Posted on 10/05/2005 1:55:23 AM PDT by rdb3
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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Why the Pledge of Allegiance Matters
Senator Tom McClintock
Date: March 24, 2004 (also previously published)
There is a great principle at the heart of the movement to strike the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance – and from our national customs, our currency, and our public ceremonies. It has very little to do with atheism. It has a great deal to do with authoritarianism.
The philosophy of the American founding is unique among the nations of the world because of a bedrock principle that was given expression with words in the Declaration of Independence that are old and familiar, and yet not often pondered these days.
In the American view, there is a certain group of rights that are accorded absolutely and equally to every individual and that cannot be alienated. The existence of these rights is beyond debate – “self-evident” in the words of the Founders. And their source is supreme - “the Creator.” “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…”
What are these rights? They are rights that exist as a condition of human life itself. If an individual were alone in the world, the rights he has are those rights the Founders traced to “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” In their words, “…that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The right to the fruit of our own labor, the right to express our own sentiments, the right to defend ourselves, the right to live our lives according to our own best lights – in a word, freedom.
But how do we secure these rights in a world where others seek to violate them? We form a government servient to these God-given rights – or more precisely, a government under God. “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men…” In the American view, the only legitimate exercise of force by one individual over another, or by a government over its people, is in the defense of these natural rights.
This concept is the foundation of American liberty. And because it defines limits to the powers of government, it is supremely offensive to the radicals of the left. They abhor the words “under God” because these words stand in the way of an all-powerful state.
The French and American revolutions were waged on precisely the same declared rights of liberty and equality. One was a ghastly failure that ended in the reign of terror; the other, a magnificent success. Why?
In the philosophy of the French Revolution, the rights of man were defined by a governmental committee and extended at the sufferance of that government. In the American view, these rights come from God, their existence is preeminent and their preservation is the principal object of government.
If the source of our fundamental rights is not God, then the source becomes man – or more precisely, a government of men. And rights that can be extended by government may also be withdrawn by government.
Words matter. Ideas matter. And symbols matter. The case now before the Supreme Court over the Pledge of Allegiance must not be devalued as a mere defense of harmless deistic references and quaint old customs. The principle at stake is central to the very foundation of the American nation and the very survival of its freedoms.
From: http://republican.sen.ca.gov/web/mcclintock/article_detail.asp?PID=263
"The principle at stake is central to the very foundation of the American nation and the very survival of its freedoms."
100% agreed..
Exactly the reason I can't even claim to be a libertarian-leaner anymore.
Conservatarian? Liberservative?
**shrug shoulders**
No money for the war, but it's ok to spend it on 'human rights' feel good stuff? That's not libertarian. That's left. Neal Boortz, one of the strongest libertarian supporters in radio, talked about this years ago.
you won't see Pat marching against the troops. He doesn't have the cojones to do so.
He is another blowhard ahole and I am REALLY glad he never got elected for ANYTHING.
We would be Canada's b!tch if he did and I don't mean because they are great or anything but because Pat sucks.
He is disgusting vile and bitter, he will oppose ANYTHING that he didn't think of first and since he has 4 stars on his shoulders I am sure he is PERFECTLY capable of armchair quarterbacking the WOT right?
wait you mean he DOESN'T have 4 stars on his shoulders? Damn, couldn't tell from what he said.
As regards the war I would like to see Lew and Pat sent to Iraq as goodwill ambassadors along with Ramsey Clark as their attorney and let them clear this whole thing up.
Just to keep it fair and to even the relief given their base, please send Ann Coulter and Drudge as backup and maybe Mayor Nagin for technical assistance.
Of course we're not. The founding fathers had no insane dreams of becoming "world policemen." We can probably blame Woodrow Wilson for that idea. He, like the man-child currently disgracing the oval office, thought that democracy could be spread and that it would cure all the world's ills. You'd think that "conservatives" would oppose such boondoggles. Pat Buchanan and Lew Rockwell, despite some modest shortcomings, understand this. They are the true conservatives--not the inbred parrots squawking praises to Bush.
Jim,
I don't disagree with your analysis of Saddam, though where it falls between fact and opinion is debatable.
However, my primary issue with all of this goes back decades in history. For 60 years (setting aside for the moment the Barbary pirates or the Spanish-American war), we have inserted ourselves into the national affairs of people around the globe.
Can you make a case that these policies have proven successful enough to continue them for another 60 years, which is essentially what President Bush is asking my generation to do?
That is the reality I face, unlike many of the older Americans. I expect to be engaged in this struggle against the jihadis for my entire life, if the President's view is correct about needing to rebuild middle east culture. (Of course, we've already been doing that for 30 years, with limited success and much failure, most recently illustrated by Sharon's abandonment of Gaza...)
I'm just not sure that nation rebuilding can work in these places. Comparing the Sunnis and Shias in Iraq to the Japanese people is not valid. Nor is a Hitler/Saddam comparison, as we didn't directly grease the skids for Hitler to assume control (though we our post WWI deals did lead to Hitler and Stalin...)
Also, look at Carter's disastrous efforts to remake the Middle East. We would be better off today if our government in the 70's had restrained itself to allowing foreign countries the right of self-determination that we demand for ourselves.
Insanity = repeating a behavior and expecting a different result. Isn't our foreign policy with regards to the Middle East insane, by this definition? Overall, I am just not sure that we are all that much better off where we are today than where we might be having not inserted ourselves into one country after another for the past half century.
Are those who disagree with the Iraq War welcome on FR?
If so, doesn't that demonstrate that opposition to this war isn't automatically enough to make someone a marxist traitor who hates America and wants us to lose?
If not, doesn't that demonstrate that the FR community doesn't appreciate legitimate policy debate?
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