"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.