Billy invokes the truth. But, I don’t get it, Billy. Clearly, Cato and Lew Rockwell aren’t comrades-in-arms. But I don’t know what "our movement" means. I have my ideas. I post them here. I support, agree with, and disagree with a variety of people, some of them the same people on different things. I suppose I’m part of the libertarian "movement," but calling it "our" is insolent and presumptuous. Calling it a "movement" without qualification is rather like calling the herding of cats a "movement." Yea, they’re "moving," I suppose.
I guess that to large extent, the whole kit & caboodle looks libertarian to me, from all corners, including the fighting and taking offense (some of it false, I am convinced). …Which is to say that when I hear talk of defining libertarianism in terms of what "self-proclaimed" libertarians aren’t part of it, it’s kind of a self-contradictory thing, to me. You get what I mean?
I don’t know anything of the alleged racism of LRC. I’ve been reading them only for about six months, for the sole purpose of getting Ron Paul updates (I’ve really not seen anything that smelled of racism). I’ve seen lots of religious crap there, and I hate it. For the life of me, I cannot understand how someone arrives at such contradictory premises, but I see neither Cato nor LRC advocating guns, clubs, trails and jails against those who hold different values. Having had some association with Cato in the past, they are certainly not what I’d call anti-state, which to me means they can’t possibly have any serious long-term effect, other than to perhaps incubate people who become anti-state. LRC seems to be largely anti-state, and they certainly support those who are. So what’s more oppressive for blacks, the state with its drug war and malicious prosecutorial "case-closed" abuse, or anti-statists, a few of whom also happen to be bigots but have no real political power?
So what mystifies me (and this is really all new to me; I wasn’t aware of this rift in the libertarian space-time continuum) is how anyone thinks that keeping the "libertarian" ranks clear of small-mined racists and bigots is important. Don’t we recognize that it’s the state that makes such stupidity magnified, by playing on the fears, passions, hatreds, emotions of people who would otherwise have little voice or power?
Now, my credentials as a non-racist or bigot will go up against anyone. I’ve shared rented living quarters with black people for years at a time, most of my girlfriends have been Asian, I’m married to an Hispanic, and I have lots of gay and lesbian friends; and I even go to dinner on occasion with my gay-partner neighbors, who look the part, and I could give a shit what people in the restaurant think. Let their imaginations run wild. I wonder how many people who profess "cleanliness" could actually walk that talk.
Yet at the same time, I keep coming back to the state. It’s the state that fucks everything up and keeps people focussed on the differences rather than the common values. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: how many racists did you do business with, today; at the mini-mart, the department store, and whatnot? That’s your anarchist life, and does it matter what they think and how small their minds might be?
But perhaps I’m missing the point, and if I am, I’ll be happy to know about it. Honestly: I do not see how libertarianism can be an honest movement without frank acknowledgment that it includes some racists and other loons, and so long as they don’t condone force to advance their values, their small minds are simply, though regretfully, welcome, as are all peaceful people regardless of idiosyncrasy. I see this as the kind of dreadful task where you say to yourself: let’s get it over with.
One thing I really don't get about this Ron Paul flap is this: even if Dr. Paul is a hardcore white supremacist, what difference does it make? Assuming he's accurately represented himself on political matters, it's clear that he's the most freedom oriented of the whole rotten bunch. If I vote in the upcoming election, it's going to be for him.
It's interesting to me, too, that people are upset about the claims against Dr. King (being a plagiarist and philanderer). It smacks of deification. If Dr. King were all of those things, I don't see how that nullifies his message. The message is what's important, not the man. I believe Dr. Paul has said as much.
Mr. Lopez, here's the von Mises quote of the day;
"They prefer to call a halt at the point where the difficulties of the problem are just beginning. And this, incidentally, accounts for the longevity of their doctrines; so long as they remain nebulous, they offer nothing for criticism to seize upon." –Theory of Money and Credit, p. 112, 1981 Liberty Fund
Honestly: I do not see how libertarianism can be an honest movement without frank acknowledgment that it includes some racists and other loons…
It can't be an honest movement because movement types can't afford to acknowledge racists – they'd get condemned in droves. Shorter version: they can't afford to be honest.
The reason is that they are playing a fundamentally dishonest game. Mass persuasion (what the libertarian movement is trying) is best done by dishonest means. Far more people are won over by bad political arguments than by good ones.`
Libertarian movement types would rather put forth bad arguments than good ones. They'd rather tell a popular lie than an unpopular truth.
So at the end of the day, should anyone care whether or not one group of liars was lied about by another group of liars?
John, I always liked you, and it's always been about your honesty.
You make a good point.
Honesty isn't about always telling the truth, or about always being right. It's about continually striving to tell the truth, continually striving to be right. In some sense, I think we were all born to lie about everything we could get away with. The path to ideal humanity is the same as the never-ending path to honesty. I don't think any of us will ever get there. There will always be new lies to conquer.
Beck is agreeing that the newsletter comments are racist. I thought you agreed with Raimondo that they were not racist.
I wrote that post before reading Raimondo, i.e., assuming there was racist stuff in there; and for all I know, there may still be. I'm certainly not going to read them all, because I don't care.
I agree with Raimondo that the two or three specific examples where he provided context were not racist. That calls into question Kirchick, TNR, Reason, Cato, and to some extent, everyone who simply took all those at their word.
There is plenty of reasonable doubt, now.
This seems like a lot of selection bias, to me. Now, lots of you tell me that LRC and company has racism in its midst, yet I have not personally seen it, yet, while I have seem silly religionism all over the place.
So, you, Sabotta, and other have this notion that LRC are racists, or sympathizers, and particularly in the case of Sabotta, the only thing paid any attention to is any bits that confirm the belief, while dismissing or ignoring anything that suggests otherwise or casts the belief into any doubt.
I see it all the time, everywhere, and libertarians are no exception at all.
So, you, Sabotta, and other have this notion that LRC are racists, or sympathizers,…
That's way to broad a brush for me. It's easily demonstrated that Lew publishes bigots, which is not to say everyone he publishes is bigoted.
OK, fine. Do you have a name or two of such bigots? If you have a link or two that clearly show it, that'd be good too. I'm happy to know for myself, and then I can decide what it means for my values.
For starters there is Bob Wallace who wrote hundreds of columns for Lew.
Then there's crypto-nazi Jared Taylor, whose work you can be confident Lew was familiar with. Taylor fan and obvious bigot Marcus Epstein is still published at LRC, though the other two have gone down the memory hole.
There is that qualification in the 'about' page. Those he may publish may not reflect his views at any given time. He might find something of interest in a given piece. The reason he did scramble for alliances is obvious; it's the same reason his mentor did in the early 1960s, and the mistakes were just as unfortunate, and just as honest, in my opinion. They've meant to do good, but desperation breeds error.
As for Wallace, so far as I know, he never said anything actually racist in any of his LRC columns or blog posts, and that post (the STR boards, right?) that did was enough to make Rockwell break ties with him completely; maybe he'd decided that he didn't have to rely on allies like that anymore. If that's the case, I wish he'd be consistent about that. I'd defend him to my last keystroke if he were. Consistency to principle, when I agree with the principles, is a beautiful thing to me.
Brian:
Pretty good take on about what I had in mind. My intuitive sense about it is that I'm dealing with honest libertarians who walk the talk, i.e., are not about purging ranks and cleansing participants so that they can dishonestly appeal to the PC crowd who aren't even "anti-racists" for honest reasons.
They have their limits, of course, and it seems they've acted on those, albeit inconsistently.
John: Question for you. I've been mulling over a writing a post about how fundamentalist, orthodox, conservative religion is like racism, while more liberal enlightened religion is like non-racist separatism. How would you differentiate?
John: Question for you. I've been mulling over a writing a post about how fundamentalist, orthodox, conservative religion is like racism, while more liberal enlightened religion is like non-racist separatism. How would you differentiate?
I'd say that the differentiation is in the degree to which they attack the people they disagree with – vices are not crimes. Osama bin Laden and the Shakers are both religious zealots, but the key difference is that Shakers aren't out to kill anyone. Similarly, neo-Nazis and Randy Weaver are both racists, but Weaver's solution to blacks and mexicans was to move to the top of a mountain in Idaho where there weren't any.
I think I see where you want to go with this: fundamentalist Christians want to wield the state against sinners. Problem is that that doesn't really differentiate them from the rest of the electorate in principle. And that's really the root problem – the fact that they get to vote on it and make it stick for you. And that isn't a problem with the fundies in particular but rather a problem with the State in general.
After all, the Amish are far more "fundamentalist" than Pat Robertson, and it's hard to make a moral case against the Amish.
I think where I'm headed, though I don't have it all worked out, really isn't about engaging the state, i.e., I'm talking about vices, not crimes — i.e., the difference between the vice of racism and the force, direct or via the state, of someone like the neo-nazis.
In other words, racism is really just a shortcut to tribalism, and religion is in many ways tribal in the way it regards the world.
So, you, Sabotta, and other have this notion that LRC are racists, or sympathizers, and particularly in the case of Sabotta, the only thing paid any attention to is any bits that confirm the belief, while dismissing or ignoring anything that suggests otherwise or casts the belief into any doubt.
This statement only falls slightly short of your usual standards of honesty, Nikoley. I mentioned HonestyLog to a friend of mine, who glanced briefly at it and then declined to look at any more of it, saying "I don't want my co-workers to see me looking at this guy's log."
Oh, well. Have fun apologizing for Raimondo.
Whatever, John…