One mark of an ideologue is the tendency to rewrite the past. Single-issue anti-war paleolibertarians have done so as of late, forgetting their former concern with matters domestic (race, immigration, and the welfare state) and generally revealing their abiding tendency: an immature obsession with purity and an utter lack of ordinary patriotism. Arthur Pendleton has the scoop at Vdare.
There is something more than a little bit weird among the small (but vocal) faction at Mises-Antiwar-Rockwell mimicking whoever they happen to be cooperating with at the moment. In the 90s, it was guys like me. In the 60s, it was anti-Vietnam activists and the Black Panthers. Today, it’s schmucks like Noam Chomsky . . . again.
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And in the late 1970′s and early 1980′s they were allied with the Cato Institute/Reason Magazine crowd, and before their New Left period it was the Objectivists.
“One mark of an ideologue is the tendency to rewrite the past.”
For instance, his shamefaced lie in 2007 when he feigned suprise that people had come to consider the term “paleolibertarian” as denoting some kind of culturally conservative libertarian despite the fact that is almost exactly how Rockwell himself defined the word in Liberty Magazine back in 1990. His claim that it refers to a libertarian opponent of the Cato/Reason/Koch/Beltway coterie is utterly laughable to anyone who’s followed LR.com and the old RRR since the 90′s (as I have).
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I agree. Lew Rockwell et al are certainly capricious. Austrian economics is an elegant discipiline. But who knows who the Mises Institute guys will align with next? Not very trustworthy in my opinion.
As if “mansizedtarget”, Christopher Roach himself hasn’t changed with whom he aligns himself?
Get real.
The Mises Institute is simply a buoy that has “bobbed” with the waves. The political landscape has changed, but they are still advocating the same libertarian opinions they always have; boiled down: anti-[modern] State. They have never been, nor have ever claimed to be “conservative”. I’ll speak for the man, and say: Lew Rockwell sees conservatism as a part of a movement against the modern state.
I may have changed my mind on a few things, but I’ve been a rock-solid traditionalist conservative since I was about 13 or so, so I’m not sure what you’re talking about.
“I may have changed my mind on a few things”
Like the Iraq war?
That’s one of the few, MAJOR, things you’ve changed your mind upon.
I’ll be honest with you:
I’ve always opposed America’s war in Iraq (and Afghanistan), not because it’s a “mistake” (as Justin Raimondo & Co. believe), but because I KNOW Revolutionary America can’t win, just as Revolutionary USSR couldn’t win in Afghanistan, just as Revolutionary United Kingdom couldn’t win in Iraq 100 years ago.
If Russia, who is winning in Chechnya (as we both know) were killing Iraqis, I’d have faith. On this, I’m sure, we both agree: the United States of America is not Russia. Russia is a real country, populated by real men, with a REAL ideology. The United States is a fake country, populated by plastic men, with a FAKE ideology.
But revolutionary Britain won in a whole lot of places. So was Britain a real country populated by real men with a real ideology?
Or are you just shooting the breeze?
Lew Rockwell and the Mises Institute hardly have a single issue obsession with foreign affairs. Both websites are absolutely full of articles on domestic policy.