[BretLudwig]

Lew Rockwell And The Strange Death (Or At Least Suspended Animation) Of
Paleolibertarianism

By Arthur Pendleton

"The biggest controversy of Ron Pauls presidential race was the
release of old excerpts from The Ron Paul Letter. During Pauls
congressional races, he had been attacked occasionally for RPL pieces
about black crime rates and political attitudes, and he had defended them.
But now James Kirchick of The New Republic managed to go through the entire
archives and find politically incorrect statements about gay rights, black
crime, South Africa, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Paul caved in a sadly conventional manner (in contrast to Obama when the
MSM finally reported the news of his ties to Rev. Jeremiah Wright). He
denied he wrote or even knew the articles existed in his own newsletter.
He denounced them on no uncertain terms, groveling about how much he loved
Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr, and how he thought the criminal
justice system is racist.

Those in the know claimed former Paul chief of staff and president of the
Ludwig von Mises Institute Lew Rockwell was the author of the letters.
Rockwell has vigorously denied it. And various writers on his
heavily-trafficked LewRockwell.com [LRC] denounced all the "racism" in the
Paul letters.

But regardless of whether or not Rockwell actually wrote the offending
articles, the fact is that he was once willing to breach all the taboos
that the newsletter violated. Unfortunately, however, in the last few
years Rockwell and his LewRockwell.com circle have come full circle and
embraced much of the leftist agenda that they once bemoaned.

In the process, they have essentially abandoned €œpaleolibertarianism€�,
the once-promising intellectual movement that stayed true to libertarian
principles while opposing open borders, libertinism, egalitarianism, and
political correctness.

I first ran into Lew Rockwell and his mentor Murray Rothbard€”who is
considered the founder of modern libertarianism€” when I volunteered for
Pat Buchanan in 1992. I had previously thought of libertarians as just
greedy hippies, but I found that Rothbard and Rockwell had all the gripes
against most libertarians€”whom Rothbard called "left libertarians" or
"modal libertarians"€”that I did.

In the late 1980s, Rockwell and Rothbard broke with the Establishment of
the libertarian movement represented by the Cato Institute and Libertarian
Party. With the Cold War over, Pat Buchanan and many conservatives were
returning to the isolationist principles of the Old Right. Rockwell and
Rothbard aligned themselves with this €œpaleoconservative€� tendency and
began to refer to themselves as €œpaleolibertarians€�. The main
institutions behind the paleolibertarian movement were the Mises
Institute, of which LewRockwell.com was originally a project, and the
Center for Libertarian Studies, which published the Rothbard Rockwell
Report (RRR.)

The RRR was a cantankerous and marvelously politically incorrect
newsletter. It would publish taboo writers like Mike Levin, Sam Francis,
and Jared Taylor. Murray Rothbard wrote one of the strongest reviews of
The Bell Curve in which he praised other scientific students of race like
John R. Baker and Phil Rushton. Most of all, RRR would not hesitate to
call out the neoconservatives and the left-libertarians for their left
wing views on homosexuality and race.

Lew Rockwell also appeared regularly in the Los Angeles Times, where he
would write columns you would rarely see in a big city paper. He
vigorously defended the beating of Rodney King and went after vouchers
because they would, in effect, allow underclass blacks into private
schools, writing

€œThe initiative also affects good public schools. They will have
vouchered students arriving from everywhere to demand entrance. What if a
suburb refuses? It cannot. The initiative says it must be open to
"children regardless of residence." The dirty secret of vouchers is that
they effectively abolish school districts.€� [Big Brother, Thy Name Is
Vouchers, Los Angeles Times, August 15, 1992. (Pay archive)

Tragically, Rothbard died at the early age of 68 in 1995. Over the next
few years, Rockwell and other paleolibertarians quarreled with the
paleoconservatives at the Rockford Institute and Chronicles Magazine over
economics€”and possibly because of personality clashes€”and mostly
seceded from their joint forum, the John Randolph Club. But they continued
to take the anti-egalitarian right wing line.

In 1999 Rockwell ended the RRR which morphed into the webzine
Lewrockwell.com (LRC) and the Center for Libertarian Studies also began
Justin Raimondos Antiwar.com.

The paleolibertarians also were leaders in the fight to oppose Third World
immigration€”Greg Pavlik wrote in RRR

"these new arrivals from the third world generally vote for statist
policies and along ethnic lines; agitate for entrenching affirmative
action; benefit from affirmative action at others' expense; back
redistribution of all sorts; commit crimes disproportionate to their
numbers; and add to the welfare burden disproportionate to their
numbers."[February, 1998]

The brilliant economist Hans-Herman Hoppe wrote scholarly articles showing
that open borders was not limited government, but forced integration.

Then came September 11. Admirably, Lewrockwell.com and antiwar.com were
among the few conservative (and even libertarian) outfits to come strongly
against the attack on Iraq. Middle America and the institutionalized
conservative movement were the most vigorous beaters of the war drum.

It does not take a genius to see that the same neoconservative ideology
that transformed conservatism into empire building is also behind open
borders€”what Steve Sailer calls "invade the world/invite the world."
David Frum's notorious "Unpatriotic Conservatives" piece that went after
the paleos gave almost as much attention to their supposed racism and
xenophobia than their opposition to the War. The Weekly Standard is the
most vocally pro-war and open borders "conservative" publication.

But instead of trying to take back Middle America from the neocons, Lew
Rockwell appears to have decided the new enemy was "Red State
Fascism€�€”a.k.a. Middle American patriotism, however misguided. Instead
of accusing the neoconservatives of transforming conservatism into a
universalistic and internationalist war machine, Mises Institute VP Jeff
Tucker wrote that the root of the problem was that all conservatives are
nationalists. Before long, LRC writers were praising Noam Chomsky and
Michael Moore, while endorsing John Kerry for President.

An alliance on foreign policy is one thing. But this leftward slide has
applied to other issues.
bullet When Jeremiahs Wrights anti-white and anti-American sermons
got attention, the paleolibertarians not only defended his extreme antiwar
positions, but also his black paranoia.

According to Justin Raimondo,

€œOf course, Wright's contention that "no black man will ever be
considered for president" is refuted by the very fact of Obama's
front-runner status. Perhaps only Hillary Clinton€”who recently offered
Obama the vice presidency, in spite of the fact that he's ahead of her by
every measure€”and a few yahoos out in the sticks are stuck in this old
mindset. As for the rest, it's undeniably true. We do have more black men
in prison than in college€”way more. Racism is alive and well; driving
while black is still a dangerous pastime. This country was founded with a
near-fatal flaw in the constitutional order, one that permitted slavery to
continue for another hundred years.€� [Links are Raimondo's]

Anthony Gregory complained on Lewrockwell.com that "decrying real racial
oppression, especially in the form of imperialism, is sometimes considered
€˜PC" but that in reality Wright was a victim of conservative political
correctness that refused to acknowledge "[t]he Founding Fathers were
hypocrites. The US was the aggressor in the Mexican War. The European
colonists were horrible to the Indians. Slavery was a great evil. Japanese
Internment was a great evil€¦The criminal justice system is systematically
unfair and oppressive."
bullet Whereas Rothbard once said that the litmus test

"which can set up a clear dividing line between genuine conservatives and
neoconservatives, and between paleolibertarians and what we can now call
"left-libertarians"€¦ is where one stands on "Doctor" King",

Lewrockwell.com now reprints King's anti-American essays and approvingly
links to pieces suggesting there was a government conspiracy to kill
King.
bullet Whereas Rothbard once bemoaned that

"in the case of most left liberals and all neocons, any proposal for any
reason to restrict immigration or even to curb the flow of illegals, is
automatically and hysterically denounced as racist, fascist, sexist,
heterosexist, xenophobic, and the rest of the panoply of smear terms that
lie close to hand",

LRC now publishes pieces from Hispanics that denounce "racism from people
like the Minutemen and other self-armed vigilantes" and say that any
"attempt by the majority to assimilate us or to only speak English because
we're in someone else's country" is "only a milder form of racism and
xenophobia."
bullet Whereas the RRR once said of the Foundation for Economic
Education,

"Does the open-borders crusade mark a permanent break from FEE's roots in
the Old Right?...The tying of FEE to the National Council of La Raza line
on immigration must be reconsidered, if only in the interests of the
organization's own stated ideals."

an LRC writer named Ryan McMaken has just defended Reconquista:

€˜Go back to Boston! Go back to Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims! Get out! We are
the future. You are old and tired. Go on. We have beaten you. Leave like
beaten rats. You old white people. It is your duty to die€¦ Through love
of having children, we are going to take over.

€œThe American Conservative Union is shocked €”shocked!€”that anyone
would say such a thing. Of course, you could simply change a few words
around and you'd simply get something that could have been uttered by most
any 19th century Anglo American €”telling Mexicans to get lost, of course.
The losers then were the Hispanics. Now, the Anglos are the losers. And
they're losing big time€¦

€œI know the thought of a Hispanic majority, which will surely be a solid
majority throughout the American Western states by the end of the century,
drives many conservatives (especially of the paleo variety) [Link to
VDARE.COM in the original] into apoplexy, but the fact is the Anglos
simply don't have ht resources (namely, the population) to win. Even if
the borders were closed, it would still be just a matter of time. The
Hispanic population is simply more young and fertile than the quickly
aging and childless Anglo one. Plus, history has shown that an old,
sterile population bordered by a young, fertile population, will
eventually be overwhelmed regardless of what the law books say€¦

€œThe fact that California, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah are
even part of the United States is just an accident of history€¦ And
overall, the day of Anglo civilization is moving quickly to the grave.
They'll be replaced in Northern Europe, and they'll be replaced in North
America. The Anglos here should at least be happy they're being
outnumbered by Christians and not by Muslims interested in Sharia law.
Soon, Anglo-Saxon civilization will be but a footnote in history.€�

Anyone who did not get the memo that we need to do a 180 on race and
immigration is now denounced or swept under the rug.
bullet When American Renaissance staffer Jim Lubinskas wrote a piece for
Frontpagemag.com proclaiming "The End of Paleoconservatism" that included
a mild criticism of the paleos abandonment of racial issues, Justin
Raimondo responded by calling Jared Taylor a "pseudo-intellectual,"
"neo-Nazi" and "Park Avenue George Lincoln Rockwell."

bullet LRC had a few blog posts questioning the legacy of Rosa Parks, but
they were promptly deleted after a left libertarian attacked them.

bullet When LRC found that Bob Wallace wrote, admittedly in simplistic
terms, about racial differences in intelligence on a message board
unrelated to LRC, his entire archive of over 100 posts disappeared.

bullet The Mises Institute website has every single article that appeared
in the Journal of Libertarian Studies€”except for Mike Levins preview
of his wonderful book Why Race Matters, which appeared in the Fall 1997
issue.

bullet The LRC archives of Jared Taylor [Archive.org link] and Joe Sobran
which used to appear on the site have been deleted.

bullet LRC carries Pat Buchanans columns, but hasnt run his pieces
on interracial crime, genetic differences in intelligence, or
immigration.

And, last but not least, LRC used to regularly link to VDARE.COM but
hasnt done so in years€”even when Peter Brimelow interviewed Ron Paul,
although it could well have helped his presidential candidacy with the
patriotic immigration reform movement.

Needless to say, this groveling hasnt done the paleolibertarians any
good. Cato Institute fellow Tom Palmer has a section to his blog called
"The Fever Swamp" dedicated to exposing the €œracism€� and
€œanti-Semitism€� of LRC and Antiwar.com. The usual Establishment
libertarian figures didnt cut them any slack during the Ron Paul Letter
fiasco.

Lew Rockwell has said he no longer considers himself a paleolibertarian.
But the movement filled a real niche and is not completely dead. For
example, Hans Herman Hoppe, who is still engaged with the Mises Institute
and LRC, has started an international group "Property and Freedom Society"
that holds conferences for the remaining right-wing libertarians and other
politically incorrect outcasts such as Richard Lynn, Paul Gottfried, Paul
Belien, Tatu Vanhanen, and Peter Brimelow.

LRC, Antiwar.com, and The Mises Institute still do some great work on
economics and foreign policy. But we must face the sad fact that they are
now completely useless on that National Question. Their opposition to the
state has turned to an opposition to the nation.

Tragically, one of the victims of this is Ron Paul himself. Despite a
brave campaign, the plain fact is that he did not do as well in the GOP
primaries as the paleoconservative insurrectionary Pat Buchanan did in
1992 and 1996. Paul could easily have countered McCains
military/patriotic appeal by emphasizing how awful McCain is on
immigration, which polls showed was an important issue in many primary
states. But so completely did Paul fail to do this that McCain repeatedly
ran ahead of him among voters who want immigration reduced.

Maybe Paul was spending too much time reading the new, emphatically not
improved, LewRockwell.com

Arthur Pendleton (email him) has a real job in Occupied America."

http://www.vdare.com/misc/080514_pendleton.htm

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