Two Items Relating to Paleoconservatism versus Libertarianism

Thing one is a headline at LewRockwell.com, by none other than Rockwell himself:

Mises Was a Nationalist

Thing two is a name change. Sean Gabb recently abdicated as head of the UK's Libertarian Alliance. His successor, Keir Martland, writes:

the organisation I now own will not be called the Libertarian Alliance, but the Ludwig von Mises Centre (or Mises UK)

The splintering of the paleoconservative movement away from libertarianism seems to be complete, or at least very near completion. That final break has been a long time coming.

I suspect it became inevitable when Murray Rothbard died with head still fully jammed up anus vis a vis the "paleo strategy." He was always mercurial with respect to strategy. If he had lived longer he almost certainly would have done a 180 at some point. But he didn't live long enough to extract cranium from rectum.

In his absence, the lesser lights who took over his work were in various ways unwilling¹ or unable² to do so either. Like a rocket in deep space that runs out of fuel for maneuver, they just kept going straight in the direction he had most recently pointed them. And when the tether connecting the paleo strategy to libertarian ideology (which led in a very different direction) got too taut, they decided to start sawing through that tether rather than let it drag them back toward sanity.

On the one hand, I'm a bit sad to see some seemingly good people floating rudderless off into the darkness on Spaceship Paleo. Fortunately quite a few have launched their escape pods from, or were made to walk the plank off of, that ship in recent years and returned to libertarianism where they are back to making positive contributions (two that come to mind are Sheldon Richman and Jeffrey Tucker), and others may yet do so.

I also wish that the paleos had listened to MacBeth -- "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly" -- rather than try to drag libertarianism along behind them for more than two decades.

But better late than never.

-----

1. Hoppe wasn't just whistling Dixie (pun intended) when he framed his approach as an attempt to put libertarianism on the rails of Marx's theory of history. His class theory is "race realism," his class war is bordertarianism, his revolutionary method is "physical removal," and his dictatorship of the proletariat is the construction of faux "private property societies" as a proliferation of Hoxha-style mini-Albanias.

2. Rockwell isn't a system-builder or an ideologue. He's a salesman. When Rothbard died, Rockwell just kept selling what Rothbard had most recently sent him out to sell while looking for new faces to put on it. Once the Ron Paul presidential campaigns were done, that model started to go sour on him. Then Trump came along. I think we have the results of the 2016 presidential election to thank for the paleos' decision to finally and forever cut their tether to libertarianism.

The danger of the paleo flirtation

The New Republic posted a second batch of Ron Paul newsletter excerpts yesterday. A number of people, myself included, expected them to be more damning than the previous batch. A number of people, myself not included, ended up concluding that they aren't. I'll get to why they are in a moment, but first some context:

Julian Sanchez and David Weigel of Reason explore the authorship questions some more. I'm not as interested in authorship per se as I was at first [1], but the article does lay out some historical timeline material that goes in directions I am interested in. Namely, it explores why one might or might not have expected to find this kind of stuff in "libertarian" publications of the time.

During the period when the most incendiary items appeared -- roughly 1989 to 1994 -- Rockwell and the prominent libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard championed an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist "paleoconservatives," producing a flurry of articles and manifestos whose racially charged talking points and vocabulary mirrored the controversial Paul newsletters recently unearthed by The New Republic.

This raises a serious question in my mind: "What the fuck were those guys thinking?"

Let me explain:

Although I began self-identifying as a libertarian in the early 1990s, I entered the libertarian movement from the paleoconservative side because that was where I found the opportunities to do so. My early movement involvements were with the militias and the Constitution Party (Aaron Russo's short-lived project, not the current abomination iteration). It took me less than a year to get deeply involved, recognize the racism, homophobia and other bizarre psychoses which permeated the "populist right wing" and the dangers those psychoses represented, and get the hell out of there (and I suspect that Russo was similarly motivated, although he cited his "Mad As Hell" project as the reason for his exit from the Constitution Party). By early 1996, I had gone over to ideological anarchism and politically to the Libertarian Party.

Less than a year for me to get shut of the "paleo" impulse. And for Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard? Much longer, if ever.

Now: I don't dispute the possibility that there might have been a point in time when the libertarian and paleoconservative ideological trains found themselves sharing a short section of political track. But that the putative heirs of Ludwig von Mises were possessed of such utter hubris as to attempt not only a long-term hitching together of those trains, but a fueling of the hypothetically resulting powerful locomotive with the worst material they could find ... well, that just creeps me out.

Now, to those newsletter excerpts. Why are the new ones even worse than the old ones?

The racism in the first batch of excerpts was explicit, but read just the right way it was possible -- barely possible, but possible nonetheless -- to write it off as a childish expression of rebellion against the excesses of identity politics and "political correctness." Yes, it was wrong and it was vile, but the possibility existed that we were seeing the results of poor judgment rather than of cold calculation.

In the newly released excerpts, that conclusion isn't available to us. These excerpts include:

- The second revealed instances of the newsletter lauding David Duke, and in a specifically racial context. The previous excerpt cited his "anti-establishment" cachet and wrote off racism as the important factor in his popularity. The new excerpt addresses Duke positively in a piece that refers to "the blacks" in vile collectivist terms multiple times. It's not plausible to write that off as mere coincidence.

- The first revealed instances of thes newsletter not only specifically and approvingly quoting/citing a publicly avowed "white separatist" (Jared Taylor) but offering subscription information for his magazine (American Renaissance) to the readers of the newsletter. This belies the possibilities mentioned in the previous paragraph as well. It bespeaks an informed interest in white identity politics rather than merely a knee-jerk reaction to black identity politics.

- The first revealed instance of the newsletter bemoaning not just the existence of black identity politics but the non-existence of a popular white equivalent. That the author subsequently quails from the obvious followup (a raised-hand chorus of "white power!") and instead segues to a stilted and weak-kneed plea that the reader work to preserve "western culture" makes it very clear that that author knew quite well what kind of fuse he was holding a match perilously close to ... and that he was resisting the urge to light it off.

These excerpts take the plausibility out of my hypothesis that this might have just been a case of a normal politician having temporarily fallen into some of the prejudices of a particular time and place, later to be embarrassed when that old failing was exposed. Rather, they point to a calculated intent to encourage and play on racist sentiments for political gain -- a plan that Rockwell and Rothbard had previously publicly advocated, a plan that was stump-stupid at best and indescribably evil at worst, and a plan that Ron Paul allowed to be (thankfully unsuccessfully) implemented in his name.

1. The authorship question is no longer of particular interest to me because Paul admitted to authoring at least some of the material, and defended it, in 1996, before denying authorship and repudiating the material from 2001 on. Apart from outing Paul as a liar at precisely the moment when he most needs to be perceived as honest, this establishes that Paul knew about, and was conversant with, the material in question. Ghosted or not, the material is Paul's baby.

Mystery solved

The author of at least some of the racist and/or homophobic material which appeared in Ron Paul's newsletters is: Ron Paul.

In 1996, Paul not only admitted to having written some of the stuff, but defended the material. Some pull quotes:

"Dr. Paul, who is running in Texas' 14th Congressional District, defended his writings in an interview Tuesday. He said they were being taken out of context. ... Dr. Paul denied suggestions that he was a racist and said he was not evoking stereotypes when he wrote the columns. He said they should be read and quoted in their entirety to avoid misrepresentation. ... In the interview, he did not deny he made the statement about the swiftness of black men. ... " -- Dallas Morning News, 05/22/96

"Paul, an obstetrician from Surfside, Tex., denied he is a racist and charged Austin lawyer Charles 'Lefty' Morris, his Democratic opponent, with taking his 1992 writings out of context." -- Washington Post, 05/26/96

"Paul, who earlier this week said he still wrote the newsletter for subscribers, was unavailable for comment Thursday." -- Houston Chronicle, 10/11/96

So, mystery solved -- and I apologize to those at LewRockwell.Com and the Ludwig von Mises Institute who have perceived me as launching on them, and especially to one in particular who felt that I was tarring all those who write at those sites, even those who were completely uninvolved with Lew Rockwell and/or Dr. Paul at the time the newsletters were published, with an unjust brush. I didn't mean it that way. Mostly I was just astonished with LRC's inability or unwillingness to deal with the whole thing rationally instead of retaliating with irrelevant character assassination. They're a bit touchy over there, and they have reason to be. This is not the first time that Lew has been hit with allegations of coddling and abetting racists -- allegations that seem to have at least some basis in fact.

But this thing remains squarely in Paul's court. As George Phillies has pointed out (at least privately to me -- if he's done so publicly, I'll link to it when I find it), the "ghostwriter" excuse was never worth much anyway. To paraphrase George, when you hire a ghostwriter his writing becomes yours. You paid good money for it, right?

Paul might have headed this off if he had been willing to take a ding on his vaunted "consistency" card and just say "yes, I wrote those things. They were actually fairly standard Republican rhetoric of the time and I was a politician riding that wave -- but it was wrong to do that, I apologize for it, and I hope you'll agree that my record in Congress and my message today reflect very different sentiments."

His unwillingness to do that got him the "consistency" ding anyway, and outed him as a liar to boot -- either he was lying in 1996, or he's lying now. Of course, a lot of politicians have survived such scandals, but Paul was marginal as a Republican presidential candidate in the first place. I suppose that white southerners could prove themselves guilty of the worst suspicions that "cosmopolitan" yankees have about them by voting for someone they perceive as "the sheet and hood lite" candidate in the GOP primary, but I'm optimistic and don't believe that will happen.

"Caesar's wife must be above suspicion"

Quoth Eric Sundwall --

There seems to be an unwritten meme going around that Rockwell is responsible for the RP newsletters (Balko, Knapp, McArdle, now Holtz). The hope being that blatant racist sentiment will undo a hardcore message and the hip and/or 'trinity'crowd can assume the mantle.

Wide, wide of the mark. Where a conflict exists between LvMI or LRC on one hand and the "cosmopolitan" libertarians (Cato, Reason, et al) on "what it means to be a libertarian," the odds are better than even that I agree with the LRC/LvMI crowd.

Matter of fact, what I "hope" is that Lew Rockwell and other distinguished writers affiliated with LRC/LvMI had nothing whatsoever to do with that newsletter content. If they did, they won't be the only ones with a black eye. Every radical libertarian who has ever promoted, featured or cited their work -- including yours truly -- will have a shiner, too.

I am a radical libertarian. I acknowledge that LewRockwell.Com and the Ludwig von Mises Institute have stood at the forefront of the radical libertarian movement for many years, and for some good reasons.

To the extent that the radical libertarian movement has "leaders," a good case can be (and has been) made by the folks at LRC/LvMI that Ludwig von Mises, Murray N. Rothbard and Lew Rockwell constitute a "dynasty" of radical libertarian ideological Caesars, with Auburn, Alabama functioning as a radical libertarian Rome, the LRC/LvMI web sites as their empire's gladatorial arenas ... and Ron Paul as the political wife of that ideological dynasty's current scion.

This is not to say that Caesar should not defend his wife if she unjustly falls under suspicion. However, Rockwell and company haven't actually defended Paul. Rather, they have limited their response to fulminating against what they characterize as "smears" without offering any substantive rebuttal or criticism of the allegations at all, or any answers to the questions raised. The're free to do that, but they have only themselves to blame if observers then conclude that perhaps Caesar is just as suspect as Pompeia.

Speaking of smears ...

Over the months, I've tried to write off the stormtrooper-like, bullying attitude of some Ron Paul cultists. You know the ones I'm talking about:

Commenter: Ron Paul puts his pants on one leg at a time like everyone else.

Cultist: Why do you want to SMEAR Ron Paul?

Commenter: I'm not trying to smear him, I'm just saying he wasn't born of a virgin or anything like that.

Cultist: SMEAR! SMEAR! That's all you're doing? How dare you imply that Ron Paul's mother ever had sex? Why, you goddamn godless socialist, I oughtta ...

At first, most of the worst of that kind of thing came from people I either didn't know at all, or already knew from prior experience to be marginal in the sanity department. My more sane acquaintances in the Ron Paul camp didn't go that far. Yeah, they twisted themselves into pretzels trying to make the real-life Ron Paul jibe with the uber-libertarian image of Ron Paul in their heads and hearts, but they didn't get all wild-eyed and frothy and hateful.

I sensed things were really going downhill a couple of weeks ago -- December 27th, as a matter of fact -- when an author whom I don't know well, but have always considered a reasonable guy and a fine libertarian writer, whipped out this bit of nonsense. Money quote:

In my view, the "Ron Paul question" constitutes a litmus test for libertarians. Simply put, the "Ron Paul question" consists of determining whether or not a person supports Dr. Paul. If so, as I see matters, he passes this test and can be constituted a libertarian; if not, his credentials are to that extent suspect.

After that eye-opener, I guess I shouldn't have been shocked by the reaction at the LewRockwell.Com blog to The New Republic's expose on Paul and accompanying newsletter excerpts.

But I was.

Substantive criticism of, or response to, the content? Nowhere to be found. Nothing but the cry of "SMEAR!" (the only time I checked, it appeared on the front page of the blog seven times) accompanied by some pretty vicious personal attacks on the TNR article's author. He's a pimply-faced youth. He's a Giuliani supporter. His education was financed by some commiesymp outfit. The rag he writes for has a sordid history. [1]

I have a feeling that much of this has to do with not wanting to answer what is quickly becoming the $64,000 question among libertarians: Who is the anonymous ghostwriter credited with the racist and homophobic vomit that went out under Paul's name?

Wendy McElroy has asked him to identify himself. Kevin Rollins and Robert Capozzi have asked Lew Rockwell to confirm or deny that he's the writer in question. [2] For which, of course, all three have been denounced for, you guessed it, "smearing" Paul, Rockwell or both.

Why is the question important? Two reasons:

First, Paul has been evasive on the subject. "Ghostwriter" and "former aide" are, I believe, the terms he's used. Those terms imply -- and no doubt intentionally so -- a long-severed relationship. If the ghostwriter is found among Paul's long-time friends and current advisors, the newsletters take on a whole new relevance vis a vis Paul's campaign, because now there's a live wire connecting that past to this present (actually, there's already one -- the lightbulb went on in Jim Henley's head before it did in mine).

Secondly, if Rockwell or another writer or writers associated with LewRockwell.Com and the Ludwig von Mises Institute wrote that trash, it casts the allegations of a racist orientation -- allegations which have been leveled at those institutions for years by folks like the Cato Institute's Tom G. Palmer -- in a whole new light. As someone who defended LRC/LvMI from those allegations for a long time, I'm mortified to discover that I may have been very, very wrong.

Speaking of which, this shitstorm represents a real problem for radical libertarians. The Mises Institute and LRC have, for all intents and purposes, been Radical Libertarian Central since the Internet came of age, and they've been damn good at it. If they've also been effectively a racist front organization, what we're looking at is the ideological equivalent of 9/11, with the planes bearing down on us piloted by those we thought were our own. It won't be a question of rescuing our betrayers, but rather of rescuing the principles those betrayers have besmirched.

There is, I suspect, little joy in Auburn right now. That the crew at LRC is responding to these events in much the same way that they've always mocked the Randroids for acting is telling. Hopefully that behavior is driven by genuine shock and confusion rather than by knowledge of their own culpability in what's fast turning into a combination black eye, broken jaw and diagnosis of venereal disease for the libertarian movement.


1. And yes, The New Republic does, in fact, have a sordid history. But last time I noticed, the owner of the publication hadn't publicly blamed that sordid history on unnamed ghost writers when confronted with it.

2. My guess -- and it's only a guest -- is that Rockwell edited the newsletters, and that the most offensive excerpts were authored by Gary North. But I repeat, that's just a guess.