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| Revising Libertarian History |
| 06.19.05 (5:10 am) [edit] |
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.
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posted by: David Tomlin (reply)
post date: 06.19.05 (10:52 pm)
You have links this time, but not the kind I was talking about. You haven't linked to the people you are criticizing, nor even quoted them directly. The indirect quotes are so vague I don't see how the many specific points in the post are supposed to bear on them.
I suspect that 'some circles' means one circle, that of Lew Rockwell. If any other 'circles' have picked up that peculiar usage of 'left-libertarian', I'd be interested to know.
The gossip about the gay hooker underwhelms, as does the feeble attempt at guilt by association.
I recall Rothbard coming down hard on the no-nukers. I remember it well because I wasn't well informed on the issue, so I read Rothbard's articles on the subject with great interest.
I think Raimondo also wrote some hard-hitting pieces in the same vein.
The paleo-libs oppose the draft. 'Hardly an atmosphere conducive to cultural conservatism' is silly blathering.
'Gay rights' is an ambiguous term. When it means adding gays to the list of affirmative action groups, that's something most libertarians would oppose. That includes some, I hope most, gay libertarians.
I haven't read Raimondo's biography of Rothbard. Have you? You don't say anything about what is or isn't in it. It would seem to be an important source regarding your insinuations that paleo-libs want to cover up certain facts about Rothbard.
You don't mention that Raimondo is himself gay. I guess that would get in the way of painting paleo-libs as anti-gay bigots.
You insinuate that paleo-libs would oppose abolishing vice squads. I don't think so.
http://tinylink.com/?uZNYd1R4zg
Paleo-lib rhetoric is often shrill, especially Raimondo's. So is the rhetoric of other cultural conservatives.
What people have forgotten that Rothbard pushed for an alliance with the left?
http://tinylink.com/ukIlnmdrZn
I'm not aware that paleo-libs oppose tactical alliances with leftists. That is a different matter from their critique of 'left-libertarianism'.
Rothbard rethought his views on immigration.
http://tinylink.com/?wqAO4qn6od
Lew Rockwell has tried to obfuscate this.
http://tinylink.com/?0COqhHL8xR
Rothbard and others thought Ed Clark wasn't radical enough on things like taxes and national defense, and the paleo-libs would agree. I don't recall any 'counterculture' issues associated with that controversy.
You say that un-named 'Radical Caucus people' were 'big advocates of drug use', not 'in keeping with their current paleolibertarian "cultural conservatism"'.
I'm not sure I understand you correctly, but you seem to be saying that certain people changed their minds about personal drug use. So what?
As for criticizing Cato and _Reason_, the paleolibs do so today. You seem to know almost nothing about the people you are criticizing, and I don't see the logic in your suppositions. Do you think that if someone criticizes Cato or _Reason_, that means they cannot be culturally conservative?
I don't know what your problem is with changing alliances. When war is at issue I'm in the streets shoulder to shoulder with leftists. When it's a new tax, I'm doing the same with conservatives. It's what libertarians do.
I offer a last bit of constructive criticism. When you have so large a number of points to address, spread them out over three or four posts, giving each post its own focus. This post is rambling and unfocused, making it tedious to read and not very effective.
David Tomlin
posted by: rightwatch (reply)
post date: 06.20.05 (1:42 am)
Mr. Tomlin completely ignores the point. it is not whether people changed their minds. I respect people who change their minds and say so. It's that they now launch rockets into the past attacking unnamend people as being "left libertarianisms" and "counter culturalists" when the people who were pushing that line were themselves. If they said they were the counter-culturalists and they were wrong I might quibble with some of their views but would respect them for it. It is a different thing when they pretend they are saving the movement from unidentified enemies and they were the people doing this.
I don't care if one of them had been a male prostitute or not. Nor do I particularly care that the Radical Caucus was a center of drug dealing/using. What I care about is that the Rothbardian paleos now pretend to be saving the movement from such activity and counter culturalism when Rothbardians were the leading counter-culturalists and when Rothbard was buddies with most of them and knew of these things himself.
I didn't say Rothbard did it by the way. But he was in the RC hospitality suites where drugs were used or made available. Maybe he never saw it but he spent a lot more time there than I did and I saw it so how could he miss it. Tomlin argues that on some things Rothbard disagreed. I didn't say he didn't. What I said was that the counter culturalists I saw were "Rothbard's friends, acolytes, students and comrades". That's pretty clear.Rothbard was himself relatively straight laced. I'm just saying that it's odd his friends today want to save us from people who were his allies yesterday.
I wrote about what I saw personally.
posted by: Bill Woolsey (reply)
post date: 06.20.05 (3:33 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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
SLS disappeared. Cato continued on with a "moderate" libertarian approach--well, moderate relative to the Rothbardians.
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.
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.
(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.)
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.
posted by: newbie (reply)
post date: 06.20.05 (3:52 am)
This is helpful:
L. Ron. Hubbard = Murray Rothbard
OK, Rothbard wasn't as much as a cult leader. But he did have the tendencies you see from the L. Ron Hubbards in the world (or the Ayn Rands...)
posted by: newbie (reply)
post date: 06.20.05 (3:54 am)
PS: It is pretty sickening to see how collectivist the "libertarian movement" really is. It makes me not want to call myself "libertarian" any more.
posted by: newbie (reply)
post date: 06.20.05 (7:13 am)
I'm not sure what the point of this is. What do you think of the current activities of the antiwar.com crowd? As I understand it, they were all in the "Radical caucus".
posted by: rightwatch (reply)
post date: 06.20.05 (7:17 am)
Pretty much true, they were all in the RC. I have mixed feelings about antiwar.com myself. There is a lot that is good there and some far fetched material as well. Some authors I find more reliable than others.
posted by: newbie (reply)
post date: 06.20.05 (7:56 am)
That's true of any website. I myself really enjoy antiwar.com, particularly Raimondo's stuff. And they do have a lot of readers. I think you are making a mistake by tryin to tie all former "radical" caucus people together. Was Rockwell ever a member of the radical caucus, by the way?
posted by: David Tomlin (reply)
post date: 06.20.05 (9:55 am)
If in twenty paragraphs I failed to address your main point, even by accident, I would suggest you give some thought to my observation that your post was rambling and unfocused. Perhaps the problem is that you yourself said many things that weren't related to your main point.
In fact I did address your claim that the paleo-libs misrepresent history, by pointing out that it is vague and unsubstantiated.
I see I was in error when I said you didn't link to the people you are criticizing. You did link to an article by Justin Raimondo, in which Raimondo proudly proclaims something of the sort that you imply the paleo-libs deny, and which you tendentiously say Raimondo merely 'admits'.
Speaking of things ignored, will you answer my question about Raimondo's book? You made a rather snide allusion to it. I think it's fair to ask if you have read it.
'I'm just saying that it's odd his friends today want to save us from people who were his allies yesterday.'
Does that mean you are withdrawing the claim that paleo-libs misrepresent history?
David Tomlin
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