Mark O. Hatfield, RIP
Mark Hatfield, Oregon's Republican governor from 1959 to 1967 and then senator from 1967 to 1997, has died at age 89. In World War II, he had been among the troops who entered Hiroshima after the bomb fell. That scarring experience, along with his deep Christian faith, made Hatfield the most pacifist presence in the Senate in the second half of the 20th century. He opposed U.S. intervention in Vietnam, Central America, the Persian Gulf, and the Balkans, he joined forces with Ted Kennedy to push for a nuclear freeze, and he never voted for a single military appropriations bill. So strong was Hatfield's interest in nonviolence that in the early '70s he flirted with rejecting the institutionalized violence of the state, reading one of the anarchist economist Murray Rothbard's articles into the Congressional Record and writing (or at least signing) a glowing review of Rothbard's Power and Market that appeared in The Individualist -- probably the only time a sitting senator has endorsed an anarcho-capitalist treatise. Rothbard was initially excited about Hatfield too, writing a rapturous endorsement in 1970 when buzz started to spread that Hatfield might run for president.
It isn't hard to find cases where the senator backed economic interventions -- he was a strong supporter of subsidies to medical research, for example -- so it soon became clear that his libertarian streak was not going to manifest itself with a Ron Paul–style voting record. But while Hatfield's dalliance with Rothbardianism faded, he did regularly introduce a bill he called the Neighborhood Government Act, which would have allowed Americans to divert their federal taxes from Washington to their local community. His long-term goal, he explained to the Eugene Register-Guard in 1973, was to shift all social services to the neighborhood level. The idea was embraced by many New Leftists (in those days when decentralism was a strong current on the left) and libertarians (in 1982, Karl Hess told Reason that the bill was one of "two and only two" legislative changes he would actively support, along with the end of the withholding tax). Naturally it went nowhere.
It isn't surprising that a politician's interest in libertarianism would come to an end. What's unexpected is that Hatfield would one day reject his pacifism too. In 2004, the aging ex-senator put his name on an article for the Oregonian endorsing the Iraq war. If he made any follow-up statements, they have escaped my attention; he may well have remained an Iraq hawk for the remainder of his life. Not the normal coda to a pacifist's political career; but then, this was never a normal political career in the first place.
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A Rothbard (by proxy) sighting!
Why do we never see an image of Rothbard in dominatrix gear?
I think that would be funny every time!
But who would be holding the riding crop? Pat Buchanan?
No no no. You don't understand.
Rothbard is holding the riding crop! But who would he be whipping?
I nominate Episiarch. Who is more deserving?
"But who would he be whipping?"
Krugman
But who would he be whipping?
Lew Rockwell
"Murray Rothbard" is now following me on Twitter.
True story.
What would an anarcho-capitalist zombie be like?
An anarcho-capitalist zombie would probably resemble Mr. Burns from the Simpsons.
He also effectively killed both the Balanced Budget Amendment and the Line-Item Veto, and was your typical big-spending kleptocrat.
I knew that there had to be something besides the pacifism to get my college to name its library, clock tower, and fountain after the guy.
Yep - the BBA fight was one of the first pitched political battles I really remember. Sorry to speak ill of the recently dead, but screw this guy.
Big deal. The Balanced Budget Amendment is a pile of hooey. There's nothing stopping them from balancing the budget tomorrow, but the BBA's premise is "we're too weak to do it so we need an amendment to the Constitution to *force* us to do it", never mind that they're not paying any mind to the OTHER amendments to the Constitution.
Word around Oregon was that he was a closet homosexual. NTTAWW the homosexual part.
"Anarcho capitalist" is a contradiction in terms. We don't need nuclear weapons, but have you seen what business sans an effective police force looks like? No? Buy a matter transporter a take a quick trip to Tottenham:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2.....ers-police
And before people start boo hooing over the shooting by the cop it was a shooting of a gangster and a peaceful protest for justice (for a gangster) shouldn't take the form of burning down a district of one of the world's financial capitals and looting all the local businesses.
I'm really sorry to burst everybody's bubbles but this is what a society in which everybody is free to run wild and do as the please looks like. Without exception.
Back to L4F, Greg.
That doesn't even make sense.
Does the use of anarchy as a modifier really confuse you that much? And where can you find the definition of anarchy listing arson as a characteristic?
It isn't hard to find cases where the senator backed economic interventions
That's understating it just a bit. The man was Oregon's cut-rate version of Robert Byrd.
A sad (and strange) epilogue to an interesting political career.