← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · FadeTheButcher
Thread ID: 10255 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2003-10-05
2003-10-05 02:07 | User Profile
Stop this hate!!111
[url]www.thornwalker.com/ditch/fields_pclib.htm[/url]
By HENRY GALLAGHER FIELDS
American libertarians were once freedom-loving, truth-loving iconoclasts who took pleasure in spurning the shibboleths of Establishment pundits and intellectuals. No dogma was deemed too sacred to be safe from their skepticism, and every alleged truth was subject to examination by free minds reveling in free inquiry. They were totally outside the mainstream, and they relished that position: one thinks of giants such as Frank Chodorov, Albert J. Nock, Murray N. Rothbard, and Roy A. Childs, Jr., standing lonely but unafraid.
But libertarians today, with some honorable exceptions, are a changed breed. They shy away from the ever-multiplying taboo issues, if they do not actually celebrate the reigning intellectual orthodoxy. Libertarian principles are noticeable chiefly by their absence.
To illustrate the decline, let's look at a new star in the libertarian literary firmament: Ilana Mercer. A self-styled "wandering Jew," Miss Mercer was born in South Africa, the daughter of an anti-apartheid rabbi who fled to Israel, where she grew up. Having lived in Canada for a time, Miss Mercer is now ensconced in the United States, where she has moved to the fore among what passes as the libertarian punditry. Meanwhile, the punditocracy (a useful neologism) that accords respectful recognition to Miss Mercer carefully ignores everything that The Last Ditch produces, as our esteemed chief Mr. Strakon has noted. (Since TLD articles do attract fan support and links from conservatives, liberals, lefties, American Indians, Arabs, inhabitants of "Old Europe," Eastern Europeans, Africans, Turks, and so on, it would not seem that all of our writings are meritless, especially considering what passes for informative prose in the libertarian mainstream.)
It can't be denied that Miss Mercer has taken a few good positions that manage to elude many libertarians. Significantly, she has stood against the American imperial war on Iraq, unlike lunatic Randroids who want to nuke the Arabs. (You may acquit the Official Objectivists on a technicality if you're so inclined, since they refuse to recognize themselves as libertarians.) But despite her antiwar sentiments, Miss Mercer has more than a soft spot for her homeland, by which I do not mean South Africa.
At some point during her peregrinations she conjured up the fantasy that libertarians "loathe" Israel and that she must leap to the defense of that perpetually victimized state. To illustrate the existence of a vast libertarian anti-Israeli groundswell, Miss Mercer manages to come up with a grand total of three individual examples — Sheldon Richman, Justin Raimondo, and Stephen P. Halbrook. The Halbrook article she cites comes from 1981, and Halbrook happens to be a Canadian, which inconvenient tidbits underscore the fact that anti-Israel feeling is hardly burgeoning among American libertarians. While Miss Mercer probably could have added to her census of sinners by pointing out a few anti-Zionist libertarian souls from the West Bank and Gaza, the bulk of American libertarians would require megadose testosterone injections before ever daring to mentally entertain, much less discuss publicly, such a taboo idea.
Miss Mercer's adoring assessment of the Jewish state doesn't gibe too well with the cardinal tenets of the libertarian canon. She holds to a historical view that Jews deserve the land of Israel, and she doesn't see much wrong with Israel's expropriating Palestinian private property and expelling Palestinian people, crimes that are still being committed, by the way. Presumably, in her mind the "collective rights" of the Jewish people trump individual rights, a position that harks back to the days a hundred years ago when "libertarian" often referred to communists of a somewhat unorthodox kidney. In any case, the notion is alien to modern libertarianism insofar as that body of thought proceeds from individualist premises. . .
2003-10-05 03:09 | User Profile
Ah, yes. Libertarianism, my political Alma Mater. Not to mention the only party card I ever got to enjoy lighting a cigar with.
From the beginning most libertarians had an inner Stalin just clawing to get out and fire up the gulags. Now it's obvious to everybody. RIP, nitwits.
2003-10-05 03:27 | User Profile
>>>While Miss Mercer probably could have added to her census of sinners by pointing out a few anti-Zionist libertarian souls from the West Bank and Gaza, the bulk of American libertarians would require megadose testosterone injections before ever daring to mentally entertain, much less discuss publicly, such a taboo idea.
This is the best sentance in the whole article.
2003-10-05 04:51 | User Profile
I disagree with the article. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that you cannot be a libertarian if you support Israel -- and DEFINITELY not if you support US aid to Israel. That's like saying you're a libertarian who believes in strict gun control -- it's a self-contradictory statement. Israel was built upon human rights violations, and it continues to sustain itself in the same way with help from USZOG.
Hell, just take a look at Liberty Forum -- that place is full of anti-Israel folks. Sure, there is a very vocal minority of pro-Israel trolls from ADL there, but the vast majority of posters there seem to despise Israel and ZOG.
It needs to be remembered that you don't need to be a card-carrying member of the "Libertarian Party" to be a libertarian. There are different interpretations of that philosophy, all of which are valid as long as they are subject to certain constraints. It's even possible to be a White Nationalist and a Libertarian at the same time. In a libertarian nation, there would be NO taxes paid to Israel, NO laws forcing whites to do business with blacks, NO forced integration in schools -- the list goes on and on. Whites would naturally rise to the top in such a society. The only departure from "official" libertarian ideology would be with regards to immigration, which would be severely restricted. (Establishing a libertarian government would mean an end to all the welfare funding that attracts all those immigrants in the first place.)
If this nation were libertarian, ZOG would be powerless to aid Israel, powerless to imprison White Nationalists, powerless to disarm us, and just plain impotent in general. Blacks and Mexicans would not be able to live off the productivity of whites as they do now, as taxes would be used only for services such as national defense, road repair, etc.