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View Full Version : How to deal with those who co-opt the message




Chieftain1776
10-07-2009, 06:32 PM
A great 2002 piece (http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/paleoism.html) by Lew Rockwell recounting his alliance with paleoism in 1990's. The best part is the lessons he draws. Think about these when dealing with the Palin/Beck people (emphasis mine):


Let me draw some general lessons from this experience, with ten years of hindsight.

1. Never trust a politician to represent, much less speak for, an intellectual movement. The likes of Ron Paul come along once a century or so. As a corollary, do not place your hopes in politics as an instrument of social change. After all, libertarians believe in a completely depoliticized society.

2. Never underestimate people’s tendency toward ideological drift. The intellectual foundations of liberty are never so strong that the basics can be taken for granted. Strategic thinking is essential, but no matter what the political moment seems to demand, libertarians must never be drawn away from the first principles of liberty and private property. Never permit yourself the slightest compromise with those two principles, and check every political position you hold against them. Better to get out of ideological activism altogether than to drag others into error.

3. Never underestimate the power of bad ideas. They must be refuted again and again. What sounds obviously ridiculous to you ("Americans should produce for America") is right now drawing someone into intractable fallacy. Error must be confronted head on, even when advanced by erstwhile allies. To believe in freedom, and to apply the principle consistently, means more than merely having a bias. It requires hard intellectual work, enormous amounts of reading, and systematic training. There are no short cuts.

4. The primary goal of intellectual outreach to other camps cannot be to convince others (to be convinced of another point of view is a trait of the young, not established writers and scholars), but rather to learn from others and improve your own understanding. The movement grows not by leaps-and-bounds, but step-by-step.

5. Always focus on the long-term, while doing what’s right day-to-day. Someday you will see, and maybe sooner than we think, that all your efforts on behalf of liberty have helped reap huge rewards for civilization. When that day comes, however, you will not receive any credit, and that is fine because the point is not institutional or personal aggrandizement. Others will jump in to grab the spotlight and attempt to subvert the movement, and our job will begin all over again.