The Return of Rightwing Paranoia

[Truth Warrior]

The Return of Rightwing Paranoia


by Anthony Gregory (http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/mailto:anthony1791@yahoo.com)

It did not take long for conservatives to once again see the state as their enemy. Bush was so universally disliked by the end of his second term, and the financial collapse and his socialist response were so staggering, that even the right began to buckle in its support for his regime by late last year. The rise of Obama, who hit the ground running with a trillion-dollar spending package and a wish list of leftwing government goodies, has turned most of the right into loud dissenters on domestic policy.

But it goes further than criticizing Obama’s management. The right now speaks about government in philosophical terms. Its radio spokesmen say government cannot solve the recession or manage the economy. They sometimes even recommend the economic tracts of Hazlitt and Mises and share airtime with libertarians in mutual horrified protest as the nation moves quickly toward socialism.

What’s more, it is personal. The pundits complain about the right being shut out and worry about being shut down. Sean Hannity even said the other day that he worries those who dissent will be punished by the IRS.


It is like the 1990s, when conservatives could often sound quite radical and passionate about the threat posed by the Clinton government. It was a danger to our liberty, they seemed to understand. They even sometimes fundamentally questioned federal taxing and such federal policing as was seen at Waco.

The mainstream media jumped on this rightwing fear of the state and called it paranoia. Conservatives who feared Clinton’s Brave New World were mocked. The administration’s real victims were ignored. The Oklahoma City bombing was blamed on rightwing uneasiness with big government.

The national government was at the time itself a little paranoid. Hillary Clinton was ridiculed when she whined about the vast rightwing conspiracy.

One last great moment from the rightwing’s last era of distrusting the state was the confirmation hearing for John Ashcroft. He had said the Second Amendment was meant to protect Americans from tyrannical government. Senator Ted Kennedy found it obscene that anyone would call the U.S. government tyrannical.

Then, with Bush freshly in power, 9/11 happened. Bush’s government became much more tyrannical than Clinton’s was.

Now it was Ashcroft defending the government and denying it was despotic. And it was Kennedy condemning the power grabs.

The left became increasingly critical of the warfare and police state being built by Bush and his crew. Their criticisms were sometimes radical, invoking the traditions of Western law and the U.S. Constitution. Unchecked executive power was a threat to the people’s liberties, most liberals would say.


Conservatives, meanwhile, nearly stopped seeing the state as anything but their protector from foreign dangers and even the liberator of all the people it conquered. It could do no wrong. The idea that the U.S. government – the same one whose ATF, FBI and IRS the right feared in the 1990s – could pose a real threat to our liberty became seditious. It was wrong to question the government and president at wartime. The most virtuous U.S. government was categorically incapable of torturing innocents, we were reassured.


The conservatives ignored the victims of the state – the bombed innocents; the peaceful protesters assaulted, spied on and blacklisted from commercial flight; the people indefinitely detained without trial. It was absurd to even think the American government would hurt its own people.

Now they are sounding paranoid again, distrusting of the national agenda, out of step with the central plan, dubious of the state’s foreign and domestic ambitions. Most of this regards economic policy, but there is a deeper dynamic at play. The right knows how much power was built up under Bush, and it knows that the left now has it all.

After eight years of waiting, the left is back and some fear it is payback time. This follows a familiar pattern. One administration punishes its political enemies from the past. Those out of power are called paranoid, whether they were the rightwing peace activists who feared FDR, the leftwing peace activists who feared the House un-American Activities Committee, the conservatives who feared Clinton or the liberals who feared Bush. And now it has turned again.

But unfortunately, the right is still not paranoid enough. Most conservatives have not atoned for their full support of the Bush regime. And they are even challenging Obama to prove his toughness in foreign relations, to provoke hostilities with Iran, to maintain and expand the war on terror.

Some go so far as to say that Obama will sell us out to the enemy – radical Islam. This particular paranoia is completely absurd, but they now think it possible that the U.S. government’s democratically elected leader would do something in foreign policy contrary to America’s interests. They worry about being censored in their dissent, but when others dissented from Bush’s policies that truly did harm America, they said the complaint was un-American. They want the freedom to condemn Obama for talking to Muslims, but when Bush’s wars empowered Iran and radicalized the Middle East, it was taboo to point it out.


The conservatives have better instincts when they are out of power, but they still do not want to let go of their love of the warfare state. Even as they think Obama’s foreign policy might be a disaster, their main problem with it is it is not belligerent enough. And of course a Republican president would silence much of their criticism.


The problem with rightwing paranoia is thus its inconsistency. If the right distrusted war as much as domestic socialism, and Republican power as much as Democratic power, its fears would not be far off base. Then again, in such circumstances, it would not really be the right anymore.

February 6, 2009


Anthony Gregory [send him mail (http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/mailto:anthony1791@yahoo.com)] is a writer and musician who lives in Berkeley, California. He is a research analyst at the Independent Institute (http://www.independent.org/) and editor-in-chief of the Campaign for Liberty (http://www.campaignforliberty.com/). See his webpage (http://www.anthonygregory.com/)for more articles and personal information.


Copyright © 2009 LewRockwell.com


Anthony Gregory Archives (http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory-arch.html)


Find this article at:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory178.html

[heavenlyboy34]

Lew Rockwell predicted this not long after B.O. was elected. ;):)

[Truth Warrior]

Lew Rockwell predicted this not long after B.O. was elected. ;):) I predicted it before the election. ;) :) Not really any rocket science.

[heavenlyboy34]

I predicted it before the election. ;) :)

Me 2. :D;)

[Chosen]

One thing that gets bandied about incorrectly by the media is the term Conservative. Since 2004 and even really, since 2001, Conservatives have been highly skeptical of W. This fervor hit a peak in late 2005 and early 2006 with "immigration reform." The arrogance by Bush in creating a special court system called the SPP and the open encouragement given to illegal aliens from Mexico to subvert our rule of law, take part in our social welfare system and ignore our sovereignty turned a period of covert subversion into an outright assault. RINO Republicans did everything in their power to oust Conservatives from the party, the purges that took place were legendary.

During this period of awareness, the left (media etc.) continued to use the term Conservative broadly to encompass anyone who did not support Authoritarian Collectivism. The reality is that Bush, McCain, Graham, Specter etc. are not Conservatives. There are probably only a handful left in the entire party.

So the comment:

It did not take long for conservatives to once again see the state as their enemy. is nothing more than collective propaganda. Conservatives were responsible for creating the anti-Bush movement from within the party. They initiated the resistance. In fact, Ron Paul was able to get his message out because of the uproar created by Conservatives over illegal immigration. An environment was fostered which allowed for a voice of dissent. So to say there wasn't this anti-State rhetoric is misleading at best, intentional most likely. Many Conservatives can attest to it.

Look at the digital realm...Take the supposed public forum "freerepublic." On the surface it seemed to be Conservative, but in reality it had been saturated with Pro Left Republicans and RINO's. They did everything in their power to stop and censor the voice of Conservatives. This spread to other major on line forums that seemed to represent Conservative culture, but were nothing more than fronts for RINO power. In the digital realm image is everything. They endeavored to ensure that discussions did not take place which exposed Conservative outrage.


Bush was so universally disliked by the end of his second term, and the financial collapse and his socialist response were so staggering, that even the right began to buckle in its support for his regime by late last year.

Another misleading instance. It is better put that Conservatives warned of civil war in 2006, so the anti-Bush movement from within was quite strong. The sole purpose of this intentionally misleading context was so that Americans would not point to the issue which caused the greatest revolt, illegal immigration. This comment above is on par with the new GOP strategy.

Here is a message I wrote in early 2006 (the date indicated in Nov 2007, due to a CMS crash and repost). This is the message from a Conservative, to which many other Conservatives subscribed and still do.



Amnesty equals civil war. (http://aztlandestroyer.com/voice/?p=9)

I propose some serious dialogue on the decay of the state which lays before us. This destructions core rests amidst the arguments made by the illegal immigrants. By ignoring the hypocrisy that a non-citizen is demanding their “rights” while in the process of committing a crime and demonstrating disregard for the law we are sanctioning disrespect for jurisprudence as the contract which defines our sovereign existence. If we allow this to take place, then answer where the demands will end? What prevents any group from making a demand as long as it is done in massive turnout? May the middle class simply now take to the streets and present that they will no longer pay any taxes? Who will punish 100 million people? Right? Isn’t this the beginning of mob rule? As for the plight of civilizations, it is simple…When you let a foreign entity determine the direction of your sovereign persuasion then you no longer control your sovereignty. If this demanding mass, who by the way are all too cowardly to attend to their own corruptions at home, gain their desires then this will spell the end of the constitution as our governing hope. We will no longer be a society ruled by law but a society ruled by men.

Our constitutional heritage demands that we are not subordinate to the convenience of the moment, the unending desire to bury our heads or complain at an arm chairs distance. So what then if our own executives, the ones we have given so much to have decided to indulge their collectivist fetish of internationalist desires? For me I do not chose to “rationalize” away my nation amidst sound bytes and poorly drawn metaphors about speeding. If it is necessary then I will chose civil war and leave our president to his newly landed charlatan horde…


The distribution of this pamphlet on the eve of the first amnesty attempt lead to a purge which affected me and many in agreement. So to say Conservatives finally figured things out "in Bush's last year" is a gross and intentional misstatement. This lead to the formation of a new group determined to fight the overt display of Collectivist Authoritarian Power.



Plunged into a downward spiral of balkanization and slow waste… (http://aztlandestroyer.com/voice/?p=16)
http://www.aztlandestroyer.com/public/ship-1.jpg
Occam’s Razor is not the blade of choice with which our President slashes and hacks at reason and sovereign right. Far more sinister is his love of the peasants machete over American steel. I would wager that on this night we have before us the most conspicuous anticipations to ever fall upon the American public. Will our leader try to appease us with a faux show of force on the border as a means from which to launch a campaign of amnesty? Or will the populace of the strongest nation on earth be fed a pill of diversion? Must we suffer the President’s Internationalist fetishes any longer? At what cost is the rule of law? Did it take the angry voices of hundreds of millions of folk just to alert him that his socialist merrymakings nullified our constitutional foundations? If the answer is yes, then how then is his trust bound by that sacred text from which he enjoys his roost? My statement is clear. We are a nation ruled by laws not by men. And to this game of The Barter of Reason, I justly cast my lot with liberty and will never look back upon it.

From detachment the executive branch speaks with a daily barrage of concessions on liberty, if advice were to find its way from this federalist bully pulpit, to what manner of madness should the common man subscribe a rational peace? How much more inaction can we muster? One day no longer a fixture of complaint, the good men may be counted in shades that appear only in motion and as the true postulant, rightful heir to the rule of law-this I believe, but what of precious time?. Humble and dutiful petitions have been received by our executives and representatives and swiftly turned over to consulting firms and political strategists who feed the collectivist charlatans their fill. And what a meal that is! Was it not our own protectorate which revealed the daily practice and routines of our patriot brothers, already in the field (is there not a federal agency for such things?); to a cartel the likes of which governmental masquerades have never seen? What nation sells the safety of its own people to its enemy? Surely not ours? And yet we stand idle, as the greatest betrayal blows heavy in the foul wind. If so presented that our virtue and the ideals of our kindred were protection of the constitution, would not one and all among clear thinking men join this political sentimentality? If voice of votes had in any form a distant chance of success, then casting the ruling class into the minority wilderness for due penance would be the prevailing wisdom. But have we not tried this already? The translation of our remonstration has been taken with a laughter, as the expectation is that loyalties need not be repaid. One should not make the mistake that our grievances would not deign to be read with weight, the election of condescension is a fetish privy to those of real ascended landings. The uniform manner in which our elected servants seem to dance has the rhythm of mockery, the taste of haughtiness and disregard for a constituency which placed it on high. One might wager that the eggshells upon which such a clumsy notion of “peace in our time” treads, have long been broken at the mere insinuation of such amnesties and flights of fancy.

On the eve of our executives indulgence, I would beseech “him” to refrain from such a plastic counsel as a means of education of his base. At this place in time a ruse for any cause will find it casts a clear light upon itself. And one and all may simply count it as an evil deed to the times of double-the good public does not swallow such sharpened falsities. If we are plunged into such a misdeed, then it matters not who calls to arms , just that good men will listen.

~The New Marbleheaders

Notice this speaks to illegal immigration, not economy. This is because it is from 2006.

Libertarians would do well to remember their "cousinship" with real Conservatives. What these demonstrate is that the resistance against globalism was there long before the economic collapse and it was in fact due to illegal immigration.

[Truth Warrior]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/conservative (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/conservative)

[Chosen]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/conservative (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/conservative)
A dictionary reference means nothing. You know more than anyone that the term Conservative is colloquial. Ron Paul is a self described Conservative, yet his opinions don't match the definition provided. All taken, I would be considered a liberal. But I see this as a bit juvenile, the article doesn't refer to Conservative in a dictionary usage it is forming its own opinion and definition for extrapolation.

Conservatism as many know points to preservation of rights and Constitutional culture.

[Chosen]

But if you would like to play games with semantics:
Libertarians, Marxists of the Right (http://www.amconmag.com/pdfissue.html?Id=AmConservative-2005mar14&page=17)


Marxism of the Right

By Robert Locke

Free spirits, the ambitious, ex-socialists, drug users, and sexual eccentrics often find an attractive political philosophy in libertarianism, the idea that individual freedom should be the sole rule of ethics and government. Libertarianism offers its believers a clear conscience to do things society presently restrains, like make more money, have more sex, or take more drugs. It promises a consistent formula for ethics, a rigorous framework for policy analysis, a foundation in American history, and the application of capitalist efficiencies to the whole of society. But while it contains substantial grains of truth, as a whole it is a seductive mistake.

There are many varieties of libertarianism, from natural-law libertarianism (the least crazy) to anarcho-capitalism (the most), and some varieties avoid some of the criticisms below. But many are still subject to most of them, and some of the more successful varieties—I recently heard a respected pundit insist that classical liberalism is libertarianism—enter a gray area where it is not really clear that they are libertarians at all. But because 95 percent of the libertarianism one encounters at cocktail parties, on editorial pages, and on Capitol Hill is a kind of commonplace “street” libertarianism, I decline to allow libertarians the sophistical trick of using a vulgar libertarianism to agitate for what they want by defending a refined version of their doctrine when challenged philosophically. We’ve seen Marxists pull that before.

This is no surprise, as libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the Right. If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. Society in fact requires both individualism and collectivism, both selfishness and altruism, to function. Like Marxism, libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the effort of empirical investigation. Like Marxism, it aspires, overtly or covertly, to reduce social life to economics. And like Marxism, it has its historical myths and a genius for making its followers feel like an elect unbound by the moral rules of their society.

The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon’s wife. A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice. But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments.

Libertarians try to get around this fact that freedom is not the only good thing by trying to reduce all other goods to it through the concept of choice, claiming that everything that is good is so because we choose to partake of it. Therefore freedom, by giving us choice, supposedly embraces all other goods. But this violates common sense by denying that anything is good by nature, independently of whether we choose it. Nourishing foods are good for us by nature, not because we choose to eat them. Taken to its logical conclusion, the reduction of the good to the freely chosen means there are no inherently good or bad choices at all, but that a man who chose to spend his life playing tiddlywinks has lived as worthy a life as a Washington or a Churchill.

Furthermore, the reduction of all goods to individual choices presupposes that all goods are individual. But some, like national security, clean air, or a healthy culture, are inherently collective. It may be possible to privatize some, but only some, and the efforts can be comically inefficient. Do you really want to trace every pollutant in the air back to the factory that emitted it and sue?

Libertarians rightly concede that one’s freedom must end at the point at which it starts to impinge upon another person’s, but they radically underestimate how easily this happens. So even if the libertarian principle of “an it harm none, do as thou wilt,” is true, it does not license the behavior libertarians claim. Consider pornography: libertarians say it should be permitted because if someone doesn’t like it, he can choose not to view it. But what he can’t do is choose not to live in a culture that has been vulgarized by it.

Libertarians in real life rarely live up to their own theory but tend to indulge in the pleasant parts while declining to live up to the difficult portions. They flout the drug laws but continue to collect government benefits they consider illegitimate. This is not just an accidental failing of libertarianism’s believers but an intrinsic temptation of the doctrine that sets it up to fail whenever tried, just like Marxism.

Libertarians need to be asked some hard questions. What if a free society needed to draft its citizens in order to remain free? What if it needed to limit oil imports to protect the economic freedom of its citizens from unfriendly foreigners? What if it needed to force its citizens to become sufficiently educated to sustain a free society? What if it needed to deprive landowners of the freedom to refuse to sell their property as a precondition for giving everyone freedom of movement on highways? What if it needed to deprive citizens of the freedom to import cheap foreign labor in order to keep out poor foreigners who would vote for socialistic wealth redistribution?

In each of these cases, less freedom today is the price of more tomorrow. Total freedom today would just be a way of running down accumulated social capital and storing up problems for the future. So even if libertarianism is true in some ultimate sense, this does not prove that the libertarian policy choice is the right one today on any particular question.

Furthermore, if limiting freedom today may prolong it tomorrow, then limiting freedom tomorrow may prolong it the day after and so on, so the right amount of freedom may in fact be limited freedom in perpetuity. But if limited freedom is the right choice, then libertarianism, which makes freedom an absolute, is simply wrong. If all we want is limited freedom, then mere liberalism will do, or even better, a Burkean conservatism that reveres traditional liberties. There is no need to embrace outright libertarianism just because we want a healthy portion of freedom, and the alternative to libertarianism is not the USSR, it is America’s traditional liberties.

Libertarianism’s abstract and absolutist view of freedom leads to bizarre conclusions. Like slavery, libertarianism would have to allow one to sell oneself into it. (It has been possible at certain times in history to do just that by assuming debts one could not repay.) And libertarianism degenerates into outright idiocy when confronted with the problem of children, whom it treats like adults, supporting the abolition of compulsory education and all child-specific laws, like those against child labor and child sex. It likewise cannot handle the insane and the senile.

Libertarians argue that radical permissiveness, like legalizing drugs, would not shred a libertarian society because drug users who caused trouble would be disciplined by the threat of losing their jobs or homes if current laws that make it difficult to fire or evict people were abolished. They claim a “natural order” of reasonable behavior would emerge. But there is no actual empirical proof that this would happen. Furthermore, this means libertarianism is an all-or-nothing proposition: if society continues to protect people from the consequences of their actions in any way, libertarianism regarding specific freedoms is illegitimate. And since society does so protect people, libertarianism is an illegitimate moral position until the Great Libertarian Revolution has occurred.

And is society really wrong to protect people against the negative consequences of some of their free choices? While it is obviously fair to let people enjoy the benefits of their wise choices and suffer the costs of their stupid ones, decent societies set limits on both these outcomes. People are allowed to become millionaires, but they are taxed. They are allowed to go broke, but they are not then forced to starve. They are deprived of the most extreme benefits of freedom in order to spare us the most extreme costs. The libertopian alternative would be perhaps a more glittering society, but also a crueler one.

Empirically, most people don’t actually want absolute freedom, which is why democracies don’t elect libertarian governments. Irony of ironies, people don’t choose absolute freedom. But this refutes libertarianism by its own premise, as libertarianism defines the good as the freely chosen, yet people do not choose it. Paradoxically, people exercise their freedom not to be libertarians.

The political corollary of this is that since no electorate will support libertarianism, a libertarian government could never be achieved democratically but would have to be imposed by some kind of authoritarian state, which rather puts the lie to libertarians’ claim that under any other philosophy, busybodies who claim to know what’s best for other people impose their values on the rest of us. Libertarianism itself is based on the conviction that it is the one true political philosophy and all others are false. It entails imposing a certain kind of society, with all its attendant pluses and minuses, which the inhabitants thereof will not be free to opt out of except by leaving.

And if libertarians ever do acquire power, we may expect a farrago of bizarre policies. Many support abolition of government-issued money in favor of that minted by private banks. But this has already been tried, in various epochs, and doesn’t lead to any wonderful paradise of freedom but only to an explosion of fraud and currency debasement followed by the concentration of financial power in those few banks that survive the inevitable shaking-out. Many other libertarian schemes similarly founder on the empirical record.

A major reason for this is that libertarianism has a naïve view of economics that seems to have stopped paying attention to the actual history of capitalism around 1880. There is not the space here to refute simplistic laissez faire, but note for now that the second-richest nation in the world, Japan, has one of the most regulated economies, while nations in which government has essentially lost control over economic life, like Russia, are hardly economic paradises. Legitimate criticism of over-regulation does not entail going to the opposite extreme.

Libertarian naïveté extends to politics. They often confuse the absence of government impingement upon freedom with freedom as such. But without a sufficiently strong state, individual freedom falls prey to other more powerful individuals. A weak state and a freedom-respecting state are not the same thing, as shown by many a chaotic Third-World tyranny.

Libertarians are also naïve about the range and perversity of human desires they propose to unleash. They can imagine nothing more threatening than a bit of Sunday-afternoon sadomasochism, followed by some recreational drug use and work on Monday. They assume that if people are given freedom, they will gravitate towards essentially bourgeois lives, but this takes for granted things like the deferral of gratification that were pounded into them as children without their being free to refuse. They forget that for much of the population, preaching maximum freedom merely results in drunkenness, drugs, failure to hold a job, and pregnancy out of wedlock. Society is dependent upon inculcated self-restraint if it is not to slide into barbarism, and libertarians attack this self-restraint. Ironically, this often results in internal restraints being replaced by the external restraints of police and prison, resulting in less freedom, not more.

This contempt for self-restraint is emblematic of a deeper problem: libertarianism has a lot to say about freedom but little about learning to handle it. Freedom without judgment is dangerous at best, useless at worst. Yet libertarianism is philosophically incapable of evolving a theory of how to use freedom well because of its root dogma that all free choices are equal, which it cannot abandon except at the cost of admitting that there are other goods than freedom. Conservatives should know better.

[Truth Warrior]

A dictionary reference means nothing. You know more than anyone that the term Conservative is colloquial. Ron Paul is a self described Conservative, yet his opinions don't match the definition provided. All taken, I would be considered a liberal. But I see this as a bit juvenile, the article doesn't refer to Conservative in a dictionary usage it is forming its own opinion and definition for extrapolation. I think of dictionaries usually as objective "fair witnesses" without a bias, nor having a dog in the fight. They often head off and resolve merely and purely semantic disputes.<IMHO>

Actually, I don't see too many "conservatives" so strongly endorsing LRC, as Ron does. ;)

Go figure. :D

[eOs]

bump for a good read

[Truth Warrior]

But if you would like to play games with semantics:
Libertarians, Marxists of the Right (http://www.amconmag.com/pdfissue.html?Id=AmConservative-2005mar14&page=17)

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/libertarian (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/libertarian)

[Chosen]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/libertarian (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/libertarian)So again a meaningless assertion, most especially with regards to the context of the article.

I suppose you do not understand the term colloquial.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/colloquial?qsrc=2446

But by your own assertion Ron Paul is incorrect in calling himself Conservative? Would you use a dictionary of unaccepted conditional usage to dethrone Ron Pauls characterization of himself?

Please insert LOL here.

[Truth Warrior]

So again a meaningless assertion, most especially with regards to the context of the article.

I suppose you do not understand the term colloquial.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/colloquial?qsrc=2446

But by your own assertion Ron Paul is incorrect in calling himself Conservative? Would you use a dictionary of unaccepted conditional usage to dethrone Ron Pauls characterization of himself?

Please insert LOL here. Meaningless ONLY to you, in this conversation.

You suppose incorrectly. :(

Ron fits a couple of the "conservative" dictionary definitions. But I don't see any references to LRC there. ;) Where's the "conservative" overwhelming outcry for Austrian economics?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul-arch.html (http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul-arch.html)

[Truth Warrior]

bump for a good read Glad that you like it, and thanks for the bump. ;) :)

[Athan]

Me 2. :D;)

Well, I predicted it before anyone else and their grandmother did. So there.

[Gordon LeCompte Bolmer]

Good article! I share Anthony Gregory's ambivalence. I'm glad to see a renewal of the conservative distrust of FedGov. At the same time, however, I resent having to endure the revival of the superannuated Russophobia, the supercilious contempt for the Europeans (the French and the Germans in particular), the malignant contempt for Arabs and Persians, and the uncritical carte blanche extended toward Israel—that entire Neocon/FreeRepublic bolus of phlegm, in essence. The one and only positive contribution of the Obamaites, and of the Olbermannites, lay in the barstool bravado of the "Right's" bonehead contingent being set back on its heels, at least temporarily.

As though the government in Moscow were of more pressing concern than the one in Washington! Whatever malignant institutional form the New World Order takes, you can be sure that the devils in Washington will have plenty of their own irons in that fire! To think of the servitors of the American Establishment as ever serving as freedom fighters against despotism... Well, the ludicrous aspects of such an expectation are self-evident. Neither Moscow nor Beijing—nor Teheran, Paris, Brussels, etc.—is as dangerous to Americans as is Washington, DC. This is far from being self-serving hyperbole on my part.

[heavenlyboy34]

Well, I predicted it before anyone else and their grandmother did. So there.

"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". ;) Got any? :confused:

[heavenlyboy34]

Good article! I share Anthony Gregory's ambivalence. I'm glad to see a renewal of the conservative distrust of FedGov. At the same time, however, I resent having to endure the revival of the superannuated Russophobia, the supercilious contempt for the Europeans (the French and the Germans in particular), the malignant contempt for Arabs and Persians, and the uncritical carte blanche extended toward Israel—that entire Neocon/FreeRepublic bolus of phlegm, in essence. The one and only positive contribution of the Obamaites, and of the Olbermannites, lay in the barstool bravado of the "Right's" bonehead contingent being set back on its heels, at least temporarily.

As though the government in Moscow were of more pressing concern than the one in Washington! Whatever malignant institutional form the New World Order takes, you can be sure that the devils in Washington will have plenty of their own irons in that fire! To think of the servitors of the American Establishment as ever serving as freedom fighters against despotism... Well, the ludicrous aspects of such an expectation are self-evident. Neither Moscow nor Beijing—nor Teheran, Paris, Brussels, etc.—is as dangerous to Americans as is Washington, DC. This is far from being self-serving hyperbole on my part.

qft! Well said, sir. :D

[moostraks]

One thing that gets bandied about incorrectly by the media is the term Conservative. Since 2004 and even really, since 2001, Conservatives have been highly skeptical of W. This fervor hit a peak in late 2005 and early 2006 with "immigration reform." The arrogance by Bush in creating a special court system called the SPP and the open encouragement given to illegal aliens from Mexico to subvert our rule of law, take part in our social welfare system and ignore our sovereignty turned a period of covert subversion into an outright assault. RINO Republicans did everything in their power to oust Conservatives from the party, the purges that took place were legendary.

During this period of awareness, the left (media etc.) continued to use the term Conservative broadly to encompass anyone who did not support Authoritarian Collectivism. The reality is that Bush, McCain, Graham, Specter etc. are not Conservatives. There are probably only a handful left in the entire party.

So the comment:
is nothing more than collective propaganda. Conservatives were responsible for creating the anti-Bush movement from within the party. They initiated the resistance. In fact, Ron Paul was able to get his message out because of the uproar created by Conservatives over illegal immigration. An environment was fostered which allowed for a voice of dissent. So to say there wasn't this anti-State rhetoric is misleading at best, intentional most likely. Many Conservatives can attest to it.

Look at the digital realm...Take the supposed public forum "freerepublic." On the surface it seemed to be Conservative, but in reality it had been saturated with Pro Left Republicans and RINO's. They did everything in their power to stop and censor the voice of Conservatives. This spread to other major on line forums that seemed to represent Conservative culture, but were nothing more than fronts for RINO power. In the digital realm image is everything. They endeavored to ensure that discussions did not take place which exposed Conservative outrage.



Another misleading instance. It is better put that Conservatives warned of civil war in 2006, so the anti-Bush movement from within was quite strong. The sole purpose of this intentionally misleading context was so that Americans would not point to the issue which caused the greatest revolt, illegal immigration. This comment above is on par with the new GOP strategy.

Here is a message I wrote in early 2006 (the date indicated in Nov 2007, due to a CMS crash and repost). This is the message from a Conservative, to which many other Conservatives subscribed and still do.



The distribution of this pamphlet on the eve of the first amnesty attempt lead to a purge which affected me and many in agreement. So to say Conservatives finally figured things out "in Bush's last year" is a gross and intentional misstatement. This lead to the formation of a new group determined to fight the overt display of Collectivist Authoritarian Power.


Notice this speaks to illegal immigration, not economy. This is because it is from 2006.

Libertarians would do well to remember their "cousinship" with real Conservatives. What these demonstrate is that the resistance against globalism was there long before the economic collapse and it was in fact due to illegal immigration.

Excellent analysis. I certainly hope your writing is not strictly limited to politically persuasive articles. Your style is reminiscent of long ago.:) Sadly, it will go over the heads of the majority of government educated Americans.

I heard tell that there is call for amnesty so that illegals can solve the problem of housing glut and decreased tax base that has occurred with the economic downturn but they first have to rationalize away how this will also mean more entities vying for fewer jobs. Shall be interesting to see where they go with that aspect. For now it seems to be brushed under the carpet.

Spot on to how they are muddying the waters with titles in the media.....

[Truth Warrior]

Good article! I share Anthony Gregory's ambivalence. I'm glad to see a renewal of the conservative distrust of FedGov. At the same time, however, I resent having to endure the revival of the superannuated Russophobia, the supercilious contempt for the Europeans (the French and the Germans in particular), the malignant contempt for Arabs and Persians, and the uncritical carte blanche extended toward Israel—that entire Neocon/FreeRepublic bolus of phlegm, in essence. The one and only positive contribution of the Obamaites, and of the Olbermannites, lay in the barstool bravado of the "Right's" bonehead contingent being set back on its heels, at least temporarily.

As though the government in Moscow were of more pressing concern than the one in Washington! Whatever malignant institutional form the New World Order takes, you can be sure that the devils in Washington will have plenty of their own irons in that fire! To think of the servitors of the American Establishment as ever serving as freedom fighters against despotism... Well, the ludicrous aspects of such an expectation are self-evident. Neither Moscow nor Beijing—nor Teheran, Paris, Brussels, etc.—is as dangerous to Americans as is Washington, DC. This is far from being self-serving hyperbole on my part.

Thanks! :)

[M House]

Well that's pretty cool TW stopped this semantic game for a day. Ron Paul's conservative about the constitution. He's pretty libertarian about other things the way I see it. Reminds me of my dad the self defined "conservative" still trying to blame the "left" for everything. Makes it hard to discuss anything. Especially if it involves mentioning anything he associates with "leftism".

[Truth Warrior]

Well that's pretty cool TW stopped this semantic game for a day. Ron Paul's conservative about the constitution. He's pretty libertarian about other things the way I see it. Reminds me of my dad the self defined "conservative" still trying to blame the "left" for everything. Makes it hard to discuss anything. Especially if it involves mentioning anything he associates with "leftism". Thanks for noticing. ;) :)

[The_Orlonater]

So again a meaningless assertion, most especially with regards to the context of the article.

I suppose you do not understand the term colloquial.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/colloquial?qsrc=2446

But by your own assertion Ron Paul is incorrect in calling himself Conservative? Would you use a dictionary of unaccepted conditional usage to dethrone Ron Pauls characterization of himself?

Please insert LOL here.

When Ron Paul calls himself a conservative, he might be talking about his social stances,personality, and culture. Oh yeah, can't forget his money stance.

Could it also mean that he wishes to conserve classical liberal stances?

[The_Orlonater]

Well that's pretty cool TW stopped this semantic game for a day. Ron Paul's conservative about the constitution. He's pretty libertarian about other things the way I see it. Reminds me of my dad the self defined "conservative" still trying to blame the "left" for everything. Makes it hard to discuss anything. Especially if it involves mentioning anything he associates with "leftism".

I turned my "lefty" family more libertarian.

I accomplished something,lol.

[Truth Warrior]

I turned my "lefty" family more libertarian.

I accomplished something,lol. Good for you. ;) :)