All That Was Right Is Left Again

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Following up on last week's appreciation of C. Wright Mills, the anarcho-Confederates at LewRockwell.com today published a piece praising the late and sometimes great Paul Goodman. Hey—aren't these guys supposed to be "right-wing"?

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Books Editor Jesse Walker is the author of Rebels on the Air and The United States of Paranoia.

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  1. Russ Lemley

    “Hey — aren’t these guys supposed to be “right-wing”?”

    That’s what I thought, until I saw the site post an anti-war article by Robert Fisk. Needless to say, I’m confused.

  2. JJ

    They’re isolationists, so it makes sense for them to link to Fisk articles. They’s also opposed to “lifestyle libertarians,” which makes the Goodman article more surprising.

  3. David

    I lost all respect for the site when they started linking to Ted Rall cartoons.

  4. Anonymous

    If that’s all it takes for you to lose all your respect, David, you must not have had much to begin with.

  5. Jim Walsh

    I stopped taking Rockwell’s site seriously when it started running articles “debunking” the theory of evolution…

  6. David

    Well, anonymous poster, perhaps I should have been more precise. Linking to Rall’s cartoons wasn’t all it took – it was the last straw. It bothers me that those who run the site are so desparately anti-war that they’ll link to anyone, even tasteless morons like Rall, who happen to agree.

  7. Many of us in the “tinfoil hat brigade” are so far to the left that we’re shaking hands with the far right–or vice versa. It’s those damned suits in the corporate middle that are the enemy.

  8. J.D. Salinger

    I’m curious, is Libertarian more right than right wing? Or is it up/down and to the right? Fuck, you need a GPS satellite link to figure this shit out…

  9. James

    Kevin,

    Really? I thought those suits were giving us jobs.

  10. Lew and crew now take their marching orders from me. I named Paul Goodman the Agenda Bender dude of the year for 1960 last week, so of course he is now on Rockwell’s radar.

    Soon he will begin linking to Hotguyz.com. Eventually all contributors there will adopt drag names.

    Shortly after that they will depose Rockwell in a bloodless coup (Rockwell is entirely bloodless afterall) and refashion the site more along anarcho-interventionist sex ironist lines.

    You’re welcome.

  11. The Sage

    I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it–“libertarian” is about as useful a denotation as “feminist.” It can mean a lot to you, or a little bit, but it doesn’t really say anything in particular about your politics. There are lots of people who call themselves libertarian because they’re liberal on abortion, and conservative on everything else. The guys at Rockwell are just anti-government purists.

  12. James:

    No, those suits aren’t “giving” us jobs. They’re buying our labor for a price; and the price is heavily influenced by the forms of state capitalist intervention in the market that force us to sell on disadvantageous terms. If we were selling our labor in a real free market, employers would be competing for labor instead of the other way around.

    Surely you don’t think the present corporate economy is anything even roughly approximating a “free market”?

  13. gnat

    This is not as bad as “The American Conservative” publishing an adoring interview with Norman Mailer….discussing the importance of ethnic purity.

  14. James

    Kevin,

    No doubt that the government is far too involved in everything, and I’d be happy to see the end of corporate welfare, but blaming the “suits” is not helpful. Corporations are simply groups of people organized to conduct business. They would exist in any government which allowed people economic freedom.

    We live in a representative democracy. We have nothing to blame for the quality of our government but the stupidity of the people choosing it.

  15. Anonymous

    >>Surely you don’t think the present corporate economy is anything even roughly approximating a “free market”?

  16. Anonymous

    Well Rothbard spoke “ALL WAR IS BAD” from the heavens and they continue to spread the Gospel in His name. Amem.

    …nevermind that there are many libertarian arguments FOR this war and in war in general, but these “libertarians” are simply heritics — warmongering neocons neolibertarian copororate neostooges. Because of this we need no intellegent debate with them. Amen.

    (Read “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements” by Eric Hoffer and you will understand LewRockwell & Co. I still read it daily, but am becomming less impressed.)

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