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

Ilana Mercer, Intellectualism, libertarianism, Liberty, Political Philosophy

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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.

Of Course The Fockers, I Mean The Farouks, Likely Knew What Sonny Syed Was Cooking

Islam, Political Correctness, Relatives, Republicans, Terrorism

But only Donald Trump is able and prepared to say what’s manifestly true.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:

I believe the sister of the killer, I watched her interviewed. I think she knew what was going on. I think — excuse me [to disruptive reporter]. I think his mother knew what was going on. She went into the apartment. [The hag lived there.]

Anybody that went into that house or that apartment knew what was going on. They didn’t tell the authorities. They knew what was going on. The mother knew. I think the sister interviewed, I think she knew.

We better get a little tough and a little smart or we’re in trouble.

Please be careful, Donald Trump. You’re bringing down an establishment that’s vested in staying alive.

UPDATED: Tired Of Sickening, Statist, San Bernadino Cliches? Here’s Another

Islam, Propaganda, Pseudoscience, Terrorism, The State

Tired of the vomit-inducing San Bernadino cliches yet? An example is the one where the community is “struggling to understand …” This nonsense is designed, subconsciously at least, to suggest there is no rational explanation for the murders of the 14. However, every sentient human being in this country knows what happens when two followers of the radical Prophet Mohammad, living in your midst, decide to act on his teachings and examples.

“Don’t play into terrorist hands” is another cliches that comes to mind. Cretin Kelly of the eponymous Kelly File embodied this statistical, statist stupidity when she exhorted her fans, on 12/4, to go out and frolic because each and everyone’s chances of being victimized by a Jihadi are minuscule. Go have fun, Kelly grimaced dementedly.

Statistics are funny things: insignificant probabilities, in this case an attack on each one of us, are insignificant until they happen to YOU or ME. To live with that consideration is a disgusting way of suggesting lives lost are, in the grand scheme, insignificant. This And-The-Band-Played-On mentality is relied upon by the state to continue its errant policies.

Only if you are shocked to your core by Jihad in the workplace and retreat/disinvest/quit frolicking like a moron; will the statists in charge get scared of your wrath, The People’s wrath.

Don’t play into the hands of state terrorists is what I’d suggest.

UPDATE (12/7): The president’s (12/6) version of “Don’t play into the hands of ISIS and that’s what ISIS wants us to do”: “We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam. That, too, is what groups like ISIL want.”

[SNIP]

Hmmm:
How do these asses know what ISIS wants?
Are they simply ass-uming?
Could these idiots be using reverse psychology with you to get you do play their game? “Oh, prez says ISIS wants me to stay away from Muslims who look menacing. So let me do the opposite and embrace he who would kill me.”

Prez keeps saying don’t do x, because ISIS wants you to do it. Well, if ISIS wants you to do what in your estimation is best for you–perhaps ISIS is right and the president is WRONG. I’m just trying to show you Obama is messing with you.