December 12, 2003

On Paleos

With all the traffic I got for my spot-on take on Rockwellians, I had to dig out the post where I tell the world why the word "Anarchy" always precedes Lew Rockwell's name on TAM. I've been critical of Anarchy Lew Rockwell's take on politics for years. Here's what I wrote back in 2000 (when I was in the weblogging Dark Ages hand coding posts to an Angelfire account):

I'm so tired of Lew Rockwell's rhetoric. He's a proud and able defender of the free market, but when it comes to talking politics, I'm sick of his bashing. He already wants to hate GW's administration before he even beats AlGore or implements one policy. He calls Dick Cheney a "mouthpiece for the military-industrial complex." I guess I'm a mouthpiece too because I support a strengthening of the U.S. military after the defunding and demoralization of eight years of Clinton/Gore. Rockwell then calls the Bush/Cheney ticket "an all-oil ticket, one with a history of war-making and war-profiteering." He also offers some silly conspiracy theory about the real reason for going to war against Iraq.

Bash, bash, bash, bash, bash is all Rockwell is able to do. He yaps about limited government, but never mentions what government should do. For Rockwell, it's either a perfect libertarian state (that the Founding Fathers may not have wanted) or Leviathan. While the U.S. is a Nanny State, we still enjoy one of the most free societies in human history. Rockwell only calls for the end of government functions and never offers any transitional stages to get to that final stage. What Rockwell is is an anarchist who can't seem to come out of the closet. Being an anarchist is fine. It's a wrong-headed, but valid political stance. I just wish he would be honest about his stance. Until Rockwell writes or says something to refute my premise, I will refer to him as "Anarchy Lew."

PunchtheBag skewered the Rockwellians and in return, Libertarian Jackass lived up to his name by linking to a hate-filled video for a song called "I Hate Republians."

Karen De Coster was observant enough to know that TAM is an original "Paleo-watcher," maybe the original. However, I do not hate Anarchy Lew Rockwell. In college in the mid-90s, I was graced with receiving copies of the Mises Institute's Free Market newsletter, and loved the stuff. I didn't agree with everything in it then or now, but it was refreshingly radical. My problem isn't with Anarchy Lew's economics, it's with his hidden-in-the-closet anarchism. She then goes on to claim that "Mr. Rockwell needs to be schooled by Mr. Hackbarth if Lew wants to really learn about Rothbard. Uh huh." I said nothing of the sort in this post.

Throughout De Coster's post is the air of snobbery. She knows the Truth devined by Murray Rothbard and other libertarian thinkers. I don't need to attack or defend Rothbard. He wrote more than De Coster and I could ever write. It's just that any opposition to her (and her fellow Paleolibertarians') worldview is treated with so much derision. I'm "simplistic, vapid, uninformed." Her snobish tone about my occasional Paleowatch posts (which are about responding to wacky Paleos, thus the name) and her not actually reading many of my posts feels as though the words "simplistic, vapid, uninformed" are better applied to her. And who cares what TAM's Alexa ranking is? I TAM was only about generating traffic, then it would have been abandoned long ago.

This attitude proves PunchtheBag's arguement that Paleos have nothing constructive to offer the American body politic. There are people like Robert Prather and myself who are fans of the thinking of Mises and Hayek. Together, Paleos and other members of the Right could work together on issues they agree with to fight back against Leviathan. We libertarian sympathizers might even be pursuaded that anarcho-capitalism is a realistic, non-utopian political program. But Paleos like De Coster brush us aside for not being pure enough. The only ones smiling are the socialists--of both parties, to steal Hayek's phrase--who have that much less opposition to their plans of bigger and bigger government.