Category Archives: libertarianism

UPDATED: Ann Coulter Disses Barry Goldwater’s Devotion To Private Property

Affirmative Action, Ann Coulter, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Private Property

In her latest column, “DON’T BLAME ROMNEY,” Ms. Coulter suggests that,

…purist libertarian Barry Goldwater … — as you will read in [her] book, ‘Mugged: Racial Demagoguery From the Seventies to Obama’ — nearly destroyed the Republican Party with his pointless pursuit of libertarian perfection in his vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Well, that immutably just position on private-property rights, taken by “purist libertarian Barry Goldwater,” is the position adopted in Into the Cannibal’s Pot, where I write the following:

In a free society—one not silhouetted by the State—honored is the right of the individual to associate and disassociate, invest and disinvest, speak and misspeak at will. Contrary to the civil servant, the private person’s “refusal to deal” ought to be sacrosanct. … In the encroaching American State, the right of free association has been circumscribed by crippling codes of hiring, firing, renting, and money lending. The culprit is the Civil Rights Act of 1964…

(Pages 119-120)

Cited in Into the Cannibal’s Pot is another “purist” who feels no compunction about defending a sacred individual right: the fine libertarian legal theorist Richard Epstein, author of Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws.

(“The Cannibal’s” predictive value seems to dovetail with its respectable Amazon rank below, today:
#3 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
#23 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Civil Rights & Liberties
#29 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Public Affairs & Policy > Social Policy)

UPDATE: In response to the Facebook thread: Ms. Coulter is very bright. Brilliant in many ways. But she’s not a deep thinker. I think she’s a solid writer and has a quick mind. I’ve always liked her b/c of those qualities, so rare among the the teletwats (sorry, could not help that).

UPDATED: Libertarians And The Vote

Canada, Democracy, Elections, Ilana Mercer, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism, The State

New American columnist Jack Kerwick is blasting non-voting libertarians. (I have an excuse: I have chosen to decline citizenship of Police State USA. I’m a permanent resident, but not a US citizen. I am, however, an American patriot. I don’t need Uncle Sam’s imprimatur or papers to be a patriot.)

I think Jack is making an argument that is similar to the one made in “LIBERTARIAN WRANGLING”:

From the fact that many libertarians believe that the state has no legitimacy, …they arrive at the position that anything the state does is illegitimate. This is a logical confusion. Consider the murderer who, while fleeing the law, happens on a scene of a rape, saves the woman, and pounds the rapist. Is this good deed illegitimate because a murderer has performed it?

Writes Jack:

“Romney, along with his fellow partisans, has pledged to repeal ObamaCare. “Would that be evil? [NO] He also wants to make America more energy independent. [Note: Libertarians want energy production, not necessarily energy independence, for the latter would imply a rejection of the logic of trade. It’s “drill AND trade, baby, trade.”] Would this be evil? A Romney administration would engender an environment dramatically more business-friendly than any that we could ever expect from an Obama administration. Would this be evil?”

The answer is no.

Basically, Jack Kerwick wants to shatter the pretense of ideological purity that allows libertarians (like myself) to stand outside of politics.

It’s a good debate. We should have it. (If I were cleared to vote, I doubt I would vote for the loopy Gary Johnson.)

UPDATE: Joseph Farah feels the same urgency that Jack Kerwick does: “It’s a matter of self-defense and self-preservation,” he says. MORE.

To Be Or Not To Be In Benghazi: That’s The Question

Democracy, Democrats, Government, libertarianism, Media, Middle East, Military, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, Republicans, Terrorism, The State, War, Welfare

“To Be Or Not To Be In Benghazi; That’s The Question,” and that’s the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

The gist of a cable received by the Office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on August 16 this year, summarized an emergency meeting convened a day before at the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, Libya.

The post could not be defended in the case of a coordinated attack. Such an attack was in the air, as Benghazi was home to “approximately ten Islamist militias” raring to go. The compound was small and understaffed. It lacked “the manpower, security measures, and weapons capabilities” to repel an all-out assault.

The cable laid out before Mrs. Clinton’s Emergency Action Committee what Fox News’ Catherine Herridge described, on Oct. 31, as “specific warnings” and “detailed intelligence.”

Fox News has been covering the Benghazi story wall-to-wall; the other cable news stations not at all. However, one specific snippet buried in the telegram was too fraught for the folks at Fox to probe.

In “liberated” Libya, the American outpost was also up against limited “host nation support.”

This was a coordinated attack on a despised presence, timed for the 9/11 anniversary. Living under de facto American occupation had enraged the occupied. Anathema to “free” Americans, this generic creature had evinced similar rage when he lived under Genghis Bush, in Iraq.

At first, the eminence grise of American opinion makers—left and right, Republican and Democrat—got behind the central conceit floated by the Obama Administration. The Arab world had once again erupted because of those of us who dared to insult Mohammad, Jihad’s muse. As the other set of despots used to intimate during its tenure in D.C., the perennial Muslim rioter resented the freedoms of our pole dancers, potty-mouthed entertainers, and loud, loutish politicians.

From the stuff that makes us “free,” these proxies for American power always exclude the IRS (Internal Revenue Service), authorized to hound us till end of the world, the alphabet soup of regulation agencies that prosecutes and regiments our best and brightest to the gills, the War on Drugs that assumes dominion over the most precious piece of real estate we own—our bodies—a welfare state that has been likened “not [to] a principality, but [to] a vast empire bigger than the entire budgets of almost every other country in the world,” and a warfare complex that gobbles up so much wealth and so many men, ours and others around the world.

As soon as it was discovered that these things—the accoutrements of a “wonderfully” messy democracy—could not be blamed for the attack on the Benghazi Mission, most media fell silent. …

The complete column is“To Be Or Not To Be In Benghazi; That’s The Question.” Read it on WND now.

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

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UPDATED: Benghazigate And The Media (Who Are Seasonal Defenders Of D.C. )

Democrats, Foreign Policy, Journalism, libertarianism, Media, Middle East, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, Republicans, War

“Barack Obama is a despicable man.” These are the words of the always outspoken and interesting Michael Scheuer (a staunch, pro-military Old Rightist, whose patriotism often leads him to conspiratorial anti-Israelism).

Scheuer was on Fox Business discussing Benghazigate.

Fox News is covering the Benghazi story wall-to-wall; the other cable news stations not at all.

This reportorial bifurcation is pretty typical of mainstream media, which includes Fox, of course. In the ramp-up to a Republican president’s unjust war on Iraq, Fox gave the Shrub and his administration a complete pass, while The Other Cable TV stations exposed the corrupt Republicans quite well.

“Reporters who slept with their sources,” “PRESSTITUTES,“ bobble-heads who were “TUNED-OUT, TURNED-ON, AND HOT FOR WAR”: These were some of the terms I used in 2003 and onward for Fox News:

“… to watch these women doing the Countdown to Obliterating Iraq segments was like watching bitches on heat. One anchorwoman’s memorable Freudian slip was to express disappointment that there was as yet no “evidence that’ll give us an excuse [her words] to attack Iraq.” On and on. (Collated in Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With a Corrupt Culture.)

Most of my information about Iraqi civilian casualties came from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. American mainstream media was generally missing in action on that front.

“ON PIMPS AND ‘PRESSTITUTES’” encapsulates the US media’s reporting during the invasion of Iraq, RIP:

…The monolithic quality of the reporting/cheerleading coming from the networks was and still is proof of the slutty sell-out. Practically all network embeds focused exclusively on the pentagon’s version of who did what, when, and how. Logistics usurped real issues; spectacle replaced substance, as the viewer was subjected to a perspective as monochromatic as the green of the night vision optics. …
…Reporting hearsay as truth and failing to verify stories has also been part of the networks’ war effort. A Geiger counter that went off in the inexpert hands of a marine was broadcast as possible evidence of weapons-grade plutonium. Every bottle of Cipro tablets became a likely precursor to an anthrax factory. Anchormen and women somberly seconded these “finds,” seldom bothering to issue retractions for misinforming the viewing public.

Then the guard changed. To American pundits (libertarians excepted), the changing of the guard in D.C. simply means a change of positions. Whereas MSNBC and CNN were more likely to expose the Bush Administration, they quickly assumed the position previously occupied by the Fox News network during the Bush years: defenders of D.C.

The pundits you follow, libertarains excepted, are all seasonal defenders of D.C.

To sum, Benghazi is a scandal. Fox News has been reporting (diligently, since their guy is NOT in D.C.) that: “…an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command — who also told the CIA operators twice to “stand down” rather than help the ambassador’s team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.”

Try to remember: The White House Situation Room, the State Department, CIA and Pentagon were just as good at forsaking Americans during the other bastard’s reign of terror.

For example, “Under ‘W,’ ordinary Americans were regularly beheaded in the theaters of war Genghis Bush launched. None of their representatives stateside bargained for their lives or staged showy Congressional hearings to probe their forsaken security.”

My hope is that the same readers who tried to have me dismissed from WND, during the Republican occupation of America, will elevate themselves above their current political preference and see the thing for what it is.

UPDATE (Oct. 27): If not for RT, we’d be as deaf and dumb (as ex-Facebook Friend, HJ) about the humanitarian disaster unfolding, a la Iraq, in Lebanon. Another Syria. Or rather, another Iraq. Read about the “Siege of Bani Walid.” Watch the visuals of the maimed and dead. Babies too.