[JohnGalt]

Rockwell is caring on a tradition established by Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard; Fleming, may prove to be a huckster, but the League of the South--which he founded-- will outlive him, I suspect.

Francis wants nothing more than to pull the conservative movement over to Jared Taylors neck of the woods, and I think that is something libertarians will not tolerate. But what we have gotten from the past decade is a search for an authentic American voice of dissent from the anti-anti-Federalist who would have looked at the Constitution as a coup d'etat and Jefferson as a sellout. It has been and continues to be a rich debate, cemented in Murray Rothbard and Fleming's Hard Right.

[x]

Francis has shown a keen analytic bent, though he flirts too much with the segregationists. So much about the man is guaranteed to offend. Gottfried is likewise a skilled analyst of contemporary American society. His books are very much worth reading, though in his slighter articles he's gotten to be too much of a whiner and accepted without question too much of what Rockwell and Fleming dish out.

Buchanan has shot his credibility as a politician, but often makes good points and raises important questions. The GOP is eventually going to regret its embrace of the neocons and move to a more main street, less globalist, less interventionist point of view, though. But it won't happen if the alternative to globalism is perceived as being tribalism or racialism.

Fleming is far too much of an armchair emotionalist. I can't consider him any sort of serious thinker or even a good writer. So much of his writing boils down to "I don't like," and some of the things he does like, sociobiology for example, have real problems for many. I don't think he has much understanding of history beyond a good guys vs. bad guys approach.

Dittos for Rockwell who also flirts too much with anarchy. So much of what gets put up on his website can't be taken seriously. The eternal "I hate the state/government is evil" refrain is more apt to turn people off than to attract them. He comes across as very much a Johnny One-Note.

I regard this LOTS/SIP nonsense more as a damning rather than a redeeming feature. An intriguing idea about American history gets pounded into a dry, narrow, spectacularly wrong-headed orthodoxy. Secession becomes a cure all, and the Confederacy the great alibi of American history.

Liberty Magazine has much in common with the paleolibs without falling into their grosser errors. There's an interesting article in the March issue contrasting Mises with Rothbard and Rockwell and questioning what they've done with his work.