J'Accuse

Lew Rockwell ^ | 12/23/01 | Michael Peirce

[dubyajames]

Paleolibertarians are essentially the more libertarian branch of the Old Right. They are devoutly anti-statist, but unlike many Randian libertarians, they are not hostile to traditional morality. Many of them are strong believers in traditional morality, viewing it as a proper framework for a free society. They do not confuse opposition to the government enforcing certain moral standards with a rejection of those standards.

In pratical terms, paleolibertarians are much more likely to oppose abortion or open borders (Peirce happens to oppose both, as well as the removal of the Ten Commandments from public places) and have a more favorable view of the traditional South. I don't consider myself one (I don't think their foreign policy is always realistic, as evidenced by Peirce's inability to discern a national interest in the Persian Gulf War), but I agree with them more frequently than I agree with the types of libertarians who dominate the Libertarian Party.

[monkeywrench]

"I base this conclusion on a consistent pattern of government support for policies that harm America." Bi partisan effort.

[em2vn]

Lewrockwell.com is nothing like the message board that comprises Freerepublic. Lewrockwell holds itself out to be a source of reporting on national, political and social issues intermingled with commentary on the former issues. I find that lewrockwell has in the past few months begun to focus on negative articles about the current administration at every opportunity.

[capt. norm]

"Paleolibertarians are essentially the more libertarian branch of the Old Right. They are devoutly anti-statist, but unlike many Randian libertarians, they are not hostile to traditional morality. Many of them are strong believers in traditional morality, viewing it as a proper framework for a free society. They do not confuse opposition to the government enforcing certain moral standards with a rejection of those standards."

Whewwww! I was thinkin' about becoming one until I saw how complicated it is. I'll bet a lot of applicants to become paleoliberatarians flunk out just trying to spell the name. Please tell me you don't have some kind of initiation (hazing) on top of all those requirements 'cause this is getting way too wierd already.

[DugwayDuke]

"Whewwww! I was thinkin' about becoming one until I saw how complicated it is. I'll bet a lot of applicants to become paleoliberatarians flunk out just trying to spell the name. Please tell me you don't have some kind of initiation (hazing) on top of all those requirements 'cause this is getting way too wierd already."

If I only knew how, I would nominate this for quote of the day, nay, quote of the week. After reading this, I must proclaim myself to be a mere amateur and remove my hat in the presence of a true professional. Merry Christmas - Duke

[Ada Coddington]

Lewrockwell.com is nothing like the message board that comprises Freerepublic. Lewrockwell holds itself out to be a source of reporting on national, political and social issues intermingled with commentary on the former issues. I find that lewrockwell has in the past few months begun to focus on negative articles about the current administration at every opportunity.

Lewrockwell.com has no message board and does no independent reporting like WND. Six days a week it posts articles of interest to, well, Lew Rockwell including some from his own stable of writers. And, yes, they perceive the current administration in a generally negative way because of war-generated power grabs.

[Ada Coddington]

. Saddam was posting his troops to invade Saudi Arabia.

Well, no. He was posing his troops to invade Kuwait and asked the US amabassador if we had any problem with that. She answered that we had no interest in who ran Kuwait.

[PatrioticAmerican]

"My two biggest problems with "Libertarianism" have always been it's stands on abortion and open-borders."

Pro-abortion might always be a libertarian stance, maybe, but open borders? I know many Libertarians, and NONE of them are for open borders. Libertarians do NOT believe in anarchy. Less government does not equal no government.

[dubyajames]

Whewwww! I was thinkin' about becoming one until I saw how complicated it is. I'll bet a lot of applicants to become paleoliberatarians flunk out just trying to spell the name.

Maybe it would have been more concise to offer the following summary: They are libertarians who would like to see the welfare state uprooted at home and a non-interventionist foreign policy abroad, but have no quarrel with traditional morality. Many of them have an appreciation for Southern culture and they often adhere to Austrian economic theories. It's just a term invented to describe the most libertarian members of the Old Right.

[DAnconia55]

Attempting to educate the kindergarten kids can't be very satisfying....

[DAnconia55]

Pro-abortion might always be a libertarian stance,

Pro-Abortion is a shallow libertarian stance. Not a reasoned out one. But that's kinda off topic...

[Kevin Curry]

My two biggest problems with "Libertarianism" have always been it's stands on abortion and open-borders.

No problem. A libertarian will be by shortly to assure you that libertarians do not favor abortion or open borders.

And if you had said your two biggest problems with libertarianism are its anti-choice and closed borders stances some libertarian would rush to assure you that libertarians are pro-choice and favor open borders.

It is the "Party of Principle" after all.

[Sandy]

This is from one who was fighting communism while you were still in diapers.

Hey! That's the author's line. Guess you missed it when you scanned the article.

[Sandy]

I have really been surprised at the bashing lewrockwell.com has taken from Freepers the last several weeks.

It's really just a small group of freepers who do most of the bashing. I figure most don't even bother actually reading the post, which is why they seldom address the post's contents. They're nothing but tomato-throwers. Ignore them.

[Cinnamon Girl]

J'Astupid

[BluesDuke]

I'm a libertarian (non-party: been there, done that, dressed the wounds and moved on)...

Welcome to the club. I have dissociated myself from the LP, though it leaves me a kind of political orphan, inasmuch as I should sooner be caught at a football game than a registered Democrat and I, like Larry Elder, cannot suffer a Republican Party which talks the talk but cannot and almost willfully refuses to walk the walk.

I'd thought I'd find some commonality of values here, including the traditional conservative emphasis on politeness, but much of what I see suggests that, as on the Left, a lot of folks on the Right aren't really interested in discussing anything with anyone. Either agree with them, or get out.

Which provokes me to think that, perhaps, conservatives here (and elsewhere, for that matter) could use a republication of Frank S. Meyer's The Conservative Mainstream - particularised references of time and place aside, this gathering of a motherlode of Meyer columns and essays from National Review and Modern Age, among other publications, is a splendid overview of the man who did such yeoman's work in trying to uphold and remind conservatives of the very real libertarian strain and bindery of conservative thought and politics. Even better would be Mr. Meyer's In Defense of Freedom, which is still in print. As a kind of proof that one can and often enough does arise from intellectual hell (he was once a Marxist), Meyer should stand with Albert Jay Nock, Frank Chodorov, H.L. Mencken, Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Patterson, and John T. Flynn as a titan of the libertarian right.

[Sandy]

Why don't you let JimRob decide if this is a waste of bandwidth?

Bears repeating.

[BluesDuke]

Paleolibertarians are essentially the more libertarian branch of the Old Right. They are devoutly anti-statist, but unlike many Randian libertarians, they are not hostile to traditional morality. Many of them are strong believers in traditional morality, viewing it as a proper framework for a free society. They do not confuse opposition to the government enforcing certain moral standards with a rejection of those standards.

The key especially is in the final sentence. The libertarian who derives or otherwise draws his influence from the prime of the Old Right would say: Let the church and the synagogue tend to our morality, that is what the church and the synagogue are constituted best to perform. And, let the government tend to its simple and proper enough business of protecting a) her individual citizens and their rights against predators (real predators, please, not mere vicemongers - what you do in your home is between yourself and God and no one else's bloody business, so long as you keep it in your home and injure none while so doing; at the moment you inflict harm upon another, compel another forcibly to partake with you, or bring it to the public square where you've no assurance that your neighbour would indulge or otherwise bear what you do if allowed his own free choice, you then violate your neighbour's equivalent rights) at home, and b) all citizens against attack from abroad.

Even now, I rub my eyes at the thought that there were libertarians who missed a critical point from 9/11 and its aftermath. Reality check: We have for years spoken, as well we should, about both our right to defend ourselves against attack, and that none has the right to initiate force against another; well, guess what - We were attacked, and in perhaps the most heinous manner yet known; force was initiated against us; and, we can argue all we like about the underpinnings and wherefores as to why such force was or was not provoked, but for now force was initiated against us, and we have every right on God's green earth to have hit back, with such force as needed to neutralise the enemy while sparing the most precious of our resources, namely our men and women in uniform and in battle.

That, it seems to this libertarian (not, please, Libertarian; I have withdrawn from the LP, as noted earlier, for reasons best saved for discourse on another more appropriate thread), should have been the salient point of it all, even as we do rightly to remind ourselves of a crucial admonition enunciated once and best by Edward R. Murrow: As a nation, we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, what's left of it in the world; but, we cannot defend freedom abroad by abandoning it at home.

[Timesink]

A few more unpleasant truths, freepers.

Nothing like labelling an opinion piece "the truth" to set off everyone's Barbra Streisand detectors.