I wrote about this during the election, but white people are far less concerned about racism than they are about accusations of racism, because racism isn't really a part of their experience, but being accused of being racist is. So this is a pretty self-serving argument: Kling's racism isn't problematic, because it doesn't "shut down the discourse" but Walcott calling out Kling is out of line because it might hurt some delicate feelings. Note that this is a reactive form of speech policing, the sort McArdle is criticizing: I can say what I want, but you can't criticize it because it "shuts down the discourse." Oh, and criticizing Kling is "McCarthyism" and tantamount to telling all libertarians to "shut up."
I'm really less concerned with whether a person is "a racist" because I think everyone's racist. I can remember getting lectures from teachers in high school about how if we were a class of white kids, we'd know how to behave. I'm much more concerned with calling out individual actions as racist, and if you want to complain about that, well you're just shutting down the discourse.
As for my "hiding" the context of the quotation from Kling about reparations, I thought it was fairly obvious that Kling had produced a flimsy pretext simply to use the word. In fact, I explained that in a later post, and if one wants to "hide" something on the internet, one generally doesn't link to it.
I can't speak to what "most white people" do or do not care about, because I am only an individual white person. Had he looked for evidence about this particular white person, by, say, googling what I've written about racism, he would have found that his statement was not an accurate characterization of the specific white person he was talking about. I read through the first hundred hits or so, because hey, maybe he's right--I actually agree with him that we are all guilty of subtle racial bias, so maybe I'm too worried about accusations of racism, and not worried enough about the lingering legacy of slavery.
But indeed, pretty much all of the links are about the problem of racism, not the problem of people who are falsely accused of it. I do not submit that I have been free of racial bias, or that my maunderings on racism are of any possible interest to anyone. But the only actual evidence available to Mr. Serwer indicates that I am far more concerned about racism than frivolous accusations thereof.
The charge that I am just trying to keep valid accusations of racism from being made is also not borne out by history. I was one of that gang of libertarians who took a whole lot of grief from the paleolibertarian contingent for urging the shunning of Lew Rockwell for the vicious crypto-racist tone of the newsletters he ghost-wrote for Ron Paul, and of Ron Paul for having turned a blind eye to it. I think that accusations of racism should be aired when there's solid reason to believe they're true. And if it seems that they are true, I think the people who engaged in such behavior should be socially ostracized unless they make a serious effort at reforming their behavior.
But accusing someone of deliberately using racial code-words to inflame prejudice against Barack Obama is a serious thing. The very reason it is a serious thing is that in order to try and stomp it out, we have made overt prejudice into the social equivalent of a capital crime. I approve of this. But the severity of the punishment means that accusation of the crime should be held to a high standard--"beyond a reasonable doubt". It should not rest on a single infelicitous word choice. I am sure that Mr Serwer is very smart and talented, but I do not believe he is gifted with the ability to infallibly read peoples' hearts.
As for his failure to include the context, again, I think the gravity of the charge warrants showing that it's deserved. And as I am quite sure Mr. Serwer knows, very few people actually click through the link to read the source text, so he was quite safe in letting a number of readers believe that Arnold Kling had compared the stimulus package to reparations for slavery. Many of those readers will not have seen the follow-up post, and will retain that impression to this day. I don't think that's responsible journalism.
white people are far less concerned about racism than they are about accusations of racism, because racism isn't really a part of their experience, but being [falsely --RL] accused of being racist is.
Maybe the solution is to stop making stupid and baseless charges of racism so white people don't have that experience nearly as often.
Making a bogus charge of racism and then complaining that people are overly sensitive to bogus charges of racism is...well, to be frank, I'd rather not say what it's like, because I'll be called a racist.
"I was one of that gang of libertarians who took a whole lot of grief from the paleolibertarian contingent for urging the shunning of Lew Rockwell for the vicious crypto-racist tone of the newsletters he ghost-wrote for Ron Paul, and of Ron Paul for having turned a blind eye to it."
You are not a libertarian. Maybe at one point you might have been, but anyone who supported TARP cannot be a libertarian.
You have no proof that Lew Rockwell wrote the "racist quotes" from the newsletters.
What exactly was racist about pointing out that blacks commit far more crimes than other races? Many black conservatives (Larry Elder, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell) have said the same thing, does one need the cover of dark skin to point out the obvious?
In short, in trying to defend yourself, you resort to pointing out your own past unjustified claims of racism, not exactly a courageous stand.
Wolcott and Serwer are obviously looking for something to complain about, because Kling dared question their hero Obama. I really don't care what some liberal thinks are "code words", robbing the public to support your own socialist agenda is the act of a thug whether you are black, white, or green. By rushing to defend yourself from their moronic accusations you inadvertently justify them, in the future you should stick to mocking them and ignore his intellectually bankrupt charges.
Sorry if I seem harsh, I agree with much of what you write, but find it hard to hold my tongue when someone who advocates giving hundreds of billions of taxpayer money calls themselves a libertarian.
As the first dark-skinned man to comment here, let me say that I think that white people's continual dancing around the subject of race is pathetic and disgusting. This fear of speaking the truth because it may offend those who make it their business to be offended is spineless.
Speak the truth, speak it clear, and tell the PC police to go and fuck themselves.
Shorter BPC: The blacks are bad.
That's TIC, but come on dude. It's one thing to say what you said, it's another to try to figure out WHY that is...unless you just happen to think all black people are violent felons.
secret asian man writes: "Speak the truth, speak it clear, and tell the PC police to go and fuck themselves."
Your sentence is missing the part about being fired and getting sued.
The very reason it is a serious thing is that in order to try and stomp it out, we have made overt prejudice into the social equivalent of a capital crime. I approve of this.
Ugh. Its irritating when people pretend that saying things that insult a category of people is somehow evil when at worst its immature.
BTW- Adam's "white people are far less concerned.." is also a racial generalization. Is it evil? NO! of course not, at the absolute worst, its silly.
Unfortunately most liberals assume libertarians' racial politics are despicable as a given.
Upon learning my political leanings, a liberal I knew, a Yalie (so not abjectly ignorant in a broad sense), responded after a little heated group debate where I was in the minority (of one), in a condescendingly reassuring tone "I see where you're coming from. You're generally into smaller government, more personal freedom, the free market, and peppered with a little latent racism."
'Thing is, while he was attempting to be clever, he meant it. He truly believed that the political philosophy upon which my positions were based was tethered to a subconscious racist imperative.
The fundamental dilemma for liberals is that libertarianism undermines and subverts the concept of the group identity, which in turn invalidates the politics of victimhood, which, while having some very real predicates, are more often pretense for legislation that on the whole restricts liberty.
The point is, we're already racists categorically (who happen to loath the idea of a powerful executive) to liberals. Now that there's a powerful black president that liberals love ... start growing a thick skin.
Heck, I barely read quotations even when they are block quoted right in the post.
Does Serwer's response even merit serious treatment? Kling's racism isn't problematic, because it doesn't "shut down the discourse"
should read "Kling's imagined racism". He simply continues to beg the question -- if you assume the person you're demonizing is racist, then surely it's unneccessary to actually prove it!
I want to disagree from with this a little bit:
"This fear of speaking the truth because it may offend those who make it their business to be offended is spineless.
Speak the truth, speak it clear, and tell the PC police to go and fuck themselves."
You don't need to tell anyone to go "fuck themselves" and I think you're trying to make this exercise WAY too simplistic anyway. The dread "PC police" have really only been around (in this particular, undefined formulation) since what...the mid 90's? From my perspective, as a college educated African-American, nobody should use them as a crutch to not engage in what you seem to think is "real talk". If you believe what you say and think, then say it and let others sort it out as they will and damn the consequences if you're so certain of yourself and your stance. But don't be shocked when everyone doesn't come down on things the same way you do.
Past that, though, it seems like you're saying there's some kind of absolute truth to the many issues around race that can be "exposed", i.e. "blacks commit more crimes than other races". Ok, well, so what? WHY is that the case? Are black people inherently more likely to commit crimes? Are there other factors at play? If so, what are they?
I don't get down for generalizations and this why. It's easy to say something like, "Blacks are thugs" or whatever, but when it's time to get down into it, people say stuff like "that's just the way they are" and the conservation ends up being a bunch or hurt feelings. And I'm not saying bring some "Bell Curve" shit or "The Protocals of the Elders of Zion" into the mix either as a method of "proving" claims. People don't know how to talk about race because it's hard to talk about and because this country has a amazingly complicated relationship with that construct. Nobody seems to know what passes for ok or offensive. I'll say that telling people to "fuck themselves" isn't usually going to open many minds, though. If you want to see a good discussion on how you can talk about the issues around race in a deep, substantive way, I'd say go read the back and forth Coates and Douthat have been trading all week about family structures.
"Shorter BPC: The blacks are bad.
That's TIC, but come on dude. It's one thing to say what you said, it's another to try to figure out WHY that is...unless you just happen to think all black people are violent felons."
Sigh. I don't see how saying that blacks commit far more crimes than other races is at all equivalent to saying "all black people are violent felons".
I don't think a comment on a blog is sufficient to discover the causes of black crime, but I think that historical racism, racial profiling, well-meaning but counterproductive government programs, and a precipitous decline in black culture since the 70's have probably played a large role.
My larger point was that Megan, Reason, and other libertarians engaged in basically the same witch hunt that she rightly criticized Wolcott and Serwer for doing to Kling.
I may have missed Megan's take on it, but for the most part no one really attempted to dissect or criticize any of the actual statements in Ron Paul's newsletters, instead they simply fell all over themselves to denounce Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, and whoever else they could associate with the newsletters.
Then when she was attacked by Serwer she resorted to referencing her attack on Rockwell as proof of her non-racism. It is this kind of lazy, fearful, discourse that prevents meaningful discussion of race in America.
If more people of all races were willing to actually discuss issues without resorting to "You're racist for bringing that up!" or "No I'm not, see what I said about this REAL racist!" I think we would all be better off.
Frankly, I'm not up in arms over this Kling thing. Poor word choice? Yeah, I'd say so...tossing out reparations when we just elected our first black president is tone deaf. Is he a racist? I've no clue, so I wouldn't call him one.
It seems Kling would have been much better off to call the tax cuts niggardly. The perpetually offended industry would still have reacted the same way, but every sensible person in the country would have realized they were just being illiterate idiots.
Megan,
It seems to me that you let people like Serwer off too easy when you turn this into a discussion about racism. It's not. And when you let people act like it is, they can use nebulous, too-vague-to-be-refuted arguments like "white people don't have the experience to properly worry about racism."
The terms of discussion should be around words like libel, character assassination, and ad hominem argumentation (real ad-hom, not the "you were mean to me on the internet" kind). In those terms, it becomes a lot clearer how to interpret willful distortions of what Kling said. Or continuing to link to an incorrect transcription of his Heritage remarks. Or even the basic issue of trying to respond to economic arguments by questioning Kling's racial attitudes.
Serwer and his ilk are just dishonest partisan hacks.
Megan is up for Vice Kleaglette of the Ku Klux Kling.
Kling Heil!
Serwer writes: "I wrote about this during the election, but white people are far less concerned about racism than they are about accusations of racism, because racism isn't really a part of their experience, but being accused of being racist is."
If Kling's hyper-inclusive definition of "racism" includes Kling's post, then this is a fair statement, and Megan certainly fits into this category by virtue of defending Kling's comments, prior racial alms-giving in the form of alienating the paleo-crowd be damned.
Indeed, I think, the whole thing boils down to how one defines "racism" and applies that label other's actions. If you see racism in everything, and not everyone agrees with you, then they're "less concerned with racism". If you see racism in nothing, and not everyone agrees with you, then all accusations of racism are categorically false.
Since racism is in the eye of the beholder, regardless of any evidence, I'm clearly a racist for posting this observation.
It follows that if anyone accuses you of racism, then that's the end of the discussion ... you're a racist.
Unless you're a member of another protected group. Then the accuser is the racist/bigot. (I'm physically disabled, so I'm clearly safe ....)
Does any of this make the least amount of sense?
Green Bear
... white people are far less concerned about racism than they are about accusations of racism, because racism isn't really a part of their experience, but being accused of being racist is.
I was one of that gang of libertarians who took a whole lot of grief from the paleolibertarian contingent for urging the shunning of Lew Rockwell for the vicious crypto-racist tone of the newsletters he ghost-wrote for Ron Paul ...
Should white people be concerned about being accused of cyrpto-racism by Megan McArdle?
The very reason it is a serious thing is that in order to try and stomp it out, we have made overt prejudice into the social equivalent of a capital crime. I approve of this.
Oh God, that's ridiculous. Making racist jokes or statements is boorish behavior, nothing more. The very reason false accusations of racism, like this one, are so prevalent is because people treat it as a capital crime.
I think Sewer was right in his post when I look at the original comment. Original Kling comment:
When I read reparations bill; I think slavery. I don't know what context you put it but that is exactly what jumps into my head. It's the only bill that approriates a large amount of money to a class of people. These are democrats and again that is the connection made here.
The other possible way to spin it; when he brings up reparations again in the context of WWI would be the reparations Germany made that broke the country economically. But really, that is a separate analogy that is divided by his definitions of Republicans and Democrats above; definitions connected to his initial comment about reparations and stimulus. And the key is the fact that he said reparations bill/stimulus bill; the Germany stuff would imply treaties which is something different.
JMHO: but I think he tried to clean up his comment the second time or maybe that is simply the way his thoughts flow.
But coupled with that statement about Obama's stimulus being like a gang of thugs robbing him and his daughter; well once I can brush off but two loaded images like that means I'd go alert and wait for the inevitable third time before citing the trend.
I think Sewer just didn't wait for the third time.
But those are both two loaded and powerful images to connect to this administration. It's not something I would make a big deal about; but it is a fairly clear connection IMO.
I wouldn't call it racist but rather bigoted language; unless I found a third incident.
"I was one of that gang of libertarians who took a whole lot of grief from the paleolibertarian contingent for urging the shunning of Lew Rockwell for the vicious crypto-racist tone of the newsletters he ghost-wrote for Ron Paul, and of Ron Paul for having turned a blind eye to it. "
You are fortunate that Rockwell doesn't believe in libel laws or you would be opening up yourself to quite a lawsuit. The is NO EVIDENCE that Rockwell wrote those newsletters. None. Hearsay accusations from people with an axe to grind don't count.
Forget about being a bad libertarian. You aren't even acting like a good journalist, Megan. Show your evidence if you have any.
I read Lew Rockwell every day. The writing style in those newsletters was totally different from his. Honestly, for someone on the short list for a NYT job, you should have more professionalism. But then again, considering Jayson Blair, maybe you'd fit right in.
I would also point to his construction of Democrats again; which IMO is coded racist language clearly:
I think Sewer made a clear and compelling case. I think the semiotics of the whole post are clear as crystal and the coded language clear.
Oh, now we're back to the code words. It must be effortless to win an argument if you can redefine the other party's words.
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 (the latter of the Cato Institute) aver that the whole brouhaha is rooted in a “strategy” enunciated by the late Murray N. Rothbard, the economist and author, and Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr., founder and president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, designed to appeal to “right-wing populists”:
“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 byThe New Republic.
“….The most detailed description of the strategy came in an essay Rothbard wrote for the January 1992 Rothbard-Rockwell Report, titled “Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement.” Lamenting that mainstream intellectuals and opinion leaders were too invested in the status quo to be brought around to a libertarian view, Rothbard pointed to David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for an “Outreach to the Rednecks,” which would fashion a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition by targeting the disaffected working and middle classes. (Duke, a former Klansman, was discussed in strikingly similar terms in a 1990 Ron Paul Political Report.) These groups could be mobilized to oppose an expansive state, Rothbard posited, by exposing an “unholy alliance of ‘corporate liberal’ Big Business and media elites, who, through big government, have privileged and caused to rise up a parasitic Underclass, who, among them all, are looting and oppressing the bulk of the middle and working classes in America.”
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: that is far too “square” for the black-leather-jacket-wearing Nick Gillespie, formerly associated with something called Suck magazine, and Matt Welch, who was an unknown quantity before getting the job at Reason. Right-wing populism? As far as the Suck-y crowd is concerned, one might as well tout the appeal of “right-wing botulism.” Libertarianism, as understood by the editors of Reason, is all about legalizing methamphetamine, having endless “hook-ups,” and giving mega-corporations tax breaks (so Reason can keep scarfing up those big corporate contributors). 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 to Team Suck.
What would the “Smearbund” do without David Duke? No smear campaign is complete without dragging him into it. No matter what the subject—the Iraq war, the Mearsheimer and Walt book, affirmative action—if you take the politically incorrect position, according to the neocons, then you’re marching shoulder-to shoulder with the former Klansman and professional nut-job.
And sure enough, the Kirchick piece takes the Paul newsletter to task for supposedly having “kind words” for Duke. Yet, if you go and read what the newsletter says about Duke, it is clear the author was merely saying Duke’s success is due to his opposition to affirmative action and the welfare state: indeed, Kirchick cites a passage (without citing it in full) in which Duke is taken to task for his lack of a “consistent package of freedom.” Yet the willfully ignorant Radley Balko, another Cato type, avers: “I simply can’t imagine seeing any piece of paper go out under my name that included sympathetic words for David Duke. That a newsletter with Paul’s name did just that demands an explanation from Paul.”
The explanation, which would be apparent if Balko had actually cited what is written, is that these weren’t sympathetic words for Duke, per se, or his political ambitions, but for the issues—legitimate issues—that he raised (and exploited) in his Louisiana campaign. After all, libertarians such as Paul reject affirmative action, racial set-asides, and all other forms of state-enforced special treatment for “minorities” precisely because they oppose racism, or any form of collectivism.
By the way, libertarians also oppose so-called civil rights legislation that outlaws discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or disability, because it violates the rights of property-owners. William F. Buckley Jr. famously derided libertarian (and “right-wing populist”) opposition to such legislation as valorizing Lester Maddox’s refusal to “serve a Negro a plate of pork chops.” Buckley’s quip surely underscored the venality and small-mindedness of Maddox and his ilk—and yet, lost in all this, is the reality of the libertarian position, which is that people have the right to be venal, small-minded, and, yes, viciously, stupidly, horribly wrong, provided they don’t initiate the use of force.
The utter dishonesty of the Reason crowd, when it comes to this issue, is breathtaking. Balko laments that
“Unfortunately, the quotes pulled from these newsletters will for many only confirm those worst stereotypes of what he represents. The good ideas Paul represents then get sullied by association. The Ann Althouses of the world, for example, are now only more certain that opponents of federal anti-discrimination laws should have to prove that they aren’t racist before being taken seriously.”
It’s all about impressing Ms. Althouse, the notoriously dyspeptic and cranky lawyer-blogger-know-it-all.
Gee, that’s the first time in a long time I’ve heard a single one of the Reasonites declare their opposition to anti-discrimination laws: perhaps it is the first mention of it in the online supplement to the magazine. Because, of course, such a position is starkly counterposed to today’s au courant political correctness, an atmosphere in which all criticism of, say, Barack Obama is typified as racist agitation. The fear of being branded a “racist” is so all-pervasive that it has had an appreciable effect on the polls: exit polls in New Hampshire foreshadowed an Obama-sweep that never materialized. Democratic primary voters were ashamed to say they hadn’t voted for Obama: talk about white liberal guilt!
The charges leveled at Paul by his accusers both the neocons, and the “libertarian” and leftist enablers, are therefore especially toxic this election season. Yet when one examines Paul’s alleged “hate crimes,” I can come up with only four sentences, lifted out of context, that are out of bounds:
“[O]ur country is being destroyed by a group of actual and potential terrorists—and they can be identified by the color of their skin.”
“I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in that city [Washington, D.C.] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”
“We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, but it is hardly irrational.”
“If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.”
These statements are offensive, and I’d bet my bottom dollar that Ron Paul not only didn’t write them, but never read.
(One might quibble about the “fleet-footed” quip: it seems more like a compliment, albeit a left-handed one, rather than an insult—but never mind.) It isn’t Paul’s style or voice. In any case, when we examine the rest of the statements Kirchick cites, in context, it becomes immediately apparent that the “libertarian” witch-hunters out for Paul’s scalp didn’t even bother to read the newsletters in their entirety before they broke into a chorus of denunciations. A former beltway wonk has published an excellent chronology of the various postings by the Reason/Cato/neocon crowd after the Kirchick piece was published and the pdf files of the newsletters were posted by Pajamas Media, on January 8. He makes it clear that what he calls the “Orange Line Mafia” didn’t have time to go through and read the material in the newsletters before firing their fusillades:
“The Ron Paul Newsletters are voluminous and even a small fraction of them could not possibly be read in the very few hours that passed between the posting of the actual newsletters (the afternoon of the 8th) and the smear campaigners’ posts (also the afternoon of the 8th). All of these ‘hit and run’ blog posts, except Kirchick’s original, must then be based on Kirchik’s piece rather than on actual reading and analysis of the newsletters. Clearly the purpose of these posts was not to initiate a thoughtful discussion of the newsletters, it was to spin libertarian voters on the most crucial election day short of the November general elections.”
It was a rush job, and a sloppy one at that, because, on closer examination, the material that is being called “racist” turns out to be no such thing. When we go to the source of the above, and other examples cited by Kirchick, we come to a rather conventionally conservative analysis of the Rodney King riots of 1992: the rioters are condemned, the Koreans are valorized, and the culture of black entitlement and its relation to the welfare state are delineated in no uncertain terms. Nothing, in short, that would be out of place in any conservative magazine. The above-cited phrase about the enemy being defined “by the color of their skin” is here placed in its original context:
“Regardless of what the media tell us, most white Americans are not going to believe that they are at fault for what blacks have done to cities across America. The professional blacks may have cowed the elites, but good sense survives at the grass roots. Many more are going to have difficulty avoiding the belief that our country is being destroyed by a group of actual and potential terrorists—and they can be identified by the color of their skin. This conclusion may not be entirely fair, but it is, for many, entirely unavoidable.”
In context, the author was clearly saying that people will draw unfair conclusions – that racism will increase—as a direct consequence of the Los Angeles riots. How, exactly, is that “racist”? If anything, it’s a warning that the sociological consequences of statist policies – and the failure of the elites to address them—will lead to the rise of the David Dukes of this world, if more responsible politicians don’t face them head on. In linking to the source, one wonders if Pajamas Media isn’t really trying to help the Paul campaign win over conservative Republicans – because I don’t think many would disagree with much of it. Another phrase that has been lifted out of context—“only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions—placed in context reads quite differently:
“Indeed, it is shocking to consider the uniformity of opinion among blacks in this country. Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty, and the end of welfare and affirmative action. I know many who fall into this group personally and they deserve credit—not as representatives of a racial group, but as decent people.”
The idea that people are not to be treated as representatives of racial groups is the antithesis of bigotry. While the author of the above is most emphatically anti-racist, he is also anti-looter, anti-violence, and justifiably angry at the sight of white motorists being pulled out of their cars by thugs of whatever color. The author of TNR’s hit piece was a mere babe when the Los Angeles riots scorched the national consciousness, and his reaction to the description of the rioters—and the circumstances surrounding it—is untouched by either experience or understanding.
The crudeness of Kirchick’s cut-and-paste method shows how little he cares for the concept of truth. In the context of a discussion about Paul alleged antipathy to blacks, he writes that a “June 1991 entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC’s Adams Morgan neighborhood was titled, ‘Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo.’ ‘This is only the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s,’ the newsletter predicted. In an October 1992 item about urban crime, the newsletter’s author—presumably Paul—wrote, ‘I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.’”
As James Fulford points out, however:
“People seem to think that he was calling blacks ‘animals.’ This was actually the Mount Pleasant riots, the largest in DC since the 1968 Martin Luther King riots, and it was immigrant Hispanics rioting against the African-American city government, so that’s not what what’s going on here, it’s just a normal headline like ‘Inmates Take Over Asylum.’”
But what matters the color of the rioters’ skin? Are we not allowed to say what is, or must fear reduce our language to strings of euphemism? Is every word to be examined and measured in terms of its political correctness quotient? Thus do self-righteous little prigs of Kirchick’s ilk seek to define what’s legitimate and what’s not.
It’s all downhill from there. Kirchick goes after Paul on the basis of his association with the scholars at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and a brilliant writer by the name of Thomas E. Woods, whose Politically Incorrect Guide to American History is a runaway bestseller among conservatives and is issued by Regnery, the Fox News of the publishing world. Again, nothing out of the conservative mainstream – a point that will no doubt horrify the readers of The New Republic. But that’s not many people, these days.
The idea that opposition to Lincoln idolatry is evidence of “racism” is absurd, as any serious person would immediately recognize. Is anyone really surprised that Paul doesn’t idolize an American President who locked up his political opponents, repealed the writ of habeas corpus, and closed down opposition newspapers? Give me a break. It’s not for nothing that the academic branch of the Lincoln cult is headquartered over at Claremont College, where the more extreme neocons hold sway: they openly admire his authoritarian methods That may be news to what’s left of The New Republic’s readers, but I doubt much of anyone else finds this beyond the pale, never mind proof of “racism.”.
Kirchick is shocked—shocked!—by the idea that secession can be a legitimate means to achieve one’s political objectives. He equates this with “support for the Confederacy” – but then one has to ask how the Soviet empire imploded so quickly and relatively bloodlessly. Wasn’t it because individuals, as well as the captive nations, seceded from the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”?
Kirchick pays tribute to his “libertarian” collaborators, averring “The people surrounding the von Mises Institute—including Paul—may describe themselves as libertarians, but they are nothing like the urbane libertarians who staff the Cato Institute or the libertines at Reason magazine.” They, of course, would never endorse the idea of secession. Or would they?
In any case, there are some pretty odd formulations in Kirchcik’s essay: “To be fair,” he concedes,
“The newsletter did praise Asian merchants in Los Angeles, but only because they had the gumption to resist political correctness and fight back. Koreans were ‘the only people to act like real Americans,\’ it explained, ‘mainly because they have not yet been assimilated into our rotten liberal culture, which admonishes whites faced by raging blacks to lie back and think of England.’”
One wonders on what other basis the author of this newsletter piece could have praised the Asian merchants of Los Angeles—just because they’re Asian? Yet why should someone merit accolades for what they are, rather than on account of the content of their character? To do so would be—dare I say it?—racist.
Another odd touch to this slapped-together smear job is that Kirchick and his pals point to the Paul newsletter’s claim that the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party was involved in helping to trigger the Los Angeles riots as yet more proof of “conspiracism,” but as the RCP’s Wikipedia entry puts it:
“The RCP upheld the 1992 uprising in Los Angeles and nationally as a “rebellion” in the aftermath of the Rodney King verdicts. Then-LAPD chief Daryl Gates alleged that the RCP was involved in the riots. Los Angeles has long been one of the RCP’s larger and more active branches.”
I suppose little Jamie Kirchick, who was something like four years old when the riot occurred, knows more about what happened than the chief of police. Or is Daryl Gates, too, a “conspiracist”? More malarkey from Monsieur Kirchick. (For what it’s worth, David Horowitz concurs.)
The rhetoric aimed at Martin Luther King is really odd, considering that the Ron Paul campaign is launching its latest “money bomb” on the civil rights leader’s birthday. In addition, Paul himself has praised MLK as an exemplar of nonviolent civil disobedience. It is true, however, as the newsletter avers, that King had some connections to Communist Party members, and had the full support of the CP. Without the Communists, there would have been hardly any civil rights movement, especially in the early years. In addition, the Rev. King was indeed a philanderer of epic proportions, as are many strong-willed individuals of the male persuasion. Why be prudish about it? Suddenly the “libertines” of swingin’ Reason magazine are blushing virgins, but, somehow, it’s not a very convincing act.
According to Daniel Koffler, a former Reason staffer now at Pajamas Media, whose compendium of Paul’s un-PC “pullquotes” was posted shortly after the Kirchick piece went up, the charge of “conspiracism” is supposedly buttressed by a statement in the newsletter to the effect that “Hillary Clnton is the most dangerous politician in America” – in which case, all the GOP presidential candidates are guilty. Are we supposed to take this stuff seriously?
As evidence of Paul’s alleged “homophobia,” Kirchick whines that the newsletter writers termed AIDS a “politically protected disease” – and yet that is the same view held by the late Randy Shilts, an openly gay reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, in his book on the epidemic and the political response to it, And The Band Played On. Shilts, who who died of AIDS in the 1980s, describes, at length, how political correctness and fear of “homophobia” delayed the closing of the San Francisco bathhouses that were incubating the epidemic and spread the virus far and wide before the gay community began to wake up.
As addle-brained as this tack is, Kirchcikt gets even sillier:
“Commenting on a rise in AIDS infections, one newsletter said that ‘gays in San Francisco do not obey the dictates of good sense,’ adding: ‘[T]hese men don’t really see a reason to live past their fifties. They are not married, they have no children, and their lives are centered on new sexual partners.” Also, “they enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick.’”
As much as I, a gay guy, hate to admit it, the statement that “gays in San Francisco do not obey the dictates of good sense” rings true to anyone who lives in what Herb Caean used to call “Baghdad-by-the-Bay” and knows anything about the sexual practices prevalent in the gay community. Priapism as a lifestyle and even a social philosophy is the norm, not the exception, and while that may offend the delicate sensibilities of those rather more priggish homosexuals who want to take the sex out of homosexuality – well, that’s just tough, now isn’t it? And not very realistic.
Furthermore, it has been widely reported that some AIDS victims had actually sought out the disease and refer to it as “bug-chasing” and “giving the gift”—albeit some years after the newsletter described such behavior. Kirchick, a sometime gay activist, has got to know about this. Not that he’ll ever admit it.
Speaking of “hate crimes,” yet more alleged “evidence” that Paul is a gay-basher is the newsletter’s attacks on hate crimes legislation – which, again, is a pretty standard conservative Republican (and libertarian position). Are the editors of Reason magazine agreeing with Kirchick that opposition to such legislation is de facto “homophobia”? Just asking ….
As for the piece on “I Miss the Closet,” now that’s a sentiment I admit to feeling with increasing intensity over the years, as homosexuality devolved into “gayness” and a lifestyle morphed into a political movement—a movement, moreover, that demanded complete ideological conformity on questions ranging from the origins of homosexuality (politically correct answer: it’s genetic) to the desirability of a national “civil rights” bill forbidding “discrimination” on the basis of sexual orientation. To disagree with the leaders of this “movement” is to court the charge of “homophobia.”
Kirchick is perturbed by Paul’s talk of an “industrial-banking-political elite” – any criticism of bankers, and their federally-insured con-game, is “conspiracism” and probably “anti-Semitic,” too. When the banks get bailed out, us plebeians had better not complain, on pain of facing Kirchick’s wrath. Worse, by Kirchickian standards, Paul is “promoting his distrust of a federally regulated monetary system utilizing paper bills” – a charge that seems slightly comical, coming as it does during the most precipitous decline of the currency since the phrase “not worth a continental” was coined.
I really can’t bear to examine much more of Kirchick’s farrago of falsehoods: it’s like wading through waist-high muck without your pants on. I have to say, however, that this supposedly “devastating” attack on the Paul campaign is devastating, all right – to the author’s reputation as a credible reporter. His writing is crude, his manner slapdash, and his abilities seem to consist primarily of the artful use of ellipses. Intellectually dishonest, inauthentic in its outrage, and unintentionally humorous at times – don’t you realize that it’s a hate-crime to criticize Kirchick’s boss?—TNR’s attempt to portray the avuncular country doctor who preaches liberty, the Norman Thomas of libertarianism, as some sort of neo-Nazi is ludicrous – yet the neocons and their “libertarian” allies persist. Why?
“If a person cared about liberty,” asks the blogger who calls himself “a former beltway wonk,” “why would they be eager to mindlessly repeat smears about the most popular libertarian candidate in decades on the very day of the most crucial ‘king-making’ primary in the United States?”
It’s no mystery, really: Ron Paul is, in many ways, the exact opposite of the Beltway fake-“libertarians.” He’s a populist: they suck up to power, he challenges the powers-that-be; they go along to get along – he has never gone along with the conventional wisdom as defined by the arbiters of political correctness, Left and Right. And most of all, he’s an avowed enemy of the neoconservatives, whom he constantly names as the main danger to peace and liberty – while the Beltway’s tame “libertarians” are in bed with them, often literally as well as figuratively.
In short, the Beltway fake-libs are in bed with the State, and all its works, while contenting themselves with the role of court jester and would-be “reformer” of the system. As long as they don’t challenge anything too fundamental to the continuation of the Welfare-Warfare State, the pet libertines of the neocon-led GOP “coalition” are deemed “urbane” and “cosmopolitan,” the highest compliment the Georgetown party circuit can bestow. Once they begin rocking the boat, as Paul insists on doing, they become fair game for the Smearbund.
Another major reason for the antipathy to Paul coming from these quarters is his uncompromising opposition to U.S. foreign policy. A good half of the Reason crowd were pro-war, some ambivalent, and a powerful minority within the Cato Institute rallied to the cause of “liberating” Iraq, or was at least sympathetic to the idea of “exporting” free market liberalism at gunpoint, once the war was a fait accompli. Reason itself took no position on the most important question of the day, I’m told because of the influence of big contributors. And now I learn, from inside sources, that Reason senior editor Brian Doherty, author of the monumental Radicals for Capitalism, a “freewheeling” history of the American libertarian movement, is in danger of being fired because he’s too pro-Paul.
The most shameful aspect of this episode is the active role played by the Orange Line Mafia in the smearing of Paul. The Reason/Cato lynch mob is really threatened by the existence of a mass libertarian movement—because it’s a movement over which they have no control. They no longer get to define libertarianism to the general public, and most importantly, the media: who needs them, when we have a much more appealing and successful salesman for liberty?
Besides, it’s embarrassing for them: while they’re begging our rulers to allow us just a little freedom, and timidly seek to trim the empire around its rougher edges, Paul and the movement he’s spawned seek a much more radical application of libertarian principles: a consistent anti-statism on the home front, and a call to dismantle the empire before it dismantles the last vestiges of our old republic.
Look, I’ve been critical of the Paul campaign—see here—and I have to say I have my issues with the way the operation is being run, and I know I’m not alone in that. I would say that the antiwar message has not been pounded home, and that their strategy—particularly their California strategy – shows a complete lack of understanding of how to get delegates under the new, congressional district-based allocation system. Another major mistake: failing to make opposition to the war and the new imperialism the centerpiece of Paul’s television ads. When the candidate gets up there on stage at the debates and speaks in his own voice, from the heart, he nearly always puts the issue of war and peace front and center. The campaign does Paul a great disservice, however, when they water down his message for some imaginary political gain that has yet to materialize and probably won’t.
Yet these criticisms are minor: the overwhelming reality is that the Paul campaign has put libertarianism on the political map as never before—and the Orange Line Mafia just can’t stand it.. Real libertarians can have but one answer to the fifth columnists in their midst, the neocon-enablers and Vichy “libertarians” who hang on every word harpy-like shriek that comes out of Anne Althouse’s gullet: Screw them, and all their works.
Show your work? YOU show your work Megan. Show how you ferreted out the newsletter author. Present the evidence. False accusations are what you claim you are fighting against. I humbly ask you to prove it.
To reiterate: Kling foolishly calls Obama's stimulus 'reparations' (he also talks about thugs and thieves), Wolcott foolishly says Kling must be a racist, and then Wolcott is the only one at fault. So McCardle (in a prior post) defends Kling as a very circumspect guy (despite her admission that he uses inflammatory hyperbole).
Why can't Wolcott, Serwer et al also be excused as circumspect people who engage in provocative hyperbole for calling racially tone-deaf comments flatly "racist" in nature?
Is it because we all assume that there's absolutely nothing racially tone deaf about using "reparations" in the context Kling chose? Or is it that his admitted hyperbole (per Megan) is more acceptable than Wolcott's and Serwer's?
I'm not trying to be cute. I'm asking in earnest.
When one uses "coded language," does that mean:
1) that one is consciously trying to communicate with racists without detection, or
2) that one is unconsciously racist?
The first seems wildly implausible, both because detection is likely and because racists are often, frankly, not that smart. They are therefore less likely to pick up on the code than smart anti-racists.
But the second seems terribly unfair, because while one might engage in racist acts without knowing it (say, not hiring the black guy for unconscious reasons), it is difficult to see how words chosen without racist intent can reasonably be said to be "racist." If by "reparations," Kling believed he meant "payments made by Germany to France," then how on Earth can we sensibly claim that what he really, unconsciously "meant" was slavery reparations? If that's racism, it's a pretty wispy and harmless kind.
Megan wants to defend people against false charges of racism and then cites as her qualifications for doing so the false charges against Paul and Rockwell that she echoed!
No wonder the cosmotards are the preferred opposition for the Lefties! Straw men would put up a better fight.
Rockwell did not right those newsletters. Paul is guilty of nothing more than poor editorial control. If anyone thinks otherwise, make your case. Megan and the beltwaytarians, OTOH are an odd mixture of opportunistic sell-outs and incompetents.
"I was one of that gang of libertarians who took a whole lot of grief from the paleolibertarian contingent for urging the shunning of Lew Rockwell for the vicious crypto-racist tone of the newsletters he ghost-wrote for Ron Paul, and of Ron Paul for having turned a blind eye to it."
The more I think about it, the angrier I get at the hypocrisy behind Megan's sanctimonious racial preening.
Neolibertarians like Megan advocate policies that are outright disdainful of a large number of blacks in this country. These folks are the ones who hit the hardest, both socially and economically, by the "free market" principles of globalization, unmanaged trade, and open borders. Yet you have the gall to pay lip service to what a racial progressive you are. The evidence? Social ostracizing the "protectionist", "nativist", and "xenophobic" paleo-crew who recognize that even the most marginalized among us are fellow citizens and as such are entitled to living wages and dignity.
Disgusting and pathetic.
Kling foolishly calls Obama's stimulus 'reparations' (he also talks about thugs and thieves),
You're still begging the question. It's only "foolish" if you assume it's an indication of racism.
Your commenters don't scare you sometimes?
You're still begging the question. It's only "foolish" if you assume it's an indication of racism.
Uh, what? I don't think Kling was being racist; I'm certain he was being foolish. You don't think that's possible?
Raimondo pasted a whole column into a comment! Some things are indeed constant.
Here is an anatomy of the spread of the smear campaign against Ron Paul just prior to and on the crucial “king-making” New Hampshire primary day, January 8th (all times are EDT; the polls closed at 8 pm EDT):
January 7th, 7:33 pm — Matt Welch (Reason Magazine) discusses the plan to smear Ron Paul on New Hampshire primary day. In a later edit, Welch strikes out the actual TNR/Reason plan (to post the piece at midnight, the exact time the New Hampshire polls opened, and not post the actual newsletters until the afternoon of the primary) and substitutes “tommorrow afternoon”. But he failed to strike out Reason’s part in the plan: “More to come from here after the gong strikes midnight.”
January 8th, 12:01 AM — Jamie Kirchick’s anti-Paul hit piece, many weeks in preparation at the request of his boss Marty Peretz at The New Republic, and featuring featuring many out-of-context quotes from Paul’s old newsletter (which have long been public knowledge and which Paul long ago denied writing) and descriptions of Paul and his associates as “bigoted”, “racist”, “homophobic”, and “anti-Semitic”, etc. is posted at The New Republic.
11:03 AM – Daniel Koffler (Pajamas Media, formerly at Reason)
“A damning New Republic expose on Ron Paul shows the “libertarian” Republican candidate to be a racist, a homophobe and an anti-Semite. Will his diehard supporters continue to defend a man who called Martin Luther King a gay pedophile? Daniel Koffler, a former Paul sympathizer, has a compendium of the Texas congressman’s creepiest hits, pulled straight from his decades-old newsletter.”
3:30 pm — Andrew Sullivan (The Atlantic, formerly editor of The New Republic) — “They are a repellent series of tracts, full of truly appalling bigotry.”
3:46 pm — David Wiegel (Reason) Wiegel praises Kirchick’s piece as “explosive” and after a brief converstation with a harried Paul, grossly mischaracterizes Ron Paul’s position as “Paul’s position is basically that he wrote the newsletters he stands by and someone else wrote the stuff he has disowned.”
3:48 pm — Nick Gillespie (Reason) “I’ve got to say that The New Republic article detailing tons of racist and homophobic comments from Paul newsletters is really stunning. As former reason intern Dan Koffler documents here, there is no shortage of truly odious material that is simply jaw-dropping.”
4:43 pm — David Bernstein (Volokh Conspiracy/George Mason University) “..it’s disturbing in and of itself that the kind of people who write such things would want to associate themselves with Paul’s name, and the kind of people who enjoy reading such things would subscribe to these newsletters because they admire Paul.” Here’s David’s web page at GMU.
(before 5 pm) — Arnold Kling (Econglog/George Mason University) — Repeats the worst quotes out of context and without explanation.
5:17 pm — Dale Carpenter (Volokh Conspiracy/University of Minnesota) – “A damning indictment of Ron Paul.”
Oddly enough, all these people with the exception of the tardiest, Dale Carpenter, live or work near the Orange Line subway (Metro) west of the capitol building in Washington, D.C. On the Orange Line, with occasional short side trips on some other lines, you can get to The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, Reason Magazine, George Mason University, The Federal Triangle, Cato Institute, Foggy Bottom, Dupont Circle (Red Line), and a number of other homes and work sites of beltway media, politicians, bureaucrats, and “libertarians.” I don’t know how many of these people actually ride the D.C. Metro, but for fun and convenience let’s call this group of smear artists the “Orange Line Mafia”. This group of media pundits and bloggers has developed a large following among actual libertarians because they are an integral part of D.C. social circles and darlings of the mainstream media, who often “link” to the blogs of these “libertarians” from their various media formats. Libertarians who watch or read MSM thus often first discover “libertarianism” on the net in the writings of The Atlantic, Reason, Cato, Volokh Conspiracy, and other Orange Line Mafia outlets, and think that they are representative of people who actually value liberty.
If a person cared about liberty, why would they be eager to mindlessly repeat smears about the most popular libertarian candidate in decades on the very day of the most crucial “king-making” primary in the United States? Yet that is exactly what a number of popular “libertarian” bloggers did that day. The Ron Paul Newsletters are voluminous and even a small fraction of them could not possibly be read in the very few hours that passed between the posting of the actual newsletters (the afternoon of the 8th) and the smear campaigners’ posts (also the afternoon of the 8th). All of these “hit and run” blog posts, except Kirchick’s original, must then be based on Kirchik’s piece rather than on actual reading and analysis of the newsletters. Clearly the purpose of these posts was not to initiate a thoughtful discussion of the newsletters, it was to spin libertarian voters on the most crucial election day short of the November general elections.
This is the crew that Megan happily lumps herself in with???? How can she reconcile her defense of Kling and her condemnation of Paul and Rockwell?
The double standard is staggering.
For context:
January 8, 2008
By formerbeltwaywonk
How can one not think of conspiracy theories having observed an improbably simultaneous media attack on Ron Paul the day of the New Hampshire primary? A remarkably successful attack that made him plunge from 14% in the polls to an 8% actual vote? After weeks where we heard little about Paul from the mass media and beltway “libertarian” bloggers? TNR from the left, Fox News and talk radio from the right, and piling on from beltway “libertarians” who made a point of loudly repeating the TNR smears and dumping Ron Paul on the day of the primary. Your eyes and ears did not deceive you, all this happened. It is not the result of a criminal conspiracy, but if one uses “conspiracy” as a metaphor for social networks and economic incentives, there is a strong sense in which conspiracy theories accurately, if metaphorically, explain what happened.
The reality behind the conspiratorial metaphor is the social networking between denizens of the Beltway, who sport a wide variety of political labels but are, relative to the rest of the country, a monoculture. I lived there. I went to these parties. These denizens range from the journalists who report the mass media news to various think tank and university scholars at the Cato Institute, George Mason University, and so on. They study Ayn Rand, then marry Andrea Mitchell and testify against tax cuts. Vast amounts of federal money, that stuff that is taken out of your paycheck with such automatic ease, flow into the Beltway area. Directly and indirectly, almost every person who lives in or near the Beltway depends on the very income tax that Ron Paul declared he would abolish — with no replacement!
Many of these paycheck vampires call themselves “libertarians” and inspire us with their libertarian rhetoric to support them with our attention, our blog hits, and our tuition money as well as the tax money that already funds them or their friends. But at the first sign of political incorrectness, all these below-the-Beltway “libertarians” have dumped Ron Paul like yesterday’s garbage. Now they can rest easy that they will still be invited to the parties thrown by their lobbyist and government employee and contractor friends, who for a second or two got worried by all those Google searches that Ron Paul might have some influence, resulting in some of them losing their jobs (end the income tax with no replacement?! The guy is obvioiusly a kook, and we don’t invite the supporters of kooks to our parties!). Now everybody around the Beltway can go back to partying at the taxpayer’s expense. All the money will keep flowing in, hooray!
The lesson millions of young libertarians have now learned from our mass media and our beltway “libertarians”? Libertarian electioneering is futile. Voting is futile. Democracy is futile. It’s hip to be “libertarian.” But anybody who actually wants liberty is a kook, as can be proven by their association with kooks. Beltway wonks posing as “libertarians” are happy to write things to inflame your hopes for liberty that they don’t really mean. Then they make sure that we elect the politicians their friends want — the ones that will enslave your future to pay for full social security for Baby Boomers. The ones that will send you off to foreign lands to kill and die. Not only the journalists who hang out with the government bureaucrats and lobbyists, and not only the politicians who talk sweet while they drain your paycheck and kill your fellow human beings, but even the beltway “libertarians” are happy to let a whole new generation of libertarians go down the tubes in order to keep their Beltway friends happy.
If the word reparations makes you think immediately of slavery and racism then you either
1) Have a poor grasp of the English language
2) Are so hypersensitive that you will find any excuse possible to see an insult in someone else's words.
The history of libertarianism as a doctrine and an organized political movement is of interest these days on account of all the attention garnered by Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas congressman known as “Dr. No,” in his quixotic yet attention-getting and surprisingly successful campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. Where do these libertarian types come from, and where are they going? Is their bid to restore respect for the Constitution in American political culture a passing phase, or a portent of things to come? Whether Dr. Paul fought a rear-guard action, or in fact launched the first wave of a continuing assault on the Welfare-Warfare Sate remains to be seen, but if the GOP is dragged down to a crushing defeat by the neocons’ war and its economic consequences, then the Paulistas might have a fighting chance of taking back the Republican party for the heirs of Robert A. Taft and the Old Right.
Yet the Paul campaign wasn’t received with universal hosannas within the libertarian movement. While the great majority of the freedom movement’s rank-and-file were wildly enthusiastic about the Texas troublemaker, a group of self-styled libertarian “leaders”-namely, the infamously smug and self-satisfied minions of Charles Koch and Ed Crane over at the Cato Institute and the editors of the Koch-funded Reason magazine-sneered and sniffed at the culturally conservative, pro-life Paul and wondered aloud if he wasn’t a bit of an embarrassment. In a war of words reported by The Nation, the two wings of the libertarian movement squared off and fired shots. Christopher Hayes reported this eye-popping denunciation of Rep. Paul by the unbearably pompous Brink Lindsey, a Cato Institute “scholar” and recently appointed vice president for research,
“He doesn’t strike me as the kind of person that’s tapping into those elements of American public opinion that might lead towards a sustainable move in the libertarian direction.”
Here’s a new logical fallacy: the argument from snobbery. He isn’t our “kind of person.” What kind of person might that be? Well, it’s not at all clear. What is clear, however, is who isn’t “our kind of person.” As Senor Lindsey puts it:
“You have this weird group of people. You’ve got libertarians, you’ve got antiwar types and you’ve got nationalists and xenophobes. I’m not sure that is leading anywhere. I think he’s a sui generis type of guy who’s cobbling together some irreconcilable constituencies, many of which are backward-looking rather than forward-looking.”
Oh, those backwoods anti-IRS hicks, with necks redder than the reddest state, hopeless Neanderthals who would never read Lindsey’s book, The Age of Abundance, wherein he describes the supposedly “libertarian” utopia being ushered in by “the sexual revolution, environmentalism and feminism, the fitness and health care boom and the opening of the gay closet, the withering of censorship and the rise of a ‘creative class’ of ‘knowledge workers.’”
It sounds like a Georgetown cocktail party, rather than a political or ideological movement, but there you have it. Lindsey and his fellow creative geniuses are too good for the poor untutored hoi polloi who don’t go to the gym four days a week and are neither feminists nor gay. In Lindsey’s lexicon, “Forward-looking” means “people like me,” and “backward-looking” stands for non-feminist non-gay non-gym-going proles, who don’t count anyway.
In any case, sneers Lindsey, Paul “comes from a different part of the libertarian universe than I do.” Yes, you bet he does.
I had to laugh when I read how Hayes demarcates the pro-Paul “populist” libertarians from the anti-Paul crowd-the latter are deemed the “cosmopolitan” faction! Yeah, as in Cosmo magazine.
Lindsey’s haughtiness is really a joke, especially when it’s married to his clueless political analysis: who are these “xenophobes” he talks about - the overwhelming majority of Americans who don’t support his “open the borders” position. And as for these alleged “nationalists” flocking to the Paulian cause: I guess this means they’re attracted to Ron’s questioning of why we’re going to war on account of UN resolutions and entangling alliances. Otherwise, I can’t imagine a less “nationalistic” candidate, in the modern sense of aggressive expansionism - which is a term surely better suited to Lindsey’s own position in favor the “liberation” of the Middle East.
Indeed, Lindsey’s whole critique of Paul is really rooted in Lindsey’s pro-war position. He argued in favor of the Iraq war in a piece for Reason, basically making the neocon “weapons of mass destruction-they’ll-greet-us-as-liberators” argument, while Paul, of course, was against the war from the beginning. Having abandoned the core libertarian stance - opposition to mass murder by the State - Lindsey and his ilk are on their way out of libertarianism, as I’ve explained elsewhere, while Paul and his “backward-looking” brethren represent the future of the movement.
The Cato/Reason crowd is motivated by a different energy than that which fuels the Paulian cause. They represent an entirely different outlook from the one advanced by the Good Doctor, and his intellectual allies and influences, and this is just the latest chapter in the long history of two contending tendencies in the long, tortuous story of the fight for human liberty.
From the very beginning, the laissez-faire movement was beset by the thrilling but utterly mistaken idea that progress toward liberty is inevitable, a long, slow, steady process that coincides with the march of modernity. The rise of the movement for personal liberty and economic freedom was coincident with the growth and development of industrial civilization: as the standard of living rose, so did the advocates of laissez faire gain intellectual and political traction. Yet none of this was inevitable.
In a series of revolutions that rocked Europe and much of the world, laissez-faire liberalism overthrew the Old Order, and yet, as Murray Rothbard pointed out, there was a fatal flaw in the classical liberalism of the 19th century, an “inner rot,” as he put it, that ate away at the ideological core of libertarianism even as the movement began to achieve some of its goals. The flaw was made manifest in the abandonment of natural rights philosophy, and a strategic timidity-one seemed to follow from the other-that reverted to a defense of the status quo.
Secondly, liberalism was lulled to sleep with the seductive lure of evolutionism-the doctrine of Social Darwinism, which saw history as an ever-ascending spiral of progress. According to this theory, the triumph of liberty is inevitable because Reason, Science, and Enlightened Thinking are on our side. The history of the 20th century would soon refute this, but at the time it seemed, well, reasonable: after all, society was progressing, peoples were freeing themselves from the yoke of feudalism and mercantilism, and it looked-if only for a moment-that the cause of liberty might triumph, however long it took.
This Pollyanna-ism was swept aside with the advent of the 20th century and the rise of the totalitarian ideologies-liberalism’s darkest hour. Yet, as proof that no error is ever finally refuted, we see its echo, today, in the abstruse theories of certain Beltway Deep Thinkers who seem to believe that because they’re getting richer, so is everybody else-and that rising income means the increase of freedom. But of course the business cycle is alive and well-thanks to the persistence of fiat money and the central banks-as we are beginning to rediscover. Also raising its ugly head is the specter of constant warfare, the favorite pastime of empires, and this, too, threatens our liberties as well as our lives.
If the 19th century saw the rise of a worldwide movement toward liberty, the 20th saw the progress that had been made repealed and the clock turned back: in the world of ideas, political absolutism ruled the day, and all around the world, the inevitability of socialism was simply assumed. In the U.S., the Great Depression brought about the utter collapse of the old Spencerian illusion that liberty would triumph simply on account of some mechanism inherent in the nature of things. Two world wars shattered the fragile shell of constitutional government in America and opened the door to the demise of our old Republic.
The remnants of classical liberalism went virtually underground; the tides of public and intellectual opinion were running so heavily against them that their ideas were not even considered. The old-time liberals-such as John T. Flynn-were simply out of the running. Park Avenue Bolsheviks such as James Burnham were confidently proclaiming the demise of capitalism and the rise of the “managerial” class of bureaucrats and steely-eyed men in spectacles who would soon put society to rights. Socialism, Leninism, fascism, and all sorts of idiosyncratic social movements and sects sprang up, like mushrooms after a heavy rain, as the Great Depression wreaked havoc on people’s hopes.
Arrayed against these overwhelming currents, a valiant band of counter-revolutionaries fought a heroic rear-guard action: these were the men and women of the Old Right. Forged in the flames of a world at war, the loosely aligned political leaders, resident intellectuals, and publicists who made up this movement began to cohere a fairly consistent set of ideas:
That war breeds tyranny and subverts republican forms of government; that we were fighting national socialism overseas only to witness its triumph on the home front; and, central to it all, an acute consciousness of America’s tragic destiny as an (anti-)imperial power, doomed, like all the others, to degenerate into a parody of itself.
Forced underground in the wake of Pearl Harbor, the Old Right persisted-in the voluminous private correspondence of that tireless letter-writer, Rose Wilder Lane. In scattered circles of like-minded individualists, and a few organizations and one-man propaganda outfits, libertarianism persisted, like a subterranean river periodically bursting up to the surface and disrupting the socialist-interventionist consensus. Such stalwarts as John T. Flynn, who continued his radio program well into the late 1940s, and churned out books at a record rate, kept up the fight. In the dark days of postwar America, when the socialist-interventionist consensus was virtually unanimous, a young Murray Rothbard regularly tuned in to Flynn’s broadcasts.
A student of the famed Ludwig von Mises, whose economic theories are the foundation stones of today’s Austrian school of economics, Rothbard is the bridge between the Old Right of the 1940s and the libertarian movement as it exists today. I’ve told Murray’s story in my book, An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard, in which I perhaps overemphasize his role as a political activist at the expense of his monumental achievements as a scholar. I took this tack, I can see now, because Rothbard’s life and career is really a narrative account of the decline and rebirth of the organized libertarian movement, a history spanning the period from the 1940s to the 1990s.
Rothbard wrote for National Review, where he was restricted to the economics beat, but in private there was conflict: in an exchange of letters with Buckley, Rothbard dissented from the cold warrior fanaticism that animated the Buckleyite right. He was eventually convinced that the NR crowd pined for a third world war in which they wouldn’t hesitate to use nuclear weapons-in which case, we were all cooked. Rothbard had thoroughly absorbed the so-called “isolationism” of Flynn and the old America Firsters, and had developed early on a libertarian perspective on the foreign-policy question that was a logical extension of the non-coercion principle.
Just as state violence against its own citizens was to be limited as much as possible, so it is desirable-from a libertarian perspective-to limit, isolate, and restrict states from engaging in coercion beyond their own borders. War, in the words of Randolph Bourne, is the health of the state, and the limited government and free market economics that are supposed to be the cardinal principles of American conservatism have been time and again betrayed on account of their worship of the War God, to whom they owe their primary loyalty.
Rothbard’s break with the conservative movement, and his sojourn into the New Left, occurred at a crucial juncture in our history: the tumultuous 1960s, when war and repression of protest movements were the key issues of the day. A day not unlike our own, at least in certain respects. The Vietnam War was the focus of the national debate, and the rising youth revolution coincided with this development, giving libertarians an opportunity to bring the message of freedom to a wider audience than ever before. The war provided an opening for Rothbard and his growing circle to make an appeal to the left, and their journal, Left and Right, introduced the classics of the Old Right, such as the essays of Garet Garrett, to a whole generation of SDSers-the main youth protest movement with chapters on hundreds of campuses.
The effort had an effect on the more intelligent SDS leaders, such as Carl Oglesby, the group’s first elected leader who later quoted Garet Garrett and favorably cited the Old Right’s anti-imperialism in his book, Containment and Change. By that time, however, he had been purged from the group he had been instrumental in founding for the crime of “right-wing deviationism.”
SDS and the anti-war movement had by then gone into their ultra-Left phase, and went out in a blaze of botched bombings and self-destructive melodrama. Also, at this point, the movement that gathered regularly in Rothbard’s living room had grown too large to fit into that small space, and the first libertarian activist conferences were being held, and the libertarian press was developing apace. Aside Rothbard’s own Libertarian Forum, there was Reason magazine, which started out as a stapled-together 12-page fanzine.
It was only a matter of time until a Libertarian Party was founded, and that occurred in 1972. The LP has been the battlefield on which the whole question of how to function as an organized political movement has been fought, and as such its history provides us with a rich source of material for our speculations as to the future of libertarianism, be it dark or bright.
The party grew, the movement grew, and, by the late 1970s, Rothbard and his associates took it to the next level-with the help of a generous benefactor, whose largess made possible a great leap forward in the pace and quality of libertarian activism.
Let us go back to the year 1978, and look at what had happened to the organized libertarian movement. Suddenly there sprang up the Cato Institute, along with an array of satellite organizations including a student group and the Libertarian Party itself, which became a cog in what we used to call the Koch Machine.
This mighty ideological center was made possible by the largesse of Charles G. Koch, an heir to the Koch family fortune, and Koch Industries, one of the largest privately-owned companies in the U.S.: the father, Fred C. Koch, had made his money in oil, engineering, and cattle, and passed on his fortune to his sons, at least two of whom-Charles and David-shared his libertarian beliefs.
From the outside looking in, all was well: magazine and newspaper articles hailed libertarianism as the Next Big Thing, and profiles of the Institute and its spin-off groups published in the mainstream media glowed with admiration for their organization and enthusiasm, if not praise for their ideas. In the mid-1970s, when Charles Koch contacted Rothbard about what he could do to advance the movement’s goals, the late great libertarian theorist wrote a long memo that projected the creation of a mighty apparatus of libertarian cadre organizing in virtually every arena of American political and intellectual life.
Koch had the money, and Rothbard had the vision. At the core of it all was Rothbard’s conception of the Cato Institute-which, by the way, he came up with the name for-as a thinktank devoted to the development, spread, and popularization of the Austrian school of economics, free market solutions to social problems on the home front, a devotion to the preservation and expansion of civil liberties, and a consistent opposition to U.S. imperialism.
The split between Rothbard and the Institute he had inspired and essentially founded, was occasioned by the presidential campaign of 1980, which Rothbard was most unhappy with. In an incident that has become legendary in LP circles, the party’s candidate, Edward Clark, an oil company lawyer, went on national television to explain to interviewer Ted Koppel that libertarianism was basically just “low-tax liberalism.”
This outraged Rothbard for any number of very good reasons, not the least of which was its strategic wrongheadedness.
The Cato Institute strategy was to target the elites, especially in the media, but also in the two major political parties and government circles. Rothbard, on the other hand, took the diametrically opposite view: he envision a populist revolt against the elites, who profit from the maintenance and growth of State power. Libertarians, he believed, must make their appeal to ordinary people. Instead of aspiring to a position at court in the hope of whispering advice in the king’s ear, it is necessary to appeal to the great masses of Americans, so that libertarianism would become a living and vital political movement, and not just an intellectual parlor game.
When Clark, under the tutelage of the Cato high command, refused to come out for the abolition of the income tax, on the grounds that this constituted an unacceptable radicalism, Rothbard essentially broke with Cato, although the formal divorce didn’t come until a bit later, at the Libertarian Party’s 1983 national convention. Rothbard attacked the Clark campaign in a series of articles that mocked the campaign’s timidity and its rather pathetic appeal to the narrow interests of “low-tax liberals” of a certain class and age.
Rothbard’s erstwhile followers in the Cato group made their appeal to influential sympathizers who must be kept blissfully ignorant of the more controversial aspects of libertarian theory. This was symbolized by their move to Washington, where they built themselves a glass and steel headquarters and set up shop as resident libertarians in the corridors of power.
Rothbard, on the other hand, pursued the path of populism. He insisted that libertarian political action must be directed at the majority of the American people, and not tailored to suit the cultural prejudices and ideological idiosyncrasies of New York Times-reading white-wine-and brie liberals.
Rothbard and Cato went their separate ways, and so did the two wings of the movement-one gravitating in the direction of Washington DC, and the other concentrated in the hinterlands, especially in the West, where a wave of right-wing populism was beginning to rise up in opposition to a regnant liberalism. The Beltway faction of the libertarian movement adapted itself to its surroundings with chameleon-like instincts, while Rothbard and his supporters organized in the countryside, so to speak, planning a guerrilla insurgency and cultivating conservatives who were beginning to resent the incursion of the neocons-invaders from the Left-and the effective takeover of the official conservative movement by former leftists and right-wing Social Democrats.
The Rothbard-Cato split has sundered the libertarian movement to this day, and that was certainly underscored by the response of the Beltway libertarians to the unprecedented success of the Paul campaign. As the Good Doctor began to garner a fair share of media attention, and his polls numbers began to rise, the Beltway crowd sneered that he was too old-fashioned, too culturally conservative, and not likely to make any headway. When he did make headway, and was addressing crowds of many thousands at rallies across the country, and the record campaign contributions began to get the campaign noticed, the Beltway crowd - most notably, the editors and writers at Reason, a Koch-funded enterprise that styles itself the leading libertarian magazine - began to back off, and offer their reluctant (although still condescending) support. But not for long.
The Koch machine was merely revving up its motors for a smear campaign of unparalleled viciousness. Just as the Paul campaign was beginning to break through the wall of silence and liberal media bias, the New Republic magazine came out with a piece by one Jamie Kirchick that accused the Paul campaign and Ron himself of appealing to thinly-disguised racism. In particular, the target of Kirchick’s scrutiny was a series of Ron Paul newsletters written during the early 1990s that violated the canons of political correctness as much for the style they were written in as their contents. The Reason crowd immediately took up the cry of “racism!” and devoted endless articles and blog entries to the ensuing controversy, as the Beltway “libertarians” crowd gleefully prepared for a righteous purge.
Writing in the online edition of Reason, David Weigel and Julian Sanchez (the latter of the Cato Institute) claimed that the whole episode was rooted in a “strategy” enunciated by the late Murray N. Rothbard, the economist and author, and Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr., founder and president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, designed to appeal to those dreaded “right-wing populists.”::
“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.
“….The most detailed description of the strategy came in an essay Rothbard wrote for the January 1992 Rothbard-Rockwell Report, titled “Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement.” Lamenting that mainstream intellectuals and opinion leaders were too invested in the status quo to be brought around to a libertarian view, Rothbard pointed to David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for an “Outreach to the Rednecks,” which would fashion a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition by targeting the disaffected working and middle classes. (Duke, a former Klansman, was discussed in strikingly similar terms in a 1990 Ron Paul Political Report.) These groups could be mobilized to oppose an expansive state, Rothbard posited, by exposing an “unholy alliance of ‘corporate liberal’ Big Business and media elites, who, through big government, have privileged and caused to rise up a parasitic Underclass, who, among them all, are looting and oppressing the bulk of the middle and working classes in America.”
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: that is far too “square” for the black-leather-jacket-wearing Nick Gillespie, and his successor, Matt Welch. Right-wing populism? As far as the Reason crowd is concerned, one might as well tout the appeal of “right-wing botulism.” Libertarianism, as understood by the editors of Reason, is all about legalizing methamphetamine, having endless “hook-ups,” and giving mega-corporations tax breaks (so Reason can keep scarfing up those big corporate contributors). 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 to Team Reason.
This railing against populism-that is, against any appeal to ordinary Americans-is part and parcel of the Beltway’s perversion of libertarianism, which relegates its pet libertarian ideologues to the role of court jesters, whose intellectual preoccupations-the legalization of drugs, and the celebration of cultural libertinism-are considered amusing and mostly harmless.
In considering the future of libertarianism, one has to imagine at least two futures: one for the kept intellectuals of the Beltway set, and the other for the populist grassroots movement that roiled the American hinterlands with its radical opposition to imperialist wars and fiat money.
The former will persist as long as its subsidies continue, but the so-called Orange Line Mafia has discredited itself with its vicious hostility directed at Ron Paul, which was on display long before the newsletter controversy broke out. On the other hand, the Paul wing of the movement has all the energy, the vitality, and the staying power of a movement that really does have a future.
Foreign policy-the question of whether we’re going to be imperial or return to republicanism-is the overriding issue of our day, and anyone who abstains in this realm really ceases to be relevant. I find it odd, therefore, that the leading libertarian print magazine, Reason, took no editorial stance on the invasion of Iraq, but merely opened it up for “debate.” That’s funny, to these people, such issues as drug legalization and gay marriage are never debatable: the “correct” libertarian position is simply assumed. Yet when it comes to the question of mass murder-well, that’s just a matter of opinion.
The error made by the Cato crowd, especially after their fateful move to Washington, DC, is similar to that made by those French libertarian theorists, including the economist Fénelon, who hoped to persuade the French ruling class to give up its power over the economic life of the nation and inaugurate an era of peace and freedom. Their strategy was to tutor the Duke of Burgundy, second in line to succeed to the French throne, and ally themselves with the Burgundians at court. When the king’s first heir died, their hopes rose: these were dashed, however, as the Duke himself, and his entire family, took sick with the same illness, which likewise proved fatal-dealing a death blow to their plans to make France a laissez-faire paradise.
Writing of the tragic end of the Burgundians in his An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Rothbard was clearly addressing himself, at least in part, to his factional opponents in the libertarian movement, namely the Cato group, which had chosen the path of influencing the elites rather than making a populist appeal to ordinary Americans against the power elite:
“The tragic end of the Burgundy circle,” he writes, “illuminates a crucial strategic flaw in the plans, not only of the Burgundy circle, but also of the physiocrats, Turgot and other laissez faire thinkers of the later eighteenth centuryy. For their hopes and their strategic vision were invariably to work within the matrix of he monarchy and its virtually absolute rule. The idea, in short, was to get into court, influence the corridors of power, and induce the king to adopt libertarian ideas and impose a laissez-faire revolution.”
The Burgundy circle learned it couldn’t be done, but when it comes to libertarians, no strategic error is so egregious that it isn’t repeated at least once a generation, if not more-and always with the same results. The Beltway libertarians are, for the most part, pursuing the Burgundian course, and they will have no better results than Fénelon and Turgot.
On the other hand, the Paulistas-the radicalized, fully energized, and decidedly non-Beltway activists who were and are inspired by Ron Paul’s untrammeled vision of liberty-have had some success.
Surely, the Paul campaign has done more to popularize libertarianism than the combined efforts of the Koch-funded organizations have over the past two decades.
It’s no accident that the Paul campaign springs from the radical Rothbardian wing of the movement. Populism-an appeal to the great majority of the American people-on behalf of liberty is no vice. And if that is extremism, then let the cosmotarians make the most of it.
Rhoda, someone could call you racist for always interpreting mention of reparations as a reference to reparations for slavery. I don't, but I can see how someone might. I do think you are probably ignorant, though. Since you overlooked Kling's reference to it, it seems you know nothing about WW I and its aftermath, including the two-decades-long voluminous arguments over reparations. Here's a clue for you, Rhoda: from wikipedia
Freddie,
To assert he was being foolish, you would have to believe it occurred to him, before or while he was speaking and writing, that the words "thugs" and "reparations" would invite charges of racism. I think it completely plausible that it never crossed his mind prior to the uproar.
However, I read the "reparations" blog entry yesterday, my immediate thought was, "Kling will regret using that word because some idiot will misconstrue it."
Rhoda: you just confirmed my theory.
When you call someone racist it means you lost the argument.
Derek
Dang, now the scroll wheel on my mouse is broken. Who can I sue?
Jesus Christ! Nobody cares about Ron Paul anymore! Please stop posting your screeds from last year.
Ron Paul never turned a blind eye to his news letters. He's explained his roll and has taken full responsibility for the newsletters on CNN with Wolf Blitzer. Frankly, I don't find anything in the newsletters racist; it's just an assessment of what Big Gov't has produced for a group of people. The issue was just rehashing of old crap by forces that wanted to stop Ron Paul at all costs prior to the vote in New Hampshire. Dr. Paul raised more money then any of the 8 or so dim wits in the 4th quarter and the establishment had to stop him at all costs. My gut felling is they were launched by John McCain and carried out by Neo Conservatives forces loyal to him in the internet, print and TV media. All RINO(s) that have shunned there roots of limited Gov't and Liberty are now done. The GOP will implode on itself as it pretends to fight Obama and at the same time pass his bills. The GOP is done period! You'd think the neo-cons would be busy pointing there finger at the neo-libs tonight, but no they have to take on Constitutionalists and Libertarians instead. When are Republican Neo-cons and Democrat Neo-libs going to take any responsibility for the mess this country is in? Never! Both just toss straw man arguments out there and point the fingers at others. Some of you better start reading the 30 years or so of Dr. Paul's financial warnings with regards to the economy and wake up to what is going to fall on your collectivist heads.
It's not about Paul. It's about Megan's blatant hypocrisy. She brought up the Paul scandal and admitted to being part of it. That is relevant to this topic. What are her standards for defense or condemnation?
There is no more evidence of crypto-racism of Paul or Rockwell then there is of Kling. The difference that colors (excuse the term) her judgment is that she agrees with Kling's ideology more than Paul's.
That's sloppy reasoning at best and more likely just dishonesty. It is compounded by a false accusation against Rockwell with no evidence whatsoever.
Show your work, Megan. Show your work. If you can't take it as well as you dish it out, then maybe your not tall enough to go on this ride yet.
Kling foolishly calls Obama's stimulus 'reparations' (he also talks about thugs and thieves),
"You're still begging the question. It's only "foolish" if you assume it's an indication of racism."
I disagree, along with Freddie. It's "foolish" to use language apt to cause offense, when that offense is forseeable, even if -- especially if -- you don't mean to cause offense, but want to talk about something serious instead. Presumably Kling didn't want his post to give rise to an endless race debate, but it did, and would not have, if he had not carelessly used a phrase with specific racial power in this context.
People do this all the time. Ever said something that offended someone, and felt bad because you didn't mean it like that, but in retrospect, the offense was forseeable and you saw you were in error to speak that way? Haven't we all? Not racist, but foolish.
This is what I'm getting at. Is there really nothing foolish in the way Kling assembled that post? If we can call Wolcott out for racial sensitivity and hyperbole, isn't Kling at fault for using heavily loaded terms in a key context and apparently not even realizing it?
Also: to those saying racial comments are just immature and boorish, I'm afraid that doesn't go far enough. Farting loudly and laughing is immature and boorish. Is that morally the same as saying that the Jews will always get you for the last dime, because that's the way those oily-noised hymies work, and you oughtta know that? There's no moral or ethical implication of saying that -- it's just "immature", like cutting wind at dinner, no more no less? Comments like that have a self-evident ethical and moral dimension.
Would you please settle down, B.S.?
And Justin, enough.
And now I learn, from inside sources, that Reason senior editor Brian Doherty, author of the monumental Radicals for Capitalism, a "freewheeling" history of the American libertarian movement, is in danger of being fired because he's too pro-Paul.
Funny, this is precisely as untrue (and delusional) as when Justin first wrote these words, more than a year ago.
And such was Reason's commitment to smearing Ron Paul that we, uh, put him on the cover of our February 2009 issue, wrote favorably about him in the Washington Post, and solicited & published his commentary about the economic crisis several months after Justin started shouting this nonsense.
"When I read reparations bill; I think slavery."
Even when it's in the immediate context of a mention of Germany and World War I? If so, that speaks to a lack of perspective or historical knowledge on your part.
Yancy,
To put it brief, "to assert he was foolish" I say that it's enough merely not to know that he would offend someone with his words, because it's so forseeable. He foolishly did not realize how loaded his description was in that context. If you really should know something and don't, you're a fool. And you really should know that saying "Barack Obama's first spending package is a reparations bill" is going to carry some racial weight, even if you talk about WWI. Sound fair?
Justin,
Could you please edit your comments down to War and Peace scale?
"accusing someone of deliberately using racial code-words to inflame prejudice against Barack Obama is a serious thing. The very reason it is a serious thing is that in order to try and stomp it out, we have made overt prejudice into the social equivalent of a capital crime. I approve of this. But the severity of the punishment means that accusation of the crime should be held to a high standard--'beyond a reasonable doubt'. "
What standard of proof did Megan use to determine Rockwell's alleged authorship of the newsletters, much less their "vicious crypto-racist tone" ?
Are false accusations only a serious thing when directed against Barack Obama? Is it okay to libel people if their economic and political ideas are different than yours? If not, then why did you do it, Megan? Show us why you are not applying different standards to the paleos and Kling.
The newsletters were not crypto-racist anymore than Kling's words were and Rockwell didn't even write them anyway. Megan didn't even read the newsletters other than some cherry-picked, out-of-context quotes (I have evidence of this if requested). It's not any different that taking the word "reparations" out of context. That she now rails against the sort of calumny she is guilty of rings kind of hollow.
On top of that, Megan has no evidence of Rockwell's ghost-writing, because there is none. none. It takes a lot of nerve to accuse someone of racism for the misinterpretation of something they didn't even write in the first place.
Nick,
Then it is foolish to ever use those words again, because someone, somewhere will always misinterpret them as racial code words. Note, Kling actually describes the meanings of these words in the context of his blog entry and his speech- the words were not left there hanging by themselves by the author (the same can not be said of his detractors, however).
I'm sorry, this hypersensitivity to individual words is the problem, not the language employed in this instance.
"such was Reason's commitment to smearing Ron Paul that we, uh, put him on the cover of our February 2009 issue, wrote favorably about him in the Washington Post, and solicited & published his commentary about the economic crisis several months after Justin started shouting this nonsense."
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.
Welch, of course, has been in the vanguard of the neocon-led smear campaign against Ron Paul from the very beginning. He and his magazine have been on a jihad against Paul and his circle ever since The New Republic made them an issue, albeit a minor one that had no effect on the campaign—newsletters that, read in context, are merely reflective of the typical conservative Republican view of the world, circa 1980-something. I’ve debunked the left-neocon Jamie Kirchick’s interpretation here. Now Welch has come up with the Right-neocon version, a clueless and embarrassing jeremiad, seemingly written by someone utterly unfamiliar with libertarianism.
He mocks Paul for refusing to vote to make Martin Luther King’s birthday a national holiday, whilst, two decades later, calling him a “hero” for his strategy of nonviolent resistance against state oppression. Yet anyone even vaguely familiar with libertarianism can see why Welch’s mockery is misplaced.
King was the leading advocate of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade “discrimination” based on race, gender, religion—and the list gets longer with the years, as the politically correct lawyers discover new victim groups to “protect.” Libertarians oppose these laws because they violate property rights—and anyway, as Richard Epstein pointed out in an extensive interview in Reason magazine, the alleged beneficiaries gain nothing from the passage of such legislation. I might add that the interviewer at no time challenged Epstein, or accused him of harboring racist sympathies, even though he (Epstein) was advocating the repeal of Martin Luther King’s life work. Apparently the MLK standard of value, wherein one’s attitude to the slain civil rights leader and plagiarist is the moral and ideological yardstick that measures one’s degree (or lack) of “racism,” is selectively applied.
When it comes to Epstein, and his scholarly and somewhat abstract analysis of the very real harm done by anti-discrimination laws and other “civil rights” legislation, the editors of Reason have been willing to allow discussion, and, more than that, challenge liberal orthodoxy on this question. And I have to say that, having been a reader of Reason since the beginning, I can recall no sympathy for King and his cause while he was still alive. Now we are told that to question or in any way acknowledge the flaws of a complex man—his close association with known Communist Party members, his naïve and quite mistaken economic views, his philandering, deviancy, and human failings—is tantamount to “racism” and “appealing to white resentment.”
What sanctimonious baloney. Reason is constantly polemicizing against drug laws, quite rightly claiming that their enforcement victimizes blacks and other minorities disproportionately: it’s okay to appeal to black racial resentment—or, rather, white “latte liberal” racial resentment on behalf of blacks—but the reverse is not true. It’s not okay to appeal to white resentment of, say, affirmative action or to debunk the idea of “civil rights” by pointing out that King’s legislative monument, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, was a massive violation of property rights—precisely the sort of big government scheme one would expect the editor of the premier libertarian magazine to oppose.
On the other hand, Paul’s characterization of King as heroic is not a contradiction, because King himself was contradictory. It is perfectly proper, from a libertarian perspective, to admire the methods of a movement such as, say, Gandhi’s or King’s, without giving unqualified support to the movement’s specific political goals. Yet ideologically, King, like Gandhi, was a mixed bag. Quite aside from campaigning for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he fought against state-enforced segregation, which regulated private property according to racist strictures – and denied blacks equal access to taxpayer-funded public facilities, including the voting booth.
Welch falsely claims that Murray Rothbard held up David Duke as an “exemplar”— an outright lie. He furthermore conflates a speech Rothbard gave to the John Randolph Club with one of Ron Paul’s newsletters. But never mind the details: the point is that neither Rothbard, Paul, or Lew Rockwell held up Duke as an “exemplar” of anything but demagoguery and racial collectivism. What the author of the newsletter in question was saying, as I pointed out here, is that there is some reason why Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, nearly clinched the Republican nomination for governor of Louisiana back in 1991, one that—from a libertarian perspective—was and is entirely legitimate. As many commentators pointed out at the time, the bulk of Duke’s support at the polls came from “protest” votes, and did not constitute endorsement of his racist views. What were these voters protesting? Didn’t they have some legitimate grievances against a system that penalized their sons and daughters in the name of “redressing past injustice”?
The 1992 Los Angeles riots over the Rodney King incident sparked a bout of racial and ideological polarization: the “Great Society” had spawned a culture of entitlement in the black inner cities and the rioters, instead of being universally and roundly condemned, were catered to by the liberal elites, and even excused by black polticians. Duke, who, the Ron Paul newsletter averred, lacked “a consistent package of freedom,” was successful because because he spoke to these concerns—while no other politician dared.
The Rothbard-paleo strategy for the Right, cited by Welch, had nothing to do with “playing on white fears of black criminality,” and everything to do with playing on the fear of law-abiding non-rioters who saw criminality being pandered to and legitimized. As white motorists were dragged out of their cars in Los Angeles, where was the outrage? Imagine, for a moment, the reverse scenario: black drivers being hauled out of their automobiles and stomped half to death on the streets of, say, Alabama. The Matt Welchs of this world would have demanded that the cops shoot the rioters on sight: yet Welch is horrified that Rothbard called for similar “street justice” when the lives and property of the Korean community of Los Angeles were threatened by racist mobs of looters. Apparently, Korean storekeepers do not qualify as an officially-recognized victim group.
What is striking about Welch’s polemic is its utter hypocrisy: on the one hand, Reason magazine has devoted many pages to explaining just why so-called civil right legislation is wrong, counter-productive, and the cause of social tensions. On the other hand, we are supposed to worship at the altar of Martin Luther King—and, furthermore, it is forbidden for any libertarian political figure to actually raise these issues in the public arena. That is the exclusive domain of theoreticians like Epstein and others. In short, as long as libertarianism is consigned to the role of an entertaining intellectual parlor game, talking about these kinds of issues is permitted. But as soon as some libertarian political figure challenges the paradigm—say, by refusing to give millions of federal and state employees a paid holiday in honor of King’s ambiguous legacy—that’s another matter entirely.
Welch’s favorite rhetorical trick is context-dropping, and so you’ll note that he never quotes more than a single word or isolated phrase of Rothbard’s “Strategy for the Right.” As a typical liberal, he blanches at the sight of Joe McCarthy’s name and never addresses what Rothbard actually says about Tail-Gunner Joe. Rothbard is chiefly concerned, in his peroration, with the phenomenon of McCarthyism as a populist, anti-government movement that threatened the liberal elites, and which, for just that reason, was hated by the liberal intellectuals and academicians, and the future neoconservatives, who were then the liberal mandarins of the postwar consensus.
As the wartime era drew to a close, and the long shadow of Franklin Delano Roosevelt began to recede, the McCarthy movement was the long-suffering right-wing’s revenge against the pinko New Dealers who had called for sedition trials against opponents of the war, smeared FDR”s enemies as “traitors,” and apologized and covered up for the internment of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps. For a while, these “liberals”—of a decidedly illiberal sort—ruled the roost, and took every opportunity to persecute their enemies and drive them out of public life. With the rise of McCarthy and the anti-communist movement, the shoe was suddenly on the other foot.
Rothbard came of political age during the McCarthy era, and saw the pro-McCarthy movement from the inside. Indeed, he was the author of a wonderful speech delivered by George Reisman (now a prominent libertarian economist) to a large McCarthyite rally in which he asked: what was the real reason for the intensity of the hatred directed at McCarthy, Roy Cohn, et al?
The Rothbardian answer: an assault on domestic Reds in the federal government represented a direct threat to “the Socialists and the New Dealers, who have been running our political life for the last twenty-five years, and are still running it!” The crowd of some 1,500—gathered in the Hotel Astor on July 28, 1954, in defense of McCarthy aide Roy Cohn, the only gay AIDs victim in history who is vilified to this day—went wild. Reisman-Rothbard continued:
“As the Chicago Tribune aptly put it, the Case of Roy Cohn is the American Dreyfus case. As Dreyfus was redeemed, so will Roy Cohn when the American people have taken back their government from the criminal alliance of Communists, Socialists, New Dealers, and Eisenhower-Dewey Republicans.”
In those days, when Daniel Bell was proclaiming “the end of ideology,” and the social democratic notions of the New York intellectuals were the unchallenged ideological and political status quo, “there was a vital need to appeal directly to the masses, emotionally, even demagogically, over the heads of the Establishment of the Ivy League, the mass media, the liberal intellectuals, of the Republican-Democrat political machine”—and McCarthy fit the bill.
Anyone who bothers to read Rothbard’s “Strategy for the Right” with some modicum of understanding realizes that he is not saying McCarthy was a libertarian, or that his ends were admirable.
“The unique and the glorious thing about McCarthy was not his goals or his ideology but precisely his radical, populist means. For McCarthy was able, for a few years, to short-circuit the intense opposition of all the elites in American life: from the Eisenhower-Rockefeller administration to the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex to liberal and left media and academic elites – to overcome all that opposition and reach and inspire the masses directly. And he did it through television, and without any real movement behind him.”
The neocons – who were then in the Hubert Humphrey-Scoop Jackson phase of their ideological hegira – immediately took out after McCarthy and the McCarthyites. As Peter Viereck, the pet “conservative” of the New York intellectuals, said of the Reisman-Rothbard speech at the Hotel Astor, it was “an outburst of direct democracy,” which “comes straight from the leftist rhetoric of the old Populists and Progressives, a rhetoric forever urging the People to take back ‘their’ government from the conspiring Powers That Be.”
“Take back America” is the slogan of yet another movement of the Right that Señor Welch finds unwholesome, as he berates Rothbard and the paleos for having “rallied around Pitchfork Pat Buchanan for president in 1992.” Curiously, he never mentions the main reason for the Rothbard-Buchanan alliance, which was a mutual agreement on the key issue of foreign policy. With the Cold War over, Buchanan and his fellow paleoconservatives began moving in the direction of a consistent anti-interventionism. Buchanan took on the neocons, almost alone, during the (brief) debate over Gulf War I, which turned out to be a dress rehearsal for the invasion and occupation of Iraq by Bush II. As such, he was way ahead of his time, and so was Rothbard, who foresaw that, with the implosion of Communism, a large section of the right could and would abandon militarism and join with libertarians in urging “Come home, America.”
Welch doesn’t mention this, and for the very good reason that his own foreign-policy views are far from libertarian. In his essay, he says that, as the cold war came to an end, “I was more interested in poking through the rubble of communism abroad.” Which raises the question: who the hell is Welch, anyway?
I had never heard of him until he became known as one of the ill-fated “warbloggers” who arose in the wake of 9/11 to vent their rage at all things Muslim and berate liberal-lefties like Susan Sontag for supposedly “blaming America” for the attacks. (Like Ron Paul and Michael Scheuer, Sontag saw 9/11 as “blowback” from our history of supporting tyrants and otherwise intervening in the Middle East, which is another reason—albeit unadmitted—that Welch has led the charge against Paul and the antiwar paleo-libertarians such as Rockwell).
I see here that Welch was the editor of a magazine published in Prague called Prognosis. While conservatives like Buchanan were discovering that our foreign policy of relentless aggression had a down side, Welch was unearthing new rationales for U.S. military intervention in Central Europe:
“I don’t claim to be an expert on anything, but I can talk pretty confidently about Central Europe from 1990-98, and especially the expansion of NATO and U.S. involvement in the Balkans (both of which I wrote and edited about extensively). And in those cases where my limited knowledge has brushed up against the party line of the Chomskyite Left’s foreign policy views, I have been appalled. For example, I’ve received more than a dozen e-mails from people quoting Chomsky while citing Kosovo as yet another example of empire-extending, militaryindustrialcomplex bloodlust on the part of a hypocritical U.S. This is so wrong, words are hard to come by. (To be an equal opportunity Left-basher, let me also say that Christopher Hitchens is chock full of shit when he implies – as he did in ‘No One Left To Lie To,’ that Clinton’s expansion of NATO was A) wrong, and B) done primarily to “furnish a sales market for those in ‘the contractor community’”). Such explanations (especially Chomsky’s) deny even the existence of Wilsonian diplomacy, or Vaclav Havel’s forceful arguments & access to Clinton’s ear, or of the sea change in U.S. policy that came about when a child of the Munich sellout (Madeleine Albright) took the reigns [sic] of the State Department. It also seems, to my ears, almost oblivious to how the horrifying Balkan slaughter of 1991-94 damaged the collective psyches of diplomats and citizens of West Europe and America. For starters, that period exposed just how not-ready-for-prime-time the idea of collective European defense was, which was yet another argument for expanding NATO.
According to Welch, in this convoluted text, NATO expansion is a good thing. Chomsky is a monster for suggesting otherwise, and for opposing our attack on a nation – Yugoslavia—which never posed a threat to us. No mention is made of the 5,000 of its citizens we killed in the process. One of the few times Christopher Hitchens has ever been right about anything is the occasion for Welch’s condemnation: how wrong—and unlibertarian—could somebody possibly be?
Clinton’s war, in Welch’s view, was glorious: Mad Madeleine Albright is valorized as “the child of the Munich sellout.” U.S. sock puppet Vaclav Havel—how could this saint and his “powerful arguments” ever be wrong? And how about that “Wilsonian diplomacy”—you know, the sort with bombs attached? Of course, you can’t argue with that …
Is this guy for real?
What kind of a “libertarian” is it who lauds war—especially one which led to the creation of a gangster state in Kosovo, where the “Kosovo Liberation Army” has driven out the Serbs except in a small northern enclave and rules the state by means of violence and intimidation? Perhaps he’s attracted to their penchant for burning down churches: now there’s a program (or is that pogrom?) Welch and his fellow “cultural libertarians” can get behind!
Welch now claims he took no position on the Iraq war, yet he spent the run-up to the invasion disdaining antiwar commentary, touting his fellow anti-“Islamofascist” “liberals” like David Rieff for supporting the invasion in the name of “modernity,” denying the atmosphere of intellectual intimidation that made the march to war with Iraq nearly inevitable, and trying vainly to prove that the sanctions imposed on Iraq since the Bush I era only killed a few thousand people, instead of the hundreds of thousands claimed by several experts—and that it was all Saddam’s fault, anyway, for trying to defy the American hegemon.
Is Welch a libertarian? Certainly not—by his own admission:
“I’m a liberal. I take liberalism to mean a belief in policy geared toward easing poverty, extending rights to every walking human who hasn’t utterly forfeited them, getting the government out of the morality business, regulating markets judiciously, ensuring the pervasive yet hopefully efficient delivery of non-market goods such as education, health care and national defense, and otherwise having the sense to let the private sector handle private concerns. What makes me not “liberal” in the way that people who call themselves ‘progressives’ are seen as “liberal,” is that I don’t think the U.S. is the primary fount of global wickedness, I am heartily in favor of the war against Al-Qaeda,” (Emphasis in original)
Welch isn’t just a liberal, he’s a boringly typical representative of the species who responds with knee-jerk irrationality when confronted with people like Joe McCarthy, Pat Buchanan, and anyone who might be characterized as a right-wing populist. He feigns support for the Paul campaign, in spite of the fact that it sprang from – and owes its success to—this very same right-wing populist sentiment, which has always been the core of Paul’s national constituency.
Welch hates Paul—and McCarthy, and Buchanan—for the same reasons the neocons hate populism in all its forms: it’s those right-wing yahoos making trouble again, disturbing the placid waters of the Washington Consensus. The neocons like to have faux-“libertarians” of Welch’s (and Nick Gillespie’s) ilk around, much as royal personages keep court jesters: to entertain them with displays of libertarianism as an intellectual game, and not a serious political philosophy with real roots in the country. That’s why Paul has built a genuine mass movement, and Reason magazine has well under 50,000 subscribers—and can’t get along without massive subsidies from numerous neocon foundations.
I once complained to a Reason staff member that I found it inexplicable the editors of the magazine would find the Iraq war debatable, giving war proponents a platform to air their views, while they wouldn’t extend the same courtesy to advocates of the “war on drugs”—and was told that the funders of the magazine would never allow it to take an unambiguously antiwar position. Welch, whose cowardly—and, in retrospect, downright stupid—refusal to take a clear position one way or the other (all the while encouraging the pro-war crowd, and displaying his contempt for those who warned of the impending disaster) made him a perfect fit for the editorship of Reason, once they got rid of Virginia “More Dynamic Than Thou” Postrel.
Welch’s first editorial for Reason is a blot on the magazine’s once-proud history, and an indication that worse is yet to come. One awaits the Reason cover story on “How To Regulate Markets Judiciously” with bated breath.
Wonder if The Atlantic is going to bill Raimondo for advertising space.
Matt, you're not fooling anyone. Reason was never in danger of losing it's tax-exempt status for political advocacy of the Paul campaign. Rockwell, OTOH, was. He did, even. Lew Rockwell.com is now taxed because he would not stop supporting Paul just to save money. Willingly. That's how much he cared for his own hide at Paul's expense. If had written those newsletters, he would have fessed up in a heartbeat. He DID NOT WRITE THEM.And you didn't even read them in their entirety before echoing Kirchick's narrative.
You sold your soul for a cheeseburger, you little twerp. I'd love to go three rounds with you if you ever had the guts.
Yancy,
I understand your position, but I think the problem is the thought that it's always just one or two "individual words" that causes the problem. The problem isn't, "oooh, he said 'reparations' or even "he said it while talking about The One, our Messiah!"
He said the first black president's first spending bill was a reparations bill for Democrats who live on the dole, ripping the Republicans who pay the lion's share of income taxes.
That's not just one word. It's a whole concept with loads of resonance and alllusion, and Kling should see that it's hard for some people to swallow as not at all about race.
I'm not saying he's a racist. I think the people who say so, based on that alone, are fools. I said so in my first comment. He just didn't say one explicit word about race at all. But to say what he did and not see how many people could take it, well, he's also a fool.
I saw Serwer fuck a goat, once. If he denies it, it just goes to show he's more concerned with false accusations of bestiality than with goat-fucking. Typical liberal.
I really hope this isn't the real "Justin Raimondo" commenting on this thread. Posting entire articles rather than linking to them constitutes embarrassing lack of etiquette and consideration for those of us with carpal tunnel.
@Matt Welch (and Justin, if it is indeed the real "Justin"): WTF are you doing here, anyhow? As critical as I am of Megan's post, the comments section is an inappropriate place for prominent libertarians to stage internecine pissing matches. If you want to go at it, you both have prominent platforms to do just that. No sense dragging Megan with you through the mud...
Cosmopolitan "libertarians"
Many of these paycheck vampires call themselves “libertarians” and inspire us with their libertarian rhetoric to support them with our attention, our blog hits, and our tuition money as well as the tax money that already funds them or their friends. But at the first sign of political incorrectness, all these below-the-Beltway “libertarians” have dumped Ron Paul like yesterday’s garbage. Now they can rest easy that they will still be invited to the parties thrown by their lobbyist and government employee and contractor friends, who for a second or two got worried by all those Google searches that Ron Paul might have some influence, resulting in some of them losing their jobs (end the income tax with no replacement?! The guy is obvioiusly a kook, and we don’t invite the supporters of kooks to our parties!). Now everybody around the Beltway can go back to partying at the taxpayer’s expense. All the money will keep flowing in, hooray!
The lesson millions of young libertarians have now learned from our mass media and our beltway “libertarians”? Libertarian electioneering is futile. Voting is futile. Democracy is futile. It’s hip to be “libertarian.” But anybody who actually wants liberty is a kook, as can be proven by their association with kooks. Beltway wonks posing as “libertarians” are happy to write things to inflame your hopes for liberty that they don’t really mean. Then they make sure that we elect the politicians their friends want — the ones that will enslave your future to pay for full social security for Baby Boomers. The ones that will send you off to foreign lands to kill and die. Not only the journalists who hang out with the government bureaucrats and lobbyists, and not only the politicians who talk sweet while they drain your paycheck and kill your fellow human beings, but even the beltway “libertarians” are happy to let a whole new generation of libertarians go down the tubes in order to keep their Beltway friends happy.
It appears that another Atlantic blogger, Ta-Nehisi Coates, has had some experience with Serwer misinterpreting his prose as well.
"No sense dragging Megan with you through the mud..."
It seems that Megan wants to be so drug:
"I was one of that gang of libertarians who took a whole lot of grief from the paleolibertarian contingent for urging the shunning of Lew Rockwell..."
And it's not the real Raimondo. He has better things to do. He just wrote this wonderful article:
http://www.takimag.com/site/article/rio_nido/
Justin isn't just a better libertarian. He's by far a better writer than any of the Cosmotards.
It's amazing how during the last forty years or so our country has gotten so absorbed in worrying about smears made against someone who is a racial minority that we've utterly forgotten about smears made against someone who has a lower-class or lower-middle-class background.
Many of the horrible things said about Sarah Palin by the Democrats fit into this category, and they were made by people who ought to know better. Nor are these the only examples. Academia is filled with people who look down on the lower classes, and see nothing wrong with doing that.
JFP, don't waste your time. We aren't cosmopolitan enough for Megan and the gang. They get annoyed when us mouth-breathers out here in flyover country get uppity. We're s'posed to just shut up and mind our betters. Didn't you get the memo?
If you cannot think of reparations when discussed in the context of WWI as being an allusion to WWI reparations rather than slavery, they you are one of the following:
1. So historically illiterate that all this WWI stuff sounds like the Charlie Brown Adult Voice (wah, wah, wah wah waaaah)
2. So fixated on race that you ignore what people write in favor of stimulating all those endorphin-producing self-righteousness nodules
or
3. Are a hack.
Responses:
1. Please make an effort to learn about that which you speak (or write). This is an embarrassing level of historical literacy.
2. Try looking at the world through multiple lenses. It's a much more interesting place, really. Racism is an important lens, but...
3. Feh.
People like this should be drawn and quartered. The last thing they want is for "racism" to disappear.
Why so serious, Paultards?
"Speak the truth, speak it clear, and tell the PC police to go and fuck themselves."
Here, here.
The most pathetic aspect of this situation is you realize (correctly) that it strengthens your argument in the eyes of the mob to preface what you write with, "as a dark skinned person." It doesn't fucking matter. Words are either correct or incorrect on their merits, not according to who says them.
That goes for chickenhawk nonsense, race crap, poverty, et. al.
Words are either correct or incorrect on their merits, not according to who says them.
I can just see a really fat, ugly, socially awkward person typing that.
But, hey: Why so serious?
Minos,
Your incivility is unbecoming (probably your self-righteousness nodes) but out of respect for you, I'll go ahead and respond in kind.
If you cannot understand that there was a second, obvious context here. Obama is the first black president, and that this is his first spending bill being talked about. If you don't think that this context will affect how some people react to talk about "reperations bill" for "Democrats living off taxes" then you are a total fool. You are blindingly, maddengly ignorant. You are wilfully trying to erase race from a discussion in which, sorry, it remains manifest, no matter how much you may want to wish it away, because you would rather only see things from your point of view.
Yes. Kling was talking about WWI. I get it. That's not the only context here. You need to get this. It's especially meaningful that for so long "Democrat living on the dole" has implied, in the minds of many, a disproportionate number racial minorities, while "high income tax paying Republicans" implied, in the minds of many, a mostly white group. These are also contexts in which Kling spoke. It all adds up, it all connects, it's all relevant, and you don't have to search for righteous outrage to get there.
Like you said: try looking at the world through multiple lenses. No, do me one better, buddy: understand that things often get heard through multiple lenses.
And be less of an arrogant prick. That you miss so much of what's going on around you in this thread, or aren't clever enough to recognize the purchase of other view points in this world, doesn't make you a better person.
"I think that accusations of racism should be aired when there's solid reason to believe they're true"
The problem is that everyone has a different idea of what "solid" is. For example, Ron Paul's unsolicited campaign contribution from some neo-nazi, vs. Obama's 20 year association with Reverend Wright. Now it could be argued that both men are opportunistically searching for political support from those who may have some racist sympathies that they themselves do not share, but somehow that's only okay for one of them.
"Why so serious, Paultards?"
Good point. It is kind of funny that Megan gets her panties in a bunch when one of her guys gets kirchicked.
The only thing I don't know for sure is if she doesn't know she's an elitist or if she actually thinks she's elite because she's a slightly smarter than average Irish chick who went to a pretty good school. She wouldn't last ten minutes on the mean streets here in Ciudad Juarez.
Megan,
I think you're overanalyzing and underthinking. If you want to confront some real racism, let's talk about Gaza. You see, I am not so much concerned about one man's poor, or imprudent, choice of words, as I am concerned about some totalitarian state (like Israel) bombing the Hell out of civilians to expand the little nation-state of Israel through apartheid. Come to think of it, you might really want to tackle the big issues of racism, like the "war on terror" and the Anglo-oriented thrust to insure enslavement of the Arab peoples. Oh, well, probably too big for you to handle.
That's a good point, Scott. Orwell said that the corruption of society begins with the corruption of language. Defining racism inaccurately leads to misdiagnosing it. When past victims of racism (such as blacks and Jews) control the definition, they can (and unfortunately do) leverage that power to justify any atrocity.
"...Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called diversity actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist.
The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence, not skin color, gender, or ethnicity.
More importantly, in a free society every citizen gains a sense of himself as an individual, rather than developing a group or victim mentality. This leads to a sense of individual responsibility and personal pride, making skin color irrelevant. Rather than looking to government to correct our sins, we should understand that racism will endure until we stop thinking in terms of groups and begin thinking in terms of individual liberty..."
Educate youself...
Who better to define something than those who have experienced it to the greatest degree.
cooper, those who have experienced racism to the greatest degree are dead, obviously. With the exception of a few dwindling Holocaust survivors, modern blacks and Jews have no more experience with racism than anybody else.
try to see it from this perspective:
First, we need to define noble status. Our rule is simple: if either of your parents was a noble, you're a noble. While this is unusually inclusive for a hereditary order, it is the 21st century, after all. We can step out a little. And nobility remains a biological quality — a noble baby adopted by common parents is noble, a common baby adopted by noble parents is common.
Fine. What are the official duties and privileges of our new nobility? Obviously, we can't really call it a noble order unless it has duties and privileges.
Well, privileges, anyway. Who needs duties? What's the point of being a noble, if you're going to have all these duties? Screw it, it's the 21st century. We've transcended duties. On to the privileges.
The basic quality of a noble is that he or she is presumed to be better than commoners. Of course, both nobles and commoners are people. And people do vary. Individual circumstances must always be considered. However, the official presumption is that, in any conflict between a noble and a commoner, the noble is right and the commoner is wrong. Therefore, by default, the noble should win. This infallible logic is the root of our system of noble privilege.
For example, if a noble attacks a commoner, we can presume that the latter has in some way provoked or offended the former. The noble may of course be guilty of an offense, but the law must be extremely careful about establishing this. If there is a pattern of noble attacks on commoners, there is almost certainly a problem with the commoners, whose behavior should be examined and who may need supplemental education.
If a commoner attacks a noble, however, it is an extremely serious matter. And a pattern of commoner attacks on nobles is unthinkable — it is tantamount to the total breakdown of civilization. In fact, one way to measure the progress that modern society has made is that, in the lifetime of those now living, it was not at all unusual for mobs of commoners to attack and kill nobles! Needless to say, this doesn't happen anymore.
This intentional disparity in the treatment of unofficial violence creates the familiar effect of asymmetric territorial dominance. A noble can stroll anywhere he wants, at any time of day or night, anywhere in the country. Commoners are advised not to let the sun set on them in noble neighborhoods, and if they go there during the day they should have a good reason for doing so.
One of the main safeguards for our system of noble authority is a systematic effort to prevent the emergence of commoner organizations which might exercise military or political power. Commoners may of course have friends who are other commoners, but they may not network on this basis. Nobles may and of course do form exclusive social networks on the basis of nobility.
Most interactions between commoners and nobles, of course, do not involve violence or politics. Still, by living in the same society, commoners and nobles will inevitably come into conflict. Our goal is to settle these conflicts, by default, in favor of the noble.
For example, if a business must choose whether to hire one of two equally qualified applicants, and one is a noble while the other is a commoner, it should of course choose the noble. The same is true for educational admissions and any other contest of merit. Our presumption is that while nobles are intrinsically, inherently and immeasurably superior to commoners, any mundane process for evaluating individuals will fail to detect these ethereal qualities — for which the outcome must therefore be adjusted.
Speaking of the workplace, it is especially important not to let professional circles of commoner resistance develop. Therefore, we impose heavy fines on corporations whose internal or external policies or practices do not reflect a solid pro-noble position. For example, a corporation which permits its commoner employees to express insolence or disrespect toward its noble employees, regardless of their relationship in the corporate hierarchy, is clearly liable. Any such commoner must be fired at once if the matter is brought to the management's attention.
This is an especially valuable tool for promoting the nobility: it literally achieves that result. In practice it makes the noble in any meeting at the very least primus inter pares. Because it is imprudent for commoners to quarrel with him, he tends to get what he wants. Because he tends to get what he wants, he tends to advance in the corporate hierarchy. The result, which should be visible in any large business without dangerous commonerist tendencies, will be a predominance of nobles in top executive positions.
And, of course, this should be especially the case in government... but enough. We've made the point.
And what exactly is that point? Well, three points.
One: this system is profoundly unhinged and bizarre, and completely inappropriate in anything like a sane, civilized society.
Two: it is — save for the change in terminology — a fairly close description of the present legal status of non-Asian minorities (NAMs) in present-day America. (Which is by no means the only modern government to adopt such a system.)
@Bearded Spock
Megan has likened her dilemma of not being able to go out for drinks after a broadway show due to not having landed a plum consulting gig shortly after graduating from business school to what auto workers are going through in Detroit.
She has no idea she's an elitist.
Its kind of hilarious actually. I mean I decided a while back I was going to let my Atlantic subscription lapse since Sullivan seems to be the only one with a brain on staff, but this lady and her followers are hilarious. I always pop in to see what idiocy is popping off. I'm rarely disappointed.
This petulant response to her being pawned that describes her white man's burden for example. Gold Jerry. GOLD.
@Matt Welch...WTF are you doing here, anyhow?
Oh, I don't care about the pissing matches; I just find it occasionally necessary to point out lies about my staff where they're printed. As indeed this thread aptly illustrates, unchallenged fantasia can become "fact" in the brains of some readers.
because it might hurt some delicate feelings
Aha! 'Delicate" is a code-word for the offesnive steretype of a "weak-willed woman." Clearly Adam Serwer is a misogynist and trying to belittle Megan.
See how easy that was?
If you want to confront some real racism, let's talk about Gaza.
Are we talking about those polls of Palestinians where 80% want to drive all the Jews into the sea?
since Sullivan seems to be the only one with a brain on staff
Yes, because spending months obsessing over a bizarre conspiracy theory that Trig Palin wasn't really Sarah Palin's offspring is clearly a mark of intelligence.
what auto workers are going through in Detroit.
Yes, I'm sure it's hell being paid $50/hr to not work.
"I'm really less concerned with whether a person is "a racist" because I think everyone's racist. "
The original writer states it, in plain English. If he really believes that everyone around him is racist, than of course every single word will be proof that everyone is indeed racist. If we ban the list of coded words (Just how many words are coded?) there will simply be a new, longer list of coded words to replace it. In fact, no coded word is necessary, since anyone is already a racist to the author by the simple virtue of being alive.
Come to think of it, being alive is probably not a requirement. Just being is enough.
white people are far less concerned about racism than they are about accusations of racism
...
I'm much more concerned with calling out individual actions as racist
I'm guessing the author sees absolutely no contradiction between assigning a very nasty attribute to all white people and claiming to be taking a stand against acts of racism.
Do you think ANY of the Paultards actually have enough self-awareness to realize they're proving Megan's point about Rockwell/Paul?
So who did author the articles in the Paul newsletter? Certainly not RP. At the time, LP members (Rockwell and Rothbard broke from the LP after the 1989 convention) believed Rockwell and Rothbard were responsible for the contents. One of them wrote it (or collaborated). Obviously, it would be easy for Rockwell or Paul to throw the dead Rothbard under the bus, at the sake of ruining Rothbard's reputation. That they haven't makes it likely that Rockwell actually wrote them in whatever "voice" he was using to appeal to the rightwing populists of the day.
I don't think Kling was being racist, but I do think the comment oculd be construed that way. For instance, if he said, "Giuliani is ruining my daughter's future. It's like being robbed by the Mafia", that would definitely have a racial/ethnic subtext to it. I don't think the word "thug" has a racial subtext, but clearly some people do.
As always with this kind of accusation of racism by word choice, the effect has been to shift the conversation. What we're *not* discussing is whether Kling is right. That is, are the spending choices in the stimulus bill largely about either Democrats getting some of their own back, or about them undoing a bunch of the spending priorities of the Republicans?
That's the desired effect, right? Accusing someone of racism (and then backing off to the impossible-to-deny charge of "insensitivity" when you get pushback on the racism accusation) is a debating tactic, not a genuine discussion about racism in society. It's the Left's answer to the (pure evil) Right's common tactic of shifting debates on national security or war into debates on the patriotism of the people on the other side. Indeed, it's almost indistinguishable, because just as with racism, it's simply impossible to prove that your word choices or imagery or underlying deep motives aren't somehow tainted with racism or hatred for America.
And the goal of this tactic is twofold:
a. Shift the debate away from something uncomfortable to your side by putting the other guy on the defensive.
b. Give wavering supporters on your side a reason for discounting those uncomfortable arguments--by saying the arguments are racist (or unpatriotic, or whatever other smear you like), you keep them from having to consider those arguments and maybe having doubts.
The Republicans used this class of tactic in the post-9/11 world to do enormous harm--to basically bully skeptics into silence about all kinds of fundamentally bad policies. It would be a real win if we caught onto the class of tactic, started recognizing it for the dodge it is, and stopped being fooled by it.
Shorter me: When someone attacks the arguer instead of the argument, it's probably because he doesn't want to take on the argument. (Perhaps because it's a good argument, perhaps because he's just better at accusations and outrage than at argument on facts.)
When someone attacks the arguer instead of the argument, it's probably because he doesn't want to take on the argument.
True, but there are times when the person making the argument is so over-the-top and ridiculous that we can also take a moment to mock the messenger. The issues are not mutually exclusive.
The martyrdom routine is getting old, but Ms. McArdle and her brethren obviously enjoy this Ayn Rand woe-is-us-we-are-always-on-trial routine enough to post about the same irrelevant exchange three times in a single day.
Here's the stuation: Mr. Kling is a loudmouthed blogger who frequently resorts to hyperbolic rhetoric when it suits his purposes. Another blogger uses his own overblown rhetoric to advance his own position. And now our own beloved Ms. McArdle is indulging in her own bit of viral marketing by turning this exchange between two fairly irrelevant people into some great contest between the forces of good and evil.
Common sense should tell you that rhetoric begets rhetoric. If one doesn't want to be accused of wackiness, then one should avoid saying wacky things or otherwise expressing oneself in a wacky fashion. Of course, Kling is trolling for effect, so he probably welcomes the exchange because it increases the attention that he receives. Bad publicity is better than no publicity, and all that.
Wolcott is in no position to stifle expression; if anything, he aided his opponents by turning a molehill into a mountain. He's not an elected official nor that important a pundit; Tail Gunner Joe, he ain't.
So you'd like to discuss the substance of Kling's comments. Unfortunately, there wasn't any. If he had an insightful observation about the stimulus package, either pro or con, then he made it elsewhere, not in the column that I read.
Wolcott should have dismissed him as a hollow drama queen, and left it at that. But he probably needed to fill space on his blog, too.
"Yes, I'm sure it's hell being paid $50/hr to not work."
Oh yeah - her followers are clueless to their elitism as well. See the recent idiotic Conrad union video for a peek into their mindset also.
"When I read reparations bill; I think slavery."
But when you read about reparations *in the context of an analogy about post-WWI Germany* if you think slavery, you clearly don't understand the common use of the word outside your personal experience. The payments to the winners of the WWI from the losers are called reparations. The fact that such reparations economically probably made a huge contribution to the causes of WWII is why there are historically seen as a bad idea of trying to economically punish one group at the cost of destabilzing the whole system.
Since Kling A) specifically identified that he was talking about that type of reparations, and B) that analogy fits perfectly in his line of argument while the slave reparations argument does not, it is should be obvious that he is talking about war reparations and not slave reparations.
If you can't figure that out, that isn't his fault. That is your fault, either by willful misreading or an accidental gap in your education.
Thank you RW for the most sensible post on this entire topic over three different threads.
He was being an 'edgist.' The argument about 'reparations' adds a dimension of social 'insight' to the discussion. Pastor Wright said 'God damn America' implying that white America had mistreated black America. This would justify 'reparations;' so it might not be improper to look at the stimulus bill as conveying this.
Old Jewish joke:
Old man gets on train, goes to sleeping compartment. Someone else is there too. Old fellow asks him, "Do you think I could borrow some soap?" Other guy finds him some soap. "And a towel?" Other guy looks at him, hands him a towel. (Short silence.) "Excuse me?" "Yes?" "Do you think I could borrow a toothbrush?" (--) "No. Sorry - you may not borrow my toothbrush."
Next day, son asks father, "How was your trip, Pop?" "Not so good", answers the father. "They put me in a car with an anti-semite."
[It may be necessary for me to add that I am Jewish, in order to have the right to tell this joke.]
"Who better to define [racism] than those who have experienced it to the greatest degree."
Name them by first and last name, please. Also, please tell which graveyards they are buried in.
"So who did author the articles in the Paul newsletter? Certainly not RP. At the time, LP members (Rockwell and Rothbard broke from the LP after the 1989 convention) believed Rockwell and Rothbard were responsible for the contents. One of them wrote it (or collaborated)."
So Rockwell's guilty until proven otherwise, is that it? What somebody thought at the time is hardly evidence.
"I just find it occasionally necessary to point out lies about my staff where they're printed. As indeed this thread aptly illustrates, unchallenged fantasia can become "fact" in the brains of some readers."
That's understandable. I occasionally find it necessary to point point lies by Matt Welch when they're Printed. As the first quote in this post shows, fantasia can indeed become "fact" in the brains of some cosmotards.
"She has no idea she's an elitist. "
I'm not so sure. She's not stupid. The language she used against Rockwell was intentionally incendiary. That's crypto-elitists code for "Hey, Old Grey Lady! I'm just as anti-populist as Kristol Bill, so please give me a job."
I think she excuses her elitism because she's not a top-tier, mainline protestant, ivy league elitist.
The are two parties to any communication: the person delivering the message and the person receiving the message. Both parties have roles to play for the communication. The person delivering the message must craft it so it can be understood by the person receiving it. The message should be delivered in a way that it does not needlessly distract the receiver from the message. (For example, the Gettysburg Address, delivered by a topless Angelina Jolie, is unlikely to be understood by most males in the audience.) The person receiving the message is tasked with properly interpreting the message. English is not a perfect language. Most words have many meanings. The receiver's task is to assign to the message the meaning intended.
All of this is Communication 101 and should not be news to anyone reading Megan's blog. Still, it's important background for understanding what's going on here. Too many hearers of the word are imposing upon the speaker an unfair burden: They insist that the speaker craft a message that is not just understandable. They demand a message that cannot be misunderstood or misconstrued. Rather than fulfill their obligations as a party to the communication, they blame the speaker for any (oft' times intentional) misunderstandings. Rather than be embarrassed for their ignorance, they elevate ignorance to a virtue and demand that a speaker apologize for using a word the speaker "should have known" would not be understood by them.
But when you read about reparations *in the context of an analogy about post-WWI Germany* if you think slavery, you clearly don't understand the common use of the word outside your personal experience.
In other words, they're demanding we be sensitive to their ignorance.
It's not clear how claiming one's own stupidity as grounds for being offended is a great debating tactic, but it does fit nicely with the sort of poor thinking that causes one to make broad camplaints about "white people" in a piece whining about how your stupidity caused you to misinterpret someone else's words as racist.
I'm not sure how one counters stupidity of this magnitude. It's like trying to debate a Monty Python skit.
You can't counter it. Moldbug had it exactly right:
"this system is profoundly unhinged and bizarre, and completely inappropriate in anything like a sane, civilized society."
First Rockwell, then Kling. When the witchhunt targets Ms. McArdle, who is she going to cry to? She has already helped to burn all of her would-be defenders.
I'm racist.
McArdle, you were porned by a man with eloquence where you have bloggy wind.
The obvious observation here is that there is exactly one side of this debate that evidently saw the phrase "gang of thugs" and instantly connected it in their minds to President Obama's skin color. And that side isn't Arnold Kling's side.
"white people are far less concerned.."
You are a racist alright. Can somebody cut the crap and just talk about PEOPLE without pigeon-holing everything everyone says and making a big deal about it?
I'm a person of color. Slavery is over. Ron Paul was right. Move on.
So Rockwell's guilty until proven otherwise, is that it? What somebody thought at the time is hardly evidence.
Sorry, you don't get to take the easy way out of blaming no one because there is some uncertainty of authorship. I blame Ron Paul and Rockwell both for the newsletters, because they were in Paul's name and Rockwell was in an obvious position to ghost-write them. If they have a problem with being associated with the content of the newsletters they could always, you know, tell us who actually fucking wrote them
Witch hunts never end when a witch is found, DJD. Somehow you think that Ron Paul is morally culpable for NOT throwing someone under the bus. What twisted ethics do you operate under, anyway?
Those newsletters were written in a style very common among gold bugs, a style designed to promote uncertainty and concern for the future in order to sell gold. That may be opportunistic, but it's not necessarily racist. As I've said before, it's not entirely unlike Obama's association with reverend Wright. Any one of a number of people could have written them and there is NO evidence that Rockwell even knows who did.
Dr. Paul himself accepted moral responsibility as publisher,as he should have. Why to this day are people still demanding a head on a plate? Why Rockwell's specifically?
The cosmotard hatred of Rockwell is simply irrational. If your cocktail party friends think less of you for your 3rd-degree-of-separation association with him, then fuck those guys. Rockwell cares more about your freedom and does more to achieve it than they do.
As a matter of fact, I KNOW Rockwell didn't write those newsletters, because I did. My only regret is that my simple attempt to gain publicity via Ann Coulter-like hyperbole led to the slander and libel of two great men. They deserved better than that and I have a lot of work to do to redeem myself.
Burn me at the stake, you fuckers- and leave the real defenders of liberty alone.
Here's a deal: We'll stop thinking you white people are racists if and when you stop demanding that we worship your history and values.
If you compare America and China circa right now, you can see that you're not all that fucking great. Maybe you'll learn a thing or two when they get around to correcting your history books.
TallDave:
No, I wasn't talking about "polls," which are a reflection of sentiment and are not actions in themselves. I was talking about the Israelis dropping phosphorus bombs and DIME weapons on a ghetto-sized populace of underemployed, fairly helpless civilians in Gaza. Only 80% of them want the Israelites pushed into the sea? That's pretty noble. You'd think it would be 100%. DIME weapons and phosphorus compared to some soda-pop rockets that have killed far less people in Israel than tasers. What if the case were this: the US govt started napalming NYC (e.g., the black ghetto). What would your reaction be? What do you think the poll numbers would be? I feel a rationalization coming around.
Okay, Spurious, then stop complaining when YOUR culture doesn't give you the benefits OUR culture gives.
All this talk about code words and racism is tedious. Most of us don't recognize the code words, even after someone else points them out. I find it incredible that anyone can hear the word "reparations" and think instantly of slavery and therefore racism. I find it incredible that anyone can hear the words "People who live off taxes vote Democratic" and think instantly that this is a coded reference to blacks.
As for racism itself, most of what we call racism is in reality culturism, i.e., the subgroups in the cities who have their own culture that is different from ours. The fact that many of the members of those subgroups have black skin simply gives us a quick way of stereotyping when we have nothing else to go on.
As soon as we have other hints about a person's culture (speech, clothes, actions), a person's race quickly becomes irrelevant (except to the true racist, of which George Lincoln Rockwell is one example. Alex Haley's interview of George Lincoln Rockwell should be required reading of everyone.)
Rex - it would be helpful to get the percentage of each race's dependence on government payments/subsidies. Let the facts speak for themselves.
The idea that a culture gives benefits is part of that lie. No, your culture didn't give me any benefits. Your need for my skills gave me a job. And I have that job because someone from your culture can't do the things that I do.
So, thanks for the money. Stay the fuck away from us.
SPURIOUS writes: "Your need for my skills gave me a job."
Alternatively: Your need for my diversity gave me a job, where said "need" is created by "community organizer"-style agitation and shakedown attempts.
SPURIOUS, what do you mean when you speak about "your culture and values"? Where exactly were you born and raised that you perceive yourself to have "culture and values" that is somehow distinct from the supposed "culture and values" of "white people"?
Are you an American? Because I know what I think the culture and values of America and Americans might be. But I have no idea what the "culture and values of white people" is. So, do tell.
Megan,
I am a huge fan of yours but must admit that I am surprised that it is not obvious to you that Kling is race-baiting.It is subtle yes ,but race-baiting it is.A talk show host from Boston whom I beleive is named Michael Graham did a similar thing on Imus this week.He stated words to the effect that "normal americans are afraid that the stimulus bill maybe welfare.." and that went on to say that helping welfare recipients wont stimulate the economy etc.There is definitely something fishy here...
Here's the thing about race-baiting. It's sort of like marital infidelity. The people who most suspect their spouses of adultery are the people who are engaged in it themselves. It's called projection. It's a normal human tendency to assume that others think like you do in the absence of substantial contrary evidence.
Considering the obvious and successful black race-baiting of Wright, Jackson and Sharpton, it's not surprising that the Obamanoids would be sensitive possible counter-attacks using the same weapon.
A talk show host from Boston whom I beleive is named Michael Graham did a similar thing on Imus this week.He stated words to the effect that "normal americans are afraid that the stimulus bill maybe welfare.." and that went on to say that helping welfare recipients wont stimulate the economy etc.There is definitely something fishy here...
Because "welfare recipients" is connected with some particular race or another, in your mind?
This projection is so fascinating.
Try again. My group isn't covered by affirmative action. We don't organize "shakedowns".
Nice try. I'll say this: Yes, I am an American, born and raised. Went to school with people who told me I wasn't an American, and to go back to my own country.
What do I mean by the "culture and values of white people"? Primarily the belief that civilization is the result of Judeo-Christian, European culture, and that any other culture's success must necessarily be derived from it. The fact that the Greeks and Romans were polytheistic pagans is conveniently forgotten. Also forgotten are the contributions of the Islamic world and the Chinese. Please, tell me the Germanic origin of algebra.
And no, I'm not Muslim, either.
Tell me, if your culture is so great, why is it that multinational corporations have been outsourcing to China and India for about two decades now? If it really didn't work, if those benighted heathens really couldn't hack it, why keep doing it?
Maybe you people aren't that necessary after all.
Oh, and Staash --
I've got seven patents in my name. How about you?
Nowhere does a patent application ask for enthnicity, so kindly shove it.
Blacks receive welfare disproportionally high compared to any other race. Why deny facts? Politically incorrect?
What do I mean by the "culture and values of white people"? Primarily the belief that civilization is the result of Judeo-Christian, European culture,
Who holds this belief? "white people"? What a strange and racist accusation. I don't hold that belief. I don't know anyone who would hold that belief. And indeed in my completely generic public school education, which I attended with a lot of other white people, we were all taught that 'civilization' is the result of - as in, was born in - Mesopotamia or Sumeria or someplace like that.
Seriously, what the hell are you talking about? You sure have a lot of weird stereotypical views about what (you think) "white people" believe. I'm sure you got them from somewhere, but when are you going to rise above them?
The fact that the Greeks and Romans were polytheistic pagans is conveniently forgotten.
By whom? Not by anyone with about a 7th-grade education.
Also forgotten are the contributions of the Islamic world and the Chinese. Please, tell me the Germanic origin of algebra.
Huh?
Tell me, if your culture is so great,
Again, what's this "my" vs "your" culture jazz? Look around, we belong to the same culture. And either way, when did I ever say that "my" culture was "so great"??
why is it that multinational corporations have been outsourcing to China and India for about two decades now? If it really didn't work, if those benighted heathens really couldn't hack it, why keep doing it?
What does this have to do with anything?
Maybe you people aren't that necessary after all.
"you people"?
Dude, you really are a freaking racist, aren't you? Have fun with that.
I just read something on a conservative website (vdare.com) that discussed an idea that I hadn't thought about before. Multiculturalism can really only function under a strong central government. That intuitively makes sense to me, and historically seems right too. Iraq being a good current example.
If that's true, then it should be no surprise that the size, scope and power of the Federal Gov't is expanding so rapidly. You don't have to be white to prefer freedom to multiculturalism, but I don't think you can be libertarian without doing so (assuming you have to choose between the two).
OK, that explains a lot of knuckledraggers I've met.
Who said I was talking to you?
Now that we are talking about it, see how many posts in this thread talk about lazy non-whites with nary a response. But me? I get the dogpile.
Similarly, if Obama were to say, "A huge section of this country consists of poorly-educated white people. They live in red states that get more tax money than they pay out. They are a liability" he would be crucified. But such things are said regularly about the smaller black population.
And no, I'm not black, either.
You people have always been pleased with yourselves because you've enjoyed relative peace and prosperity. But now your jobs are going overseas, and you feel betrayed. As Bearded Spock says, go to VDARE. It's fun to read their rants. The point is, you were lucky. Now that the rest of the world has woken up, don't count on us doing your bidding anymore.
And you're not? Liar.
"I've got seven patents in my name."
Congratulations on securing the use of state power to prevent the dissemination of technology! I don't suppose it ever occurred to you that patents actually stifle innovation while they enrich patent holders at everyone else's expense.
There's a book (free of course) that exposes patents and all other intellectual "property" to be a bogus concept that has wreaked considerable damage to society.
http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf
Getting a patent doesn't mean you are smart. It means you are practicing statism.
I think Sonic and SPURIOUS are really making my point about multiculturalism, but it's not the black/white culture clash that's the problem. It's the statist/libertarian culture clash that is unresolvable. You just can't have a rational argument with people who think it's okay to use state force against you when you disagree with them.
While I did write the enclosed piece, the "Mencius Moldbug" who posted above was not me. I'm sure no harm was intended, but it is a fragment of a longer essay and wasn't really written to be taken out of context.
I've read you longer essay, Mencius, and it seems the context was largely the same as the conversation here. The issue is double standards in both cases. If that's a misinterpretation, please explain.
Actually I thought it was rather brilliant.
spurious,
Who said I was talking to you?
You wrote stuff under a quote you pulled from my comment. I treated this as talking to me, as is customary in comments sections.
Similarly, if Obama were to say, "A huge section of this country consists of poorly-educated white people. They live in red states that get more tax money than they pay out. They are a liability" he would be crucified. But such things are said regularly about the smaller black population.
They are? By whom exactly? Who in particular is your accusation here against? Point them out and I'll criticize them too.
And no, I'm not black, either.
I don't care. I literally could not care less.
You people have always been pleased with yourselves because you've enjoyed relative peace and prosperity.
Again, what "you people"? What are you even talking about? You don't know squat about me yet you feel free to sound off about how "pleased with myself" I am and about how much "peace and prosperity" I supposedly have. This is just plain ignorant.
But now your jobs are going overseas, and you feel betrayed.
What are you talking about? Who are you talking to? This has nothing to do with anything I've said to you.
Dude, you really are a freaking racist
And you're not? Liar.
You think I am? Based on what? Feel free to cite your evidence based on what I've written here. I'll be waiting,
THIS, on the other hand, REALLY needs to be taken in context.
"applied to the cream of America's actual WASP-Ashkenazi aristocracy, genuine genetic elites with average IQs of 120, long histories of civic responsibility and productivity, and strong innate predilections for delayed gratification and hard work, I'm confident that this bizarre version of what we can call ignoble privilege would take no more than two generations to produce a culture of worthless, unredeemable scoundrels. Applied to populations with recent hunter-gatherer ancestry and no great reputation for sturdy moral fiber, noblesse sans oblige is a recipe for the production of absolute human garbage."
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified_22.html
MM-
All I'm saying is that unredeemable scoundrels and absolute human garbage are not mutually exclusive groups, so why the distinction? It seems to me that even if you are right and the "WASP-Ashkenazi aristocracy" is a standard of deviation smarter than the mean, wouldn't that mean they would be MORE likely to take advantage of the unfair playing field as well as take advantage more severely than other immoral but less intelligent groups?
It just seems like a distraction from your major (and, IMO correct) theme. Whether or not we have an aristocracy, we DO have a perverted nobility that plays by different rules. The double standard results in massive harm to society. It makes no difference if it's Jews, WASPs, Blacks or Eskimos, the temptation to exploit a perverted system for selfish gain is too great for most people. The suggestion that it substantively matters which ethnic group is doing the exploiting is not crypto-racism. It's racism.
I just bring this out to distinguish between what Kling is accused of and what that sort of thing really looks like. MM is a much more talented writer and has a much better grasp of economics than Kling, IMO, but that doesn't excuse him from perpetuating the false claim that "moral fiber" is a hereditary trait.
SPURIOUS writes: "Try again. My group isn't covered by affirmative action. We don't organize "shakedowns"."
Ok, so you're an Asian minority with a chip on your shoulder about the cultural mythos of Western Civilization, in, get this, a historically Western country! That's all well and good, but how is this remotely relevant to the topic at hand?
SPURIOUS continues: "I've got seven patents in my name. How about you?"
The vast, vast majority of patents are purely defensive (prime example: IBM). Is this your major accomplishment in life? Will your tombstone read: "Here lies SPURIOUS, named on 7 patents".
Give me a break.
"Tell me, if your culture is so great, why is it that multinational corporations have been outsourcing to China and India for about two decades now?"
If _your _culture was so great, why wouldn't these multinational corporations be outsourcing to _this_ country to undercut Chinese and Indian wages? Why was Great Britain not your colony rather than the other way around? Oh right, because for all your chest-thumping, Chinese and Indian cultures are servile, overly hierarchical (how's that caste system working out for you?), and not conducive to innovation.
Our friend SPURIOUS also is a revealing example of an often neglected hazard of immigration. While the first generation comes here for economic opportunity and is eager to culturally assimilate, the second generation often becomes alienated and radicalizes. I'm glad SPURIOUS is venting his frustration on message boards rather than following the example of Seung-Hui Cho.
I also find it ironic that SPURIOUS is airing his grievances in a thread specifically discussing white-on-black racism. In my experience, Asian immigrants are, by far, the least sympathetic (and often the most hostile) to our black population.
Staash -
Well, duh. That's the point. Patents are instruments of business, not science.
Nope. I rarely think about it. I mentioned it because it's something I did that obviously doesn't take into account ethnicity. However, it does seem to bother the fuck out of you.
No caste system for me, sorry. You fail again. Not all of us are Indian (or Chinese).
Would you say the same of the Japanese? I guess that's why Detroit is kicking Toyota's ass. I guess that's why the Rust Belt is innovating its way to the future as we speak.
Not in my case. My parents were like me. Study, work, stay out of trouble, take the money and nothing else. Wouldn't want to turn out like Randy Weaver or Timothy McVeigh.
Bearded Spock -
Take it up with the framers of the Constitution (white guys all, I believe). Article one.
I love your definition of "libertarianism": What's mine is mine, and what's yours is yours. Unless what's yours is really sweet, in which case it's a natural resource. Reasoning like that makes me glad we have the right to self-protection.
Agreed. But again, that wasn't the point. Y'all have some insecurity issues, it seems.
By the way, my overall point was, "I'll work hard, and I'll leave you alone if you leave me alone. For example, you don't want my culture, and I don't want yours." Seems pretty libertarian to me, but I'm amused at the response.
Sonic Charmer -
Really? On Valentine's Day? What a waste. You would think that all those "No comments so far" lines on your blog would give you a hint to do something else. But do with your life as you see fit.
And I'll concede that I don't know if you are racist. I was speaking to "you, plural" because I'm dealing with three people, and I'd say at least Staash qualifies. I got carried away with you, though.
____________________________________
Anyway, it's been fun. Respond as you like, but I won't be following this thread anymore. I have things to do tomorrow, even if some of you apparently don't.
SPURIOUS derisively snorts: "Anyway, it's been fun. Respond as you like, but I won't be following this thread anymore. I have things to do tomorrow, even if some of you apparently don't."
Surely you'll be hard at work penning a decisive refutation to my "racist" assertions, which you conveniently ignored in your reply:
"If _your _culture was so great, why wouldn't these multinational corporations be outsourcing to _this_ country to undercut Chinese and Indian wages? Why was Great Britain not your colony rather than the other way around? Oh right, because for all your chest-thumping, Chinese and Indian cultures are servile, overly hierarchical (how's that caste system working out for you?), and not conducive to innovation. "
Oh course, you could also be hard at work on another shitty patent for an American company that views you as little more than slave labor.
SPURIOUS wrote: "Would you say the same of the Japanese? I guess that's why Detroit is kicking Toyota's ass. I guess that's why the Rust Belt is innovating its way to the future as we speak."
I don't buy for a fucking second that you're Japanese.
"Take it up with the framers of the Constitution (white guys all, I believe). Article one."
We don't live under the constitution anymore, or hadn't you noticed? The 10th amendment isn't even given lip service any more, congress doesn't declare wars, etc. What you're really arguing is the current system supports patents. Your defense amounts to might makes right; the rationalization of every thug (of every color) in history.
"I love your definition of "libertarianism": What's mine is mine, and what's yours is yours. Unless what's yours is really sweet, in which case it's a natural resource. Reasoning like that makes me glad we have the right to self-protection."
I fail to see how you are harmed if something that you have sold was replicated. That's like a farmer demanding money in perpetuity if the seeds he sells are planted by someone else. You can't even really argue opportunity costs unless you also want to argue that not mugging little old ladies is an opportunity cost.
Things are valuable because of their scarcity. An artificial scarcity gums up the works. Like carbon credits.
You have three choices:
1. Don't invent anything.
2. Invent stuff and keep it secret.
3. Invent stuff and share it with the world.
You can't have patents without patent trolls, and patents trolls are worse than #1 and #2 because they keep an equally brilliant but slower inventor from ever being #3, thus depriving the world of a new and free technology.
Bearded Spock:
Those were some good observations about patents. I hadn't thought about these points. The arguments are getting lame. I think the collectivists are still swooning over their new religion, whatever that is. It's either bombs for Jesus, bombs for Zionists, or bombs for the common good; it's so hard to tell. You know, there's always got to be an ideology handy to justify one's unethical actions. You'll see that in Lenin, Hitler, Roosevelt, Bush, perhaps Obama (I'm still waiting) and so many other fanatics that have cursed this planet with their manure.
I'll tell you this. I walked into the polling booth and voted for Obama. My reasoning was this: let him get elected, put him there, let him live up to the rhetoric. I want to see him "end" the war, give us "good govt," "end" the elitism, "fund" public healthcare, and so forth. So far, I am seeing nada, nothing different. Just another crony with big-bankster, multinational friends.
Want some fun, go to Rawstory.com. You'll see the collectivists gasping for breath between the ideologies. Good day.
Scott:
I hope you're being sarcastic. There's no possible way that Obama has any intention, much less the ability to live up to his campaign rhetoric. He threw his grandmother and his preacher under the bus to get elected. What's worse is that he's way out of his league. It's like we're in that plane crashing into the Hudson and the pilot is Leslie Nielson. He's going to make us nostalgic for W. If you thought 9-11 was bad, just wait until the currency crisis hits.
I don't vote for any politician. It only encourages them.
I(f Kling used the term "reparations" to describe the stimulus bill, where I now live--Orlando--that is code for giving unearned money to the blacks.
If Kling said that the stimulus bill and TARP was like "thugs breaking into his house," where I live and where I come from (Alabama) those words evoke images of blacks (and Hispanics) breaking into houses, typically with imagined white victims.
Only the totally unreflective and outright liars wouldn't admit to that.
Now, you can argue that it wasn't Kling's intent to stimulate racial images and racial fear, but don't argue that the words don't evoke such images and fear for many white Americans, and not just southerners.
And if you really want to show that Kling's use of such terms as reparations and thugs in the context of policies supported by Obama isn't even unconsciously reflective of an intent to stimulate racial animosity, show where Kling has used similar terms in the past when the Bush White House, Cheney, Halliburton et al were straight up stealing our money. Reparations to the rich and thuggery at the highest levels.
Can't find the use of such terms? Can't even find criticisms by Kling of the Bushies and their thieving policies which served the rich and screwed the rest of us?
As usual, scratch a Libertarian and find a Republican too embarrassed to admit to it.
At least be freaking honest, and at least don't expect most of us to believe that strategies that Republicans and their fellow travelers, Libertarians, have been using for years aren't strategies. There is a clear reason why the GOP has become a southern party.
If you don't come clean now, you guys who are Believers are going to have to follow the path of Lee Atwater and admit to this sin on your death beds to get clear with God.
The more aware and rational Libertarian and Republican atheists can just chalk it up to the necessities of permanent political war. You sue what you gotta use to win.
Sincerely.
White. Southern, Honest
Lawrence Auster has an interesting (and extremely heterodox) take on the subject of "racism":
"The very idea of racism implies a human norm that is not racist, and from which racism, by definition, would be a departure. But in what does this norm consist? Where in the world are there families and communities that are not based on this mutual preference for people who are similar? The answer is that, outside of marginal and cosmopolitan exceptions, the preference for one's own is the universal tendency. Since, then, there is no "non-racist" norm, from which racism would be a deviation, is it not clear that "racism," in its contemporary inflated sense, has no meaning at all? It has no more meaning than calling people with noses "nosists.""
Staash,
One can agree with you about there being an underlying preference for persons "like us," and a corresponding alienation from those not like us. In times of great stress, societal and personal, alienation from the Other likely increases.
Consequently, unless our purpose is to increase alienation between groups to serve a political interest or goal, doesn't it behoove writers like Kling to take care about the words he uses?
Just because the word "reparations" is used in reference to other phenomena than reparations for slavery, doesn't mean that the first image that comes to most American minds isn't reparations to black persons by white persons. The same thing is true for words like 'thugs breaking into my house' and stealing, no less, from "my daughter."
It's hard for me to believe that upon reflection Megan doesn't admit how the words FUNCTION, even is she denies absolutely that that was Kling's intent.
Words have meaning in contexts, and in the American context, using words like reparations and 'thugs breaking into houses' functions as stimulants for racism, the question of the possibly universal initial preference for same race persons aside.
Kling necessarily doesn't have to be any more racist than many others to use such concepts. He just has to be ignorant of the contextual meaning of words or unconscious of his intent or think that his political ends outstrip his commitment to being a person with some integrity.
Megan I don't know about. I think she needs to live outside of NYC and Washington for a while and learn what words mean to most Americans.
Barbara M.,
I(f Kling used the term "reparations" to describe the stimulus bill, where I now live--Orlando--that is code for giving unearned money to the blacks.
What does "where you live" have to do with anything? Is Kling supposed to edit his words to make sure they don't mean something offensive "where Barbara M. lives"?
I'll take your word for it (actually I won't) that "in Orlando" the word "reparations" means "giving unearned money to the blacks". However, in the English language that is not what it means. It is a generic term meaning payment for a past wrong. The idea that "reparations" refers only to blacks in America is ahistorical and probably ignorant.
Germany paid reparations after WWI and WWII. Indeed, throughout history reparations have traditionally meant war reparations.
If Kling said that the stimulus bill and TARP was like "thugs breaking into his house," where I live and where I come from (Alabama) those words evoke images of blacks (and Hispanics) breaking into houses, typically with imagined white victims.
There are no white thugs in Alabama? Perhaps thugs=blacks/Hispanics "in Alabama", if by "in Alabama" you really mean "according to those whites who are racist in Alabama". Once again, this association says more about the person making it than about Kling.
Now, you can argue that it wasn't Kling's intent to stimulate racial images and racial fear, but don't argue that the words don't evoke such images and fear for many white Americans, and not just southerners.
Oh, sure, perhaps they do evoke such images for many white Americans. Racist white Americans. Why that's somehow Kling's fault is unclear to me.
And if you really want to show that Kling's use of such terms as reparations and thugs in the context of policies supported by Obama isn't even unconsciously reflective of an intent to stimulate racial animosity,
This sets the bar at a ridiculous level. So let me understand, in order to defend Kling, according to you, one has to "show" that his usage of those terms wasn't "even unconsciously" meant to have racial connotation. In short, we have to "show" what was going on unconsciously inside Kling's head, and prove that he wasn't even unconsciously being racist.
That's ridiculous.
Can't even find criticisms by Kling of the Bushies and their thieving policies which served the rich and screwed the rest of us?
Um, how about in this very controversy! If you had actually read the posts in question you'd see that Kling's usage of "thugs" referred to Henry Paulson, Bush's Treasury Secretary.
I'm still waiting for Megan to explain why she considers Kling's remarks defensible and the Ron Paul Newsletters "crypto-racist." It what way were they substantively different?
If she simply intuits that they are different, then she should say so, but if not, she should explain what objective criteria she uses to judge them by.
No explanation is coming, because Megan's position is obviously absurd on it's face. I would be happy to be proven wrong, but I won't be.
Well, it is my problem, I guess. That is, if the author does not come forward and debate the issues, then the author is either out of touch or wrong. Megan, come forward please! Please tell the dissenters why they are wrong. I want to be proved wrong. I am waiting.