Category Archives: libertarianism

UPDATED: Libertarians Should Look Inward For Reasons Funding Drying Up*

Ilana Mercer, Intellectualism, libertarianism, Liberty, Political Philosophy

Jim Ostrowski has posted to Facebook a column by EPJ’s Robert Wenzel titled “LewRockwell.com in Financial Trouble?” Jim, who has never enjoyed a feature column on the “libertarian sites” he slavishly touts (sorry pal; just standing up for what you deserve), and has been called by Murray Rothbard “one of the finest people in the libertarian movement” (damn straight), should contemplate the following:

If these iconic, but waning, sites had not diligently and systematically expunged or marginalized their best and brightest, presumably because we do not conform strictly to party-lines; they’d have long since harnessed the energies, intellectual and other, of individuals who, after working in the trenches like dogs for little to nothing, and without ANY libertarian support—are in a position, finally, to boost atrophying sites and help increase their audiences.

Robert Wenzel is right. The problem of dwindling funding (usually associated with reduced readership) is not all the doing of the neocons or the libertarians who don’t like cookies or pop-ups. (The love of cookies inspired the title of a chapter in my next book, not that you’ll hear about any of my books, all good for liberty, from the libertarian sites you know.)

Non-establishment libertarian sites operate in as cultish a manner as do beltway libertarians. In the liberty-oriented community, people tend to huddle in atrophying intellectual attics, and quibble about detecting and expelling contrarians. Dare to dissent, and keepers of the flame will take it upon themselves to read you out of the movement (check).

This, naturally, makes for tribalism, not individualism. The bad, moreover, have a nasty habit of crowding out the good. Or, as one Objectivist wag once wrote, “Quality is never the result of intellectual purges: the most creative and independent thinkers are the first to go.” That makes perfect psychological sense: those who remain feel more secure, group cohesion having trounced intellectual vitality.

Infrequently, on the occasion that this column is featured by one of the sites discussed, I will invariably get the odd letter or two to say: “Wow, never heard of you. Where have you been hiding? Why aren’t you a regular?”

Why am I persona non grata in libertarian circles after, oh, close to 20 years of quality writing? Take a guess?

The last of the letters I quote verbatim:

“Next to Rothbard, I believe you and Hoppe are the best libertarian writers I know of. I’ve read all your articles. I had been arguing with x and others about immigration for months. Some of the self-proclaimed dictatarians [sic] of libertarianism blocked me because I disagreed with them. You were the only person who challenged the libertarian establishment on immigration, and you were right.”

No, the Ron Paul Revolution is over and it is not the only act in town. If Ron-Paul-Only institutions are faltering, they need to look beyond the neocons and “the bizarre anti-ad perspective of many ‘libertarians,'” in the words of Wenzel, and do a little navel-gazing.

UPDATE (12/8): Jim Ostrowski knows I’m right, but won’t “Like,” because he’s being … lawyerly. He, like myself, deserves the prominence which would have PAID dividends to those who gave it. So, I’m sorry: You huddle in compliant ideological attics; you never tolerate the slightest dissent; you behave like mainstream; you’ll dry up.

*****

* For the same reason, The Independent Institute should stop hitting me up for money on Giving Tuesday or on any other day. (I’ll choose The World Parrot Trust and Project Perry any day. And I did.)

Donald Trump Says The Sentient, Simple Smart Thing: Keep Jihadis OUT

Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Terrorism

Said Donald Trump today at a rally: If you’re a Jihadi who’s traveled to train abroad—American, permanent resident or anything else—“you are never-ever coming back into the US.” Finally, a man smart enough to say the simplest, truest, most libertarian thing; what was said in “A Modest Libertarian Proposal: Keep Jihadis OUT, Not IN”:

Naturally, no individual should be arrested for harboring wicked thoughts or hanging with wicked people. But when he leaves the Occident with the intent to train to wage war on his neighbors—the Jihadi must be stopped from re-entering the good country.

Let the West’s homegrown Jihadis wander from the killing fields of one crap country to another, like the nomadic hired guns they are.

By nature, this modest proposal is defensive (not to mention decisive) and, thus, eminently libertarian.

There are well over 3,000 Western fighters that have traveled to assist ISIS and its offshoots in forging a caliphate. They return with murder on their minds. They must not be allowed back into Western countries.

Citizenship is nothing more than a political grant of government privilege; a positive, state-minted right. Citizenship is not a natural right. Yet these state-stamped licenses—citizenship and attendant travel documents—are honored, at the cost of innocent lives.


Be careful Donald Trump. Bringing down the system, as you are doing, is dangerous to the parasites that are attached to it like limpet mines.

Be careful. Get top notch private protection.

UPDATED: The Turks, The Turkmen & The American Turkeys Stateside

America, Foreign Policy, Government, Islam, Israel, libertarianism, Middle East

The US government is too often on the side of the American People’s enemies. (Think closely about the implications of that statement.) I would venture that were a US pilot parachuting through disputed airspace, onto Turkey’s territory, the Turks—great NATO allies of Obama and Bush—would sic their Turkmen proxies on our pilot, and these ethnic Turkmen would have eliminated him, with blood-curdling cries to a vampiric god, as they did an ISIS-fighting Russian pilot. The Kurds—real allies to America and Israel but betrayed by both—our pals the Turks are always killing.

What is the term for a government that’s mostly on the side of its people’s enemies?

UPDATE: There is that tinny robotic libertarian edict to see no evil, hear no evil; some libertarians believe you should pretend to see no evil/ hear no evil, all under the guise of foreign policy neutrality. Not me. Noted here was the fact that there is a sympathetic people in the region. That only the 3, proverbial, see-no-evil hear-no-evil monkeys (and some libertarians) would deny. The post further asked not what we can do for the good Kurds, but why are this government’s interests (ditto Bush’s) the same as those of the bad actors. The paragraph is a rather modest one. So, where is its answer? What is the proper term for “a government that’s mostly on the side of its people’s enemies”? Where are those Founder quotes?

UPDATED: Great Historian Of Liberty On ‘ET Analyzes Paris Attacks & Weeps For The West’

Classical Liberalism, Free Speech, History, libertarianism, Liberty, Nationhood, The West

It’s not easy to admit, but writing “ET Analyzes Paris Attacks & Weeps for the West,” now on The Unz Review, was very emotional. Enough said. Therefore, it means a great deal when liberty’s historian, the great Dr. Ralph Raico, says this about my ET:

November 27, 2015 at 5:04 pm GMT • 100 Words

An excellent, courageous article. The author demonstrates her unwavering commitment to individual rights, including freedom of expression, by criticizing the Federal Republic’s prosecution of an elderly woman for the heinous thought crime of “Holocaust denial.” Such prosecution is a common occurrence in the soft authoritarian regimes of western Europe which the First Amendment has thankfully spared us in America–so far.

Dr. Raico’s Articles Archive at LewRockwell.com.

About Ralph Raico, PhD.

Raico Books.

READ “ET Analyzes Paris Attacks & Weeps for the West,” now on The Unz Review.

UPDATE: Clyde Wilson, another great historian (quoted just the other day), this time of the South, sent commendations. It means a lot, because, as I said, this piece took a lot out of me.

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