Set Your TiVos to "Stun"
Matt Welch | January 9, 2008, 3:19pm
At some time maybe around 5:00 or 5:30 p.m. EDT today, I'm scheduled to make an appearance on CNN talking about Ron Paul's old newsletters. It's an edited piece, not a panel bull session, so my 15 minutes will probably end up as 30 seconds max. UPDATE: Or maybe not! If it ever runs, please someone drop a line.
Speaking of newsletters, former reason editor Virginia Postrel had this to say today:
Thanks to The New Republic, libertarians who weren't paying attention in the 1990s, don't read Texas Monthly, and didn't do their candidate research have now discovered that Ron Paul said--or, more likely, allowed to be said in his name (probably by Lew Rockwell)--nasty things in his newsletters. Much reaction can be found at Hit & Run, as well as Andrew Sullivan's blog and The Volokh Conspiracy. The disclosures are not news to me, nor is the Paul campaign's dismissive reaction a surprise. When you give your political heart to a guy who spends so much time worrying about international bankers, you're not going to get a tolerant cosmopolitan.
twv | January 9, 2008, 4:08pm | #
Yes, many who complain about "international bankers" are, indeed, targeting Jews, and the horror of the "international Jewish Conspiracy." I have heard this many a time from those on the self-described "partiot" end of the right-wing spectrum, and from a few people tangential to libertarianism. These people generally despise libertarians for being so soft on Jews and ignorant of "what's really going on." I was always thankful for their willingness to distance themselves from us.
Alas, it was to them that Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell were trying to appeal (in part) in their Paleo Turn, right after the first Ron Paul fiasco of 1988. Even before then they had begun using terms like "bankster" to appeal to the far right cranks.
Remember, the Paleo Turn was an attempt to egg on hate towards the underclass as part of a class war that would (golly gee whiz, really?) overthrow the state.
I thought then and think now that libertarianism is not a philosophy of hate, and can't succeed as such. So I was not surprised by the failure of the Paleo Turn, or by the recent brouhaha over the Ron Paul newsletters.
Read them. You can see that they are the Paleolibertarian movement in Beta version. The general level of nastiness there is preparation for the general level of nastiness that bubbled forth amongs the paleos in the '90s. This didn't go very far, of course. But it was ugly, it was pretty obvious, and it is a sad part of the history not only of Ron Paul, but also of the late Murray Rothbard, who sullied himself in hatemongering before he died.
Cosmopolitans accept differences, and don't mire themselves in talking about the badnesses of a few cultural groups. They stick to principles, are mostly indifferent to the foibles of others, and, in so doing, let civilization keep rumbling along.
The Paleo Turn was a failed attempt to try revolution using an anti-cosmopolitan mindset. It was doomed from the start.
Jaap Weel | January 9, 2008, 5:09pm | #
"Tolerant cosmopolitan"? What the frak does that have to do with libertarianism?"
Inasfar as modern (and specifically, American) libertarianism is a continuation of the classical liberal tradition: everything. Inasfar as modern American libertarianism is a newfangled theory that is all about rationalistically deriving the whole of political morality from two or three hifalutin' metaphysical axioms: not necessarily a whole lot. I blame Ayn Rand for having done so much to promote the
rationalist school. Virginia Postrel represents the tradition of Popper and Hayek; her book
The Future and its Enemies is something Hayek might have written if he had been a talented and experienced American journalist rather than a talented and experienced Austrian academic, and the title is of course a reference to Popper.
Anyhow, the classical liberal tradition is quintessentially tolerant and cosmopolitan. It has been the philosophy of meritocratic merchants seeking to overthrow the entrenched privilege of French aristocrats and Prussian bureaucrats in favor of peaceful voluntary interaction without regard to rank or creed or other such bullshit. In that sense, it is illiberal to see the world as an assortment of groups, nations, genders, ranks, classes, ethnicities, whose interests are irrevocably opposed and who must fight the class struggle or win the war or kill the Jews or keep the uppity Negroes in their place or whatever. Instead, it proposes to stop fighting already and start trading and otherwise cooperating peacefully. That might sound like starry-eyed idealism, but in the cases where people have believed in it sufficiently to give it a try, the results have traditionally been outright amazing.
As you can see, this is a very different approach to political philosophy from "you see, the Nature of Man is such that he has a Right to Own his Body, and therefore ..." (cut 200 pages of questionable metaphysics) "abolish the IRS!"
But in a sense, it is every bit as libertarian, or at least classically liberal, and often leads to similar conclusions.
