Sunday, September 3, 2017

Common Ground




As regular readers know, one of the sites that I frequent is that of The Saker.  I find his commentary on geopolitics and empire very worthwhile and insightful.  Of course, I do not agree with him on all topics, but I do not allow this to handicap my ability to become informed.

He has written a piece, with a title sure to shock: “First they came for the Nazis and pedophiles…” He does something you are not allowed to do: rationally look at the term “Nazi” and the emotions that this term evokes.  In some ways, it corresponds to my views recently presented here.

But this is not the “common ground” to which I refer.  Instead, this, from his “Conclusion: the last groups of resistance” (emphasis in original):

So that leaves only two groups who are still capable of thought and these are the paleoconservatives and the libertarians.  They are not exactly my cup of tea with their economic ideas and myths, but that really is irrelevant at this point.  What matters is that they are the last ones standing for the following basic principles:

-        Support for Constitutional freedoms and civil rights
-        Opposition to empire and foreign wars
-        Resistance against the social and political agenda of the “coalition of minorities”

It is this last point that might give some hint as to just which libertarians the Saker is speaking of.

I think that by now most paleoconservatives and libertarians have understood that “the Trump presidency is over” as Bannon put it.  Trump is a crushed and neutered intellectual midget in the hands of the Neocons.  But what Trump stood for during his election still deserves to be fought for.  Forget the man, but remember the values, the ideas, the principles which got him elected.  These values are all that stands between us and a life of servitude to the Neocons and their AngloZionist Empire.  This is also all that stands between mankind and a possible world war.

When Trump first began to gain traction, I noted that his was a continuation of the Ron Paul campaigns in the previous two cycles – not in terms of consistency and intellectual depth (as if this need be said), but in terms of that which was presented as the enemy.

in the US context these are the only two political forces left which are mentally capable of resistance.

I believe that the Saker describes himself as being from the left – the real left (as he calls it), of which he says no organized movement can be found north of the Rio Grande.

What the Neocon propaganda machine has been doing is to try to place the paleoconservatives and the libertarians into either the category “Putin agent” (Ron Paul) or Nazi (Pat Buchanan).  If they succeed, then it’s really the end, folks.

I say the Saker has this pretty much nailed.

Speaking of the mental capability of putting up resistance (HT Unhappy Conservative):

Sorry alt-right but the American media is an amazing national treasure, regardless of your ideological outlook. The free market in information has produced the best media industry in history.
-        Jeffrey Tucker

The media that is nothing more than press agent for war, destruction and empire – this is an amazing national treasure for some, but not for those who embrace freedom.  I don’t believe Tucker is the type of libertarian of which the Saker speaks, the type who is the last hope against empire, the type who is capable of thought and mentally capable of resistance.

I understand individuals, even adults, making meaningful changes in their political and cultural outlooks.  Yet I cannot apply this to Jeffrey Tucker, who has completely transformed his outward appearance since leaving the Mises Institute. 

Given how intellectually mature he was at the time of his transformation, one is only left with the possibility of questioning his integrity.

It is interesting with whom I hold common ground.

14 comments:

  1. I do not see any leftist in here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Donald_Trump

    max

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  2. Just began reading your blog a few weeks ago after Lew Rockwell mentioned it in a talk (I think at Mises U) and I find it very appealing. I've felt like a homeless ancap in many ways—the Mises Institute catalyzed my political transformation from a sort of neocon-lite to ancap and helped in part with my conversion to Catholicism from evangelical-whateverism. I'm pretty sure I'm not a left-libertarian (actually I'm certain of it) but I'm also having a hard time agreeing with closed borders/restricted immigration arguments; I've concluded I simply don't understand the Hoppean arguments and need to study further.

    At any rate, part of my confusion has stemmed from suddenly not understanding Jeffrey Tucker. Someone who was very clear and cogent at LvMI began to lose me between LFB, liberty.me, and now FEE. All those organizations seem to be making the right arguments, and FEE is publishing/digitally re-publishing laudable and worthy books as far as I can tell. But "Against Libertarian Brutalism" really stuck in my craw and I have had a hard time articulating why. Again, I probably don't understand it.

    On a related note, I saw that Deidre McCloskey has written a preface to Tucker's new book and, as much as I respect the little of McCloskey's research and writing skills that I have encountered, I cannot make myself call him a woman. If being a libertarian means embracing gender confusion, I may not even be libertarian.

    (Anonymous for now as I am in a sensitive industry in California; although my current employer is outspokenly conservative/paleocon, I will not be working for him forever.)

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    1. Welcome, and happy you are here.

      "...from suddenly not understanding Jeffrey Tucker."

      I laughed out loud at this - far more succinct and to the point than anything I have written regarding his transformation.

      If you haven't yet perused some of my writing on libertarians and culture, I offer:

      http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/p/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html

      You may find some articles - and comments - helpful to the issues you raise.

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  3. Woods is finding himself in trouble with libertarian Bolsheviks:

    http://tomwoods.com/bonus-ep-990-libertarian-drama-libertarian-party-chairman-takes-swipes-at-your-host/

    Relevant because it's illustrative of the point that, from my perspective, libertarians should be good for at least one thing; opposition to the empire. If they can't do that then they are worse than useless.

    Rothbard famously said that the question to determine whether someone was a libertarian is "do you hate the state?"

    https://mises.org/library/do-you-hate-state

    Now Rothbard was both onto something very deep and wrong. The area in which he is wrong, or rather narrowly confining his comments to libertarians, is that you cannot really hate an abstraction unless you are on levels of autism that shouldn't be possible. What you should hate is the actual state, not the idea of a state. With that established, does it really make sense for us to assume libertarians are the group who are most opposed to the USG/NATO? Did not Hitler hate the Weimar state? How about Randy Weaver? Tim Mcveigh? William Luther Pierce wrote an entire novel about violent revolution against the state (Turner Diaries). Harold Covington wrote an entire series on a white nationalist rebellion against D.C. How about the "racist" South actually waging a war against the state? I could go on and on.

    Hate comes from the things you care about being threatened. What do libertarians care about most? Money? Status? The USG isn't drawing up plans for rounding up subscribers to FEE. They aren't shutting down libertarian websites or violating their civil rights.

    We will see increasing from libertarians the idea that real opposition to empire is "fascist," and in my opinion there is truth to it. They are already claiming anti-Syrian war stuff is fascist and anti-Semitic (makes you think...).

    My question for these people is what specifically do you oppose about the empire? You say you are antiwar but you affirm the ideological premises on which the empire is built!

    This is by design. The empire has vast resources and can placate any position EXCEPT ethnic-nationalism (they may even be willing to do that if pushed far enough). True opposition to the empire must strike at the root and this empire is built on the premises of liberalism.

    It is my opinion that these people have no right to separate themselves from the imperialists and say "b-but we are da true liberals." Gee where have I heard that before.....?
    *internationale plays in the background*

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    1. I read this twice and it still makes no sense.

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    2. I second that. I don't follow...

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    3. I will clarify but if you could both answer my above question it would help.

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    4. State (polity)
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(polity)


      Country
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country


      Nation
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation


      any state,country,nation which is oppressive should be hated.

      like: USSR,north korea,cuba,Nazi germany,Fascist Italy, imperial England and france, and USA today.

      max

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    5. Are you talking about the state or the idea of a state? I "hate" the actions of the state, its impunity, and the repercussions therein.

      Hate can derive from more than just threats. Envy, for example. People hate the object of their envy. Are they threatened by that object?

      But let's just accept being narrowly boxed in so as to uphold your premise and allow the broadening of my mind. Please proceed.

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    6. Libertarians often waffle between a hatred of the particular state (D.C for our purposes) and a professed hate for "statism." I believe people are drawn to hardline libertarianism because it offers a strong critique of the present State, and there is plenty to hate, but you don't have to actually be a libertarian to hate it, and in many cases it's non-libertarians who hate it the most. I am not aware of any libertarians taking up arms against the state in the 20th century but I am aware of white nationalists who have (this is not an endorsement of violence, no bully FBI). My point here (and above) is just a more explicit version of what Deist said in his recent speech. People don't fight for abstractions, they fight for flesh and blood. This is true the world over. Every hardcore insurgency always has an ethnic-religious difference from the state they fight.

      Now let's say you hate the State because it's oppressive and you believe in universal human liberty (Sheldon Richman is an example of this view). Well how is this any different than the ideology on which the empire is based? He doesn't like how the wars of Liberation are conducted but does he really have a principled objection to a war of liberation in theory? How about a world order that garaunteed homosexuals rights world-wide? If the empire was actually bringing "true human rights" to Iraq would they object? Libertarians accept the premises of the liberal world order but dissent on how it's carried out.

      Libertarians like Sean Gabb have attempted to solve this by placing the philosophy in a particular ethnic-cultural context (Anglo-Saxon tradition), which I find admirable but that's not how most see it. For most it's a universal theory of human rights and as such it's hardly a departure from the ideological foundations of the present world order.

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    7. I hate the state, for the sake of argument I'll use hate. But it's not really an emotional thing. Of all the arguments I've encountered, the most compelling is Hoppe's argumentation ethics. So I hate the state because it's narrative, goals, and means are all dependent on faulty logic.

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    8. I will have an extensive post on this available in the morning. I will place the link here, once available.

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    9. http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2017/09/do-you-hate-state-and-if-so-why.html

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