clear then that libertarianism was “in opposition to throne and altar, to monarch, the ruling class, theocracy and war.” He wasn’t salivating over Hapsburgs or yearning for a return of the Confederacy which was the friend of “order and regulated freedom” in conflict with “atheistic individualism and an unrelenting rationalism in politic, in favor of a Christian understanding of authority, social order and theology itself” as Mr. Woods would put it. I have argued that “counter culturalism” was a movement of the New Left. It was born then and thrived there and from there moved outwards. I would think that a libertarian would find some of it acceptable on the legal level but not necessarily so on the individual, moral level. So the New Left was where woman’s lib, gay rights, freedom from censorship, the drug culture, etc was founded. Rothbard at the time was quit enthusiastic about how the New Left was moving in a libertarian direction. I didn’t think so. I saw some agreement on minor issues but not on many. And I felt it had the seeds of a more authoritarian sentiment within it. That, I think, proved to be the case. Murray referred to himself and his band of merry followers “ex-rightist libertarians”. He saw within the New Left a “remarkable shift toward libertarian and anti-statist positions” which I must confess I didn’t see. I, like many Rothbard admirers, did try to work with the New Left on issues of war and the draft for instance. But I only saw a louder, more obnoxious version of the Old Left. I didn’t see them as advocates of a new freedom worthy of an alliance. Nor did it appear that the Right was much better. I still bought into the idea that libertarianism is neither Left nor Right! I still do. There is an interesting blog commenting on this subject here: http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/06/rothbard-arti cle-online-rothbardian.html" title="http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/06/rothbard-arti cle-online-rothbardian.html" target="_blank"http://mutualist.blogspot.com... I don’t necessarily agree with the site in all details or even most. I just thought the comments of interest. If you didn’t see it one of the individuals posting comments here wrote that the illusive Thomas Woods essay in favor of ordered freedom and against the evils of individualism can be found here. http://web.archive.org/web/20...://reformed-theology.org/html/issue04/christen dom.htm I have several new items to work on for the site. But it was not my intent to post something new daily. After all, in the grand scheme of libertarianism, this is really a minor topic. Libertarianism is still a fringe movement and the Paleo’s are the fringe of the fringe so one would not spend too much time on it. And demands at work require my attention as well and I still would like to get out of the city by the weekend for a few days away. Though I do hope to stay in touch with the marvels of technology it’s more a matter of finding time. I should say something about our name. In recent discussions with other libertarians there was a concern expressed by the rise of the radical right: the racist, homophobic, bigoted kind of theocratic thinking that I think is so dangerous. A few of us decided to write about that so we established the blog. The others dropped out due to time constraints. Well I was going to discuss the rise of such ideas within libertarianism. They were going to tackle it in other areas. So the focus narrowed but the blog was already there. But I am assured by the others that they do still intend to make such a contribution and some have said they will send me links and information on my topic as well. So at some point we may widen our focus As I have said before feel free to write RWtblog@hotmail.com |
| A Confederacy of What? |
| 06.20.05 (2:02 pm) [edit] |
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The following statement was posted: “Opposition to Lincoln's centralism is not ‘die hard advocacy of the CSA.’” And that is true. To oppose Lincoln doesn’t make one a partisan for the Confederacy and it’s politics of slavery. Nor does it it preclude it. The argument that Cathy Young made in Reason is that Thomas Wood, author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History”, was not merely an opponent of Lincoln’s centralism but a supporter of the the slave-holding South. Young wrote: “Woods is talking not merely about the expansion of federal power but about the triumph of Northern ‘radical individualism,’ religious liberalism, and other cultural evils. He favorably quotes a 19th-century Southern theologian who described the defenders of slavery as ‘friends of order and regulated freedom,’ and portrays the Civil War as ‘a struggle against an atheistic individualism and an unrelenting rationalism in politics and religion, in favor of a Christian understanding of authority, social order and theology itself.’ The Southern cause, he concludes, is ‘the cause of us all.’” http://www.reason.com/0506/co... In an earlier article on the same subject Young wrote: “The full extent of that extremism is camouflaged in the book. The author's official bio leaves out the fact that Woods is a co-founder and member of pro-secession League of the South. Here's a sample of the League's views, from a position paper: '’Today's white Christian Southerners are the blood descendants of the men and women who settled this country and gave us the blessings of freedom and prosperity. To give away this inheritance in the name of 'equality' or 'fairness' would be unconscionable.’ While generously urging ‘Christian charity’ toward blacks, the paper denounces the idea that 'Southerners should give control over their civilization and its institutions to another race, whether it be native blacks or Hispanic immigrants.’” http://www.boston.com/news/gl... Woods himself admits he is not just a member but a founding member. http://www.southerngrace.biz/... Now to be fair to Woods I tried to read the essay of his that is quoted in several critiques. It was published in the secessionist article which was published in the League’s journal. But the links have been deleted. The journal in which it appeared has vanished from the web as far as I can tell. However, the theocratic (and I mean that in the strictest sense of the word) web site reformed-theology.org had reprinted it with Woods permission. This journal is filled with conspiracy theories from the authors who worked with the John Birch Society, Lew Rockwell contributor Gary North is a frequent contributor and it generally takes the view that Old Testament morality law needs to be put into place today right down to the stonings. These theocrats tend to be very pro-slavery saying that it is good for the inferior races to be brought in contact in white Christians. (For a web site that combines this Calvinist theocracy and Southern Secessionism try www.littlegeneva.com.) But when one opens the journal page where the Woods article is supposed to appear you get this notice instead: Christendom's Last Stand, by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. Removed by request of the author. http://reformed-theology.org/html/issue04/christen dom.htm" title="http://reformed-theology.org/html/issue04/christen dom.htm" target="_blank"http://reformed-theology.org/... I thought that particularly odd since the previous page was quite explicit in saying that the article was appearing with the express permission of Mr. Woods. So some years ago Woods gave permission for the article to be disseminated and now he has it withdrawn. It has disappeared from the original location and from a secondary location. It may be that Mr. Woods has changed his mind about the article and no longer stands by what he wrote then. We all mature and change our minds and there is nothing wrong with that. I don’t want to condemn a man for views he has repudiated. But I haven’t seen anything that indicates Woods has changed his mind. One Libertarian came to Woods aid and defended him from Young http://www.strike-the-root.co... but he spends most of his time implying that if you are anti-Woods you must be pro-Lincoln and trying to prove that Lincoln was evil. That is a point that was not being disputed from what I could see. He then said readers should check out Wood’s reply to Young’s first article on the topic at Rockwell’s site. http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods38.html" title="http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods38.html" target="_blank"http://www.lewrockwell.com/wo... Here is how Woods deals with Young’s comments about the “reply” in question. Paragraphs 1,2 & 3: Tells us who likes his book and who doesn’t. No reply to what Young said. Paragraph 4: Insinuates Young was out to get him, no reply to what she said. Paragraph 5: Quote a Mises Institute individual about Wood. No reply to what Young said. Paragraph 6: Attacks unnamed libertarian who didn’t like his book. Attacks another unnamed libertarian web site which he said “tried to portray me as a Klansman” and then responds, “you know the tender solicitude and sympathy that the Klan shows for Latin Mass Catholics.” Actually the Klan has dropped it’s anti Catholicism. But either way no reply to Young. Paragraph 7: Attacks “Beltway Libertarians” saying they don’t like him because he upholds “Southern tradition”. No reply to Young. Paragraph 8: Argues that Lord Acton was pro-Southern, again no reply to what Young wrote about his views. Paragraph 9: Says conservatives previously debated the “Lincoln” legacy but no one I’ve read is opposed to that. There is a argument smuggled in which is saying that to oppose the revival of so-called Southern culture is to be pro-Lincoln. One is no more pro-Lincoln for opposing the Confederacy than one is pro-Saddam for opposing the Iraq war. No reply to what Young wrote. Paragraphs 10 to the end: Takes on neoconservatives and attacks them. No reply to what Young wrote. I was hoping Woods would give us some defense for his viewpoints. I figure he had three real options. He could say he did hold such views and no longer does in which case I think the story is over. He could say his views were distorted and explain how and the story ends. Or he can say he stands by the article and we debate what is in it. He did none of that. He never mentioned it. Instead he pretends it never existed and he issues requests to sites that had published it (at least one such request) asking for it to be chucked down the memory hole. At the very least he could have explained why he is trying to erase any records of what his article said? All i can do is assume that the people who originally quoted it did so accurately. My ability to disprove the quotes disappeared when Woods had the article erased. I wouldn’t think that was a wise move unless it confirmed what the critics said and Woods still stands by those positions. I went to the web sites for the League of the South and read numerous pages. It appears to be semi-theocratic in the sense of wanting to impose some sort of undefined “Christian culture” on the new Confederacy and loosely embraced white supremacy. I say loosely only in the sense that they didn’t say “we whites have the right to rule the darkies”. But they do say just that in gentler, kinder terms. Here is what they are clear about. They and their League of the South Institute are secessionists. Their Institute calls itself “the educational arm of the Southern independence movement.” http://lsinstitute.org/ They wish to restore “Christian liberties” and reaffirm the old southern cultural heritage. Elsewhere they say: “The League of the South is a Southern Nationalist organization whose ultimate goal is a free and independent Southern republic.” http://leagueofthesouth.net/s... As Young wrote they did say that Southerners would never give control of their institutions to another race (which implies that only Whites are Southerners). They also seem to want to water down the evils of slavery which is what Woods was accused of by his critics. The League says regarding race relations in the South: “Southerners on both sides who were ‘racist’ by principle were decent and humane in their actual conduct.” http://leagueofthesouth.net/s... That one sentence has a lot packed into it. First note that the word racist in in quotes which implies they don’t believe there was any racism in the South. Second, while I think there probably were racists on both sides, it implies that the racism was somehow equal in impact and intensity and it says that both groups of racists were “decent and humane”. Now I’m not sure we can call the actions of the Klan “decent and humane”. I don’t think lynching was ‘decent and humane” (and it was almost always white mobs lynching blacks). It was black churches that were “decently and humanely” fire bombed not white churches. I never heard of a anonymous blacks going out and breaking up groups advocating white supremacy but there were white groups that went out and broke up meetings advocating legal equality. This sentence is actually abhorrent to any decent libertarian. Now for their “soft” racism. I quote: “The League seeks to protect the historic Anglo-Celtic core culture of the South because the Scots, Irish, Welsh, and English have given Dixie its unique institutions and civilisation. Should the Christian, Anglo-Celtic core be displaced, then the South would cease to be recognisable to us and our progeny. We must maintain this all-important link to our European heritage from which we have drawn our inspiration. Anglo-Celtic Southerners and their European cousins have a duty to protect that which our ancestors bequeathed us. If we will not promote our own interests, no one will do it for us.” http://www.dixienet.org/posit... This is pretty much the way David Duke, former head of the Klan, is expressing himself these days. It’s called marketing. Instead of saying you are promoting white supremacy you say you want the system to protect your culture. Again note how the Southern culture they talk about clearly excludes blacks and Indians who lived there for about the same period of time—obviously longer for Indians. When they previously discussed blacks in juxtaposition to Southerners this was not an error. It was intentional. They do not believe that Southern blacks are part of the Southern nation. They are aliens living in a white, Christian land. The League does say they should be treated justly but it is clear that it is against equality. The League has one page showing how the US congress voted on issues and then they separate out the Southern representatives to shows how the new Confederacy would have voted on the same issues. The implication certainly is that the South was the good guys (and on some issues they were). But included in the policies of the new Confederacy was foreign aid for the Contras, retention of US control over the canal in Panama, prayer in state schools, banning abortion and keeping out immigrants. http://leagueofthesouth.net/s... Now some supporters of the Paleolibertarian agenda try to pretend these secessionists who want a white, Christian nation are really libertarians at heart. The League of the South doesn’t buy into that at all (and remember we are discussing them because Mr. Woods is a founding member). First the League makes it clear that this libertarian idea of equal rights is out the window. “In a starkly secular libertarian world where everyone has the same, duplicate rights as all others, and government exists not to enforce organic values, but merely to prevent imposition on rights, some very startling results become obvious. The government guided by the god of human individualism must set out to tear up all human relations and constructions that are grounded in anything other than human individualism and consent. Herein libertarianism and Critical Theory connect. At this point, extreme libertarianism joins not only with secularism, but also with feminism, the Civil Rights Revolution, and internationalism.” http://www.lsinstitute.org/Ex... They say that Southern culture didn’t buy into this sort of equality of rights egalitarianism. This is correct even if that is glossed over by Mr. Woods. Instead it gave rights on the basis of who you are. So everyone’s rights are protected because the only real rights they have is determined by what group they belong to. So fewer legal rights for blacks is okay because their black. It’s based on who they are and therefore not a infringement of equal rights. I quote: “Southern Conservatism openly essays at being just, not egalitarian. It finds justice in treating a man or woman as who he or she truly is-who he or she is, in reality. It finds rights, duties, liberties, and communal values, in the Common Law of the land and people, the Common Law handed down to it through time, a Common Law constructed as the framework for an organic society. It does not find these things in the application of abstract principle answering questions of how to benefit the lowest-common-denominator at any given moment.” And what they are setting up is a Christian system of law. This is one reason Reconstructionists are on their side much of the time (not all of course but generally). “Furthermore, the Common Law of a Christian people is necessarily a Christian Common Law. And the Common Law of a Christian people knows its own and is not ashamed of its own, neither its values nor its ethnicity.” And if you get real inspired to join this cause for a racially based, Christian-based revived Confederacy you can sign a declaration linked to by the League to that effect. http://www.petitiononline.com... Here are a few excerpts: “The national culture of the United States is violent and profane, coarse and rude, cynical and deviant, and repugnant to the Southern people and to every people with authentic Christian sensibilities. Purveyors of the national culture have everywhere lowered standards of morality and debased human dignity. They have appealed to mankind's worst impulses through profanity and obscenity in the arts and literature; they have depicted decadence and debauchery as normal and desirable; they have distorted Southern symbols and denied our right to interpret or display those symbols; they have assumed the authority of parents in the areas of religion and education; they thus have driven a wedge between the generations; they have prostituted all areas of thought and learning for market share; they have demonised Southern heroes and canonised tyrants and war criminals; they have distorted Southern history to advance their ideas of social justice; they thus have driven a wedge between the races and regions; they have destroyed hope; they have spread despair; they have called good evil and evil good; they have everywhere substituted the opinions of men for the decrees of God.” “To our Southern forebears the triune God gave the inspiration and wisdom to create a confederated, constitutional republic based on the principle of local self-government and sustained by a vibrant and vital cultural heritage. We consider our heritage a sublime and unmerited blessing and we cherish it. Today it is threatened as never before by the godless national culture of death, supported by an overbearing government that acknowledges no limits to its power.” “We reaffirm the cultural inheritance of our honourable forefathers and declare to the world our intention to defend and preserve it. The preservation of historic cultures--especially those that establish liberty--has never been cheap or easy. We hereby proclaim to the world that the struggle to protect and advance our Southern cultural heritage begins in earnest today...Henceforth, we shall stand steadfast in defense of our inheritance as free men and women of the South, and we welcome all who share our principles to stand with us. “ “As witness to our intent, we affix our signatures to this Declaration of Southern Cultural Independence...invoking the blessings of our Lord, Jesus Christ, on a just cause.” This does sound very theocratic to me and I honestly believe that their constant discussion of “culture” means race something they are more clear about elsewhere. Certainly some of the signers of that petition left white supremacist messages on the site so they seemed to think so as well. Now why spend any time on the League. Wood is not the only Rockwellian Paleolibertarian type to associate with them. You will find a couple of Paleolibertarians have worked with this group as well and other League lectures have written for Rockwell. But Woods was a founder of the group. And the whole debate about his membership came out because it was said this his book on history intentionally distorts facts to give a pro-Confederacy viewpoint and that this is inspired by Woods’ belief in the revival of this confederacy. At issue was what sort of group did Woods endorse. I wouldn’t even condemn him for speaking to them or listening to what they had to say. But being a founding member was more than that. That implies endorsement. Now why is Woods being promoted by these Paleolibertarians so strongly. Rockwell’s web site carries around 50 articles by this man—including a review he wrote about his own book. He is not merely someone to whom they link because he occasional writes something interesting. He is a regular columnist for them. He lectures for Rockwell’s Mises Institute and I note at least one other League of South lecturer is also a frequent contributors to Rockwell’s site. Woods founding membership in the League of the South certainly makes one wonder what kind of libertarian, paleo or otherwise, he’s supposed to be. And equally one would wonder why Rockwell’s site and the Mises Institute are so fond of him. If he were the only such bird in the Paleolibertarian flock you might ignore it. But he isn’t. A slew of Rockwell linked writers have come out with book after book fighting what would appear to be a war that has been over for 150 years. Woods is an adjunct scholar for the Mises Institute. An internal search of the Mises site shows Woods mentioned over 500 times. Other seccessionists associated with the League, like Woods, lecture to the Mises crowd. Mises related academics lecture for the League. It’s a very cozy relationship to say the least. But are the goals of the League really what libertarianism is all about? I don’t think so. |
| Should we unite? |
| 06.20.05 (6:35 am) [edit] |
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Short: to the point and a valid question, so I thought I’d post this comment on the main board along with my reply. “Well, thanks for the quick reply. I'd prefer to be saved from the "counter-culturalist s" by discussing their ideas rather than their inconsistencies or history. But for those who see value in getting the history of the movement "right", I guess you'll provide one version of that history.” “But from my narrow point of view, what's needed in the libertarian movement is not a "correct" history or more ways to differentiate between the players, but rather a unification of the already too numerous factions.” “To have someone with your apparent lengthy background in the movement and your ability to write spend time on dividing instead of uniting seems to me to provide the ideal demonstration of why the movement has trouble getting out of its own way... :(“ Dear : ( Sorry to make you sad. You raise some valid points. I am not trying to save anyone from counter-culturalists as I said here. The issue was that some people, who have allied themselves with very unlibertarian people, are using “counter culturalism” to attack the libertarian movement. They wish to divide the movement. Not divide it as much as have it march in lock step with them. This was how they’ve been for a long time however. When they were the Radical Caucus they were willing to “smash” anyone who disagreed with them. See George Smiths essay discussing this tactic. Mr. Smith explained their actions 20 years ago: “All enemies, and especially internal enemies (‘deviationists&rsq uo;”, must be “crushed.” The end justifies the means. Short of violating rights, Libertarian Leninists exhibit few constraints on their behavior. Their tactics run the gamut from gossip and personal attacks to serious.” http://users.aol.com/xeqtr1/voluntaryist/v is05.txt" title="http://users.aol.com/xeqtr1/voluntaryist/v is05.txt" target="_blank"http://users.aol.com/xeqtr1/v... Now I will not that unification is not necessarily good. First, which tactic is the right one? I don’t know. Better to allow diversity. Second, when the movement was centered in the LP their was one center of power, one center of resources, etc. That meant that the diffirent approaches were inevitably drawn to fighting with one another for control of that center. I don’t think that was good. I don’t really care if the Paleo’s want to start some other movement. I wish they wouldn’t use the name of Mises to do so. I even think they are starting to get away from Rothbard to some extent. Here is where I have major problems. We are now getting messages that seem very close to crossing the line of being racist (if they haven’t already crossed the line). We have White Supremecists and anti-Semites getting plugged and endorsed by Paleo-Libertarians. Instead of being a principle alternative to the Left and Right, or extreme Left and far Right, they are allmost merging us with the far Right. They want us to downplay social freedom, they want us to join in a racist campaign to keep immigrants out (and it racist as I will try to show later). I think they are doing a great deal of harm to the name of libertarianism. In the past we had our share of eccentrics, loonies, wierdos and strange ones. No one says the contrary. And a lot of people perceived us a strange or weird. But we were never associated with hate. We were never branded racists. We were seen as the people the Right knew they could rely on to support free enterprise--that was in the days when the Right believed in free enterprise--and we were seen by the Left as those people who would go to the wall for civil liberties. But we were never associated with Jew-haters, anti-gay bigots, racists, theocrats and so forth. |
| A Good Reply |
| 06.20.05 (6:12 am) [edit] |
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I am impressed with the quality of responses i get here. Most are reasonable even those who I disagree with. With t the exception of the posts i deleted everyone has been civil. I will do my utter most to try to respond. Here is one post that was made which I wanted to give more prominence. (Partly because it is good and partly because the comments box is too difficult to read.). I am leaving the name on since this was publicly posted already but private communications I receive are not identified by me. I will make comments along the way if that’s fine since it is easier than trying to keep track of it all and putting it all in one spot. My comments will be in brackets and have a RW at the beginning to try and keep them separate. Bill Woolsey [outside user] Monday 06.20.05 [8:33 am] The history here is mostly consistent with my observations--though I guess I should be glad I never visited San Francisco in the late seventies. [RW: That you for the confirmation. Don ‘t be too harsh on the city. It’s like one giant Disneyland. You get the bizarre costumes on a daily basis and now and then the entire city goes bouncing around like one big ride. Sure there are wacky characters but that gives the city it’s charm. I enjoy it and think everyone should live in San Francisco at least at some point in their life.] I would add some observations. By the time I was active in the SLS, there was already a split between the initial leadership and the radical caucus Rothbardians. [RW: Well the people I met at SLS were the people who ran the RC. Rothbard wasn’t there but many of his followers were.0] SLS started at about the time of the Clark campaign, and that is when there was a split between Rothbard and Cato, SLS, etc. The Rothbardians were dead set against the ant-nuclear power "strategy." [RW: Some Rothbardians were and some weren’t. I don’t mean to imply at any point that they were all united on issues. They often weren’t. And as I said I am speaking of Mr. Rothbard’s supporters and the people who surrounded him who today make up a certain amount of the Paleo crowd.” Also, the Clark campaign had a "leftish" approach. The theory was that stagflation had discredited "liberal" economics. So, the libertarians would offer liberals and dovish, McGovernite foreign policy, and ACLU view on personal liberty, and a sugar coated scheme of market-oriented reform. It didn't work. [RW: Let’s be fair to the Clark campaign. It didn’t work in that he didn’t get elected. But then we had the principle Bergland campaign and the results were worse. We had the Paul campaign and Badnarik campaign. None of them work in the sense of victory. But my view is that all of them help push the ideas of liberty a bit.] That SLS would try to get involved in the anti-nuke movement, as well as anti-draft stuff was consistent with the Clark campaign approach. It didn't work. [RW: I did see efforts to join the anti-draft campaign but not the same effort on the nuclear issue (thankfully). But I did see the anti-nuke stuff that came out of head office and out of Libertarian Review.] SLS disappeared. Cato continued on with a "moderate" libertarian approach--well, moderate relative to the Rothbardians. [RW: My impression watching Cato since those Montgomery Street days is that they’ve been pretty consistent, pretty decent and relatively effective.] As I see it, the paleo turn came from the fall of the Soviet Union. Rothbard thought that there was an opportunity to reconstruct the entire right on an isolationist basis. All of the puportedly disciplined libertarian revolutionaries were supposed to turn on a dime, and follow our leader into rightwing political work. Personal liberty issues would have to be downplayed. Our common ground of the freemaket emphasized and, of course, a new foreign policy introduced in place of anti-communism. [RW: Agreed. MR did seem to think we should be a discplined vanguard following the leader. He, of course, being the leader. I always say us as the alternative to Left and the alternative to Right. I don’t mind strategic issue alliances but I didn’t think we should downplay our free markets with the Left or our social freedom with the Right.] Many of Rothbard's followers in the libertarian movement, refused to follow. Pesonal liberties issues were too important too them. They couldn't stomach working closely with Christian conservatives. [RW: Amen.] (Of course, many libertarians weren't about to follow Rothbard anywhere. This really only applies to Rothbardian libertarians who failed to follow the twist in the strategic line during the late eighties.) [RW: Well it was sometimes damn difficult to keep up. Mr Rothbard was quick on his feet and could turn on a dime.] Rothbard's line of attack on those who were supposed to be taking his orders was that they refused to give up on personal liberties issues and start working with cultural conservatives is because they personally had unconventional habits. They were only libertarians to be free to do these various unconventional things--as opposed to heroically hating the state. So, gay people or drug users who followed Rothbard in his twists and turns are fine. The "left libertarians" in the sense of counter-culture types really just applies to a small segment of the libertarian movement. I guess from a Rothbardian perspective, those who didn't follow Rothbard weren't really libertarians at all. You know, people associated with "Treason" magazine or those Republican lite folks at Cato, etc. [RW: I think you a tad bit harsh with Cato. They certainly have had some good stuff on foreign policy and in opposition to Bush. I wish they would do more on civil liberties. But all in all I’m okay with them even if we part company now and then.] |
| Good question |
| 06.20.05 (3:25 am) [edit] |
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he following came in as a comment: Monday 06.20.05 - 5:04 am It seems a strange sort of logic that allows you to remain anonymous while taking pot shots at others by name. Why criticize by name in the first place? Wouldn't it be sufficient, even better, to focus on the "wrong" (from your point of view) ideas they promote instead? That’s a fair question. Why criticize by name? Well imagine if I posted the remarks without any names? The Paleos would line up taking pot-shots at me for not naming names. How does one show that the people today who are saving us from counter-culturalists WERE the counter-culturalists without naming names? But I did put in one policy. I mention names where things are public knowldege and documented. Where it wasn’t necessarily widely known or public knowledge I didn’t mention names. I don’t think anything is gained by knowing who in particulary was a prostitute or doing drugs. And it is not my intention to embarass these people at all just to call them on their revision of the facts. Also as I said already the main reason for even posting this was to pre-empt the attack I’d get that I’m one of these “left libertarians” that the Paleos have created to be “the enemy” (a good motivational tactic on their part but not necessarily factual). And I will be focusing more on ideas but if I don’t document who said them or spread them then I’ll be accussed of not substantiating my facts. I hope to take a few of days off so that I can work on one such piece. And now is as good a time as any --- better in fact. The city can be a zoo around this time of the year. I don’t mind the influx and the crowds at all but don’t enjoy it as much as I used to and would like to get out before Sunday. And I want a little more sun. So I thought I’d head south in the next day or two and visit some friends. I’ve got someone to monitor the site and hopefully when I get back I’ll have the first article dealing with the main thrust of the site--the ideas that need discussing and the movement toward an intolerant, authoritarian libertarianism. |
| One Letter |
| 06.20.05 (2:40 am) [edit] |
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Letters: Got the following in a few minutes ago: Hello Rightwatch, Very nice start. Just finished your post on " revising libertarian history" and got several chuckles as people I knew in SF in the mid 70s were mentioned. I suspect though that you'll find your anonymous status won't last too long. A few names come to mind and although I wouldn't out you if I did know for sure ... At any rate, good for you whoever you are, it's about time someone puts a little light on those years. As promised I protect the identity of those who write me and send me information. I did delete a sentence where he takes a guess at who is RightWatch but the list continues to grow. Of course it may be one mentioned, several mentioned or no one mentioned to date. And since I said I welcomed submissions from others it could be that we’ve already posted one such submission or are going to in the future. Frustrating I would think if you are intent on attacking the person instead of refuting the argument. I don’t want to dwell on this “left libertarian” issue for long. It really is a side issue. I just figured that the moment I started talking about some of the unsavourary viewpoints that I’d get attacked as a left-libertarian. That seems to be a stock reply from the unhinged. So that was pre-emptive just to lay some groundwork. Nor do I want it thought I particularly care about the issues mentioned. If someone was making a living as a prostitute that’s better than living off of fake disability claims for instances or welfare. Its not my business. Nor do I care if they ingest various substances or sell them to consenting adults. I was just a bit miffed that today’s Rothbardians are protecting us from yesterday’s Rothbardians. |
| Was I wrong about that! |
| 06.20.05 (2:10 am) [edit] |
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Was I wrong about that! I thought that anonymity would prevent some people from ignoring issues and evidence. As i said I’ve read other sites where some of the paleo-libertarians became completely unhinged and launched some really scurrilous attacks. One in particular has a tendency to try and insult people over their sexual orientation and so forth. One of the individuals, who was firmly in the counter-cultural movement that he and his friends say was ruining the libertarian movment, posted at least one message here calling people names. Since he was unaware of who runs the site he made guesses and just started insulting and attacking people he thought might be behind it. I removed that comment along with another that had come in when I was off line and thus I could not tell where it came from. But it too started taking pot shots at random people in the hopes that one of them might be RightWatch. I must confess a bit of astonishment. I know the venomous reputation of the person who posted the second (and possibly the first) message. What I didn’t count on was that if he was unsure who to attack that he’d just start pulling names out of the hat and using shot-gun slander where he attacks anyone who comes to mind in hopes that he’ll get the right person at some point. I would like to thank those who have emailed with information. Some was used already and some has been filed away for future use. |
| Revising Libertarian History |
| 06.19.05 (5:10 am) [edit] |
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Someone has been revising libertarian history. Here is the story I’ve read in some circles. There is something out there called “left libertarianism” which one “paleolibertarian” equates with libertinism. What is it? Well, supposedly the story goes this way, at one time the Libertarian movement was dominated by these counterculture types: hippies, druggies, homosexuals, the unemployed and various other miscreants. Murray Rothbard looked down from high and said: “I am not pleased.” He gathered the forces of decency two by two and lead them into the Promised Land of paleolibertarianism where they sit today surrounded by their allies the paleoconservatives lamenting the cultural condition of the land. In a very long time in this movement I never actually saw that time. At least not when it dominated the movement. Most libertarians I’ve known for a few decades have been decent, hard working, relatively middle class and conventional people. But there was a short period when such people did hold influence although never a majority of the movement. And even when they had influence they were the fringe position. But here is what I don’t understand. I knew those people and virtually to a man (or woman) they were Rothbardians! And I don’t just mean that they were fans of Rothbard. I mean they were in constant touch with him. They were his “radical vanguard”, his “radical caucus” and his foot soldiers in the battles against the enemy—whoever that would be at the time. Let me describe what I saw. Let’s start with the counter cultural 60s. Rothbard was out there recruiting the so-called “New Left” and trying to interest them in his ideas. He shows up at the YAF convention in St. Louis wanting to challenge that advocate of cultural conservatism William F. Buckley. The young libertarians are accused by the conservatives who controlled YAF of being hippies, counter cultural, druggies, draft dodgers, etc. Off these libertarians go to form the movement. Karl Hess, then very much Rothbardian, goes even further to the Left. He explores all sorts of alliances with the Left. Rothbard is calling for an alliance. He writes for the premier journal of the so-called New Left, Ramparts. In spite of these efforts most recruits into libertarian groups were not coming from the Left. Most were readers of Ayn Rand hence Jerome Tuccille’s satire “It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand.” And most were personally rather conservative. We move into the 70s. The Libertarian Party is formed. Soon Cato Institute is formed. The Ed Clark for Governor (California) campaign gets great attention. The Kochs fund not just Cato but Libertarian Review, Inquiry and Students for a Libertarian Society. Libertarian Review was edited by Roy Childs, who was very much in agreement with Rothbard most of the time. Inquiry was edited by Bill Evers who was practically Rothbard’s first lieutenant. Paleolibertarian Eric Garris described Evers “as Murray Rothbard’s closest associate, practically joined at they hip.” SLS was dominated by individuals who were all Rothbardians. Rothbard was on the board of Cato. And all these groups were centered in San Francisco on Montgomery Street. What were these groups pushing? Well, it’s a mixed bag. But there was a good deal of counter cultural activity happening. I was a relatively new libertarian and an activist at the time in various groups. Most the people I meet were, as I said, pretty middle class and conventional. A meeting is scheduled to promote SLS. I make my way to San Francisco, to the hub of activity that was on Montgomery Street. I’ve read Libertarian Review and mostly enjoyed it. I read Inquiry but found it catering to the Left too much, in my opinion. I saw a newspaper National Vanguard that was explicitly Rothbardian and it’s style was far too radical for me. But I naively thought it was part of a grand strategy. Reason would appeal to conservatives, LR to mainstream libertarians, Inquiry to the Left and National Vanguard to the New Left. Of these publications only Reason wasn’t run by someone closely allied to Rothbard. I show up at Montgomery Street and walk into the SLS offices, which if I remember correctly, more resembled a warehouse than an office. Numerous other activists had gathered. We are meeting one another and chatting. One of the now leading paleolibertarians walks into the room and in a very loud voice announces: “God, am I exhausted. I was in the park all night sucking cock.” Maybe not the exact words but very close. I cringed. So did virtually everyone else. Even if true none of us could understand why he thought it necessary to share this information with the rest of us. Counter cultural? Definitely. Certainly not a cultural conservative. The story went, according to friends of his, that not long before he was advertising “services’ in the local gay newspaper as the “Italian Stallion”. But this was someone who a Rothbard acolyte and remains so to this day. They had a few spats over the years. But he always ended up back in Rothbard’s camp. Inquiry explicitly courted the Left and Left intellectuals. it was dominated by Rothbardians. Roy Childs, who was then pretty much in the Rothbard camp was running Libertarian Review and the leaders of SLS were Rothbardians. LR and SLS were both pushing ideas I could not support. They were explicitly appealing to the Left. LR jumped on the antinuclear power bandwagon which struck me as wrong. Now I know they talked about Price-Anderson and how that law limited liability for nuclear power companies. But they did more than that. They also printed material by anti nuclear activists like John Goffman about how nuclear was bad in and of itself. SLS meanwhile was still hard pushing for some sort of infiltration with the Left. The booklets it published were meant to appeal to these people, using their language and their issues. SLS focused heavily on the issue of the draft. So that meant strategic alliances with the Left and working with Lefties. Hardly an atmosphere conducive to cultural conservatism. Now I was anti-draft although not antinuclear power. And I was willing to try to do outreach to the Left. I came to know these Rothbardians and off and on worked with them on different issues. Here is what I saw. Take the gay rights issue. Very counter cultural if you ask me. Again I support the mainstream libertarian on that issue. But who was pushing gay issues back then? Well, it was pushed in SLS for sure. And the first publication on gay rights, and which eventually lead to the formation of gay libertarian organizations, was a little blue booklet written by Rothbardian Ralph Raico. It was a good booklet. I have no faults with it. Ralph said it well. He outlined a good libertarian position. But this was not cultural conservatism. Remember this was almost 30 years ago. It was cutting edge. There was no “Will & Grace” or “Queer Eye” on television. There was nothing on television. Movies hardly approached the subject. This was the cutting edge of the counterculture. Even some on the Left couldn’t handle it and were conservative when it came to gay issues. SLS was run by Rothbardians and so was Inquiry magazine edited by Evers. Here is what Radical Caucus activist Eric Garris had to say. According to him he was activist in the Left wing Peace and Freedom Party and it was there he meet Evers. Garris claims he took over this Left-wing party and that “Bill Evers was one of the intellectual guiding lights for our successful faction” “In 1978, Justin Raimondo, Bob Costello and I formed the Libertarian Party Radical Caucus (LPRC) to continue to move the LP toward more principled stands... Shortly after the formation of the LPRC, Bill Evers joined and urged Murray Rothbard to do the same. We expanded the LPRC Central Committee to include Bill and Murray, Bill’s friends Colin Hunter and Scott Olmsted soon joined the Central Committee.” Remember that Rothbardian Garris says Evers and Rothbard were “practically joined at the hip”. And that was true. I saw it myself. http://www.antiwar.com/blog/archives.php?id=A2004011" title="http://www.antiwar.com/blog/archives.php?id=A2004011" target="_blank"http://www.antiwar.com/blog/a... I remember sitting in a political meeting well outside San Francisco one night when someone came in and said that “Gay in San Francisco are rioting”. It was the White Night Riots when Dan White was given a slap-on-the-wrist sentence for the murder of gay city supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone. I could almost understand the anger and frustration that lead to that night. When the sentences had been announced I had been sickened. A spontaneous march on city hall erupted as an angry community came to vent their anger. And it exploded. I remember the news showing a line of burning police cars. Someone had smashed the windows in the cars and set them on fire. I don’t remember the exact number it looked like around half a dozen such cars, all parked in a row, were torched. Surely that image was one which is not likely to sit well with cultural conservatives. Homosexuals rioting and setting fire to police cars. But that image was used on the cover of the booklet put out by Rothbardian Justin Raimondo. His gay rights booklet was “In Praise of Outlaws”. It was published by SLS. This is the same individual who was hired by the paleolibertarians to write the official paleo biography of Murray Rothbard. As Raimondo admits: “In the late 1970s, I worked in the National Office of Students for a Libertarian Society (SLS)” which printed “a variety of pamphlets (my “In Praise of Outlaws: Rebuilding Gay Liberation”, is today a collector’s item noted for its artsy picture of burning police cars on the cover).” http://www.antiwar.com/justin... Today there is very little mention of the Radical Caucus. The RC was a minority organization within the Libertarian Party. It published a publication called “Libertarian Vanguard”. It was pretty much Rothbardian through and through. Here was the basic idea of the RC and how it fit into Rothbard’s then strategy. The idea was that libertarianism was a radical anti-statist movement that challenged the status quo. A libertarian revolution was needed but to be successful it had to be lead by a revolutionary vanguard. I know it all sounds familiar. Rothbard openly borrowed the strategy from Lenin. George Smith wrote about this 21 years ago: “One must understand Rothbard's flirtation over the years with "Libertarian Leninism" to appreciate his approach to movement strategy. The appellation "Leninist" is not a smear - it is Rothbard's own term. It denotes, not an agreement with Leninist philosophy, but a reliance on the Leninist model of movement organization and strategy.” “Rothbard defended strategic Leninism for many years, only to renounce it later in the pages of Vanguard. But Rothbard's shift from Leninism related to its emphasis on centralism in Party organization. Having previously supported a party with strong central control and direction, and having condemned Party decentralists as "Konkin deviationists," Rothbard has since swung over to the decentralist side. (Yesterday's deviationism is today's Party line. After all, centralism isn't so great if someone else is in the center.)” “Despite Rothbard's partial recantation, other features of strategic Leninism continue to Inform his approach to movement politics. "Right opportunism...... left sectarianism," "deviationism...... vanguard," "cadre" - this standard Leninist jargon is commonly employed by Rothbard and some of his followers in the Radical Caucus (RC)” “...Strategic Leninism requires obedience and loyalty to the Party. All enemies, and especially internal enemies("deviationists"), must be "crushed." The end (the good of the Party) justifies the means. Short of violating rights, Libertarian Leninists exhibit few constraints on their behavior. Their tactics run the gamut from gossip and personal attacks to serious.” http://users.aol.com/xeqtr1/voluntaryist/v is05.txt" title="http://users.aol.com/xeqtr1/voluntaryist/v is05.txt" target="_blank"http://users.aol.com/xeqtr1/v... Radical Caucus member Scott Olmstead, who is trying to revive the RC under the name the Rothbard Caucus, wrote this about the history of the RC: “My own small role in the LP at the time included membership in the Central Committee of the Libertarian Party Radical Caucus, founded in February, 1979 by Raimondo and Eric Garris, and dedicated, at least in part, to applying the Rothbardian insights to party strategy. Rothbard himself was a member of the Central Committee until the LPRC was torn apart at the 1983 presidential nominating convention.” His website notes that Rothbard was a member of the central committee of the Radical Caucus. http://www.lprc.org/strategies.html" title="http://www.lprc.org/strategies.html" target="_blank"http://www.lprc.org/strategie... This radical cadre needed to control the movement. It had to have control of the party and all libertarian groups. What it couldn’t not control it was obliged to smash, which it tried to do rather gleefully in my opinion. In particular it went after the libertarians who were trying to appeal to the mainstream. We were then moving into Reaganesque America. At that time Rothbard was still very much appealing to the counter cultural Left or at least trying to do so. The language in Libertarian Vanguard was extreme and shrill. And the main issues it promoted are often at odds with the current paleo-libertarian perspective. For instance we shouldn’t forget that Radical Caucus Rothbardians pushed a public initiative in San Francisco to abolish the vice squad. Again I am not criticizing that. I’m just amazed that anyone is trying to claim this “counter cultural” movement was in opposition to Rothbard. It was his own troops leading the charge. The Radical Caucus was antiwar which still fits the paleo viewpoint. I have no problem with that. But it was shrill. It appeared anti-American to a lot of people and was criticized by cultural conservatives for that very reason. It put a big emphasis on anti--draft activities. People forget that Rothbard actively pushed for an alliance with the far Left of the day. Samuel Konkin, who ran an anti-Party libertarian group that was called the Movement of the Libertarian Left (but to whom the Rothbardians are not referring) said that Rothbard rallied “Isolationist Libertarians... into an alliance with the New Left.” He also recalled how in 1969 Rothbardian defectors from YAF meet with defectors from the Students for a Democratic Society “at a historic conference in New York over Columbus Day weekend, called by Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess.” Konkin says Rothbard “worked enthusiastically for the New Left throughout the 1960s”. But we should not forget that it was in the New Left of the 60s that the “counter cultural” movement was formed. Again Konkin says: “During the 60s and 70s many Libertarians co-operated with groups from radical left, Karl Hess was a member of the Blank Panthers and Students for Democratic Society, Rothbard co-operated with M[urray] Bookchin in New York’s Left-Right anarchist supper club.” http://www.spaz.org/" title="http://www.spaz.org/" target="_blank"http://www.spaz.org/~dan/individualist-anarch ist/software/konkin-inter view.html Libertarian Vanguard was strongly pro gay rights and pushed heavily for legalization of drugs. And it was big on how the Immigration department was evil and had to be smashed. It tried to appeal to the Hispanic community with its vitriolic attacks on immigration laws. Whatever the mainstream libertarian view point on such an issue was it took that view but expressed it in a shrill more extreme way. And it tended only to push those issues that had appeal to the Left. It was going out of its way to out-radical the radicals. That is one reason the Radical Caucus was mostly a minority within the party. Most libertarians were too culturally conservative to go along with them. And almost without exception (at least i can’t remember any) the people running this were close allies of Rothbard. Rothbard sat in on their meetings. He wrote for them. He encouraged them. He, to a very large extent directed them. And these radical Rothbardians made war on those who tried to appear more mainstream. One only has to remember the Ed Clark presidential campaign in 1980. The Rothbardians were livid. Clark wasn’t radical enough. He was part of the evil “Kochtopus” that was destroying libertarianism. Rothbard had been on the warpath with Cato people since he was removed from the Cato board. And he was intent on driving them out of the Libertarian Party. In New York City at the LP convention he basically succeeded although in the end his own coalition fell apart. The Radical Caucus people were icons to the counterculture that paleolibertarians attack. A few were gay. They were big advocates of drug use --- not just drug legalization. They were users and in some cases sellers of various drugs. They ran a bookstore for awhile called Libertarian Books and Periodicals. It stocked books, not just on drug legalizaiton, but on how to use drugs and how to hide them from the police. The bookstore was a very countercultural center. At one point it was raided for drugs. It was well known the drugs were actually there but the police missed them. I can think of at least three Radical Caucus members who were dealers on one level or another. This was widely known. If one went to Libertarian Party conferences various groups would have hospitality suites each year. The Radical Caucus was one such group. Numerous delegates complained that the RC suite always reeked of the smell of pot. If a delegate was looking for any illegal substances the place to go was the Radical Caucus suite. Again no one was against legalization. But it was widely felt that the RC went farther than that. They were not just advocates of legalization but enthusiastic users and distributors of these products. Most libertarians said if they wanted to smoke pot it was their business but that they shouldn’t do it at a Party Convention, that a police raid or media report of such activities would harm the party. Radical Caucus delegates however openly defined such advice. Again this is hardly in keeping with their current paleolibertarian “cultural conservatism”. The Radical Caucus regularly attacked what it saw as “right-wing opportunist” plots to take over the Libertarian Party. Cato was too conservative. Reason was considered so bad they routinely called it “Treason” magazine. Rothbard didn’t seem to have a problem with any of this at the time. If one watched the conferences the RC people were constantly gathered around Murray taking in his strategy and planning with him what they would do to take over the party. There was one time when the RC and Rothbard did split. Rothbard wanted the Cato crowd out of the Party. Some of them were supporting Earl Ravenal for the LP presidential nomination. Rothbard opposed Ravenal. Ravenal lost but not before Garris and Raimondo defected from Rothbard and supported Ravenal. This alienation lasted until the next presidential convention. Garris, Raimondo, Hunter and other RC people were supporting Indian activist Russell Means and Rothbard and his new lieutenant Lew Rockwell were backing Ron Paul. The RC rump was screaming about a “Bircher” plot to take over the LP and did what they could to destroy the Paul campaign and those who backed it. The more conservative oriented libertarians (by which I mean conservative in style) lined up behind Paul. Rothbard attacked the Means supporters for appealing to the countercultural Left. He had switched sides and they hadn’t followed -- yet. But within a few years most of the Rothbardians had made up with their mentor and guru and joined the paleo-conservative movement. It was bizarre to see how quickly these advocates of alliances with the New Left were out forming the “Libertarian-Republican Organizing Committee”. Now the idea was to abandon the Libertarian Party and take over the Republican Party. Ron Paul, who some of them accused of leading a Bircher plot to take over the LP was their favoured presidential candidate. Not long after that they were lining up with Pat Buchanan as their standard bearer. And soon they were courting far right conspiracy theories, praising the work of racists and backing the Confederacy in a war that had been over for more than a century. Certainly there was a segment of the Libertarian movement that was countercultural. But the people I knew who were leading that fringe of the party were Rothbardians. They were Murray’s friends. They were his allies in battles within the party. It wasn’t them against Rorthbard (except during the period mentioned above). It was them with Rothbard, lead by Rothbard, inspired by Rothbard, some said controlled by Rothbard. The most Rothbardian of the Rothbardians was the Radical Caucus. And they made no pretence at trying to work with cultural conservatives. They were hard core advocates of mimicking the style, tactics and issues of the New Left. And Murray encouraged them. To see paleolibertarians attacking “left libertarians” is funny. When I read about this countercultural “left libertarianism” and how Rothbard was the enemy of such a movement I have to chuckle. That wasn’t what I saw. When i saw the “counter cultural” LP people I saw Rothbard’s friends, acolytes, students and comrades. He wasn’t their opponent but their hero. At best one can say that the Rothbardians of today are attacking the Rothbardians of yesterday. |
| Being un-PC or PC? |
| 06.18.05 (11:33 am) [edit] |
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This response was posted: “I thought you would have a word to say about someone like Neal Boortz, who has advocated government spying on anti-war activists. Actually, I thought this would be mainly about such 'neolibertarians', who think the national security state provides the best environment for capitalism to flourish. “ “Why don't you be honest? Your concern is not with the 'authoritarian', but with the un-PC.” “One more point. If you're going to throw around accusations, it would be nice to provide some links.” David Tomlin David: Thank you for taking some time to write. I may well get around to Mr. Boortz please give me time. I only announced the site and made my first posting today. There is plenty of time and I did ask for suggestions and I think that if Mr. Boortz said what you say he said I’d be interested in having a go at him. Please send me the link to this information. For the record I’m a non-interventionist for a very long time now. I have no patience with the pro-war crowd and disagree vehemently with them. In fact this is one of my major critiques of many Objectivists including some whom I have already mentioned. I find your second sentence you wrote odd. First, you imply I’m being dishonest because I’m not really upset with authoritarianism but with the “un-PC”. I won’t go into details but I’ve been a public critic of political correctness for a very long time as well. But I am not going after people for being un-PC but for being bigots. I believe that political correctness was being used to shut down legitimate debate. That was wrong. There was a backlash against it which, on the whole, was good. But some people are using that backlash to justify all sorts of hateful viewpoints. That is indecent. To be opposed to political correctness is not a justification for bigotry. I can think of some very fine writers in the libertarian movement who are most definitely not PC and not bigots. They will not be discussed since they are not my target. My target is not the non-PC because they are non-PC, but bigots and authoritarians. I think it a shame that some bigots have tried to jump on the anti-PC bandwagon as a justification for being bigots. It’s so much easier to say, “I'm just not PC” instead of “I think blacks are inferior and homosexuals are disgusting threats to our children who should be physically removed from society.” Someone like the white supremacist David Duke is constantly whining that he's attacked merely for being un-PC. I read one British writer who frequents white supremicist conferences claiming that the neo-Nazi British National Party was being attacked merely for being non-PC. I wasn't going to spend time on them simply because they don't pretend to be libertarians. Racists are un-PC, for sure. But being un-PC is not necessarily a virtue. It really depends on the context. If it is used to censor then I’m against. But I’m not advocating censorship. In fact I haven’t had time to advocate anything yet! But racism is disgusting and morally repugnant in spite of being un-PC. Just because being PC is problematic it doesn’t justify everything that is the polar opposite of PC. Finally you say if I am going to throw around accusation provide links. I intend to do just that. You know all the first posting was meant to do was start the discussion and the debate and announce that I would be doing this. You seem to treat it as the entire argument. Again give it time please. |
| Anonymity |
| 06.18.05 (11:09 am) [edit] |
| I just had one more brief reason to state for being anonymous. I was just reading some of the blogs and other web sites that have dealt with this topic. I hate to say it but some of the supporters of the groups I will be discussing here come completely unhinged when their leaders are criticized. I've seen some very nasty stuff much of it focusing on people, their sexual orientation, and the like. As an anonymous blogger these people will not be able to do that. I'm sure they will attack the anonymity aspect as much as they can to force my identity out. But I won't take the bait. If you don't know me then you can't focus on the irrelevent. Instead they will have to focus on the arguments or ignore them completely. |
| Just a quick word |
| 06.18.05 (8:51 am) [edit] |
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javascript:emoticon(':D') This site has barely been operational for more than an hour or so. I sent word out to maybe 10 people about it after it was up and running. Already we have had it viewed almost 60 times. I guess it hit a nerve and people are spreading the word. I did want to say that I'm happy to entertain guest submissions. Email them to me at RWtblog@hotmail.com and I'll consider them. Let me know if you want to use your own name or a pseudonym. I will respect your confidentiality in all matters including information you pass on. |
| Authoritarian Libertarian |
| 06.18.05 (6:25 am) [edit] |
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This is a new blog, a unique blog and one that will be read by few people. Our goal here is a simple one. We are worried about trends that we've seen within the wider libertarian movement. Libertarianism is a philosophy that says each individual should be free to live his or her own life as he or she sees fit provided they respect the equal liberty of others to do the same. Herbert Spencer said it almost 200 years ago. Ayn Rand said it more recently. It is supposed to be a philosophy of freedom. It is one that allows people their foibles and errors and even their lies provided they don’t hurt another person. It respects the life, liberty and property of all. We Libertarians used to talk about how our ideas avoid the major mistakes of the Right and the Left but embraces the best of both. But as the United States has moved more and more in an authoritarian direction we have witnessed Libertarians who have moved in that same direction—even some who claim to oppose that drift toward a police state. There was always an authoritarian tendency in the private circles of Objectivism. There is nothing as intolerant as a fundamentalist Objectivist. But mostly that was confined to internal bickering and slander. We have seen intolerant groups like the Ayn Rand Institute and SOLO spring up—the latter supposedly an alternative to the former because the former is intolerant about the wrong things. We’ve also seen it in the writings of fringe elements of Libertarianism—such as some of the satellite intellectuals revolving around the Mises Institute. This latter case I think is particularly sad since the Mises Institute is so little about Mises these days. It was the Rothbard Institute more than anything else. And now it is drifting even away from Rothbard and becoming the Hoppe Institute. And that’s scary. We have “paleo-libertarians” who have allied themselves with racists and bigots! Individuals like Sam Frances who openly worked with white supremacist groups were welcomed in their circles. Advocates of theocracy, including the stoning to death of sinners, are still regular contributors there. The leading monarchist (of all things) of their group is trying to forge a new movement of the extreme Right and libertarians. This works out to mean anti-gay sentiments expressed openly and buying into the racism of the anti-immigration Right. Now what is good is that these are fringe groups. Very few in the mainstream libertarian movement pay them much attention. Hoppe has no real following in the US and is alienated from most of the libertarian community—which is a good thing. But each of these groups do their damage. But to be fair, which we will try to be, they also do some good. But at the same time they do a great deal of harm. It would be an odd bird indeed that only did damage. And there are many people in these groups who are good and decent people. I know many of them personally. In one area or another I’ve worked with many of them. But this trend toward what I call “authoritarian libertarianism” (which I will explain in more detail in the next posting) is a bad one. It is bad for two reasons. First, we are seeing libertarian ideas distorted. Some are pretending that libertarianism is the philosophy of Ayn Rand. It isn’t. Objectivism is a subset of libertarianism. That is all Objectivists are libertarians (even if they can’t admit it) but not all libertarians are Objectivists. Libertarianism, as a philosophy, existed long before Ayn Rand was born. Jefferson proclaimed libertarian ideas, so did Spooner and Spencer and Mencken. So did Hayek, Mises, Friedman, Lane, Paterson, Chodorov, Nock and dozens more. And not a one of them was an Objectivist. There is much that is good in Objectivism and there are troublesome areas as well. For many it is a substitute religion with all the intolerance of religion built into it. This intolerance and authoritarian nature is the ugly side of Objectivism. We don’t see it in the David Kelly group to any significant degree but we do see in ARI and others. The distortion of libertarian ideas is leading to the second problem. The public is now getting the wrong idea about what it means to be a libertarian. Racism, antigay bigotry, viciousness, monarchism, Catholicism and all sorts of other ideas are now being equated with libertarianism. Libertarianism is a tolerant philosophy. It does promote “Live and Let Live”. Libertarianism as a political philosophy has nothing to say about what religion people practice, who they sleep with, etc. But now it is being equated with bigots on the borders stopping people from trying to better their lives. Now we have individuals regularly making nasty remarks about homosexuals or about people because they are homosexual while drooling over monarchy. (If you don’t believe they drool listen to the introduction at the Mises Institute to one of the Hapsburgs. The poor man was probably soaked with saliva by the time he got up to speak.) The libertarian movement is filled with good and decent people. Some express libertarianism badly. A few express it maliciously and viciously. Some are trying to turn it into their own personality cult. Others are associating it with the worst elements of the extreme Right. I don’t like it. And I’m going to speak out about it here. So why do so anonymously? Simple. I already told you I work with many of these people all the time. I know them. I even like some of them. Others are just complete jerks but that’s another posting. I have friends in the groups we are talking about and I have no desire to alienate them or hurt them. In addition having access to these groups allows me to discuss the problems I see. If access is cut off it would be difficult to dissect the problems. Anonymity gives one more freedom. I will try not to let that push me to another extreme. Hence my pledge to try to remain fair. I will try to make my case with evidence. Some of the people I will talk about I actually like personally, as individuals. I dislike what they are doing. As I said most are not entirely evil or even predominantly evil. I can think of some who I think are just evil and vicious but not many. Most are individuals of mixed premises and mixed sentiments. They are partly good and partly bad. I won’t go into details on that at this time. I just want to say that with very few exceptions do I think any of them are entirely bad or even mostly bad. But what they are doing is damaging. They are trying to push our movement in the wrong direction. They are linking us with lunatics and bigots. Some of them are closet bigots themselves. Some not so closeted. And this is bad. I will be interested in feedback. And if you have information on the trends I am talking about please send it to me. And please let others know about the blog. Libertarianism is a good and decent philosophy and I think it’s worth saving. Send comments or information or suggestion to RWtblog@hotmail.com |
| Tracleer |