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The Right’s Left Turn
FrontPage Magazine ^ | 5 OCTOBER 2005 | Jacob Laksin

Posted on 10/05/2005 1:55:23 AM PDT by rdb3

The Right’s Left Turn
By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 5, 2005


In late September, as throngs of placard-wielding protestors were descending on the nation’s capital, Lew Rockwell, the nominally libertarian proprietor of the website LewRockwell.com, was holding forth at an anti-war rally convened by the far-left Alabama Peace and Justice Coalition (APJC).

 

That the APJC’s rallying cry – “Spend money for human needs, not war!” – was of questionable accordance with principled libertarianism’s aversion to government largesse, didn’t seem to phase Rockwell, who joined a roster of speakers with an altogether different view about the proper role of the federal government. “I was aware that I was a token non-leftist speaking to a largely leftist audience,” Rockwell later explained on his website. Nonetheless, he noted that, despite some political differences with the gathered crowd, his “speech seemed well received.”

 

And no wonder. With its foam-flecked denunciations of the United States for “the evil of imperialism, the immorality of enslaving a foreign people, the malice of colonialism, and the intolerable brutality of authoritarianism,” its paranoiac allusions to a dissent-crushing “state,” and its unelaborated call for “resistance,” Rockwell’s speech could have been given by any of the more literate ringleaders of the anti-war left.

 

It might be supposed that Rockwell’s base of operations, LewRockwell.com, a gathering ground for a querulous cult of libertarian-anarchist true-believers, would be less amenable to the APJC’s members. On the contrary, a left-wing extremist would find much to admire among the site’s standard fare. Rockwell describes it as “unapologetically idiosyncratic.” That is putting it mildly. Although occasionally plumping for some eccentric ventures—LewRockwell.com is an enthusiastic supporter of the cause of the Confederate South—the default mode of the site is unsubtle ant-Americanism clothed in the garb of “anti-state” libertarianism.

 

Certainly that’s Rockwell’s stock-in-trade. In the disturbed worldview of Rockwell and his ideology-blinkered acolytes, the U.S. government, far from representing the democratic consensus of the American people, is the world’s most oppressive regime. “We are talking about the greatest centralized power on the globe, the world's largest, most well-armed, and most dangerous government, the only government to have ever used nuclear weapons against civilians and the government that has invaded more countries than any other in modern times,” complained Rockwell in June of 2004. Rockwell was still stuck on that theme one year later, even going so far as to endorse the caricature of America as the avatar of the Evil Empire. Americans need to face the reality that most of the world sees our nation as the new evil empire, and many people in the Gulf region are dedicated to making sure that the Iraq War is the last hurrah for American militarism,” he wrote in June of 2005. “How tragic to admit that the analogy is not entirely implausible.”

 

Rockwell’s underlings are even more candid about their contempt for the U.S. The American-led war in Iraq has afforded them the occasion to vent their hostility. For evidence, one need look no further than a December 2004 entry on LewRockwell.com’s blog by contributor Mike Rogers. In the course of cheering the terrorist holdouts in Fallujah, Rogers put up a picture of a bombed-out American tank. In case the message was too muddled, Rogers appended it with a caption: “A toast to the defeat of the evil empire - A prayer for the poor fallen souls.” One might have been forgiven for wondering whether the poor souls in question were American troops or the terrorist diehards responsible for their deaths.

 

More explicit still was LewRockwell.com columnist Karen Kwiatkowski. In a June 2005 column entitled “Unleashing the Resistance,” Kwiatkowski issued a blanket endorsement of the terrorist insurgency in Iraq. “They don’t understand everything that is happening, but most Iraqis have decided to pursue one or more of the countless paths of resistance to the state. All are qualified to resist. None are excluded.” Not only that at, but Kwiatkowski advised American opponents of U.S. foreign policy to take their cues from the insurgents: “We might take a lesson from the growing Iraqi insurgency and the response of that nation nearly destroyed by our pretext-laden invasion and the American neo-Jacobin possession of that country,” she wrote. Kwiatkowski declined to offer specifics. She noted, however, that “my gentle thoughts are increasingly turning to murder.”

 

In common with the more unhinged elements of the far left, LewRockwell.com is committed to propagating the notion that the U.S. is in the grip of a fascist government. Again, Rockwell himself is among the more ardent spokesmen for that view. His political opponents, he insists, are “fascisti,” while anyone with the temerity to voice support for American policies is dismissed as one of the “storm troopers of the regime.” As for the 62 million Americans who voted to reelect George W. Bush, they are—you guessed it—the proponents of “red-state fascism.” Lest such comments be dismissed as mere overheated sloganeering, Rockwell stresses that this “not just rhetoric.” Rather, Rockwell urges his readers to recognize that fascism is a reality, not just a smear term.”

 

Rockwell’s certitude about the essentially fascistic character of the Bush administration has prompted him to embrace an unlikely ally: the far left. The alliance is contracted unambiguously in a December 2004 column Rockwell penned for his website. In it, he urged his libertarian adherents to make common cause with the anti-war left. “In short, what we have alive in the US is an updated and Americanized fascism,” Rockwell explained. The solution, he added, “requires that we face the reality of the current threat forthrightly by extending more rhetorical tolerance leftward and less rightward. What is the most pressing and urgent threat to freedom that we face in our time? It is not from the left.”

 

In the ensuing months, Rockwell and his site began the migration into the territory of far left hysteria. By July of 2004, Rockwell had discovered a full-grown affection for the left. “I have this in common with NPR, Michael Moore, the Black Caucus, and assorted other grasping, complaining, anti-capitalist victim lobbies: a burning desire to see George Bush's fingers pried loose from the levers of power,” he wrote.

 

A convinced believer that the invasion of Afghanistan was “wholly unwarranted,” and that the American-led war to oust Saddam Hussein was “a malevolent hoax,” Rockwell unsurprisingly found much to appreciate about Moore’s conspiratorial documentary, Fahrenheit 9-11, calling it “must-see” movie. LewRockwell.com accordingly ran several flattering reviews of the film. One “conservative critique” of Fahrenheit congratulated Moore for portraying President Bush as “the figurehead of a murderous power elite.” Similarly, a comment on the site’s blog gleefully hailed Moore’s propagandistic assault on the Republican Party, raving that “[t]he film portrays The Party of Lincoln as it always has been: A cabal of money-and-power hungry political hacks enriching themselves through the auspices of the state…”

 

With the presidential election in the offing, Rockwell encouraged readers in a September 2004 column to “look left.” There they could “find fascinating war revisionism, courageous defenses of the innocently detained, principled stands for constitutional rights, well argued exposes of the high and mighty.” How any libertarian worthy of his name could justify defending the most fanatical enemies of civil liberties was not a question that violated Rockwell’s conscience. Instead, in words that would not have been out of place on the pages of the Nation, Rockwell sneered at the “supposedly rightist president who wages war, cuts taxes, and shovels other people’s money at corporate fatcats.”

 

Perhaps mindful that his relentless thumbs-up to the far left’s agenda could alienate libertarian supporters, Rockwell sought to allay their fears in a March 2005 column. Mistrust of the far left, he declared, was misguided. “I used to complain about the universities and their indoctrination of students in leftist theory,” Rockwell explained. “But these days, one has to be grateful that there are at least some pockets of resistance remaining.” So there would be no question about where he stood on an alliance with the left, Rockwell added, “I’m wary of all formal alliances but I do think libertarians need to be strategically flexible and entrepreneurial in finding intellectual allies, even if it means admitting that far better arguments are being made by CounterPunch than National Review.” A subhead that appeared in the column said it all: “Rethinking the Left, for Now”.

Seen against this background, the latest addition to the Lewrockwell.com clan—grieving mother turned anti-war left standard bearer Cindy Sheehan—should not be shocking. In September, the site gave space to an angry rant by Sheehan, in which she delivered herself of the view that the “aggression on Iraq is illegal, immoral and appallingly unnecessary,” and called on supporters to become “extremists.” Come November, Sheehan will be a prominent speaker at a benefit conference for LewRockwell.com. Among the subjects of discussion will be “The Camp Casey revolution and the tipping point for peace” and “How hurricanes and the ‘War on Terror’ embolden the US police state.” Less discussion, one presumes, will focus on how a supposedly libertarian website has become a willing dupe of the far left.

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TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Government; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: antiwarright; lewrockwell; lewsers; libertarianism; libertarians; rockwell
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To: rdb3

Take it as you will but it only has to do with frustration over the lack of dissenting opinion that is allowed on the board.

Pat Buchanan is a true Patriot but Jim Robinson seems to think otherwise and deems him a traitor. Because I have and always will support Mr. Buchanan I'll be dubbed an anti-semite by half of the board and will probably be booted for challening JR. It's just frustrating.


61 posted on 10/09/2005 2:19:51 PM PDT by Yonkers Finest
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To: Yonkers Finest

I'll tell you what, pal. If you or anyone else joins in with the communists and terrorists and those who are giving aid and comfort to the enemy by protesting against America and against our troops and thereby putting our troops in even more danger of being blown up by terrorist bombs, then you will most definitely be banned from FR. And that's a fact!


62 posted on 10/09/2005 3:07:11 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
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To: rdb3

I don't even think he's far right anymore.


63 posted on 10/09/2005 3:21:46 PM PDT by nickcarraway (I'm Only Alive, Because a Judge Hasn't Ruled I Should Die...)
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To: Alia

The problems is he isn't exercising the options of his position- he lets the Senate Democrats and media do that.


64 posted on 10/09/2005 3:25:01 PM PDT by nickcarraway (I'm Only Alive, Because a Judge Hasn't Ruled I Should Die...)
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To: nickcarraway
No, that's not true.

He said in 2000, Inaug Speech, exactly how his admin was going to go about "doing business". He has kept his word. The only ones trying to "change" his words, are those who only saw President Bush's won as their own "private little victory". Obviously, they did not listen very clearly to exactly what he says, and so they do not understand what he is doing.

Dittos again in re President Bush's win of 2004. They don't listen closely or clearly to what he says; no they do a little tap dance as tho they are gladiators with remote controls controlling the President (since "they helped him win") and then play emotional blackmail games when he exercises his options. The President is not a droid "for hire" by those who helped win his election. I know it is utterly SHOCKING for some people to kin this.

So, like angry, thwarted children, they flip off these little self-revelatory bon mots as a projectory at the President.

Who looks foolish? Not the President.

65 posted on 10/09/2005 3:30:34 PM PDT by Alia
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To: Yonkers Finest

Pat Buchanan and his buddy, "Red" Lenora Fulani the Commie.

'Nuff said.

66 posted on 10/09/2005 3:49:51 PM PDT by veronica ("clowns clones clowns/ it's raining clowns/snarling FR obsessed clones/ claws bared clowns"...)
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To: Yonkers Finest
Pat Buchanan is a true Patriot but Jim Robinson seems to think otherwise and deems him a traitor.

You have the right to deem Pat Buchanan any way you please. Just know that many, many, many people do not share your views about him.

I wouldn't piss on him if he were on fire. I find him disgusting.


If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.
They're going fast!

67 posted on 10/09/2005 4:45:06 PM PDT by rdb3 (Have you ever stopped to think, but forgot to start again?)
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To: Alia
So, like angry, thwarted children, they flip off these little self-revelatory bon mots as a projectory at the President.

Interesting comment. Very interesting.


If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.
They're going fast!

68 posted on 10/09/2005 5:00:01 PM PDT by rdb3 (Have you ever stopped to think, but forgot to start again?)
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To: rdb3
My favorite ones for study?

The ones saying.. he failed on Miers, he failed on immigration, he failed on x,y, or z, so let's pull our troops out of Iraq and stop the WOT. Those were beauts; prime examples of something which I dare not utter.. lol.

69 posted on 10/09/2005 5:13:07 PM PDT by Alia
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To: rdb3

lol! The gif is perfect.


70 posted on 10/09/2005 5:19:23 PM PDT by Alia
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To: veronica
"Pat Buchanan and his buddy, "Red" Lenora Fulani the Commie"

Veronica my dear.. I see your still at it.. so let me ask you a question... do you know that both you and Dr. Fulani have many of the same thoughts in regards to Bill Clinton??? Does that make you a commie??? ;-)

p.s. do you know more then I, are Dr. Fulani and Pat still in contact???? Or did you miss the fact that their "friendship" was a political thing only, due to them both being in the Reform Party at that time frame...

71 posted on 10/09/2005 5:57:26 PM PDT by Refinersfire
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To: Jim Robinson

I'll tell you what, pal. Please provide me with some sort of link or text that demonstrates Pat openly siding with communists and terrorists or protesting against America and our troops. If this is as you say I'll glady eat my words and apologize.

Just spare me of some lame transcript from MSNBC that has Pat criticizing Bush. Being critical of this president/war/administration does not mean that they hate America nor does it make them any less of a patriot and I am completely fed up with that nonsense being peddled around like the gospel.


72 posted on 10/09/2005 6:10:32 PM PDT by Yonkers Finest
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To: Yonkers Finest
You're the expert on Pat's opinions. You tell me. Where does Patrick Buchanan stand on the war. Is he with us or with the enemy. There is no in between.
73 posted on 10/09/2005 6:14:43 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
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To: Yonkers Finest; Jim Robinson
"Being critical of this president/war/administration does not mean that they hate America"

Please allow me to take your comment one step more.. During the Clinton years, many upon many on this website (I include myself in that statement) were critical of Bill Clinton's actions and ideas.. if one paints with such a wide brush as has been done on this thread.. one could just as easy say that those who spoke against Clinton, were "communists and terrorists".. but then again.. it all comes down to who's ox is being gored.. doesn't it... :-(

74 posted on 10/09/2005 6:17:00 PM PDT by Refinersfire
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To: Jim Robinson

He's stated many times that he doesn't believe that this war is being fought for the right reasons. He's stated that this war was not the best move in the war on terror. Patrick Buchanan has made it perfectly clear that he does not support this war. Being critical, because you honestly feel that the country you love so much is being jeopardized because of bad decision making is not siding with the enemy as you so plainly like to put it.

Still waiting to see those pics of Pat marching against the troops by the way.....

Also can someone call Generals Zinni and Schwarzkopf. Tell them that they're nothing but commie terrorist scum because I'm pretty sure I heard them being critical of the war somewhere along the line.


75 posted on 10/09/2005 6:31:19 PM PDT by Yonkers Finest
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To: Jim Robinson

"Is he with us or with the enemy. There is no in between."

Jim,

I know that you are not a dumb person in any means, but to dis-allow the third option does not look well upon you.. for there is the middle option, of being against both sides of an issue and having one's own thoughts.. and the facts could just as easy back up that option, in regards to the actions of those who struck us on 9/11 and that this White House "overlooked/missed" facts that show that Iraq was not as big a threat as the White House stated..

For while I will agree that the leadership of Iraq "might" have attacked us head-on, if given the chance.. in all truthfulness, I didn't see that happening, as their style was more of pick and choose their targets, based on what they could gain from it.. and attacking us, would have been their downfall as has been shown by this war...


76 posted on 10/09/2005 6:37:43 PM PDT by Refinersfire
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To: Refinersfire; Yonkers Finest
Got news for you guys. This forum (or at least the people I'm trying to attract to it) supports America, supports the president, supports our military, and supports the war against terrorism. And that includes supporting the war against terrorism in Iraq.

We are not fond of traitors like Jane Fonda, or John Kerry, or Cindy Sheehan, or Michael Moore, or Walter Cronkite, or the left-wing media, or the liberal Democrats. We consider these people the domestic enemy. In case it's escaped your notice, we on this forum and in our chapters all across the nation protest against these leftist traitors at every opportunity we get. Lew Rockwell has joined this traitorous mob that is demonstrating against America and as far as I am concerned, that makes him part of the enemy. We will not allow the left to turn this war into another political loss like they did Vietnam.

Those who side with the terrorists or with the left or with International Answer, et al, and or otherwise provide aid and comfort to the enemy are not welcome on FR. Very sorry if that bothers you or frustrates you or makes you feel uncomfortable. That's just the way it is.

We allow plenty of room for valid criticism and dissent on FR, but those who come right out and denounce America and or pledge support for the enemy, like some of our friends here have in the past, will be zotted. Again, if that bothers you, too bad. Perhaps if it bothers you too much, you might consider a site somewhere else that's more to your liking.

77 posted on 10/09/2005 6:54:59 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
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To: Refinersfire

Right. How about spewing the leftist talking points? If you cannot see for yourself that Saddam Hussein himself was a bloody terrorist and with nukes or other weapons of mass destruction his fascist regime would be a threat to the entire region and a direct threat to our allies and to our national interests and therefore a threat to the entire world then you're not nearly as smart as some people may have mistakenly given you credit for.


78 posted on 10/09/2005 7:05:50 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
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To: Yonkers Finest

Yeah, he's stated it. And he's flat out wrong. And that's not just my opinion. Why is Pat Buchanan where he is today and George W Bush the Commander in Chief? And we can all thank God for that.


79 posted on 10/09/2005 7:16:35 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
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To: Jim Robinson

"Got news for you guys. This forum (or at least the people I'm trying to attract to it) supports America, supports the president, supports our military, and supports the war against terrorism. And that includes supporting the war against terrorism in Iraq."

Jim.. guess what.. I support America.. hell, many in my family has given their blood in doing so, including this lastest action in Iraq.. so please don't act as if you or anyone else has a corner on that market.. as for the President, I'll only support him or anyone who holds that office, when he acts in a proper manner in regards to the Constitution.. which is my first duty to uphold and honor, in regards to this manner.. as for the Military... look above..

"We are not fond of traitors like Jane Fonda, or John Kerry, or Cindy Sheehan, or Michael Moore, or Walter Cronkite, or the left-wing media, or the liberal Democrats. We consider these people the domestic enemy. In case it's escaped your notice, we on this forum and in our chapters all across the nation protest against these leftist traitors at every opportunity we get. Lew Rockwell has joined this traitorous mob that is demonstrating against America and as far as I am concerned, that makes him part of the enemy. We will not allow the left to turn this war into another political loss like they did Vietnam."

Again, you are not the only ones that act on behalf of this country in doing said actions.. as for the "political loss" issue, from where I sit, one can not place that blame on the left this time.. it sits with this White House and their own misdeeds.. the President should have fired more then a couple of his staff on many different matters.. But that is just MHO..

"Those who side with the terrorists or with the left or with International Answer, et al, and or otherwise provide aid and comfort to the enemy are not welcome on FR. Very sorry if that bothers you or frustrates you or makes you feel uncomfortable. That's just the way it is."

Choosing to not side with either side does NOT place one on a side other then their own.. as for the "brother or frustrate" issue, what gives.. I thought we were having an honest debate of the issue...????

"We allow plenty of room for valid criticism and dissent on FR, """"but those who come right out and denounce America and or pledge support for the enemy"""", like some of our friends here have in the past, will be zotted. Again, if that bothers you, too bad. Perhaps if it bothers you too much, you might consider a site somewhere else that's more to your liking."

Has this been done by the other poster you are addressing in your post, I know I haven't... so it has no bearing in this debate as far as I am concerned..


80 posted on 10/09/2005 7:23:50 PM PDT by Refinersfire
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