ROCKWELL'S "RED-STATE FASCISM"

The libertarian blog Liberty and Power is at the moment in the throes of debating (generally sympathetically) an article by Lew Rockwell which calls for libertarians to cosy up to the Left because American conservatives have become "Fascist". In a way Rockwell is correct. ALL modern Western governments have more in common with Mussolini's Fascist state than they do with (say) Lord Salisbury's British government of around 100 years ago. Governments in all the Anglosphere countries are far more intrusive and dominant today than they once were. And the dictatorial "political correctness" movement seems mainly to emanate from government-funded institutions too, particularly the judiciary and the universities. So there is every reason for libertarians to be dissatisfied with that. Lots of conservatives are dissatisfied with it too.

But the amusing thing is that the libertarians on L&P and elsewhere seem to think that have found a way of doing something about it. Rockwell and his ilk think that the Left would notice if the libertarians were to "ally" themselves more with the Left. But why should the Left care? They already have Chomsky and Michael Moore to feed them all the catnip they want. Why would they take more than passing notice of a handful of irascible libertarians? The sad truth about libertarianism is that NOBODY WANTS IT. It is not an accident that the U.S. Libertarian party gets only about 1% in national elections. Human beings are tribal and tribes always have some sort of government. And handing over responsibility for lots of things to somebody else is NOT stupid. It is in fact just one aspect of that great human trick of division of labour. Division of labour means that you specialize in just one thing and somebody else has to do all the rest. Only some lower animals do everything for themselves. So people don't WANT to make all their own decisions. They want somebody else to look after everything outside their own sphere of activity -- and an elected government is readily handed all those unwanted responsibilities. As a libertarian myself, I wish all that were not true but it is.

So what is a libertarian to do? It depends on your priorities. Libertarians have always opposed conservatives on issues of sexual morality and Leftists on issues of economic regulation so libertarians have always had to make a choice if they wish to do more than spend all their time talking to one-another. As I see it, however, the battle against restrictive sexual morality has been won long ago. Many good Christian people still advocate it but the percentage of the population who still practice (say) pre-marital chastity would have to be tiny. And among young Republicans in particular sexual freedom is simply modern -- not something particularly Rightist or Leftist. So issues of sexual morality ought not to decide anybody's allegiances these days.

Which leaves issues of economic management and foreign policy. Hard-line libertarians like Rockwell are furiously anti-war on ideological grounds -- because they believe that only governments can make war and they are against governments. What individuals by themselves could do about it if the Islamic nutjobs were to get hold of a few nukes and detonate them in America's big cities they do not say. GWB's strategy may not be perfect but knocking over a couple of Islamic regimes that were pillars of support for Islamic terrorism certainly seems better to me than sitting at home and hoping for the best. The Left are advocating that but Leftist interest in reality has always been small. For them too ideology is all that matters. So it seems to me that any libertarians living in the real world would be doing what they can to help the GOP -- and one way of doing that effectively would be to get inside the GOP and nudge it more and more in the direction of the free-market thinking that has long been its greatest strength. The two major political parties that characterize the Anglosphere are always of necessity centrist parties so NOBODY -- not even libertarians -- can hope to have more than marginal influence on actual policy. But GWB's various tariffs on steel, shrimp etc show that there is still plenty of need in the GOP for free-market advocacy. And it is free market prosperity that makes so much else possible.

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ELSEWHERE

A good comment from a reader: "If the rainfall on Los Angeles these past few days had landed on a third world country, thousands would have died and hundreds of thousands would have been homeless - and the same rains ten years later would have had the same results. A government that does not advance its people is unworthy of respect. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach him to fish and he depletes your fisheries. Teach him to be a capitalist and he will sell you the fish".

Another interesting email just in: "A radio station in Sydney took the initiative and recruited celebrities to bolster support for the appeal to people to open up their wallets for the tsunami disaster. The "host" was Johnny Young, formerly of the "Young Talent Time" program. To everyone's surprise, he started raving and ranting about America and Iraq -- stating that all the money spent by America in arming itself in Iraq should be spent on the disaster. If America had started the war, you could understand some ill will. But that rich Arabs and some Leftoid psychopaths in other governments, supply billions of dollars to fund terrorists and arm them to the teeth to kill Israelis and Americans for the sake of killing was not mentioned. There was no suggestion that the Muslims ought to disband their idea and donate THEIR money to the appeal. Mr Young and his ilk obviously support genocide and not the people trying to end it."

Tim Blair notes disgusting United Nations claims to be doing relief work in Indonesia that is actually being done by American and Australian organizations. More on the Australian effort here

Nasty ideologues: "The political and ideological exploitation of perhaps the worst natural disaster in all our lifetimes is almost beyond belief - were it not for the fact that nothing these days is beyond belief. Even as tears spring into the most hard-hearted person's eyes at both the unimaginable scope of the tragedy and at the wrenching individual stories of loss, opinion leaders just can't help themselves. They are using this cataclysm as little more than cheap debate fodder about the nature and character of the United States, its president and its citizens..... Secretary of State Colin Powell found himself in the position of having to remind the world that over the past four years the United States has provided more such aid than all other nations on the planet combined. It is appalling that he had to mention this, and that President Bush was compelled to cite the same information on Wednesday, because you're not supposed to brag about how charitable you are. But once a United Nations official decried the American aid pledge as "stingy," the administration had little choice." And Tim Blair points out the sheer lies being told by the Left about the huge American aid going to the tsunami victims.

La Shawn Barber seems pleased that there is now a Leftist "hate" site devoted to her. She points out that Ann Coulter has hate sites aimed at her too and welcomes "her" hate site. I linked to La Shawn not long after she started her blog so I agree that Leftists should be bothered by her but it had not occurred to me that an "anti" site is a sort of a backhanded compliment. It shows that you are bothering them. Since some Leftist nerd put up a spoof site of "Dissecting Leftism" a little while ago, I guess that I am now in distinguished company too.

The latest posting on my new MarxWords blog shows that Marx loathed the Jews but was willing to use them to undermine Christianity.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

Comments? Email me here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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