Article Archive
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Mishima, (Post-)Paleocon of Nippon
Who Is Matt Welch?
How did Matt Welch, who knows nothing about libertarianism, ever get in the position of becoming editor of Reason, the emblematic libertarian magazine? It is a position, after all, that has a bit of history to it, one that covers the life span of the modern libertarian movement from its very inception. It is a position, therefore, of some honor, one that has been a bit tarnished in recent years, and yet not indelibly damaged until recently. Surely Welch has accomplished exactly this, however, with his laughably ignorant attempt to slander Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul as “racists” – and not only that, but to discredit an entire argument and way of looking at race relations and politics that differs significantly from his culturally leftish version of political correctness. [Read More]
The Day I Met Ayn
When Ayn Rand appeared at the blue-green podium, peering intently at us through reading glasses that seemed too big for her face, I thought, for a moment, that there must be some mistake. The woman who stood before us was short, with her dark hair swept impatiently back from her forehead in a page-boy haircut. She was wearing a severe suit that may have been fashionable at some point in the distant past, and looked to be in her late fifties. A wave of disappointment swept over me: where were Dagny Taggart’s “show-girl legs”? And where was Dagny Taggart? The woman standing on the stage resembled a Russian babushka who had somehow been diverted on her way to the Moscow market to pick up a sack of potatoes and instead had wandered, improbably, into the NBI auditorium. That visual impression, however, lasted only as long as it took her to begin speaking. [Read More]
A Revolution Betrayed?
The reality is that for Ron Paul to rule out a third-party run is a tragic error. Paul’s presidential campaign galvanized so much energy and enthusiasm that, at times, it mimiced the dimensions and depth of a real mass movement, that is, of a serious effort to recapture the GOP from the neoconservatives and inaugurate a new era on the Right. The Paul campaign ignited interest at both ends of the political spectrum, and drew in a broad array of activists and supporters who, despite their ideological diversity, showed remarkable cohesion and an amazing degree of self-organization. As a grassroots phenomenon, it has outpaced anything seen in the libertarian movement—or, indeed, on the far right side of the political spectrum–since the storied days of Barry Goldwater. The field has never been more inviting for a third-party candidate of the Right, as the man conservatives love to hate takes his place as the GOP standard-bearer in 2008. [Read More]
Why the Beltway Libertarians Are Trying to Smear Ron Paul
The hysteria that is energizing the campaign to smear Ron Paul and his supporters as “racist” is reaching a crescendo of viciousness, as the Beltway “libertarian” crowd revs up its motors for a righteous purge. Writing in the online edition of Reason magazine, David Weigel and Julian Sanchez aver that the whole brouhaha is rooted in a “strategy” enunciated by the late Murray N. Rothbard and Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. designed to appeal to “right-wing populists." Reason, of course, in it’s new incarnation as the official organ of the libertarian movement’s aging hipsters and would-be “cool kids,” vehemently opposes reaching out to middle and working class Americans. Moreover, the decidedly “square” Dr. Paul—a ten-term Republican congressman from Texas, no less, and a pro-life country doctor of decidedly conservative social views—was and is anathema. [Read More]
The Real American Right: Part III
Within the conservative movement of the time, such as it was, the main appeal was a visceral anti-Communism, which generally appeared in two varieties. The McCarthyite “enemy within” version, practiced with alacrity by such outfits as “Counterattack,” which put out the infamous Red Channels pamphlet that purportedly exposed “Communist-inspired” propaganda in the media, and the advocates of “rollback,” who concentrated on pushing a foreign policy that would, in effect, declare war on the Soviet Union and seek to free the “captive nations” behind the Iron Curtain. [Read More]
The Real American Right: Part II
Members of the Old Right like Murray Rothbard were “apostles of discord” because they challenged and opposed all those Good Things that non –“extremists” embraced, like the Welfare State, the United Nations, and the liberal-collectivist shibboleths of the time, which were indeed held as sacred by both parties and all “respectable” commentators. [Read More]
The Real American Right: Part I
I had grown up a conservative, weaned on National Review, the “fusionism” of Frank Meyer, and the bedrock constitutionalism of Barry Goldwater... As far as I was concerned, the libertarian movement was founded at the 1969 convention of Young Americans for Freedom ,where a libertarian burned his draft card and a fistfight with the “trads” led to the founding of a separate libertarian youth group. [Read More]
Jonah Goldberg Takes on Ron Paul
Jonah Goldberg’s critique of the Paul campaign – published in the dead-tree version of National Review -- is surprisingly respectful, but, alas, he gets several things wrong: heck, he gets just about everything wrong. But then, if he didn’t, he’d be in the Paul camp, and probably wouldn’t be Jonah Goldberg. [Read More]
Ayn Despite the Randians
The current regime of Rand-handlers offer an application of the principles of “Objectivism” to foreign policy that is unique in the annals of individualist thought: uniquely bloodthirsty. According to them, America must devote itself to a totalistic war against Islam, and all Islamic countries everywhere. We are “holding back” in Iraq because we (supposedly) have too much regard for the lives of innocents. [Read More]