Category Archives: Old Right

UPDATED: Republicans Desperately Need To … Flip-Flop On Foreign Policy (Entrenched, Un-Rothbardian Meta-Perspective)

Democrats, Elections, Just War, libertarianism, Liberty, Middle East, Military, Old Right, Political Philosophy, Politics, Republicans, War

Democrats and Republicans are warring over who won last night’s vice presidential debate. Democrats say Joe Biden; Republicans Paul Ryan.

While I agree with Daniel Pipes’ impressions of Biden’s repulsive demeanor (excerpted below); to the impartial observer, the outcome was clear. This time around, Ryan took the place Barack Obama occupied last week: loser.

Or, rather, relative loser (BHO was an absolute loser).

Ryan, of course, was never as bad a loser as Obama, as he is far more intelligent, studious, and quicker on his feet than the president. But overall—and during most of the bickering—Ryan lost.

Here’s Pipes on “Joe Biden’s smirk”:

Actually it was not just the smirk – it was also the false hilarity, the 82 interruptions of Ryan, the finger pointing, the preening arrogance, and the talking down to the audience – that overshadowed all else in the debate. Not until the last fifteen minutes did Biden talk like a normal human being, and then he became quite effective. Before then, however, his ugly demeanor overwhelmed his words, leaving a powerfully unpleasant impression. In contrast, Ryan spoke earnestly and respectfully, even while getting in a couple of sharp elbow jabs.

Dr. Pipes and I diverge over the nature of the principles mentioned, but Pipes correctly points to the absence of any in the debate, writing that, “With only a few exceptions, both candidates (as was also the case in the presidential debate) stayed aloof from principles, preferring to make the case as to who is the more competent manager. … those endless numbers and the disagreements over small facts meant the discussion verged on the tedious.”

Particularly painful (to longtime observers vested in an Old-Right, non-interventionist foreign policy) was Ryan’s deer-in-the-headlights look under Biden’s relentless barrage of,

“You gonna go to war (Iran)? You’d rather Americans be going in doing the job instead of the [Afghan] trainees? You wanna send our soldiers to the border with Pakistan; let the Afghans step-up. We’re leaving! Let them step-up. The last thing America needs is to get in another ground war in the Middle East …”

I’ll say this much: Poor Paul Ryan knows his Afghan mountain passes.

His boss’s behind Biden saved.

The debate dovetailed with “Desperately Seeking A Flip-Flop On Foreign Policy,” this week’s column, now on RT. It pointed out that “in fact, there is little daylight between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, as far as foreign policy goes.”

UPDATED (Oct 14): ENTRENCHED, UN-ROTHBARDIAN META-PERSPECTIVE. In reply to the Facebook thread, and Myron Pauli’s entrenched meta-perspective.

Myron, you mean you would not wish to hear and see Republicans commit to not launching wars and leaving all foreign bases? What kind of libertarianism is THAT!? Not Murray Rothbard’s. He was a tireless political junky, never one to sit on the fence lazily and feign disinterested piety. Alas, we have this debate every week, Myron. It’s not a debate. You adopt the same meta-perspective on politics; I cut and paste a characterization of your response, and it is this: “… We libertarians must not comment on policy, for it compromises our precious libertarian purity. We must not apply the mind to the issues of the day to enlighten our readers and bring them closer to liberty, for no enlightenment other than the immediate and absolute application and acceptance of the non-aggression axiom can be entertained.

UPDATED: Anything Obama Can Do, I Can Do Deadlier: That Sums Romney’s Foreign Policy

Barack Obama, Constitution, Elections, Foreign Policy, Just War, libertarianism, Old Right, Republicans, Terrorism, War

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow stares into the Romney foreign-policy abyss, and demolishes Obama’s challenger for going AWOL, and allowing Americans to continue to drift unmoored. In fact, from Maddow’s impassioned plea, I hazard that if Mitt Romney fleshed out the details of an Old-Right, anti-interventionist stand, exposing the immorality of Obama’s adventurism and violations abroad, he’d get her respect, and, if not her own vote, that of many of her pals on the left.

Yes, on rare occasions, Rachel Maddow does surprise with a streak of independence. If I understood Maddow’s latest televised monologue–and I do believe I am not giving her undue credit—she is challenging Mitt Romeny to say something meaningful, anything, about US foreign policy. And, in particular, about Obama’s worldwide drone assassination program, which she, like any decent human being, abhors.

That’s all you’ve got. how about this. what would you do differently if the answer is we’d be stronger, that’s not an answer. we deserve a politics that is capable of giving us choices or setting up a debate about competing reasonable ideas about handling the controversial things the government does in our names.
I know what the obama administration’s position is on Afghanistan. because he’s the president. i have no idea what mitt romney would do differently in Afghanistan, if anything. i know what the obama’s administration is on drones. i frankly find that position hair raising. i know what the obama administration’s position is on Pakistan. i know mitt romney thinks pakistan is very important. is it inconceivable somebody would ask him why, how, what his plan would be when it comes to that country? politics should move us some distance toward debate and decision making on the hardest problems we face as a country. that is not what we’re getting from our politics right now. if we’re not getting it now, when…”

Obama, says Maddow, is “using flying killer robots to do kill people all over the world.” She invites Romney to step into the void,

and his “answer is that he also thinks killing bin laden was a good idea. [and that] he wouldn’t crash [a drone] in iran. any questions? it is days like this when you realize that however important this presidential campaign is and this decision is, that we as a country have to make between these two candidates, our politics are essentially failing right now. they’re essentially impotent now for debating questions like this one. choosing between candidates is supposed to be the way we choose between policies in important thing that affect our country including national security. but our politics have been allowed to shrink if one side doesn’t want to talk about it, we’re not going to debate it as a country. let people in Washington figure it out. a new report out today says our secret drone policy, which we’ve been implementing for the better part of a decade, may be radicalizing the residents with a radical country. we’re not going to debate that at all. that’s not a policy matter that’s bort some national discussion. no competing ideas about maybe a choice in course. this is what the democratic president is doing. the republican party has no competing ideas on this at all? nothing to say? with this policy, due process that we afford people, that we kill people, the due process ultimately consists of the president of the united states making the call.
…but we are in the process of picking who’s going to be the next president and we’re not asking where these two men stand on that issue or if they think they should have that power. if that power should exist. if we’re not going to ask these questions now. look at this week. you have president obama at the UN talking about the policy of Pakistan and Hillary Clinton meeting the president of Pakistan on the same day. you have the developing story of the drone attack yesterday that killed an al qaeda leader. and you have a presidential campaign. but the conversation when it comes to this stuff is, “he seems like jimmy carter.” i read that he was a one-term president once. really? that’s all you’ve got. how about this. what would you do differently? if the answer is we’d be stronger, that’s not an answer. we deserve a politics that is capable of giving us choices or setting up a debate about competing reasonable ideas about handling the controversial things the government does in our names. i know what the obama administration’s position is on afghanistan. because he’s the president. i have no idea what mitt romney’s [is]…

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UPDATE (9/26): In reply to the Facebook thread: MRP, as per usual, your position is in contradiction to mine. As I’ve replied to you many times, and in almost every post or column of mine, yours is standard anarchism, and it goes as follow: “Don’t say anything, for it is nothing really. Do not comment on policy, for it compromises precious libertarian purity. Do not apply your mind to the issues of the day to enlighten your readers and bring them closer to liberty, for no enlightenment other than the immediate and absolute application and acceptance of the non-aggression axiom can be entertained.” Pretty much. I’m sorry, Myron, but, like it or not, what Maddow said is important. Objectively speaking. And my anti-war readers are better informed for understanding how truly remiss Romney is for not breaking with the Bush-McCain axis of evil. It takes no intellectual effort whatsoever to adopt a default position of intellectual ennui and superiority.
Finally, I am unconvinced Romney is as bad a man as is Obama, on a personal level. Romney is just a conformist, and pig ignorant in terms of political philosophy.

UPDATE II (2/26/2017): Napolitano-Koch Connection? (Sixth Sense)

Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Media, Old Right, Political Correctness, The State

As you all know, I was no fan of Freedom Watch, which, in my opinion, had that distinct CATO/Beltway, left-libertarian bent. The following item, via LewRockwell.com, seems to lend credence to the Napolitano-Koch connection:

“Last year, [Koch-allied board members] used their shares to place two of their operatives — Kevin Gentry and Nancy Pfotenhauer — on our board against the wishes of every single board member save for David Koch. Last Thursday, they used their shares to force another four new board members on us (the most that their shares would allow at any given meeting); Charles Koch, Ted Olson (hired council for Koch Industries), Preston Marshall (the largest shareholder of Koch Industries save for Charles and David), and Andrew Napolitano (a frequent speaker at Koch-sponsored events). Those four — who had not previously been involved with Cato either financially or organizationally — were likewise opposed by every member of our board save for Gentry, Pfotenhauer, and David Koch. To make room for these Koch operatives, we were forced to remove four long-time, active board members, two of whom were our biggest donors. At this moment, the Kochs now control seven of our 16 board seats, two short of outright control.”

UPDATE I (March 7): My sixth sense doesn’t often fail me. I sensed something fishy about Napolitano. Was he intertwined with the Kochtopus or what? No wonder every women on Freedom Watch was from the (CATO run, as we find out) Independent Women’s Forum.

Read “Cato and the Kochs.”

UPDATE II (2/26/2017): The Rockwell link has disappeared. Fishy? But here is another hyperlink that suggests Andrew Napolitano was being pushed at CATO by lefty moguls, the Koch Brothers.

“Cato and the Kochs” by Will Wilkinson:

It seems clear enough that the Kochs are trying to take over by stacking the board. I have no idea what they’re up to, but judging from their board nominees and appointees, it doesn’t look at all good. On the other hand, the hand-wringing over the new Koch-nominated board members–Ted Olson, Andrew Napolitano, Nancy Pfotenhauer, and Kevin Gentry–strikes me as overwrought. It’s worth noting that David Koch has been on the Cato board for years, the whole time I was employed there and more, and I don’t remember anyone once suggesting he was an ideological or strategic danger to Cato’s mission. But suddenly he’s an existential threat! Cato and Cato’s chairman Bob Levy didn’t seem to have a huge problem with Ted Olson, a Solicitor General under G.W. Bush, when he was at Cato arguing for gay marriage on constitutional grounds. Andrew Napolitano is a stout libertarian who put a ton of Cato guys on Freedom Watch, his recently cancelled show on Fox Business. Cato executive VP David Boaz seems to get along pretty well, ideologically and otherwise, with Napolitano in this recent clip. …

“A stout libertarian” of The Left: That’s Judge Napolitano, at least until recently.

UPDATED: Liberty’s Civilizational Dimension

Foreign Policy, History, IMMIGRATION, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Old Right, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, Republicans, Ron Paul

LIBERTY & CIVILIZATION. In the post “STRASSEL’s Non Sequitur,” it was pointed out that whether Ron Paul’s statements about Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum were true or not, “Paul has taken a classic Chris-Matthews kind of ad hominem swipe against Bachmann: she hates Muslims. Santorum hates gays and Muslims. Siding with the Left by adopting its arguments may be situationally advantageous, but it will backfire on a Republican candidate in the long run. This tactic, even if it was tantamount to a not-so-funny joke, damages Ron Paul’s effectiveness from the vantage point of conservative libertarians who think that liberty cannot be reduced to the non-aggression axiom and has a cultural and civilizational dimension.”

In their demands for an explanations, my libertarian readers seemed to forget that “conservative libertarians” are the majority who matter.

This writer is a paleo-libertarian; a libertarian of the Right. If libertarianism is ever to appeal to middle America, it is this libertarianism, as it is rooted in the founding ideas, which is also why I prefer classical liberalism as a philosophical label.

As I pointed out in “Libertarianism Lite,” “A certain establishment-endorsed libertarianism is currently being touted on the Fox News and Business channels as the only legitimate brand of libertarianism. This life-style libertarianism, or libertarianism-lite, as I call it, tends to conflate libertinism with liberty, and appeals to hippies of all ages, provided they remain juveniles forever.”

These sinecured TV types appeal to middle America not at all. “Ordinary, gun-toting, homeschooling, bible-thumping Middle Americans remain unmoved by people who draw their paycheques from foundations, think tanks, and academia, and wax orgiastic about MTV and Dennis Rodman. This stuff might appear sophisticated, but it is reductive and shallow—a post-graduate cleverness that lacks philosophical depth.”

More crucially: If you are driving a libertarianism that hates the whites BHO described derisively as clinging to their bibles, bigotries and guns—you are a marginal and insignificant force in American politics, and so you will remain.

True, salt-of-the-earth America (the founding stock of this great nation) is diminishing fast thanks to immigration central planning: mass immigration from the third world.

In “The Sequel to ‘Suicide of A Superpower’” I wrote: “…almost all the immigrants replacing the host population in the U.S. come from ‘Asia, Africa, and Latin America.’ Given America’s preference for welfare-dependent, third-world immigrants, pillage politics will proliferate. Thirty years on, when the Rubicon is crossed, most Americans will be poorer, less educated, and more welfare-dependent. One party will represent this majority. This party will serve as an instrument of perpetual oppression of the minority by a politically powerful majority. … America is destined to degenerate into a dominant-party state.”

The party of choice for this socially engineered America will never ever be Republican or libertarian leaning (capital or lower case “l”). Never ever.

A candidate who dismisses the national questions, namely immigration, affirmative action, the centrality to America of Christianity and the English language, etc.—fails to appreciate the civilizational dimension of ordered liberty.

Like it or not, the libertarian non-aggression axiom has a cultural and civilizational dimension, stripped of which it has no hope of being restored. I’m not saying that in her fumbling iterations on Islam Ms. Bachmann evinces such an understanding; far from it. But Bachmann is instinctively using Islam and Jihad as proxies for arguments that have become politically too dangerous to make.

For a conservative candidate to mock individuals who do so is a grave error.

UPDATE: “Two new polls show that Ron Paul is now the undisputed leader in Iowa, while Newt Gingrich has deflated and Rick Perry may be on the verge of making a small comeback.”

Insider Advantage (12/18)

Ron Paul 24%
Mitt Romney 18%
Rick Perry 16%
Newt Gingrich 13%
Michele Bachmann 10%
Rick Santorum 3%
Jon Huntsman 4%