January 22, 2008
As I’ve mentioned before, there was something I was supposed to write but couldn’t bring myself to get started working on. I tried to remove other distractions by prohibiting myself from writing any blog posts here until I began, but the only result was that I wasted time at other sites. Thanks to a malfunctioning server preventing me from fulfilling an entirely different obligation, a few hours ago I finally got around to it. I churned out more than I expected and by completely abandoning quality for quantity I might get it to the five-page limit by Wednesday, of which one or two may satisfy the original purpose of writing it. After that I should update much more regularly than I have this month.
In other good news, No Treason is back. As I said there:
Even though I’m a paleo that doesn’t believe in objective rights/morality, I’m still glad to see you back. Folks like Kinsella and DiLorenzo can really be dicks sometimes and I’m pleased you’re around to give ‘em hell.
The paleo vs cosmo/beltway/lifestyle/DC libertarian divide has gotten more attention than anyone would suspect thanks to the recent Ron Paul newsletter flapdoodle. I’ve been engaged in further doodle-flapping on the subject at Across Difficult Country, Distributed Republic, Will Wilkinson’s fly-bottle, EconLog, Mencius Moldbug’s Unqualified Reservations, FormerBeltwayWonk, IOZ, Brink Lindsey’s Age of Abundance, David Friedman’s Ideas, Kip Esquire’s Stich in Haste, and likely other sites. I happened to like Julian Sanchez and David Weigel’s piece on the paleolibertarian strategy, which apparently even Lew Rockwell no longer considers himself part of though I will still cling to the name. When Razib brought up Austrian Economics at Gene Expression I went off rambling about my journey through libertarianism. I was unable to post my comment about Justin Raimondo’s piece at TakiMag, so I do it here:
Wow. I didn’t expect anyone to actually defend the content of the newsletters, but Raimondo did. Give that antiwar.com has usually pushed the envelope more than lewrockwell.com which is turn does it more than mises.org I guess it shouldn’t have been too surprising. In context it is more defensible and there are some good hits scored against Kirchick.
I don’t think the Kochtopus is going after Paul. Many of them still seem to like him, they generally agree he probably didn’t actually write the newsletters and they are just reporting on a story that is highly relevant to their readers. People who decline to comment on something because it might be damaging to their favorite candidate cannot be taken seriously. I thought that the Weigel-Sanchez piece in Reason was quite fair, though that may make my opinion different from that of Sanchez himself.
I think most of this inter-libertarian rivalry is quite pointless. I’m a paleolibertarian and I identify more with the LvMI/LRC faction, but you guys need to grow up and try and act civilly with the Beltway crowd. Sanchez seems correct when he says it was mostly a fight going on at one side, with only Tom Palmer continually feuding in return. I’m glad you guys are around to point out when they slip up, but after that move on. There are too few libertarians to try and excommunicate folks who haven’t even violated any doctrines (I know there are some who supported the war, but even most Beltway libertarians opposed it).
Just to prove I’m not biased, I defended Barack Obama against similar guilt-by-racist-association charges at Steve Sailer’s blog and Volokh Conspiracy. You should, of course, disregard what I say and demand that Obama be raked over the coals.
I’ve been involved in a big dispute over Darwinism at Lawrence Auster’s site. The relevant posts are this one and this one. It spilled over to the anti-anti-semitism (yes, that’s two “anti”s) white nationalist blog The Inverted World in the post Auster’s Folly. At the same blog I argued against their support for the Iraq war here.
Hopefully Anonymous has still not updated, but the Hoover Hog has.
The title of this post was inspired by this, from Richard Dawkins. As long as I’m talking about atheism and libertarianism, Vox Day’s “The Irrational Atheist” is available for order and to hear the author himself hype it the sales are quite well. I might even buy it eventually, since it’s got John Derbyshire’s recommendation. I hope it outsells Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism”, which is a book that deserved to be written but not by Jonah Goldberg. Will Wilkinson interviews Goldberg here and Vox Day does so here.
P.S Completely off topic, but apparently George Orwell died 58 years ago yesterday.
January 22, 2008 at 10:44 pm
+1 for Gaimondo. I hope some of his readers did add The Camp of the Saints on their reading list when he mentioned it not that long ago:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11246
“On the narrower question of recruiting fresh bodies for our overseas military operations by offering citizenship – did you ever read The Camp of the Saints? It’s a novel about what happens when a massive flotilla of immigrants arrives on European shores, and some less extreme version of this scenario is easily imaginable in the context of our military recruiting efforts among the “undocumented.” It’s not inconceivable that U.S. military recruiters will soon be setting up shop overseas, bribing potential GIs with green cards and the promise of a bright future in America, where the streets are paved with gold. Every ambitious thug, every upwardly mobile Mexican mafia “enforcer,” every Russian skinhead with his eyes on the prize will flock to these recruiting centers, like ants to a honey pot left out in the yard. The world will soon be swarming with them: armed, unassimilated, and dangerous in more ways than one.”
January 25, 2008 at 8:38 am
The same essay also has Raimondo sounding rather “paleo” here:
“No, I’m not saying that legions of foreign-born soldiers are going to pull off a coup against Our Dear Leader. What I am saying is that the political culture many of these newly recruited neo-Americans hail from hardly rules this out. Latin America, the largest source of immigration to America, has spawned many a military coup: indeed, south of the Rio Grande, this is something of a time-honored tradition. Something about the political culture of those lands encourages the cult of the Leader and militates against constitutionally limited government and the rule of law.”
January 25, 2008 at 9:08 am
I’m not worried about a coup, but the effects on our political culture (as sorry a state as it’s already in) is my primary concern with immigration. Like the immigrants themselves, I really prefer living in the U.S to Latin America, and I don’t think the differences between the two are just do to geography.
January 25, 2008 at 10:03 am
” Something about the political culture of those lands encourages…militates against constitutionally limited government and the rule of law.”
I think he’s agreeing with you.
January 28, 2008 at 2:46 am
[...] for our own pet reasons and I find them more interesting. Among those places recently was the Inverted World where I was sympatico with regard to Darwinism but not racialism or the Iraq [...]
February 29, 2008 at 1:21 am
[...] (as did Giuliani with Robertson). Personally, I reject guilt-by-association in the case of McCain, just as I did earlier with Obama and Paul. I have problems enough with Mr. “Bomb, bomb Iran” and his own [...]