Some commentators are associating the Oklahoma City bombings of 15 years ago and other far right violence with the rise of “anti-government” sentiment in opposition to the Obama health care bill and other recent expansions of federal spending and regulation. Former President Clinton’s recent New York Times op ed is a good example of this genre:
We should never forget what drove the bombers, and how they justified their actions to themselves. They took to the ultimate extreme an idea advocated in the months and years before the bombing by an increasingly vocal minority: the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them. On that April 19, the second anniversary of the assault of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, deeply alienated and disconnected Americans decided murder was a blow for liberty.
Byron York catalogues several other examples of similar rhetoric. From such statements, you might think that Timothy McVeigh and friends were libertarian foes of big government who hoped that their terrorist attacks would somehow lead to tighter constraints on government power.
Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. In reality, McVeigh was a neo-Nazi and his attack was inspired by the Turner Diaries, a 1978 tract that advocated the use of terrorism to overthrow the US and establish a government explicitly based on Nazi Germany. If you suffer through the experience of actually reading The Turner Diaries, as I did, you will find that author William Pierce did not support anything remotely resembling limited government; indeed, he explicitly repudiated limited government conservatism inthe book.
Rather, Pierce promotes the establishment of a totalitarian state modeled on Hitler’s (the book refers to Hitler as “the Great One”). There is absolutely no evidence that McVeigh’s attack or Pierce’s book were motivated by concerns about “American freedom” understood in a libertarian or conservative sense or that they sought to strike “a blow for liberty.” Rather, they were motivated by a desire to suppress Jews and non-whites and establish a Nazi-like “Aryan” state. Likewise, the original German Nazis also supported unconstrained government power, including in the economic realm. They weren’t the National Socialist Party for nothing.
If you study other instances of extremist right-wing violence in modern American history, most of it looks similar to McVeigh’s in the sense that it is motivated by racist, anti-Semitic, or authoritarian sentiments rather than a desire to limit the power of government. Think of the Ku Klux Klan (may of whom were economic populists, and favored a massive government role in enforcing segregation) or violence by various Neo-Nazi groups that, like McVeigh and Pierce, look to Nazi Germany as a model. The longtime Neo-Nazi activist who attacked the Holocaust Museum last year is a recent example of the latter. These people are “anti-government” only in the sense that they hate and fear the present government; by that definition communists are “anti-government” too. They have no general desire to constrain government power or to limit government control of the economy.
By contrast, the Tea Party movement that many seek to conflate with McVeigh is primarily motivated by wholly different concerns. As a recent New York Times survey concluded, “When talking about the Tea Party movement, the largest number of respondents [who were supporters of the movement] said that the movement’s goal should be reducing the size of government.”
This is not to say that it is completely impossible for genuinely anti-government libertarians or conservatives to engage in terrorist violence. The fact that such incidents have been vanishingly rare so far does not mean that they can’t happen. Nasty, potentially violent people can be found in almost any political movement. I don’t endorse the all too common assumption that depraved people are only found among our ideological opponents, whereas “our” side is morally pure.
It’s also true that statist racists and neo-Nazis have obvious reasons to hate Obama and that they might therefore try to latch on to movements that oppose the administration for wholly different reasons. That does not, however, make the latter racists or neo-Nazis themselves. Similarly, genuine communist totalitarians such as Fidel Castro (who called Obamacare “a miracle”) might endorse Obama’s health care plan as a step in the right direction. That does not mean that Obama himself is a communist.
The bottom line is that Clinton and others have drawn an unwarranted connection between “anti-government” movements that seek to limit government spending and regulation and a very different set of groups that have no real objection to big government as such. Instead, they seek to use massive state power to enforce racism, anti-Semitism, and neo-Nazi totalitarianism. No one should confuse that with a genuine anti-government ideology motivated by concerns about the fate of “American freedom.”
UPDATE: The point made in this post also undercuts claims that libertarian anti-government rhetoric somehow inspired McVeigh-like violence even if the libertarians don’t intend such a result. Clearly, the violence was actually inspired by neo-Nazi ideology that is very far removed from libertarianism (or even limited government conservatism).
UPDATE #2: In writing the initial post, I did not take sufficient account of McVeigh’s statements written while he was in prison. In this April 2001 letter to Fox News, McVeigh describes his motive for the attack as “retaliation” for the federal government’s “increasingly militaristic and violent” actions, including the 1993 Waco incident. This is not inconsistent with the neo-Nazi ideology of the Turner Diaries, since most of the actions in question seem to have been against far right groups. Still, it could be interpreted in a more libertarian “anti-government” sense as well. The letter also includes attacks on US foreign policy similar to those made by various groups on the far right and far left.
McVeigh’s wikipedia entry claims that he described himself as a “libertarian” while he was in prison and voted for Libertarian Party presidential candidate Harry Browne in 1996, citing various news reports. However, extensive research in the Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw newspaper data bases finds no corroboration for this wikipedia claim, except for a 2001 Washington Post article (not available online, as far as I can tell) that quotes McVeigh as saying he was a libertarian in the context of expressing his position on vegetarianism. There is no corroboration for his supposedly having voted for Browne.
On balance, I see no reason to alter my bottom line conclusion on McVeigh. When you look at the evidence that emerged from the time of the attack itself, it is clear that The Turner Diaries was the principal inspiration. I suspect that in later years, McVeigh sought to characterize his motives in ways that would be more likely to win a measure of mainstream sympathy and perhaps help him avoid the death penalty. Still, this additional evidence is relevant and I thought I should point it out.
UPDATE #3: Some commenters and people who have e-mailed note possible pre-attack statements by McVeigh that point in an anti-government direction. In my view, these either 1) predate his reading of the Turner Diaries, or 2) are compatible with hating the existing US government without opposing big government generally (the view held by Pierce and other neo-Nazis). I also think it’s very clear that The Turner Diaries was the book that actually precipitated his attack, even if he hated various aspects of US government policy previously. I do have to acknowledge, however, that McVeigh’s thought turns out to be more complex and multifaceted than I initially thought, and it’s arguable that his position was a hodgepodge of different views hostile to the US government, some of them inspired by neo-Nazism, but others much less so.
yankee says:
To take the least charitable reading, this post reeks of no-true-Scotsmanism.
April 20, 2010, 4:11 pmIlya Somin says:
this post reeks of no-true-Scotsmanism.
No True Scotsmanism is perfectly appropriate if the culprit in question really wasn’t a Scotsman.
To put it another way, I don’t commit the logical fallacy of claiming that it is impossible for a “true libertarian” to commit terrorist attacks because a true libertarian is, by definition, a person who wouldn’t do such things. Rather, I make the point that the people who actually did commit the attacks were not motivated by libertarian concerns or anything like them.
April 20, 2010, 4:18 pmCassandra says:
The “terrorist” label is nonsensical to me. Of the following, which were terrorists?
Sampson, Spartacus, John Brown, Original Tea Party, von Stauffenberg, McVeigh, Joseph Stack, Unabomber, assassins of Letelier, Allende, Schneider?
The victors write the history books and it’s clear to me that if Osama Bin Laden brings down the USSA, he will not be considered a terrorist any more than was Spartacus.
April 20, 2010, 4:21 pmFederal Farmer says:
The partisan bickering in the Waco posts, which I predict will occur here as well (don’t need to be a genius to predict that), seems predicated on the supposed dualism of left vs. right. This post points out that all right are not equal and one might infer that all left are also not equal.
April 20, 2010, 4:23 pmPeople need to eschew the simplistic dualism of left vs. right and incorporate the ‘orthogonal’ axis of statism vs. individualism (libertarianism or perhaps classic liberalism?).
wikipedia reader says:
I agree that McVeigh was motivated by the Turner Diaries in part, I remember clearly the many discussions about those books at the time. But I read your post to be saying that McVeigh was exclusively motivated by his Neo Nazi, pro-totalitarian beliefs.
I think that goes too far. There is plenty of evidence that McVeigh believed himself to be a defender of the declaration of independence. He also wrote a letter to the ATF claiming that they were destroying the constitution and that they would be hanged for it, just like Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg trials. I dont understand why a domestic terrorist who, as you appear to argue, is motivated primarily/almost exclusively by Neo-Nazi ideas, would reference defending the constitution and punishing ATF agents like we punished NAzi war criminals.
The story is not as clear as either you or Bill Clinton would have it be. But I dont think you effectively rebut Clinton-eque arguments by trying to deny the very real connections that McVeigh had to the anti-government, “defending the constitution” militia groups in the U.S.
April 20, 2010, 4:29 pmIlya Somin says:
McVeigh believed himself to be a defender of the declaration of independence. He also wrote a letter to the ATF claiming that they were destroying the constitution and that they would be hanged for it, just like Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg trials. I dont understand why a domestic terrorist who, as you appear to argue, is motivated primarily/almost exclusively by Neo-Nazi ideas, would reference defending the constitution and punishing ATF agents like we punished NAzi war criminals.
As I understand it, he wrote these things before he read the Turner Diaries and became a neo-Nazi. But the actual inspiration for the Oklahoma City bombing was a very similar attack described in TD itself.
April 20, 2010, 4:32 pmnewrouter says:
This is “right-wing” only if you’re a communist. Otherwise its “left- wing”
April 20, 2010, 4:33 pmwikipedia reader says:
as a follow up, also taken from wikipedia, note that while McVeigh said that
“people say The Turner Diaries was my Bible, Unintended Consequences would be my New Testament. I think Unintended Consequences is a better book. It might have changed my whole plan of operation if I’d read that one first.”
unintended consequences is a novel all about “the enactment and subsequent unintended consequences of several important pieces of U.S. gun control legislation and regulation: the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, the Assault Weapons Importation Ban enacted by Presidential executive order in 1989 and the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994.”
April 20, 2010, 4:35 pmOrin Kerr says:
I don’t know why we care what Bill Clinton is saying, but I thought this was interesting from Wikipedia:
April 20, 2010, 4:35 pmwikipedia reader says:
ILYA SAYS: As I understand it, he wrote these things before he read the Turner Diaries and became a neo-Nazi. But the actual inspiration for the Oklahoma City bombing was a very similar attack described in TD itself.
I wasnt arguing that he didnt take his tactical inspiration from the turner diaries – but thats a different point than about where he got some of his motivations isnt it?
April 20, 2010, 4:40 pmShag from Brookline says:
Surely McVeigh would have been thrilled with Justice Scalia’s decision (5-4) in Heller.
April 20, 2010, 4:40 pmIlya Somin says:
ILYA SAYS: As I understand it, he wrote these things before he read the Turner Diaries and became a neo-Nazi. But the actual inspiration for the Oklahoma City bombing was a very similar attack described in TD itself.
I wasnt arguing that he didnt take his tactical inspiration from the turner diaries — but thats a different point than about where he got some of his motivations isnt it?
The inspiration wasn’t merely tactical but strategic. He endorsed the objectives of TD as well as its means.
April 20, 2010, 4:44 pmJay says:
Yeah bro, one man’s terrorist is just another man’s freedom fighter. What is truth, anyway?
April 20, 2010, 4:46 pmShelbyC says:
Can’t follow the cite, but I’d imagine a little skepticism is in order. Can incarcerated folks vote?
April 20, 2010, 4:47 pmrachel says:
If My protesting = “patriotism”
and your dissent = “hate”
then, My protesting your dissent = Statism with an enemies list.
Violence in the name of patriotism or hate = violence.
April 20, 2010, 4:48 pmArthur Kirkland says:
McVeigh may have believed he was a right-leaning libertarian believer, but in reality he was a godless liberal. Don’t believe me? OK, show of hands!
April 20, 2010, 4:48 pmIlya Somin says:
as a follow up, also taken from wikipedia, note that while McVeigh said that
“people say The Turner Diaries was my Bible, Unintended Consequences would be my New Testament. I think Unintended Consequences is a better book. It might have changed my whole plan of operation if I’d read that one first.”
unintended consequences is a novel all about “the enactment and subsequent unintended consequences of several important pieces of U.S. gun control legislation and regulation: the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, the Assault Weapons Importation Ban enacted by Presidential executive order in 1989 and the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994.”
If you’re a neo-Nazi opponent of the existing US government, you might well be opposed to federal government policies that might disarm you or others like you. Similarly, communists might oppose federal efforts to suppress communist speech. That doesn’t mean that McVeigh was a libertarian or that the communists are free speech supporters.
April 20, 2010, 4:48 pmMark Field says:
I think you may be forgetting anarchist violence, of which there was quite a bit in the US from roughly 1880-1930. Of course, if you consider that “left-wing” then your statement remains true.
The Nazis were “socialist” in the same way the Soviet Union was “republican” or the DDR was “democratic”.
April 20, 2010, 4:49 pmwikipedia reader says:
I don’t think that arguing that he was influenced by the Turner Diaries (strategically, tactically, spiritually, etc…) which I grant you, precludes finding that he was ALSO motivated by other ideologies.
My point is that McVeigh was ALSO motivated by ideologies that many see still latent within the Tea Party Movement. I don’t endorse the broad brush used to paint all libertarians as terrorists of course. That is mere political gamesmanship and petty at that. But a rejoinder which denies that McVeigh was at all influence by that right wing/libertarian/anti-government ideology is deeply flawed and, in my mind, severely misleading.
But I am off to the gym, so I wont be able to respond.
April 20, 2010, 4:52 pmApologies.
Federal Farmer says:
Just a nit, but the name “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” would technically only claim that it is a union of Republics, not that it was Republican itself.
April 20, 2010, 4:59 pmBama 1L says:
Of course they can, although they usually need absentee ballots. I don’t know of any reason McVeigh could not have voted in November 1996, when he was incarcerated awaiting trial. He was convicted in June 1997 and lost the vote (in most states) at that time.
April 20, 2010, 5:00 pmBama 1L says:
And it would be correct, because none of its constituents were ruled by kings.
April 20, 2010, 5:02 pmTim says:
I’m assuming you meant the Opinion of the Court written by Justice Scalia, not “Justice Scalia’s decision.” I also suggest that you learn the difference.
April 20, 2010, 5:03 pmIlya Somin says:
I don’t know why we care what Bill Clinton is saying, but I thought this was interesting from Wikipedia:
McVeigh’s only known political affiliations were his voter registration with the Republican Party of New York when he lived in Buffalo, New York, and a membership in the National Rifle Association while in the military. McVeigh self-identified as a libertarian in a statement that was reported by MSNBC.com and The Washington Post; and while in federal prison, he voted for Libertarian candidate Harry Browne in the 1996 United States presidential election.
Looking at the wikipedia article, it doesn’t offer any actual links any articles from MSNBC or Washington Post.I checked the Westlaw and Lexis news data bases from 1994 to the present (that database includes the Washington Post), and did not find any articles with quotes by McVeigh stating that he is a libertarian (except one noted below) or that he voted for Harry Browne in 1996. The sole exception was a 2001 article where he stated that he was “a libertarian” with respect to animal rights, This, of course, was many years after the Oklahoma City bombing, and at a time when he was posing as a civil libertarian, perhaps in order to try to get clemency. He never, however, repudiated the fact that the Turner Diaries was the main inspiration for his bombing or the racism and neo-Nazism advocated by Pierce. Even if McVeigh had some libertarian beliefs along with his neo-Nazi ones, the bombing was pretty clearly motivated by the latter.
April 20, 2010, 5:07 pmAngus says:
I have no idea where Wiki would get that he voted for Browne in 1996 unless he said so in an interview. However, it was perfectly legit for McVeigh to vote in that election since he was not convicted until June 1997.
April 20, 2010, 5:09 pmMark Field says:
Technically true, though I’d note that the US Constitution guarantees a republican form of government to the states without stating that it itself is “republican”.
In any case, I don’t expect anyone to claim that, say, Ukraine was “republican” while a member of the USSR.
April 20, 2010, 5:11 pmIlya Somin says:
I think you may be forgetting anarchist violence, of which there was quite a bit in the US from roughly 1880–1930. Of course, if you consider that “left-wing” then your statement remains true.
These people were socialist anarchists. They were not either conservatives of libertarians (the groups referenced in the post).
The Nazis were “socialist” in the same way the Soviet Union was “republican” or the DDR was “democratic”.
In this post, I cite plenty of evidence to the contrary.
April 20, 2010, 5:12 pmAngus says:
Unsure if this is legit or not, but a libertarian organization posted a letter they say McVeigh sent them. If it’s real, certainly shows McVeigh as a Ron Paul style libertarian.
http://wlo418.tripod.com/worldlibertarianorder/id18.html
April 20, 2010, 5:13 pmMark Field says:
A quick search shows that the source of the vote for Browne claim was American Terrorist, p. 298. Someone with the book ought to check.
Statist anarchists?
Silly me to consider the entire history of Nazi Germany as evidence against your post.
April 20, 2010, 5:16 pmOpenVolokh says:
No one would even dispute that McViegh was not a libertarian.
IS’s assertion that over the top anti-government rhetoric by libertarians and othera did not influence McVeigh is illogical. That X influenced person A does not imply that Y did not also influence them. Influence by both X and Y are not mutually exclusive.
Libertarians and others have a moral (not legal) responsibility to avoid extremist anti-government rhetoric having little relation to reality.. For the record I have never seen any such rhetoric by IS or other bloggers here at VC.
April 20, 2010, 5:17 pmIlya Somin says:
Unsure if this is legit or not, but a libertarian organization posted a letter they say McVeigh sent them. If it’s real, certainly shows McVeigh as a Ron Paul style libertarian.
http://wlo418.tripod.com/worldlibertarianorder/id18.html
Quote
The organization in question seems like a group of crackpots seeking to gain notoriety by association with someone famous. They offer no proof that the letter is genuine.
April 20, 2010, 5:18 pmTimothy McVeigh Was Not “Anti-Government” « LewRockwell.com Blog says:
[...] this blog post, libertarian law professor Ilya Somin shows that he was not. In fact, he was a [...]
April 20, 2010, 5:22 pmOpenVolokh says:
Reading the comments, I guess this is just wrong. Whether McVeigh is libertarian or not is irrelevant. If he was a libertarian, his actions are not the responsibility of other libertarians.
The point is that avoiding extremist rhetoric with little or no basis in fact is a moral responsibility. A libertarian who engages in such rhetoric could well influence a non-libertarian or a libertarian who is mentally ill or sociopathic.
April 20, 2010, 5:26 pmSwan Trumpet says:
I doubt McVeigh was a neo-Nazi. His only authorized biography made clear his disdain for the Nazis and he disparagingly compared the ATF to “brownshirts”. He also was an admirer of Justice Brandeis – a Jew and an ardent Zionist. It was Brandeis McVeigh chose to quote when he addressed the court.
McVeigh also resisted Ramzi Yusef’s attempts to convert him to Islam while in prison – an act on his part inconsistent with that of an antisemite. His choice of Henley’s poem Invictus also suggests he wasn’t the knuckle-headed neo-Nazi some have claimed.
April 20, 2010, 5:28 pmIlya Somin says:
IS’s assertion that over the top anti-government rhetoric by libertarians and othera did not influence McVeigh is illogical. That X influenced person A does not imply that Y did not also influence them. Influence by both X and Y are not mutually exclusive.
Yes, but if the evidence shows that McVeigh’s bombing was undertaken to promote objective X (Nazi totalitarianism) which is incompatible with Y (limited government), then it’s pretty obvious that his efforts can’t be attributed to Y. Perhaps his support for Y was somehow in part caused by “anti-government rhetoric” by libertarians. But the actual evidence shows that it was caused by racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric that was “anti-government” only in the sense that it claimed that the government was under control of the Jews.
April 20, 2010, 5:32 pmjosh says:
“Clearly, the violence was actually inspired by neo-Nazi ideology that is very far removed from libertarianism (or even limited government conservatism).”
Setting aside the fact that the use of the word “clearly” tends to undercut the argument, I suggest you watch that socialist, librul nutjob Rachel Maddow’s documentary which plays two hours of tapes of McVeigh actually saying why he committed the bombing. My recollection from the tidbits I saw was that he credited Waco and Ruby Ridge far more than the Turner Diaries. I believe he said he needed to do it to show the “bully” government that there were consequences to his actions. Here’s what I think may be a snippet (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIMH5sNLCs8).
April 20, 2010, 5:33 pmShelbyC says:
Fair ’nuff. I had assumed he was convicted.
April 20, 2010, 5:35 pmDavid says:
I really don’t see what’s objectionable about Clinton’s statements. He’s not even blaming the ‘vocal minority’ for results of their rhetoric. He’s just asking people to be mindful that there are people out there who will take incendiary rhetoric to an “ultimate extreme”. This seems very sensible to me. I think his point is not so much that you should agree with this or that person on political matters, but rather that you should find a more responsible way of voicing that opposition than putting crosshairs on the heads of people you disagree with.
I think the perfect illustration of this is the murder of Dr. Tiller. Although pro-choice myself, I very much appreciate the intractability of the underlying problem, and respect people who hold the belief that life starts at conception. But the level of rhetoric surrounding the issue rose to such a fever pitch that one person decided to take the logic to the “ultimate extreme” and kill Tiller. It’s not that people aren’t justified in holding their views, but at some point it becomes an incitement to violence, which is not a form of free speech that is or ought to be protected or valued.
April 20, 2010, 5:44 pmUrso says:
This is a presumption that a guy like McVeigh acts rationally. “Oh, tenets of Nazism conflict with tenets of libertarianism. I must therefore logically choose one or the other.”
It seems more likely to me that a nut like McVeigh would read an extreme libertarian/anarchist tract saying how terrible the gov’t was and say “Yeah! I hate that gov’t!” Then read a neo-Nazi tract about how we need to keep down ‘undesirables’ or whatever and say “Yeah! I hate those undesirables!”
April 20, 2010, 5:47 pmStephen Lathrop says:
Take the argument as presented. McVeigh was no libertarian but some sort of neo-Nazi. The Tea Party is at least somewhat libertarian, and not neo-Nazi.
You still have to deal with the substantial overlap in those two ideologies on the question of guns and armed liberty. That piece they have in common, and it seems highly motivating to at least some members of either group. It is in fact an important ideological similarity, not a defining difference.
What if non-trivial numbers in either group believe the guns piece of their ideology is really the most interesting and motivating part? Doesn’t that subset, though drawn from two groups, then form an ideological group of its own, one worth taking note of?
April 20, 2010, 5:52 pmhippo says:
“extremist rhetoric with little or no basis in fact”
Where is this rhetoric? It certainly isn’t from the Tea Party.
April 20, 2010, 5:58 pmClinton is vile in implying that.
Christopher Cooke says:
It seems more accurate to say that McVeigh self-identified as a libertarian, but used Neo-Nazi tactics and followed some of their beliefs. Ilya’s argument seems to be that McVeigh couldn’t be a libertarian because he read the Turner Diaries and believed that jews controlled the US government. However, there are many anti-government views represented by people on the fringes of the left and right. They frequently do advocate overthrow of the US government and hatred of it because they see it as being controlled by their enemies. They also tend to be firm gun right advocates because they think they need their weapons to defend themselves from the US government and their many perceived enemies. The rightwing lunatic fringe members like McVeigh tend to be some of the most fervent 2nd Amendment supporters and show up at NRA conventions just as surely the LaRouchists and Trotskysts and other nuts on the left show up at anti-war rallies organized by liberals. Each group has its share of nut jobs, in short. (Note, the Black Panthers were big 2nd Amendment supporters too).
Thus, I don’t see how Ilya’s post undermines Bill Clinton’s argument, which is that some extremists who believe in limited government take their view to extremes, preach hatred of the government, and try to kill government workers. That should be no more controversial than saying that some leftists, who believe in bigger government, take their beliefs to extreme ends and try to impose totalitarian states on everyone, and kill anyone who differs with them (e.g, Khmer Rouge). I think Ilya is being a tad thin-skinned here. Clinton was not equating him or all libertarians with McVeigh, he was just noting that there is a slipper slope in political rhetoric–the more you demonize government, the more some nut-jobs get inspired to commit McVeigh-style stunts. This is obvious to anyone not blinded by ideology.
April 20, 2010, 6:03 pmDesiderius says:
“armed liberty”
Yeah, Nazis are sure big on liberty.
MSNBC ran a two-hour special on McVeigh? God, this really is bad. Good thing they have so few viewers left.
I’ve long been puzzled by the seemingly knee-jerk, but certainly no-holds-barred animus many intelligent Progressives have for libertarians. This is of a piece with the over-the-top Pinochet guilt by association with Friedman, which I’ll admit completely took me by surprise at the time and made me reevaluate what Progressives were up too.
I’d always thought of libertarians as at worst like pacifists and assumed liberals/progressives did too, if they had even heard of their existence (some hadn’t!) – i.e. perhaps overly idealistic/unrealistic, but with their hearts in the right place. I’m mean, who could oppose peace and liberty? One could still respect, and even be inspired by, a principled pacifist/libertarian, while not being prepared to go that far oneself.
I’ve since come to the realization that this isn’t even close to how many Progressives view us. To them, we’re more like sociological/institutional Luddites, standing in the way of Progress with either no reason, or, worse, nefarious ones. If the former, we thus merit derision; the latter, being taken down with any means necessary, including guilt by association smears such as the above by MSNBC.
Obviously, I disagree, and would like to ask those Progressives here with such views to reconsider. I think we’re the wing of Liberalism that counters illiberal overreaching from the Left, as many of you do quite energetically similar overreach from the Right. As Liberals have never been, and likely never will be, in a majority, in order to divide and conquer, we have, and must continue, to divide ourselves for maximum influence.
As for our ostensible Luddism, there is a big difference in the labor saved by a dishwasher and the labor/mental energy saved by a government powerful enough to make your decisions for you, or, you know, to raise your children or take care of your parents. The importance of community ties that such powers inevitably erode creates an interesting overlap between libertarian and communitarian concerns, that EV has previously noted.
This is a new century, and the coalitions formed for the old continue to fray. Be open to new ones.
April 20, 2010, 6:12 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Don’t you have to, you know, consider it correctly, rather than just “considering” it?
I mean, do you have any substantive rebuttal to the post linked by I.S., or just some handwaving?
April 20, 2010, 6:16 pmDesiderius says:
Christopher Cooke,
“Clinton was not equating him or all libertarians with McVeigh”
Knowing Clinton, and I voted for the guy twice and would again, so I’m not interested in value judgments here, just an accurate picture of reality, what do you perceive his motives in bringing this matter up just now to be?
April 20, 2010, 6:17 pmskeptic says:
David, you say that Clinton was reasonable because he’s only asking speakers to exercise self-restraint and to be aware that others could be inspired by their words to become violent:
Would you agree that this sentiment could be fairly paraphrased as “be careful what you say,” or “watch what you say,” so that you don’t give unintended comfort to bad people?
If not, what is the difference?
If so, is Clinton’s statement any different from Bush spokesman Ari Flesichman’s, which was often held out as an example of Bush’s tyranny?
April 20, 2010, 6:17 pmJon O. says:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2001/09/mcveigh200109?printable=true
April 20, 2010, 6:21 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Surely not. I know it’s an article of faith on the far left that Heller was some radical right wing decision, but actually it was an extremely narrow decision that upheld virtually all gun laws.
April 20, 2010, 6:23 pmStrict says:
Ilya writes that McVeigh’s attack was “motivated by a desire to suppress Jews and non-whites.”
If suppressing Jews and non-whites was his only or primary motivation [whichever you are asserting], it’s quite strange that he would launch an attack on…Oklahoma. Of all places.
His “Buffalo News” letters and other comments before his execution show that his primary motivation was to fight big government. He was definitely a libertarian. He ranted about high taxes and how mounting taxes might result in a civil war. Apparently he tried to start that civil war…
[I don't doubt that McVeigh was Jew hater, though].
April 20, 2010, 6:26 pmDesiderius says:
Strict,
“If suppressing Jews and non-whites was his only or primary motivation [whichever you are asserting], it’s quite strange that he would launch an attack on…Oklahoma.”
Um, check the pictures of the casualties. Alas, plenty of non-whites.
April 20, 2010, 6:30 pmTribe fan says:
If McVeigh would have loved Heller, he would have loved Scalia for it, and also Larry Tribe, who acknowledged years ago that the “individual rights” view had more merit than the “militia only” view.
So Larry Tribe handed him the match to light the fuse! He should be careful about what he says!
April 20, 2010, 6:30 pmjosh says:
Desiderius
The reference to the MSNBC documentary is that it appears to play actual tapes of actual words that came out of McVeigh’s mouth. Just thought that might be helpful evidence of why he did what he did.
April 20, 2010, 6:35 pmBob from Ohio says:
This is a blog comment chain, not a brief.
I suggest you should learn the difference between polite and rude.
April 20, 2010, 6:49 pmChristopher Cooke says:
Clinton’s motives are hard to figure out (apart from getting himself in the news again) but he says he wants people to behave more civilly when they debate one another. My guess is that he wants to get some Republicans and Fox news types to cool down their anti-government, and especially Obama-hatred, rhetoric (e.g., elected Republicans and Republican talking heads on Fox who flirt with the birther nonsense, the “Obama is a muslim” nonsense, or equate him with Hitler), lest they inspire more McVeighs or, more likely, some assassination attempt on the President. I note in this regard the conservative blogger Solomon Forell who tweeted a call for an assassination on Twitter. His column as essentially agreeing with the Department of Homeland Security’s analysis that right-wing fringe groups (the militias) are posing a larger threat of violence than before with Obama’s election.
Personally, the threat of violence does not come from rational libertarians, but from irrational fringe groups. As some have noted, McVeigh may not have had a rational, coherent political philosophy. He may have thought of himself as a libertarian, and harbored views that others would say are inconsistent with libertarianism. But, whether people like McVeigh think of themselves as libertarians or not, is really irrelevant. I don’t see why Ilya feels the need to argue that McVeigh was not a libertarian. I will concede he was a nut and a terrorist, and does not discredit libertarianism as a philosophy anymore than the clown who flew his plane into the federal government building discredits libertarianism. Certainly, we can all find things to dislike about our government but that doesn’t make everyone who dislikes the government or who is concerned about is size into a
April 20, 2010, 6:51 pmTiberius Gracchus says:
I am a little puzzled by the Somin’s characterization of the Klan. The Klan at least appeared as quite strongly opposed to federal government action on social issues. I don’t recall any pronouncements from the various Wizards, etc., in favor of social security or welfare, or the like. Is there reason to think that the Klan wanted extensive legal control at the state level? I don’t recall that, but I suppose it could be the case. The Klan seemed far more interested in exercise of social control through community action. With respect to the various tea party groupings, there is not much suggestion of concern about action by the states, just the federal government. Which would put them in company with the old states’ rights groupings. Of course, could be that anti-state views are just not covered. The central point here is that interest in social control is not strongly tied to control by state agencies. The mild example is HOAs.
April 20, 2010, 6:52 pmFederal Farmer says:
Bill Maher used to identify himself as a libertarian until, I guess, he found out it was about more than just wanting to smoke pot.
April 20, 2010, 6:53 pmElliot says:
Is there evidence McVeigh knew what a Libertarian was?
April 20, 2010, 7:00 pmGuy says:
I’m not going to pretend to know the details, but is there any evidence that he was not a libertarian other than that he read the Turner Diaries? Do you claim it was just a coincidence that he was adhered to the views of radical right libertarianesque anti-government groups before he resorted to terrorism?
April 20, 2010, 7:10 pmDan M. says:
Ilya, what in your post is credible at all with regard to McVeigh being motivated by a desire to institute a Nazi government? Just because he read a book that gave him the idea? You are making completely unfounded accusations to cast blame away from libertarians, while you are so incredibly skeptical of any evidence presented that, yes, Timothy McVeigh was indeed a libertarian, and no, he wasn’t a racist or Neo-Nazi.
Why can’t we just accept that McVeigh was trying to further many goals that you and I likely share with him?
April 20, 2010, 7:10 pmSome kid says:
Leftists claimed in 2001 that Mohammed Atta was motivated by what motivates them, and had acted for them.
Being anti-trade and anti-Israel, they were willing to overlook their disagreements and different styles of address. Not anti-woman or anti-gay themselves, they saw the murders in New York and in Washington as an opportunity, a teachable moment, and an expression of their own beliefs. They made a ventriloquist’s dummy of the terrorists, and used the attacks to say, once again, that the US must learn and must redeem itself, to listen to what leftists, ignored for so long, had been saying for years. Not against “Jews.” Just “Zionists.”
The equivalent’s to claim McVeigh for our side. Which we don’t do. Gore Vidal adopts him, but libertarians don’t.
We don’t adopt the neo-Nazi as a libertarian. We have him foisted on us. Years before Osama bin Laden began to quote Michael Moore, he had his beliefs, which leftists ignored. And leftists ignore what motivated McVeigh.
April 20, 2010, 7:12 pmChristopher Cooke says:
sorry for the typos. I meant to say that “Certainly, we can all find things to dislike about our government but that doesn’t make everyone who dislikes the government or who is concerned about is size into a McVeigh-style terrorist.”
To Federal Farmer: I suspect Bill Maher was likely sympathetic to libertarians when Bush was president and the Republicans controlled Congress. Now, he is not, or is less sympathetic, because the Democrats control Congress and the White House. I don’t find the man to be a deep thinker.
April 20, 2010, 7:18 pmbyomtov says:
Christopher Cooke,
As some have noted, McVeigh may not have had a rational, coherent political philosophy. He may have thought of himself as a libertarian, and harbored views that others would say are inconsistent with libertarianism. But, whether people like McVeigh think of themselves as libertarians or not, is really irrelevant. I don’t see why Ilya feels the need to argue that McVeigh was not a libertarian. I will concede he was a nut and a terrorist, and does not discredit libertarianism as a philosophy anymore than the clown who flew his plane into the federal government building discredits libertarianism.
Exactly. There really is no need to debate the exact political philosophy of a homicidal lunatic. Even if McVeigh were, by all standards, a committed libertarian that would no more implicate libertarianism in his crime than the clothes he wore implicate the store he bought them from.
What is important, and what I think Clinton was trying to say, is that there are violent fringe nutballs out there, and that violent rhetoric can easily set them off. It doesn’t matter what ideology is being espoused. Nothing could be less important. The danger is in the advocacy, or near-advocacy, of violence. That can’t be excused on ideological grounds, any more than a (non-violent) ideology can be blamed for the McVeigh’s of the world.
The critical thing about political rhetoric that encourages violence is not its arguments, but that it encourages violence.
April 20, 2010, 7:18 pmMark Field says:
Claiming that the Nazis were “socialists” is intellectual nihilism. I’m no more going to waste my time debating that than I would creationism or the benevolence of Stalinism.
I think it’s because most of us see only the right libertarians; that’s been the dominant faction for 40 years or so now. We never see them protesting unnecessary wars or making anything other than mumbles of polite disapproval about restrictions on things like free speech and due process. To us, they spend most of their time bashing liberals, trying to make the world safe for Enron, and voting for people like George Bush. Twice.
April 20, 2010, 7:24 pmlgm says:
McVeigh was a few roses short of a dozen — it doesn’t make sense to analyze his political philosophy in detail. It makes more sense to figure out how he got the way he was, and what to do about it.
Elected officials like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann are irresponsibly moving disaffected conservatives toward anger. They do this with what must be deliberate lies — death panels, takeover of 1/6-th of the economy, bailouts bankrupting our children (TARP is close making a small profit for Uncle Sam.), Bill Clinton murdered innocents at Waco (propagated at VC, alas!), etc. etc.
April 20, 2010, 7:35 pmConstantin says:
Is this a minority belief at present?
April 20, 2010, 7:38 pmDr. Weevil says:
Way back at 5:52pm, Stephen Lathrop alleged a “substantial overlap” between Neo-Nazism and Libertarianism “on the question of guns and armed liberty. That piece they have in common, and it seems highly motivating to at least some members of either group. It is in fact an important ideological similarity, not a defining difference.”
This seems false to me. Neo-Nazis (and Palaeo-Nazis) often love guns with a love “passing the love of women” (as the Bible says), but I’m pretty sure they want to keep those guns in the hands of themselves and their jackbooted Aryan friends. Do Nazis (old and new) support gun rights for Jews, Gypsies, Socialists, Capitalists, gays, blacks, and Slavs? I don’t think so. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that Libertarians support gun rights for Liberals, Conservatives, Socialists, Progressives, and even Nazis of both genders and every ethnic group, even those who would like to take away Libertarians’ guns.
April 20, 2010, 7:58 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
byomtov,
What is important, and what I think Clinton was trying to say, is that there are violent fringe nutballs out there, and that violent rhetoric can easily set them off. It doesn’t matter what ideology is being espoused. Nothing could be less important. The danger is in the advocacy, or near-advocacy, of violence. That can’t be excused on ideological grounds, any more than a (non-violent) ideology can be blamed for the McVeigh’s of the world.
Where was Clinton over the past decade, then? Someone linked this in another thread recently, and it bears inspection.
April 20, 2010, 8:17 pmDesiderius says:
Mark Field,
“Claiming that the Nazis were “socialists” is intellectual nihilism. I’m no more going to waste my time debating that than I would creationism or the benevolence of Stalinism.”
We report.
You decide.
See 11-18, 20-21, and 25, especially. The “warehouses” in 16 were basically the WalMarts of their day. Was this all just window-dressing?
“I think it’s because most of us see only the right libertarians; that’s been the dominant faction for 40 years or so now. We never see them protesting unnecessary wars or making anything other than mumbles of polite disapproval about restrictions on things like free speech and due process. To us, they spend most of their time bashing liberals, trying to make the world safe for Enron, and voting for people like George Bush. Twice.”
Well, then, open your eyes, man. Cato was against the war, and was not shy about it. FIRE and the Institute for Justice are all over civil liberties violations that the ACLU is too compromised to touch. Maybe they don’t go for some of the things the ACLU does because the ACLU already has things well-covered.
Making the world safe for Enron? Yeah, Enron got off as scot-free as Fannie and Freddie. Not. Safe my ass.
If you don’t want Bushes, don’t nominate zeroes like Gore and Kerry. That said, I don’t really think you want to see a country with all the liberals on one team. If the other won once, that would be game over.
April 20, 2010, 8:27 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Dr. Weevil,
Just so. Libertarians are the only people I’ve ever met who cheerfully admit their opponents’ right to be armed.
April 20, 2010, 8:39 pmerp says:
Ilya, thanks for actually telling it like is/was. McVeigh was no right wing zealot. Clinton is still trying to sell that ridiculous canard and setting up the climate for another horrendous tragedy to pin on some other delusional yahoo.
It’s quite amazing to me that people who are categorically against capital punishment no matter how vile the crime, dispatched McVeigh without the usual candlelight vigil and 20 years of appeals.
My take on it that is dead men tell no tales.
April 20, 2010, 8:41 pmDesiderius says:
BTW, all that platform proves is that the early to mid 20th Century was a terribly illiberal time and that the Nazis were just going along with the Zeitgeist. All the more reason against Progressive seances attempting to reconjure that Geist for this Zeit.
April 20, 2010, 8:42 pmRe: Timothy McVeigh Was Not “Anti-Government” « LewRockwell.com Blog says:
[...] an earlier post, I linked to an item by law prof Ilya Somin suggesting that Timothy McVeigh was not “anti-government” at [...]
April 20, 2010, 8:44 pmTGGP says:
I have seen no evidence that McVeigh “converted” from hostility to support for Nazism, including reports from people who knew him. There’s just the Turner Diaries. His comparison of it with Unintended Consequences (featuring a hero who is not only Jewish but a holocaust survivor) would suggest the common element between the two is what inspired him.
Michael Gilson de Lemos is a libertarian (with no association with violence or hate groups as far as I’m aware) who lists “The Turner Diaries” (among others) as examples of the “invasion literature” in vogue among those afraid of communism/socialism.
Occam’s Razor suggests that a person can remain a libertarian even while liking very hateful books. Ilya is trying something like a no-true-Scotsman to preserve the reputation of libertarians more broadly, but he should just admit that being a libertarian doesn’t prevent people from doing terrible things. Followers of Le Fevre perhaps abhor violence at all, but Lysander Spooner (whom Randy Barnett is a fan of) tried to start slave uprisings in imitation of John Brown and urged the Irish to revolt against their landlords. If we’re allowed to include the founding fathers as classical liberals and ancestors of libertarians, they started a war and killed many people over some issues we might now consider trivial.
As a side-note, while McVeigh acknowledges tactical inspiration from the Turner Diaries, he himself is more an example of the “leaderless resistance” featured in the sequel/prequel.
April 20, 2010, 9:02 pmpumasoc says:
There’s a whole lot of non-sense coming through these comments.
It’s obvious that McVeigh was a statist. For example:
- McVeigh served the American empire in the army. He participated in an unprovoked invasion of Iraq (under Bush I). He murdered Iraqis during this invasion. War is the health of the state.
- After coming home from Iraq he tried out for the Army Rangers. He failed.
- In the MSNBC tapes of McVeigh, he did speak of his regret about killing innocent Iraqis. He also spoke of his interest in the 2nd amendment. He did not, however, speak of natural and individual rights – calling cards of libertarians. The rights he spoke of were always in his mind by virtue of the government. This is because he was a statist, who felt the government could grant and withdraw rights. He was not a libertarian who believed rights were inherent and sovereign to individuals. If he had, he would have said so – THIS IS WHAT LIBERTARIANS DO!!!! His problem was not government, it was THAT government. He wanted policy changes, he did not want a whole sale stripping of government’s power and sphere of influence.
- With regards to the person that claims McVeigh’s support of the Declaration of Independence proves he is a libertarian – that document states a peoples right to overthrow an oppressive government and replace it with a more suitable form. IT DOES NOT SAY THAT ONLY A LIBERTARIAN GOVERNMENT WILL WORK!!! Overthrow the Feds and replacing them with his Nazi regime was exactly what he wanted.
- With regards to the person who quoted McVeigh as self-identifying as a libertarian – GLENN BECK CALLS HIMSELF A LIBERTARIAN! He clearly is not. Nor is Bob Barr. Many others that claim to be libertarian aren’t libertarian, too. I could call myself a Martian, but it doesn’t make it true.
The truth is that the defining feature of libertarianism is the non-violence axiom. McVeigh defied this time and time again when it mattered most. He was a violent nut.
As a libertarian I have to bring this last bit up: I find it EXTREMELY INSULTING that these statists – Bill Clinton et al – have the audacity to warn against the dangers of private individuals reeking havoc on our lives. All the terrible private terrorism over the past 100 years is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the 100 MILLION PEOPLE KILLED BY THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT IN THE LAST CENTURY. That doesn’t even include wars. Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Fidel, Che, and Hoover (he poisoned American alcohol during prohibition), are all LOL’ing (laughing out loud) at fear mongering against those people who oppose government’s violent use of force for political self-interest.
Clinton’s a war criminal like Bush. His administration admitted that it was likely responsible for over 500,000 Iraqi deaths due to sanctions and periodic bombings of Iraq during the Clinton years. When Madeline Albright was asked about the amount deaths and whether they were worth it, she said they were worth it! Unbelievable. And this jerk has the audacity to say that peaceful protesters asking to be left alone are the danger. If that’s not nutty, I don’t know what is. Nutty like a McVeigh.
April 20, 2010, 9:06 pmbbbeard says:
Maybe I’m missing the point here, but it always seemed clear to me that what triggered McVeigh was not Something He Read in the era before blogs, or Something He Heard in the era before Fox News Channel. What triggered McVeigh was the actual violence perpetrated on actual innocents by our government. And though it is tempting to try to put the blame on Janet Reno (or even Bill Clinton, as Dick Morris has tried to do lately), in reality many folks at many levels of government were involved in the decision to confront and to assault the Branch Davidians.
The death toll in Waco was horrific, and only made worse by the government’s claims afterwards to have been justified. If we’re going to learn anything from Oklahoma City, maybe we should start with how to prevent our government from doing that to us.
BBB
April 20, 2010, 9:10 pmDan M. says:
Ilya, you’re still not providing ANY evidence that McVeigh was a neo-Nazi or that he had any authoritarian motives for the bombing. You scoff at the evidence presented by others, yet you have absolutely nothing except a little snippet from the ADL. He was anti-government. He was motivated by the government’s violence perpetrated against citizens. My gosh, read Gore Vidal’s “The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh.”
April 20, 2010, 9:29 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Dan M.,
My gosh, read Gore Vidal’s “The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh.”
Because it isn’t as though Gore Vidal has an ax to grind or anything.
April 20, 2010, 9:31 pmFederal Farmer says:
Really? You consider creating a government where the people don’t serve it, but it serves them to be a ‘trivial issue’? That was far more revolutionary than the war itself. Jefferson gave you too much credit when he wrote “we hold these truths to be self-evident.” Sometimes the apple falls far from the tree. Two measly centuries go by and people forget what it means to be American.
April 20, 2010, 9:37 pmrpt says:
It may or not be minority, but it is neither rational nor factually based.
April 20, 2010, 9:44 pmmadawaskan says:
How about keeping it simple?
McVeigh was an irrational actor that should be apparent by the end result-and Libertarians and others need to stop legitimizing his actions.
How about the theory of responsibility?
McVeigh is responsible for his own damn actions and to start justifying his actions by this, that or the other is to stray from whatever the hell I thought Libertarianism might stand for-the independence of the individual.
If you want to start buying into the theory of “communitarianism” keep sailing this particular tack.
April 20, 2010, 9:48 pmJonathan Witmer-Rich says:
What a weird debate. From the Wikipedia site, there looks like LOTS of evidence of libertarian (pro-liberty, anti-big-government) beliefs motivating McVeigh’s conduct:
- Letter to local paper protesting taxes: “Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate ‘promises,’ they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They mess up. We suffer. Taxes are reaching cataclysmic levels, with no slowdown in sight… Is a Civil War Imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn’t come to that. But it might.”
- Statement in 1993 to reporter at Waco: “The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people. You give them an inch and they take a mile. I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control.”
- From a Court TV profile: “In the gun show culture, McVeigh found a home. Though he remained skeptical of some of the most extreme ideas being bandied around, he liked talking to people there about the United Nations, the federal government and possible threats to American liberty.”
- “He produced videos detailing the government’s actions at Waco and handed out pamphlets with titles like ‘U.S. Government Initiates Open Warfare Against American People’ and ‘Waco Shootout Evokes Memory of Warsaw ’43.’” Warsaw ’43 being, of course, the Jewish uprising against the Nazis. Not exactly seeking the return of National Socialism.
- His letter to the ATF telling them to “remember the Nuremberg trials.” Again, equating our gov’t with the Third Reich, not trying to re-establish it.
- Letter of recruitment to Steve Colbern: “And if you are a fed, think twice. Think twice about the Constitution you are supposedly enforcing (isn’t ‘enforcing freedom’ an oxymoron?)”
- T-shirt he was wearing on the day of the bombing: “it had a tree with a picture of three blood droplets and the Thomas Jefferson quote, ‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.’”
So, lots of claims about gov’t being too big, taking too much of our property (taxes), limiting our freedoms, concerns about the UN, extolling the value of liberty and freedom . . . .
Does Ilya think the wikipedia entry is factually inaccurate? Which of the above claims are false?
April 20, 2010, 9:49 pmmadawaskan says:
IOW McVeigh was a messed up individual and would have globbed onto anything or any excuse to act out.
In the vacuum of Ruby Ridge or Waco the idiot would have found other excuses-not to be confused with reasons- to be a mass murderer of children.
April 20, 2010, 9:51 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
So that would be a “no,” then. Just checking.
Not sure what you’re talking about here. With one or two exceptions, Cato and Reason were vocally against the Iraq war, and I don’t know many who voted for Bush even once, let alone twice.
April 20, 2010, 9:54 pmFederal Farmer says:
Which Libertarians are ‘justifying’ McVeigh? Criticism of the Federal Government’s use of force in Waco and pointing out that McVeigh was at least rationalizing his act of mass murder by acting in response to Waco in no way justifies McVeigh. Perhaps you need to name these Libertarians that are justifying McVeigh so we can all point and waggle disapproving fingers at them.
April 20, 2010, 10:12 pmMark Field says:
From American Terrorist, p. 354, paperback edition:
“Since he was not yet a convicted felon, McVeigh retained his right to vote in elections. From prison he wrote back home to New York state and obtained an absentee ballot from the Niagara County Board of Elections. He used the opportunity to vote against President Clinton, casting his vote for the Libertarian candidate.”
Frankly, these are trivial examples in the grand scheme of things. Libertarians threw a monumental fit over Kelo; not so much over Iraq. In the grand scheme of things, that’s hard to beat as an example of “misplaced” priorities.
Like I said, they’ll mouth some platitudes when it comes to a few issues, but their passion has been the Republican Party. They sold their souls; if they want them back, it’s going to take more than a few position papers. It’s going to take sustained commitment in opposition to the greatest danger to freedom today: the Republican Party. It’s not too late, but they’ve a LONG way to go.
April 20, 2010, 10:18 pmStrict says:
McVeigh apparently wrote a letter to the director of The World Libertarian Order [never heard of WLO].
Ilya, I think you are relying too much on the “inspired by the Turner Diaries” thing. Moreover, a libertarian can be inspired by a non-libertarian thing, right?
And also, the fact that some non-whites were among his victims does not mean that suppressing non-whites was his sole or primary motivation. That is an absurd line of reasoning.
In the prosecutor’s 2.5 hour opening statement at trial, the words “race” and “Jew” appears zero times. The word “hate” appears once – in reference to McVeigh’s hate of big government. Kind of strange that the prosecutor would fail to tell the jurors that McVeigh wanted to create a Nazi government.
April 20, 2010, 10:23 pmConstantin says:
Why not? Have you read a history book?
The second assertion Clinton dismisses–that “public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them,” is at least a close call to anyone paying attention. I think it’s probably true for a majority of the political class, but not true for actual “public servants” like the mailmen or teachers. So this one might depend on what the meaning of “public servant” is.
The first one, that the government is the biggest threat to our freedom, is true in my own experience. In fact, it’s really the only threat to my freedom I encounter on any regular basis. I can defend myself against street thugs, and the only way a terrorist or hostile nation threatens my freedom is by (1) killing me or (2) committing acts that serve as the impetus for the government, in response, to take measures that threaten my freedom.
The danger inherent in government was enough that we have one Bill of Rights, and its whole purpose is to protect us against government action. Who else is a legitimate threat?
April 20, 2010, 10:23 pmStrict says:
McVeigh’s only statement during his sentencing:
Justice Brandeis was the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice and an active Zionist.
Ilya, you say that McVeigh wanted to institute a Nazi Government in America and his main motivation was to suppress Jews. Why would he then, at one of the most important moments of his life [seconds before hearing the death sentence], approvingly quote a famous Jewish person?
April 20, 2010, 10:40 pmScott Eudaley says:
This is pure historical illiteracy. You obviously have never read Mein Kampf or much history of the Weimar Republic. The “Socialist” part of their party’s name was there for a reason. The Nazi’s advocated a thoroughly socialist state. In Mein Kampf, Hitler explained the differences between Nazism and Communism. Under Communism, all property is de jure owned by the state. Under Nazism, the same is achieved de facto by vesting all real control of property in the state. To paraphrase Hitler, “when all power to control property is vested in the state, the owner is simply left with a contentless piece of paper (the title).” Hitler thought that was a more practical way of achieving totalitarian control than the outright seizure of property, but the goal was the same.
The German people were quite aware of the similarities as is evidenced by a joke that was common until 1933: “Why is a Nazi like a beefsteak? Because he’s brown on the outside and red on the inside.”
The Nazi’s were, in fact, a socialist, left-wing political party with a nationalist veneer. The real tragedy of the Weimar Republic was that there were no political parties which advocated individualism, limited government and the free market. All of the political parties were thoroughly statist. The Nazi synthesis was to combine the Marxist economics of the Communists and Social Democrats with the racist resentments of the Nationalists. It won them the country and drenched the world in blood.
April 20, 2010, 10:41 pmTGGP says:
I intentionally added “some” to give me weasel room. A lot of their motivation was goofy conspiracy theories, with among the most anachronistic being their reaction to the tolerance of Catholicism in the Quebec Act. Douglass North in “Violence and Social Order” treats them more charitably, but notes that what they feared (“faction”) is just what came to pass under the new regime. They rebelled against taxes, but then their new government laid down plenty (in part to pay for war debts) and crushed revolts against it. As countries went, England was already among the most democratic and the government the rebels formed was a timocracy (not that bad in my book, but worth noting to democratic fundamentalists). Bryan Caplan gives the libertarian case against the war here.
April 20, 2010, 10:41 pmMichael B says:
If any set of voters are susceptible to this spew of Clinton, Chris Matthews, et al., are credulous enough to believe it, then it serves as a strong indication, if not an absolute proof, that such are as stupidly informed in the social, political and cultural arena as some numbers were stupidly informed in sexual or psycho-sexual matters c. 1950, when Alfred Kinsey came out with his study.
For most, one senses such tactics have jumped the shark, but it’s difficult to say, the “enthusiasts” for notions, in this thread alone, suggest otherwise, at least so among those who’d like to advance the association.
April 20, 2010, 10:42 pmDesiderius says:
MarkField,
“Like I said, they’ll mouth some platitudes when it comes to a few issues, but their passion has been the Republican Party. They sold their souls; if they want them back, it’s going to take more than a few position papers. It’s going to take sustained commitment in opposition to the greatest danger to freedom today: the Republican Party. It’s not too late, but they’ve a LONG way to go.”
Oh get off your high horse. Like I said, there is no shortage of liberals who have compromised their liberal principles for the sake of the Democratic Party. No one’s hands are clean on that count except cowardly fence-sitters like yours truly, and we have our own issues.
The passion isn’t for the Republican Party per se, it is for thwarting those who would re-institute an eighty-year-Old Deal and call it Progress. Short of that thwarting, at least preventing it’s extension into even further generation-sacrificing folly.
But those are just policy differences. Liberalism goes a lot deeper than that. The only way we ultimately lose our freedoms is if we choose to pursue fleeting political power over recognizing our friends and countrymen who share our passion for that freedom, whatever team they’re on.
April 20, 2010, 10:46 pmAnonsters says:
That’s mildly inverted. They were an extreme nationalist party with a socialist veneer, I’d say.
April 20, 2010, 10:47 pmDesiderius says:
David,
“I don’t know many who voted for Bush even once, let alone twice.”
I did. Would again.
April 20, 2010, 10:47 pmDesiderius says:
Strict,
“Why would he then, at one of the most important moments of his life [seconds before hearing the death sentence], approvingly quote a famous Jewish person?”
What part of “for good or ill” denotes approval?
April 20, 2010, 10:50 pmStephen Lathrop says:
Point taken. But I was trying to call attention to the possibility that there could be people in both groups for whom the principle membership attraction is the guns and resistance-to-government piece. These, assuming they exist, may have more in common with each other than they do with other members of their own groups, whose interests embrace a broader agenda. And of course the guns-and-resistance bunch might also be the population most likely to alert the concerns of outsiders.
April 20, 2010, 10:54 pmDesiderius says:
Looks like we have a preponderance of evidence presented here against the original proposal by Somin that McVeigh was No Real Scotsman. All the more reason to consider Clinton’s objectives in (re)raising the issue. Guilt by association may be par for the course in his line of work. Doesn’t mean we have to like it or take it lying down.
April 20, 2010, 10:56 pmMichael B says:
Apologies. Correction to a graph, not far above:
For most, one senses such tactics have jumped the shark, but it’s difficult to say, the “enthusiasts” for such notions, in this thread alone, suggest otherwise, at least so among those who’d like to advance the association.
April 20, 2010, 10:59 pmRicardo says:
What Anonsters said. You can’t go around accusing others of historical illiteracy and then say that Nazis had a nationalist veneer.
Nationalism was the very reason for the Nazi Party’s existence. Its economic policies were simply based on a combination of policies that the Nazis felt would give the country the best chance of ending the Great Depression as quickly as possible, rearming the country, and ending the economic chaos and instability of the Wiemar era. They actually achieved these goals. The Nazis were not wedded to Marx or Lenin in the same way ideological socialist or communist movements are (and, of course, they actively persecuted such movements accusing them of holding anti-German ideas and being controlled by Jews). And you simply do not see genuine socialists going around saying they are going to create a “healthy middle class.”
April 20, 2010, 11:00 pmMark Field says:
Are you Pauline Kael? According to the Cato Institute’s own figures, libertarians voted 72-20 for Bush over Gore and 59-38 for Bush over Kerry.
Hey, I’m certainly not claiming any moral purity here. You asked why liberals are so angry with libertarians. The voting figures I provided above should be some clue. So should the constant denigration of liberals we see in places like here from the so-called libertarians.
This has been going on for 40 years. Goldwater convinced libertarians that the Republican Party would be libertarian, but all it did was suck you in and use you. In return for essentially nothing, libertarians spent that time bashing people they should have been allies with on many issues (not allies in polite company, determined fighters for causes), only to be betrayed time and time again by your false friends.
April 20, 2010, 11:03 pmrpt says:
In my lifetime there have been good political leaders and bad ones, and the millions of people who make up “the American government” (which is a neutral concept) on all levels are not the problem. “They is us.” I am not afraid of them or it except to the degree to which they act incompetently, corruptly, illegally and so on. In my experience, there is much more danger of all of this when the R’s are in power, but that is a matter of degree.
Re the R’s, all elected libertarian politicians and serious candidates are R’s, just like the tea persons and their parties, to the extent to which they are not Armey’s, Scott’s and the Kochs’ astroturf. Rand Paul, Ron Paul, etc, are R’s.
April 20, 2010, 11:09 pmsteve-o says:
“Some commentators are associating the Oklahoma City bombings of 15 years ago and other far right violence with the rise of “anti-government” sentiment in opposition to the Obama health care bill and other recent expansions of federal spending and regulation.”
If you think there is no “association” between the rise of anti government sentiment and bizarre conspiracy fantasies then you are not terribly well-informed. McVeigh’s prediliction for the “Turner Diaries” was just a symptom of his nuttiness.
April 20, 2010, 11:10 pmrpt says:
If this is so, why did the capitalist financiers of the west support the rebuilding and remilitarizaton of Germany in the 1930′s? Did the Third Reich own the banks and factories? This is a new one.
April 20, 2010, 11:16 pmStrict says:
Desiderius: “What part of “for good or ill” denotes approval?”
What? I think you are confused – read what I wrote, and the quote, again. McVeigh wanted Brandeis’ words to speak for him. He clearly liked the quote.
April 20, 2010, 11:40 pmRicardo says:
I just caught this statement. This explanation does not make sense because McVeigh voluntarily ended his appeal process and asked for a prompt execution. Wikipedia quotes him as saying “I knew I wanted this before it happened. I knew my objective was state-assisted suicide and when it happens, it’s in your face. You just did something you’re trying to say should be illegal for medical personnel.” He also apparently said that after dying the “score” would be 168 to 1 — a statement unlikely to win any mainstream sympathy.
April 20, 2010, 11:43 pmyao says:
Michelle Dulak Thomson: “Because it isn’t as though Gore Vidal has an ax to grind or anything.”
Ilya Somin and Michelle Dulak Thomson are axe-free?
April 20, 2010, 11:44 pmStrict says:
“McVeigh’s prediliction for the “Turner Diaries” was just a symptom of his nuttiness.”
Yes, he was crazy.
But McVeigh himself has said that the reason he liked the Turner Diaries was because of its [libertarian] emphasis on guns and bringing down the government, NOT the racialism. Ilya assumes that because McVeigh liked the book, he liked all aspects of the book. Ilya further assumes that McVeigh’s particular acts were inspired by the book, and especially by the racism/racialism espoused by the book. I have no idea how Ilya separates the two aspects [libertarian gun loving / race hate] of the book, and how he concludes that McVeigh was inspired exclusively by the race hate and not at all by the libertarianism.
April 20, 2010, 11:48 pmrpt says:
Another relevant point is that the over the top rhetoric about the dangers of electing Obama (reflected here in 2008) can be used to justify violent response. It was of course worse on townhall, red state, and other conservative sites. Go back and look at some of the campaign season VC posts of the Obama threats: mandatory government service, confiscatory taxation, seizure of firearms, Bill Ayers in the cabinet, government takeover of the economy and so on. If these were real threats, then violent resistance is justified in the minds of some. That they have not materialized is forgotten.
April 20, 2010, 11:54 pmMark Field says:
Oh, and even after all Bush did, libertarians voted for McCain 71-27.
For Wales?
April 20, 2010, 11:55 pmStrict says:
Ricardo,
Ilya’s claim that McVeigh wanted to hide his crypto-Nazism and racial beliefs/motivation in order to get a favorable sentence is completely absurd.
He was completely defiant. He wasn’t looking for favors. And he certainly didn’t lay off [i.e. completely omit] racial rhetoric in his writings and comments in order to win the hearts and minds of Jews and non-whites. After the attack it was too late for him to win over just about any sane person.
Ilya’s “completely inspired by Jew hate and not by libertarianism in the least” portrayal is not supported by the facts. It’s a huge stretch.
April 20, 2010, 11:55 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Read more carefully: these are people that Cato would like to claim as libertarianish (“10-20% of the population”) — people who are socially liberal and fiscally conservative — but not people who actually identify as libertarians.
April 20, 2010, 11:58 pmDesiderius says:
“What? I think you are confused — read what I wrote, and the quote, again. McVeigh wanted Brandeis’ words to speak for him. He clearly liked the quote.”
He liked the quote because it reflected his government-obsessed worldview. I don’t think it was approval of the government omnipresence he (mis)perceived (and was thus, in his fevered mind, “admitted to” by Brandeis, hence his choice of that quote) that led him to blow up that building.
Also libertarianism does not equal “bring down the government”. In fact, an unlimited government is more likely to bring itself down than one that is constrained by the consent of the governed.
April 20, 2010, 11:59 pmDesiderius says:
MarkField,
“So should the constant denigration of liberals we see in places like here from the so-called libertarians.”
No argument there, only suggesting that the friendly fire in the other direction doesn’t help matters. Luckily, those we were worried about in the first place (and have been mistakenly calling liberals) have now taken to calling themselves Progressives, so things should be somewhat clearer going forward.
“This has been going on for 40 years. Goldwater convinced libertarians that the Republican Party would be libertarian, but all it did was suck you in and use you. In return for essentially nothing, libertarians spent that time bashing people they should have been allies with on many issues (not allies in polite company, determined fighters for causes), only to be betrayed time and time again by your false friends.”
Not nothing, but not as much as we’d hoped. Things are looking up though for that alliance, since the D’s evidently decided throwing in with the corporatists was a better bet than the libertarians, after putting out some feelers in the other direction. I’m afraid it will be a while before we can be allies again.
April 21, 2010, 12:09 amLarryA says:
As I recall McVeigh was a member of a militia group for at most a couple of months, before they asked him to leave.
Actually, in libertarian terms the difference is obvious. If he’s fighting for the right to live his own life the way he wants to he’s a freedom fighter. If he’s fighting to force others to live the way he wants them to he’s a terrorist.
April 21, 2010, 12:11 amConstantin says:
Thank goodness there isn’t a group on the Left that would fit a similar description.
With due acknowledgment of former Celtics’ coach Rick Pitino, Ronald Reagan’s not walking through that door. You pick the lesser of two evils.
April 21, 2010, 12:14 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
Again, these aren’t libertarians, but in any case, what did Obama offer libertarians? Nothing. One party at least acts as if it wants the libertarian vote; one aggressively spurns it.
April 21, 2010, 12:16 amjosh says:
yao
well said. I’ve read this blog for years, but just recently noticed michelle’s comments. she’s entitled to her opinions, but they do appear to be directly lifted from the the Glenn Beck show.
As to Ilya, I have to say, the second update was about as weak a rejoinder as I;ve ever seen on this site. You got it wrong. McVeigh’s reading of the Turner Diaries does not appear to have been as prime a motivator as you originally thought (despite your “extensive research on Lexis and Westlaw”). He plainly acted (at least according to his own words) for revenge of Waco and Ruby Ridge (I have no idea why, after reading some of the comments in Kopels recent posts!)
You got it wrong. You should just fess up, rather than torture your back to the original premise.
The fact is, no sane librul I know accuses libertarians of being responsible for McVeigh. Do I think the unhinged rhetoric is unhelpful? You betcha. But I became a lawyer from inspiration by the likes of Burton Joseph, so I’d defend your right to speech to the death.
But I just have to say, this hard drive to distinguish libertarians from McVeigh just smacks of defensiveness. Why would anyone even need to do it? B/c Bill Clinton gave a speech and wrote and op-ed saying over-the-top rhetoric is bad? It is! He didn’t call for censorship, and he (still) isn’t coming for guns. I seriously wish we could past the black helicopters. There are real civil liberty issues at stake.
April 21, 2010, 12:18 amScott Eudaley says:
Apologies, I shouldn’t have used the word “veneer” for the racist, nationalist elements of their philosophy. It was an essential part of their belief system and not something simply layered upon it. I implied otherwise and that, as you say, is not historically accurate.
However, to argue that their economic statism was incidental to their viewpoint is simply not historically accurate either. Their socialism was integral to their philosophy and, thus, part of their party’s name. Hitler was emphatic about it in Mein Kampf and they hewed to it consistently throughout their history. Granted, they were not ideologically beholden to Marx and Lenin, but they were consistent economic statists, virtually indistinguishable from the Communists (and, thus, the old German joke). Their battles with the Communists are better seen as a bitter battle over who is going to be the dominant leftist party than between two antithetical viewpoints. That certainly seemed to be the way Hitler viewed it.
Actually, in societies where there is a middle class and a democratic vote (as in Weimar Germany), you see such claims all the time. Of course, they don’t really mean it, but they have to say it to get elected.
It is important to understand that National Socialism was a synthesis of the two dominant strains of ideological thought in Weimar Germany. On one side you had the socially-oriented statism of the Junkers landowners, the Prussian militarists, et al as represented primarily by the Nationalist party. On the other side you had the economic statism of the workers, peasants, unemployed soldiers et al as represented by the Social Democrat and Communist parties. The other, smaller parties such as the Christian Democrats and the Center (Catholic) parties oscillated back and forth. None of the parties were in any substantial way supportive of a non-statist solution to their many problems. In a society thorough drenched with statist ideologies, the Nazi synthesis of Nationalism and Socialism ultimately proved irresistible to the voters. They seemed a reasonable compromise!
History is replete with instances of banks, financiers and industrialists ignoring ideology in search of a buck. In the midst of a world-wide depression, any investment backed by a government seemed like a good deal at the time. Even though every aspect of how that money was invested, lent or spent was controlled by the German government, the illusion of private property attracted far more money than the Communists could ever have hoped for. That was an explicit part of Hitler’s plan and one of the reasons he argued for de facto versus de jure socialism. One might as well ask why anyone ever thought it smart to buy mortgage-backed securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
April 21, 2010, 12:41 amAnonsters says:
Yeah, it’s called fascism. Fascism =/= socialism.
April 21, 2010, 12:54 amAnonsters says:
^^ I should add to my above that fascism, or authoritarianism more generally, swept Europe in the 1920s-1930s. It’s kind of important not to confuse it with socialism.
April 21, 2010, 1:15 amScott Eudaley says:
I was looking for this Hitler quote and finally found it:
– Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction
April 21, 2010, 1:21 amRicardo says:
I didn’t say or mean to imply it was “incidental.” National Socialism was a totalitarian political philosophy. That very fact rules out its being “free-market” or “capitalist” in the strong senses of the terms immediately. That’s simply true by definition.
I think the problem is that some people have a mental model of a line with “socialism” at one end and “free-market” at the other end. They say the Nazis were far away from the “free-market” end and are therefore socialists. This is the fallacy of the false dilemma. Socialism doesn’t simply mean “statist” or “interventionist” in economic affairs: it refers to a particular system of thought that the National Socialists differed from in very important ways.
The Nazis made electoral gains across the political spectrum leading up to their takeover of the government. It wasn’t the case that they were simply stealing the votes of the Communists and the Social Democrats — they certainly were at war with these two parties but their appeal was significantly broader than the German Left. If you call it a left-wing political movement, you are putting your thumb on the scale by emphasizing the economic interventionist policies while de-emphasizing the racial nationalism, the blood and soil rhetoric and the appeals to past glories of German Empires and the achievements of “Aryan” civilization.
To be perfectly clear, the Nazis did indeed borrow rhetoric and policy ideas (as well as the name of the party) from socialists. The reasons for this are several:
1. Intellectual currents in Europe at the time supported many socialist ideas. Many of the ideas the Nazis supported in the economic realm were supported by others who would never have considered themselves socialists.
2. They needed to win the votes of the working class while marginalizing the Communists and Social Democrats and realized that co-opting parts of socialism was an effective way to do this.
3. Pragmatism. Simply put, the Nazis wanted to end the Depression and re-arm the country for war and their policies accomplished these aims. Nazi Germany was also a relatively prosperous place before the War — there were no famines or bread lines.
4. Again, as a totalitarian political movement, you simply cannot have people occupying important roles in society who are not beholden to the National Socialists. By definition, a totalitarian (as opposed to a merely authoritarian) movement cannot be described as free market.
This does not make Nazism a socialist or leftist political movement. Politicians are stealing each others’ ideas all the time. Stealing an idea doesn’t mean you adopt your opponent’s ideology.
April 21, 2010, 1:30 amAnonsters says:
And yet the SS rounded up communists and sent them off to the camps, too.
April 21, 2010, 1:48 amRicardo says:
Scott, there are also quotes where Nazis slammed Bolshevism as a philosophy being pushed by Jews as a way to weaken and destabilize Germany. The earlier context of your quote is this:
See also this speech from Goebbels. The point Goebbels makes is that politics is dominated by three groups: Bolshevists, democrats and National-Socialists. He says that democrats and Bolshevists are aligned in a struggle against the Nazis. And this speech was from 1938, before the Molotov-von Ribbentrop Pact and the subsequent breaking of that same pact.
All this simply illustrates the Nazi propensity to be all things to all people. The Nazis claimed to be socialists when recruiting people from the working class and then turned around and called socialists Jewish subversives when it came to getting support from people who hated socialism. At their core, the Nazis were never in any doubt that their ideas were fundamentally incompatible with socialism as, indeed, Hitler admits in the very speech you quote from.
April 21, 2010, 1:53 amleo marvin says:
I just learned on one of the other comment threads that McVeigh was a secret Muslim working for bin Laden. Now I’m supposed to pivot back to Nazi? I have a headache.
That’s what you took from his post?
Actually, I’ve seen Michelle be fairly open minded, so I wouldn’t write her off too quickly. There are enough irretrievable loons around here already without attributing to wingnuttery what might just be a bad day, month, whatever.
April 21, 2010, 2:16 amShag from Brookline says:
If a Heller decision had come down before Ruby Ridge, Waco and Oklahoma City, might those events not have come about? What if a Heller decision and a Second Amendment extension to the states had come down shortly after the 14th Amendment had been ratified, would violence involving arms have been reduced? Might there have been marches on Washington, DC by protesters carrying openly to convince Congress and the Executive as well as SCOTUS to give the protesters their due?
April 21, 2010, 6:07 amBill Twist says:
It has been my distinct impression that Timothy McVeigh was enamored of “The Turner Diaries” not so much for it’s underlying political philosophy of racial hatred, but more because it was at the time really the only novel that talked about taking direct action against the federal government.
In other words, it was inspiration as to method, not as to motive. He already had the motive: Ruby Ridge and Waco.
This is supported by his statement that had the novel “Unintended Consequences” by John Ross come out a couple years earlier than it had, he probably would have chosen selective assassination of federal government employees, like that done in “Unintended Consequences”, instead of using a massive truck bomb against a federal building like in “The Turner Diaries”. Ross’s novel isn’t racist in the least, and it’s actually pretty darn libertarian: While most of the motivation behind the violence against government in that book is because of the actions of the ATF, the FAA and EPA also get dragged into it.
Certainly, I haven’t heard of any statements McVeigh made that would unambiguously support him being primarily motivated by racial or ethnic hatred, which would be the case if he was a neo-nazi or white supremecist.
April 21, 2010, 7:42 amScott says:
I find it troubling and proof of how far down the wrong road we are that people would even think to link libertarianism with one of the most extreme examples of statism in the past century. About the only thing this guy had in common with libertarians is he was pro-second amendment. Even then, he probably only thought white people should have guns, so the connection fails there too.
I’ve noticed that libertarians are increasingly painted in a bad light, whether it’s Fox’s black sheeping of Ron Paul, or MSNBC being, well, MSNBC. Even Jon Stewart from the Daily show, who is usually pretty good, did a whole show recently where he made fun of Glenn Beck. Hey, I don’t like Beck either, and he deserved the mocking, but don’t tell the world that he’s a libertarian when he’s a neocon!
April 21, 2010, 7:47 amBill Twist says:
This is also supported by his actions immediately after the bombing: He sped away in a car with no plates, and traveled at a high rate of speed, guaranteed to attract the attention of law enforcement.
He was wearing a t-shirt with the “tree of liberty” statement.
He also had a folder or envelope with political stuff in it.
He also had a gun on his person, and he voluntarily disclosed this to the officer knowing he’d be arrested, *AND* he didn’t shoot the cop (because he was a state trooper, not a federal agent) in an attempt to get away.
Had he wanted to escape, he would have had plates on his car, and he would have driven at a slower speed (although he apparently had a notoriously lead foot), he wouldn’t have been dressed in that particular t-shirt, and he wouldn’t have had that packet of political materials. Most certainly, he’d have put the handgun in the trunk and not told the cop, or failing that shot the cop and sped off.
He wanted to get caught, so that people would know why the event happened. In other words, if he wasn’t caught, the government wouldn’t “get the message” to back off in confrontations like Ruby Ridge and Waco, and to reign in the ATF. They might assume some other motivation, and that wouldn’t do.
April 21, 2010, 7:55 amShag from Brookline says:
” … but don’t tell the world that he’s a libertarian when he’s a neocon!”
But what if Beck tells the world that he’s a libertarian? Can we take Beck at his word? Or is there an official/authoritative libertarian determination that Beck is not a libertarian even if he says he is?
By the way, why insult neocons? (Let me count the ways …. )
April 21, 2010, 7:57 amAndrew says:
Reliable Source, by Lloyd Grove, Washington Post (Apr 17, 2001):
And here’s some ghoulish trivia for you: McVeigh ultimately did go vegetarian for his last meal (two pints of mint chocolate ice cream). Have a nice day!
April 21, 2010, 8:38 amQuilly Mammoth says:
McVeigh’s relationship with Andreas Strassmeir, security chief for Elohim City, has always made me suspect that he had…at the least…an affinity for the Christian Identity Movement. There are records showing McVeigh called Elohim City in the weeks just preceding the bombing.
McVeigh insisted that he was simply calling Strassmeir to ask for a hiding place after the bombing.
April 21, 2010, 8:47 amrodrick says:
Clinton opposes “the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them.”
What he fails to comprehend, however, is that THIS IS TRUE! The police state and prison industrial complex, for one particular instance, is a direct threat to the people of the United States. Every day brings new reports of police murdering people in the streets of our towns and cities. And doing so with impunity. As agents of government power, police are only the most obvious threat to life and liberty in the United States.
April 21, 2010, 8:55 amBM says:
The KKK and the confederate south were all about their constitutional rights, including sedition. There are also plenty of other groups hopefully including Democrats that respect the constitution. Based on a love of the constitution alone couldn’t McVeigh have been a Democrat? Since when is that a sole measure of Libertarianism?
April 21, 2010, 9:05 amLynne says:
I find this post extremely disappointing. Ilya Somin is a respected public intellectual but no evidence is presented to substantiate the idea that McVeigh was a Neo-Nazi.
April 21, 2010, 9:05 amI read extensively about McVeigh during the 1990′s and later, and I saw absolutely nothing to substantiate such a claim. Can Mr. Somin point to any Nazi memorabilia seized from McVeigh’s possesions? Is there any record of him either officially joining or generally associating with Neo-Nazi organizations? Are there any recorded anti-Semitic statements from McVeigh?
I submit that the answer to all these questions is “no.”
One pattern of McVeigh’s life was that he was a loner- he had repeated problems forming and keeping personal relationships. He couldn’t seem to bond with any group, really, and ended up completing his ‘mission’ alone.
I’m disappointed that a person of Mr. Somin’s intellectual training would use the contents of a single book to generalize about a person’s entire belief system and motivations. I’m certainly no fan of McVeigh, but that’s no excuse for sloppy generalizations.
I thought legal minds were trained to undertake the burden of proof in constructing arguments.
BM says:
Ricardo,
There’s nothing incompatible with being a proud German and being a socialist. The movement had deep roots in Germany. Learn some history.
April 21, 2010, 9:10 amcboldt says:
Shag from Brookline: — If a Heller decision had come down before Ruby Ridge, Waco and Oklahoma City, might those events not have come about? What if a Heller decision and a Second Amendment extension to the states had come down shortly after the 14th Amendment had been ratified, would violence involving arms have been reduced? Might there have been marches on Washington, DC by protesters carrying openly to convince Congress and the Executive as well as SCOTUS to give the protesters their due? –
Taking your first two questions in order:
The Heller decision does not stand in the way of Waco/OKC. The charge against Korseh would still be filed, the same way, today, as it was then. That law has not been changed, except to have been strengthened by [blatantly dishonest legal reasoning in] the Heller decision.
You’d have to fill in the parameters of the hypothetical Heller decision shortly after the 14th amendment, but I’d point to Presser and Miller (both post-14th Amendment) and easily show that those precedents have been misconstrued by the federal courts in order to uphold unconstitutional restraint, both state and federal, on firearms possession. Presser is the RKBA extension to the states …
I don’t understand your third question. Perhaps it’s mooted if the Courts hold that the people have a right to the same arms as used by infantrymen, and no state or locality had imposed onerous restrictions.
April 21, 2010, 9:13 amQuilly Mammoth says:
Sadly you didn’t read my comment. McVeigh spent time at Elohim City, he called Elohim City from Kingman two weeks before the bombing. He admitted calling Andreas Strassmeir to ask for shelter. I don’t know how much you know about the Christian Identity Movement, Lynne, but asking to spend the night there is not like calling your old college room mate to crash for the night when you are in town to see a concert.
Residents of Elohim City are known to have placed portraits of McVeigh on their walls. Meanwhile, the founder of Elohim City has died and Strassmeir fled back to Germany in the mid 90′s and refuses to be interviewed about the subject. While not a hard link people of unlike mind are not welcomed in CIM circles.
Meanwhile, McVeigh’s attorney Gary Jones maintains to this day that there were others involved. Several members of the Oklahoma County Grand Jury have stated that they thought there was outside aid to McVeigh (either Iraqi or CIM) but that the FBI and others refused to investigate further.
April 21, 2010, 9:24 amStrict says:
Desiderius: ” I don’t think it was approval of the government omnipresence he (mis)perceived (and was thus, in his fevered mind, “admitted to” by Brandeis”
Wow. You need to try again. I never said he approved of the government omnipresence described by Brandeis. I said he approved of the Brandeis quote.
I find it supremely strange that someone whose primary motivation is to suppress Jews would, at one of the most pivotal moments of his life, then quote a Jewish person.
April 21, 2010, 9:33 amStrict says:
“McVeigh’s attorney Gary Jones maintains to this day that there were others involved.”
I believe others were involved.
That is a drawback to the death penalty, because now there’s no chance that McVeigh could ever spill the beans.
April 21, 2010, 9:35 amyankev says:
The same could be said of the Posse Comitatus nut cases, and the idiots who think that they can’t be tried in a US courtroom if the courtroom has a US flag with gold fringe on it. If a Nazi-inspired terrorist conceives the constitution as an Aryan Christian document, there is nothing inconsistent in his delusions. The citation to Nuremberg is certainly ironic, but you may have noticed that irony is often lost on deluded extremists.
Nurenberg, of course, was an exercise in extra-territorial or universal jurisdiction, a cause much beloved by today’s liberals and leftists. I think we can agree that it would be a mistake to claim that McVeigh’s use of Nuremberg somehow proves that he was a liberal Democrat.
April 21, 2010, 9:47 amcboldt says:
Andrew: –(quoting Lloyd Grove article) –
That article presents the following as being handwritten by McVeigh,
If the letter is authentic, it states how McVeigh self-identified vis-a-vis his view of definitions of social groupings.
April 21, 2010, 9:51 amI have no problem with libertarians being viewed as willing and able to use violence. The notion that the world is a safe or peaceful place, by nature, is false. Peace is obtained and maintained by credible resort to and willingness to use violence.
byomtov says:
MDT,
Where was Clinton over the past decade, then? Someone linked this in another thread recently, and it bears inspection.
I don’t know. But no matter how strongly you feel he should have spoken out then, that doesn’t make what he says now wrong. Whether your criticism of Clinton is valid or not, it has nothing to do with the truth of what he said in his op-ed.
April 21, 2010, 10:07 amBill Twist says:
I had gotten the impression that their relationship was one of convenience more than a political affinity for each other. Certainly, McVeigh was not particularly religious, nor was he particularly racist in his outlook: One of his roommates in the Army considered him to be indifferent to racial matters, despite his enjoyment of “The Turner Diaries”.
I think Ilya has made too much of a single data point: If I were interested in fighting a guerilla campaign, and I read from Mao’s “On Guerilla Warfare“, that wouldn’t necessarily make me a Maoist, or even a Marxist. That’s not a completely accurate analogy, though: There are plenty of books on waging a guerilla campaign, going back all the way to Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”. I’d have my pick of books, and wouldn’t have to rely on one. At the time Timothy McVeigh was becoming disenchanted with the actions of the federal government, there was really only one ‘anti-government’ book sympathetic to gun rights, and that was “The Turner Diaries”.
That McVeigh considered “Unintended Consequences” by John Ross to be superior to “The Turner Diaries”, to the point where had it been available prior to him taking action he would have followed the actions in that book (selective assassination vs. indiscriminate bombing) instead of those in the TTD supports this.
April 21, 2010, 10:07 amRicardo says:
Tim McVeigh was a murdering scumbag but the guy knew a thing or two about Occam’s Razor.
“For those die-hard conspiracy theorists who will refuse to believe this, I turn the tables and say: Show me where I needed anyone else. Financing? Logistics? Specialized tech skills? Brainpower? Strategy? … Show me where I needed a dark, mysterious ‘Mr. X’!” — Tim McVeigh on the day of his execution
Indeed, all the evidence points to Nichols and McVeigh being the only terrorists. McVeigh was a classic loner who had trouble fitting in and almost certainly had a higher-than-average IQ. He didn’t need anyone else aside from Nichols. He tried to recruit his army buddy Michael Fortier but Fortier refused. Anyone can learn how to make a fertilizer bomb from reading a book. The Elohim City connection has been investigated ad nausium with no evidence of any conspiracy.
As with the JFK assassination, people fallaciously assume that such a momentous event must have involved an elite team of professionals tied to some mysterious organization with possible international connections. The reality is much duller — a couple of marginally employed hicks who couldn’t get a date did this.
April 21, 2010, 10:10 amMark Field says:
Ah, no true libertarian.
Right, because John Frickin’ McCain was soooo attractive to libertarians.
This, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with libertarianism. Your priorities couldn’t possbily be more warped.
Agreed. I generally disagree with MDT, but she’s sane. On this site, that’s a real recommendation.
April 21, 2010, 10:17 amTom Mannis says:
Excellent anaylsis. Thank you for writing this piece.
April 21, 2010, 11:03 amPatrick Glenn says:
I don’t know if we should expect much intellectual consistency and/or clearly defined premises from the likes of McVeigh. If it were the case that McVeigh had left a large body of materials explaining his views, motivations, political prejudices, etc., I suspect that we’d find hundreds of examples of where he was sympathetic to policies/attitudes usually associated with liberalism, progressivism, social democracy. Then, if we were as intellectually dishonest, cynical, and lazy as many on the left tend to be, we could stick our fingers in our ears and mindlessly chant that McVeigh was inspired by “liberal progressivism” to commit his evil deeds, even though we understand that McVeigh’s twisted, confused mindset was partly constructed by distortions of otherwise reasonable perspectives.
April 21, 2010, 11:17 amStrict says:
“If it were the case that McVeigh had left a large body of materials explaining his views, motivations, political prejudices, etc., I suspect that we’d find hundreds of examples of where he was sympathetic to policies/attitudes usually associated with liberalism, progressivism, social democracy. ”
He has a record of many letters, hours of interviews, public statements, and third-person historical accounts, and none of them show he was sympathetic to policies/attitudes associates with liberalism, etc.
Yet you assume that if the record as more complete, it would be full of hundreds of examples of “leftism.” Well done completely making things up.
April 21, 2010, 11:30 amShag from Brookline says:
Can the phrase about a woman “being a little bit pregnant” apply to one who claims to “being a little bit libertarian”?
April 21, 2010, 11:33 amrachel says:
McVeigh’s mix of beliefs are not at issue. I don’t hear Clinton telling American imams or separatist African-Americans or extreme Greenies to tone down their rhetoric. Don’t remember him admonishing virulent kill Bush or even anti-war protests from a few years ago or a few (teeth-cutting for him) decades ago. Didn’t Congressional Democrats give Michael Moore a standing ovation?
If grannies carrying placards that protest Obamacare and unprecedented deficits are to be held responsible for the next mass-murdering nutter, then someone should point out that a government implementing policy so objectionable to a number of people that they form a new political alliance and take the time to peaceably protest is responsible for their apparently objectionable free speech that, according to Clinton and like-minded, might lead to an instance of violent nuttery…
Causality’s a bitch.
April 21, 2010, 11:35 amPatrick Glenn says:
Rachel: I did not closely follow the McVeigh story during the 90s and haven’t had a chance to review McVeigh’s materials since. It hasn’t been an area of interest for me, but maybe if it were worth my while. I’ll bet you a $1,000 (for entertainment purposes only, of course) that, if I had access to all of McVeigh’s materials, I could find at least 50 examples in which McVeigh “was sympathetic to policies/attitudes usually associated with liberalism, progressivism, social democracy.” You do realize, don’t you, that we live under a system that has gradually become predominantly social democratic over the last 100+ years? McVeigh would have had to conceive of an extreme, purist form of anti-Western, anti-American nihilism in order to completely purify himself of all traces of 20th century social democracy. But if you’re game, I’m game.
April 21, 2010, 11:45 amPatrick Glenn says:
Sorry, my last comment should have been directed at Strict, not Rachel.
April 21, 2010, 11:48 amStrict says:
“I don’t hear Clinton telling…separatist African-Americans…to tone down their rhetoric.”
Maybe because the black separatists are dead, imprisoned, or mostly defunct now and not a major voice in American politics, unlike the Tea Party movement?
You are upset that Bill Clinton hasn’t denounced the people that you hate. Um, great “point.”
[And if I recall correctly, Bill Clinton did criticize Rev. Wright for his overblown rhetoric. Furthermore, Bill Clinton has opposed slavery reparations. And he certainly was opposed to the type of black separatism which calls for separate black "state[s]” within America.]
April 21, 2010, 11:48 amrachel says:
From what I understand, most Tea Partiers are against big, metastasized government, and against the current regime, just as Michael Moore and other principled Progs have been against a less controlling-engineering-redistributionist one.
The short-hand “anti-government” characterization used by both sides is misleading and constitutes a trap, as almost any violent terror act can be construed as anti-gov, or anti-this gov or anti-policy of this gov.
Strict, your saying I “hate” particular people or groups is uncalled for. Do you know me? You missed the point completely and then went over the top.
April 21, 2010, 11:55 amStrict says:
Patrick:
Interesting how you start with “I suspect that we’d find hundreds of examples” and then backpaddle to “”I could find at least 50 examples,” all while offering not a single example.
Your argument that McVeigh must’ve been some sort of liberal simply because he lived in 20th Century America is well…special. I don’t know where to start.
April 21, 2010, 11:56 amStrict says:
Scott: “I find it troubling and proof of how far down the wrong road we are that people would even think to link libertarianism with one of the most extreme examples of statism in the past century.”
I find it bizarre that Scott thinks blowing up a federal building is an example of statism. Even more bizarre is that Scott thinks that the OKC bombing was one of the most extreme examples of statism in the 20th century. I can think of a lot more extreme examples of statism in the 20th century: Showa Japan, Nazi Germany, and Stalinist Russia are three clear examples of statism that were far, far more extreme than the OKC bombing.
April 21, 2010, 12:02 pmrachel says:
Strict, I never heard Clinton say or imply that strong protests by groups other than Tea Partiers or right-wing radio might cause a terror event. Simply saying tsk-tsk is not the same. I should said in my first comment “to tone down their rhetoric or else terrorism.”
April 21, 2010, 12:03 pmDesiderius says:
Strict,
“Wow. You need to try again. I never said he approved of the government omnipresence described by Brandeis. I said he approved of the Brandeis quote.
And I questioned whether his use of the quote denoted “approval” of either the sentiment expressed or the person expressing it. If I spend my life fighting the KKK because I have some warped belief that it runs the world, then quote the Grand Wizard confirming that belief on my death-bed, how is that evidence that I am approving anything?
“I find it supremely strange that someone whose primary motivation is to suppress Jews would, at one of the most pivotal moments of his life, then quote a Jewish person.”
If one believes that Jews control the world via government, quoting a Jew claming government omnipotence would not imply that one loved Jews anymore than it would imply one approved of such omnipotence.
April 21, 2010, 12:09 pmCalderon says:
Mark Field said:
Right, because John Frickin’ McCain was soooo attractive to libertarians.
This, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with libertarianism. Your priorities couldn’t possbily be more warped.
McCain was not attractive to libertarians at all, but the US isn’t a dictatorship. Given the fact that both the Senate and House were going to be Democratic, libertarians voting for McCain made more sense than voting for Obama. If the former would have won, there would have been years of federal government stalemate on most issues; if the latter won, there would be four years of expanding government.
As far as priorities being warped, it depends a lot on where you think the threats are coming from and what you can do to prevent them. Ideally, there would be libertarian candidates to cast meaningful votes for. But if they aren’t, and if you think conservatives either won’t pass conservative social legislation or it will be struck down by the courts, but that progressives can and will pass economic regulations that won’t be reviewed by the courts (which is the actually existing circumstance), then it makes more sense for libertarian to vote for candidates in favor of free markets even if they’re also social conservatives.
April 21, 2010, 12:13 pmDesiderius says:
MarkField,
“For Wales?”
No, for Plymouth. Jamestown. Philadelphia. Ellis Island. We’re not going back to the Old Country, no matter how unpopular that makes you at Davos.
April 21, 2010, 12:14 pmStrict says:
Rachel,
I read the Bill Clinton op-ed. He doesn’t even mention Tea Partiers or right wing radio. He only mentions and denounces the “many threats against the President, members of Congress and other public servants”.
He did not say or imply that Tea Party “strong protests” might cause a terror event. To the contrary, he said that “Criticism is part of the lifeblood of democracy.” And “Civic virtue can include harsh criticism, protest, even civil disobedience.”
What may have implied was the Tea Partier’s threats of violence are wrong and may lead to violence, not that Tea Partier’s “strong protests” would do such a thing. [Unless, you are euphemizing threats of violence as "strong protests," which would be pretty dishonest.]
April 21, 2010, 12:14 pmPatrick Glenn says:
Strict: you’re showing your unpleasant, illogical Leftist side. I used the number 50 because that’s about how many examples I’d be willing to locate given the projected research commitment (my time is not cheap). Now, if I started listing examples right up front, wouldn’t that reduce my chances of being ableo to lure you into a bet you’re going to lose? But I will go check the first thing I can find on the internet and give you a quick example as soon as I’m done with comment.
I never made an “argument that McVeigh must’ve been some sort of liberal.” If you’re going to build a strawman, at least make some kind of effort to disguise it, maybe stuff some straw in the seams. My argument was that, if someone who wanted to mimic the intellectual dishonesty and laziness of certain leftists, they could cherry pick examples from McVeighs’ materials in which he “was sympathetic to policies/attitudes usually associated with liberalism, progressivism, social democracy.” A good faith response would acknowledge this liklihood, but then argue that such examples are incidental, etc., but in your case I’m not sure I can count on the good faith part.
April 21, 2010, 12:16 pmUrso says:
This is my favorite exchange in the thread, and pretty neatly sums up the whole of Godwin’s law. Rightwing guy: “The Nazis were essentially left wing, with an incidental number of right wing attributes.” Leftwing guy: “The Nazis were essentially right wing, with an incidental number of left wing attributes.”
Of course, I’d take the Nazis at their word (and their deed) that they were both deeply nationalist and deeply socialist. There’s no real contradiction here; it just looks like a contradiction to Americans who are used to one party espousing one philosophy and not the other, and vice versa.
April 21, 2010, 12:22 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Leo Marvin,
[quoting josh:] I’ve read this blog for years, but just recently noticed michelle’s comments. she’s entitled to her opinions, but they do appear to be directly lifted from the the Glenn Beck show.
[Leo:] Actually, I’ve seen Michelle be fairly open minded, so I wouldn’t write her off too quickly. There are enough irretrievable loons around here already without attributing to wingnuttery what might just be a bad day, month, whatever.
Ought I to be flattered? Actually, I have only heard of Glenn Beck because others complain about him; I have not watched him, have no idea where or when he airs, and have no interest in him. But josh evidently does; he knows what I have “directly lifted” from a show I’ve never seen, so obviously he must watch it himself. And he obviously has some sort of regard for Glenn Beck, given that he accounts the man capital letters, but doesn’t do the same for me or indeed himself.
I would be curious, though, to know what I’ve written on this thread that even might be mistaken for “wingnuttery.”
April 21, 2010, 12:22 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
IS, I think you’re missing the point. This whole ‘controversy’ isn’t anything more than an attempt by the Democrats to tar the Tea Party movement with an OKC association. The proper response is to bring up the Democrats’ actions during and after Waco, loudly and often.
“They bring a knife, you bring a gun.” Remember?
April 21, 2010, 12:24 pmJoe Y says:
What’s fouling up the “Nazi: Socialist or not” argument here is that it is being analyzed from a current American point of view, not from European one contemporaneous with events.
The biggest anachronism is misunderstanding of the phrase “right-wing.” German National Socialism was right wing socialism, not right-wing politics. Specifically, because it was nationalistic and gradual, as opposed to class-based and immediate,it was considering the right-wing of socialism, but not right-wing in and of itself.
The phrase “right-wing” itself is completely different in the European and American contexts. In Europe, the right-wing is monarchy, state-religion, etc. In the US, the closest we had to this kind of right-wing was the ante-bellum and the KKK and similar organization.
The current US right-wing is classical liberalism in the context of the US Constitution. Whatever one may think of it, it shares nothing with Nazi ideology. It’s not even an ideology.
April 21, 2010, 12:27 pmrachel says:
Strict, I must be the only person who makes the unwarranted connection between the Clintons’ denouncing of right-wingers post Oklahoma (hate radio blew up the building donchaknow) (don’t remember him denouncing fundy Islam as the cause of the 1993 WTC bombing- didn’t he call it just “a criminal act”?) and the current Obama-Clinton campaign about so-called irresponsible speech (that just happens to coincide with mass Tea Party demonstrations and elections soon to come.)
Disclosure: I’m not a Beck right-winger but big on defense and fiscal sanity, I am a lesser government not anti-government proponent, and I think this much of Clintonianism [fingers 1 mm apart].
April 21, 2010, 12:30 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Mark Field,
Agreed. I generally disagree with MDT, but she’s sane. On this site, that’s a real recommendation.
Golly. Mark, I generally disagree with you too, but you are also sane. As are most of the commenters here. There are very few politically-oriented blogs with such a civil and articulate community of commenters.
(Why is this site different from all other sites? Because the loonie-to-sane ratio is so low!)
April 21, 2010, 12:34 pmAnonsters says:
Nazis were fascists. Fascists are pretty damned right-wing. It’s the revisionism of those who would portray the Nazis as somehow akin to modern “liberals” that’s comical. That said, it would be silly to say that the (mainstream) American right generally resembles anything like Nazism, too. [That said, I think there are significant strains of fascism running through neo-con ideology. Not Nazism, but fascism.]
Protip: it’s not helpful to impose the labels of current political discourse onto historical events.
April 21, 2010, 12:42 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Joe Y,
The phrase “right-wing” itself is completely different in the European and American contexts. In Europe, the right-wing is monarchy, state-religion, etc. In the US, the closest we had to this kind of right-wing was the ante-bellum and the KKK and similar organization.
This is very interesting. Is it true now? Le Pen, Haider and his successors, the Lega Nord, &c. don’t seem to be focused on reinstating monarchy (!) or state religion; in fact, they look very like the nationalist right in this country, concerned above all with national identity and immigration control. It’s true that we have other people called “right-wing” with different concerns. But the only Europeans who surface in our press with the label “right-wing” attached fit very neatly indeed into one of our homegrown political categories.
April 21, 2010, 12:46 pmyao says:
MDT: “Why is this site different from all other sites? Because the loonie-to-sane ratio is so low!”
Well, some of us come for the free bitter herbs and charoset.
April 21, 2010, 12:47 pmPatrick Glenn says:
Hey, Strict, I didn’t have to look for very long. The first two into paragraphs of the first McVeigh “essay” (from 1998) I encountered on the web sounded like they were straight out of the “progressive” anti-colonial paybook. He wrote:
“The administration has said that Iraq has no right to stockpile chemical or biological weapons (‘weapons of mass destruction’) — mainly because they have used them in the past.”
“Well, if that’s the standard by which these matters are decided, then the U.S. is the nation that set the precedent. The U.S. has stockpiled these same weapons (and more) for over 40 years. The U.S. claims that this was done for deterrent purposes during the ‘Cold War’ with the Soviet Union. Why, then is it invalid for Iraq to claim the same reason (deterrence) — with respect to Iraq’s (real) war with, and the continued threat of, its neighbor Iran?”
Now, I admit, that you could find similar statements as above from both the non-interventionary libertarian right and segments of the pseudo-pacifist anti-colonial left, but that only makes my point. There is going to be occasional overlap among even the most divergent views. To find examples of McVeigh expressing viewpoints on domestic policy that are sympathetic (or similar to) views expressed on the “progressive” American left, I’d need to jump into the materials, and I’m still willing to do so if you put your money where your mouth is.
April 21, 2010, 12:47 pmmadawaskan says:
Hey! Let Clinton be a warning to you all:
a third party candidate that siphoned votes from the Right is how we ended up with-him.
April 21, 2010, 12:48 pmLou Gots says:
McVeigh was a terrorist, of course, no less than John Brown or Spartacus, and, like them, justly punished for his crimes. The Militia, civil society armed, is a defense against terrorism, and does not raise its hands against the innocent, as did each of the above.
McVeigh’s sympathizers would tell us that after Oklahoma City there were no more Wacos, no more Ruby Ridges, and that even pigs can learn.
April 21, 2010, 12:52 pmAnonsters says:
John Brown was more hero than terrorist.
I mean, really. Murdering proslavery advocates with broad swords.
April 21, 2010, 1:03 pmmadawaskan says:
Oh for the love of…..
Are you people really digging up what McVeigh wrote?
Think that might be the very reason he looked for excuses to do what he did?
To be important? Historical? Significant?
Honestly-the guy was pathological-again in the absence of certain events-there would have been other excuses and other supposed ideologies.
Sociopaths like to blame others for their actions -here is where the Democratic communitarianism and criminals have a nice symbiotic relationship.
On reading up a little bit on McVeigh like most nutters he starts to unravel when reaching adulthood.
Mcveigh reachs adulthood and realizes that he is a loser. His dreams of being better than most aren’t realized and he takes out his frustrations on everyone else.
At the same time-he finds a way to stand out-as not average.
And there you have it-the Oklahoma City Bombing.
McVeigh, who seemed bland in the extreme in high school, struck a co-worker as wild. McVeigh gave him rides home, tearing down side streets at 70 miles an hour. From the truck, the man said, McVeigh yelled at slower drivers and grabbed the butt of his shotgun, “like he was going to blow them away.”
“Sometimes when I was driving, he’d put his face right next to mine and scream that the cars were going too slow, and then just keep his face there and stare at me,” the co-worker said. “Other days he’d be all right. It was like sometimes he was on medication. I think maybe he was just starting to go crazy when I knew him.”[source:Washington Post]
There’s other evidence-that McVeigh was a nut-like blowing up complete strangers-because he was the only bearer of justice-but that seems to have escaped most here.
April 21, 2010, 1:03 pmUrso says:
You say that fascism is different than socialism. Of course it is. That’s not the question. Nor is the question whether the Nazis were fascist – again, that’s self-evident. The question is whether the Nazis were also socialist. Your refusal to admit that the answer is “yes” is just like Prof. Somin’s adamant refusal to believe that McVeigh had any libertarian beliefs.
The simple fact that someone agrees that the state should have a strong hand in trunning the economy — as did the Nazis — does not make him a Nazi. No more than the fact that the libertarians share certain beliefs with McVeigh makes them all terrorists.
The Nazis believed a lot of things. Hell, the Nazis believed that everyone should marry blonde haired, blue eyed women. Does that ruin blonde haired, blue eyed women for the rest of us, lest we be accused of agreeing with the Nazis? So we’re left with two options: 1) argue strenuously that the Nazis didn’t really prefer blonde haired blue eyed women, or 2) admit that we can agree with the Nazis to a certain extent and not be Nazis. To bring it back to the original topic, it’s a very different thing to say “the state should control the economy to the extent necessary to guarantee single payer health care” (which is what Euro socialists believe) and to say “the state should control the economy so we can build a shitload of tanks” (which is what the Nazis believed).
April 21, 2010, 1:05 pmmadawaskan says:
IOW-even amongst criminals McVeigh stands out as nuts-first most people are killed by people that they know-simple fact, secondly- even criminals have a code-
killing children will get you the shiv in prison.
Even criminals can distinguish McVeigh as nuts-law students-have a little more trouble.
Why is that?
April 21, 2010, 1:08 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
yao,
Well, some of us come for the free bitter herbs and charoset.
I don’t know what to say to that but “Bravo, sir.” (Or “ma’am.” As the case may be.)
April 21, 2010, 1:09 pmAnonsters says:
Of course. No argument here.
Although:
I like the darker-haired ladies, myself. ;)
April 21, 2010, 1:09 pmJoe Y says:
To Michelle Dulak Thompson:
I don’t really understand the current European right-wing movements. They seemed to get lumped into a single category, from genuine fascists to “Little Englanders” or national equivalents to classical liberals.
I think the major problem with Europe today is a lack of democracy, even in putative democratic countries. People there seem powerless and baffled, judging by the press I read, either UK, or English-language editions of the Continental press.
It’s all very disheartening. When people feel powerless they either give up or revolt violently. Europe has a terrible track record in this regard.
April 21, 2010, 1:14 pmAnonsters says:
Have you seen turnout statistics for American elections?
April 21, 2010, 1:17 pmFrank Drackman says:
I enjoyed “The Turner Diaries” and I’m Jewish…
especially at the end where they mention the “Bands of deformed mutants” that roam the desolate regions rendered inhospitable by radiation…Its FICTION for cryin out loud…
Frank
April 21, 2010, 1:19 pmRPT says:
Does anyone contend that this is not a line from a movie, uttered by a Scotsman?
“They bring a knife, you bring a gun.” Remember?”
April 21, 2010, 1:21 pmUrso says:
This is a really good point. This guy’s ‘motivations’ are genuinely not worth our attention.
April 21, 2010, 1:23 pmMark Field says:
I don’t buy it. The same was true in the opposite direction in 2000 and 2004, yet libertarians voted for Bush both times. I could even excuse 2000 on the ground that you didn’t realize what you were getting, but in 2004 you have no excuses.
Every presidential campaign I hear different excuses, but the result hasn’t changed for 45 years: libertarians vote Republican.
I agree with this in concept, I just find the general libertarian application of it to be warped. Take 2004 as an example. If Kerry had been elected, Congress would have been firmly Republican, meaning no major social legislation. The most significant impact would have been on the Iraq War. For libertarians to treat the War as less important than some imaginary horror in a divided government says to me that there’s a real blindness here.
John McCain doesn’t stand for any of these things and never has. And I’m not directing this at you; I know you voted for Obama.
Given the two incidents you mention (Waco and Oklahoma City), I’d say you’re bringing a gun to a bomb fight.
April 21, 2010, 1:30 pmMark Field says:
But was he a TRUE Scotsman?
April 21, 2010, 1:33 pmB says:
If McVeigh considered himself to be a libertarian, he violated the Zero Agression Principle. Thus he wasn’t one.
The Wikipedia entry states:
Now I haven’t read either book. Still based on reading about what that book is about and McVeigh saying he might have chosen a different target if he knew about the daycare. He obviously wouldn’t have thought about non-government visitors in the building as well.
April 21, 2010, 1:47 pmRPT says:
By Kevin Young
Political reporter, BBC News
4.20.10
The worlds of politics and celebrity have often collided, with parties regularly seeking to add a dash of glitz to campaigning. So far this time they’ve been few and far between – so here’s a look back at some of the big names over the past 30 years.
ACTING
Sir Sean Connery has long been an SNP supporter, with the former James Bond writing two years ago that party leader Alex Salmond was “the best leader Scotland has ever had”.
April 21, 2010, 1:50 pmPatrick Glenn says:
madawaskan said:
Actually, I was using two paragraphs from McVeigh’s writings to make points very similar (although coming from different angles) to the points you made. But, no, as you went to some lengths to stress (correctly), McVeigh did what he did because he was a nutcase, not because he was thinking about his future literary exposure – right? Or, do you care to rebuild your explanation on another foundation?
April 21, 2010, 1:53 pmOscar says:
If “the victors write the history books”, and the Romans defeated Spartacus, then why is Spartacus “not… considered a terrorist”?
It is your moral relativism that is nonsensical.
April 21, 2010, 1:53 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
The sarcasm is misplaced. These are people that neither call themselves libertarian (as opposed to the Nazis, who did call themselves socialist) nor associate with the libertarian movement. They’re just people who, generally speaking, are “socially liberal and fiscally conservative,” who Cato thinks are loosely sympathetic with parts of the libertarian agenda (*). But saying “socially liberal, fiscally conservative people voted for Bush” is very very different than saying “libertarians voted for Bush.”
(*) Emphasis on the “loosely” and “parts.” I’m sure you agree that 20% of the population is not signing onto the Libertarian platform.
Our priority is liberty; the liberal priority is government.
There were/are many things about McCain that are not at all libertarian. There was nothing about Obama that was at all libertarian; indeed, the areas where McCain was least libertarian, Obama took to the next level of being unlibertarian. At least McCain talked about wanting to cut spending; Obama did not. (Remember Obama’s contrast between McCain’s “hatchet” and Obama’s “scalpel”? Obama thought this was a point in his own favor.)
In any case, I supported neither, so I’m not defending McCain as a libertarian. But if one wanted smaller, less intrusive government, McCain would have been a tiny bit better than Obama. You’re not quite as likely to see Republicans, e.g., appointing people to the FDA who want to control how much salt you eat.
April 21, 2010, 2:20 pmSarcastro says:
Now that’s a dichotomy I can get behind! Freedom? Or Government?
Cake? or Death?
April 21, 2010, 2:40 pmMalvolio says:
To put it politely, that’s just stupid. Terrorism is attacking civilian targets with the intention not of materially weakening your opponent’s military but of undermining civilian morale.
Attacking the Pentagon was not terrorism (although hijacking a civilian vehicle to do it was a war crime), but attacking the Towers was.
There are some gray areas (bombing housing of war-production workers, for example, done during WWII, or the assassination of Gerald Bull) but they are not numerous or extensive.
One interesting thing about terrorism is, it doesn’t seem to work. At least, I cannot think of an example were attempting to coerce a government into significant policy change by attacking civilian targets actually led to the change desired. Usually just the opposite.
April 21, 2010, 2:40 pmJabba The Tutt says:
Ilya Somin: I recall that McVeigh wrote, possibly in one of his letters to the editor to his local Buffalo newspaper, that he condemned America for being the only industrialized country without nationalized (ie socialized) healthcare. I’ve spent a couple of hours searching for this on the internet without success.
In your research for this post, did you come across this information?
April 21, 2010, 2:53 pmMichael B says:
The Nazi’s were, in fact, a socialist, left-wing political party with a nationalist veneer.
Problem is, that depiction doesn’t qualify as even half the story, Anon, that view is truncated in the extreme. What do you think was happening during Adolf’s first five years from 1933 to 1937, what do you think was happening in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Marxist/Leninist origins during that same period? Soviet Russia was little more than a National Socialist regime itself, with expansionist designs, again much like Adolf’s expansionist vision.
1933, in Soviet Russia, the Ukrainian mass murder was proceeding apace, a democide sponsored by Stalin wherein four to eight million were murdered via systematic starvation. 1936: Stalin began his attempted rape of Spain during the Spanish Civil War, via the ComIntern, via the International Brigades, via GRU and NKVD agents, military staff, etc. sent under the guise of “aiding” the Spanish Republic.
Or, internally, within the Soviet Republic, that Leninist/Stalinist regime resembled that which Lenin conceived only in a single sense – that private ownership of land and capital were abolished – while in every other sense none of the Leninist (theoretical) program had been achieved:
“Instead of genuine freedom of the press, there is the impossibility of expressing a free opinion … without running the risk of being deported; instead of the free play between parties within the framework of the soviet system, there is the cry of “one party in power, and all the rest in prison”; instead of a communist party destined to rally together, for purposes of free co-operation – with men possessing the highest degree of devotion, conscientiousness, culture and critical aptitude – there is a mere administrative machine, a passive instrument in the hands of the Secretariat, which, as Trotsky himself admits, is a party only in name; instead of soviets (unions and co-operatives functioning democratically and directing the economic and political life of the country), there are organizations bearing … the same names, but reduced to mere administrative mechanisms; instead of the people armed and organized as a militia to ensure by itself alone defense abroad and order at home, there is a standing army, and a police force [the GRU] freed from control and a hundred times better armed than that of the [Czar]; lastly, and above all, instead of elected officials, permanently subject to control and dismissal, who were to ensure the functioning of government until such time as “every cook would learn how to rule the State,” there is a professional bureaucracy, freed from responsibility, recruited by co-option and possessing, through the concentration in its hands of all economic and political power, a strength heretofore unknown in the annals of history.” – Simone Weil, “Oppression and Liberty”
Iow, Anon, how, exactly, was Adolf’s National Socialism so very different from the Soviet Socialism during the very period you invoked?
With negligible exceptions (e.g., relatively small, homogeneous, Jewish kibbutzim in early 20th century Palestine), Socialism has always promised one thing: its ideal of equality – and has always produced something else entirely: inter-generational forms of dependency, together with manifestly eroded or wholly truncated views of individual liberty.
April 21, 2010, 3:14 pmMark Field says:
In front of you are 2 doors. One door leads inevitably to death, the other to libertarian fantasyland. In front of each door stands a guard. One guard (a liberal, of course) tells only lies, the other guard (a conservative) tells only the truth. You don’t know which guard is which and you don’t know which door is which. You may ask one question, which each guard must answer before you must choose which door to open. What is your question?
For DMN, it’ll apparently be: will they reduce the salt in my Campbell’s soup behind that door?
April 21, 2010, 3:29 pmElliot says:
Ifone did not know the terms socialism, communism, Nazi, right, left etc, and simply observed Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany, what would be the basic differences?
April 21, 2010, 3:38 pmAnonsters says:
In one, they spoke German; in the other, Russian.
April 21, 2010, 3:47 pmSteverino says:
No, they were both committed nationalists and committed socialists. For some reason, the American left has succeeded in promoting the fallacy that the two are incompatible.
The Russian communists, for instance, may have started as international socialists. But by necessity they became nationalist socialists. WWII is still called “The Great Patriotic War” for a reason in Russia.
As a matter of fact, if you go to the most thoroughly communist state today, North Korea, you will not only be struck by the nationalism but the racism. One of the primary causes of disgust they have with the south is the “mixing of the races” that is going on down there.
Nationalism may not be a defining feature of socialism, but it is perfectly compatible with it.
What is now called fascism is unquestionably rooted in Marxism. Of course, if you’re the type to be fooled by appearances, there are various protests you may make. They didn’t sieze the means of production, for instance. No, they didn’t need to; their innovation was that the important thing was to exercise the prerogatives of ownership. The prior owners could retain the title. That was unimportant. They did the state’s bidding. If you want to apply the term “veneer” to fascism, it was the appearance of capitalism. Underneath, it was pure socialism.
As a matter of fact, Mussolini’s criticism of the Bolshevik’s was they they didn’t leave the bourgoisie in place to run industry, as they knew how to do it. The Bolshevik’s refused to have anything to do with cooperating with the Bourgoisie; those Russian communists who did believe that were the Mensheviks (Bolshevik meaning “majority” and Menshevik meaning minority). When the Bolshevik’s suffered economic collapse, and had to reintroduce a monetary system and economic incentives in the 1920s Mussoline was convinced that he was not only correct but the purer Marxist. The higher stages of socialism are impossible without moving through capitalism. A retarded economy like Russia, or his own Italy, needed something like his corporate state.
Another irrelevancy is the fact that fascists were hated by communists. Yes, they were. But there is no more vicious rivalry than that among socialists. Trotsky getting the ice axe to the head, or the conflicts between the USSR and PRC, or China “teaching Vietnam a lesson,” ought to be enough evidence (not that there isn’t more) that this is the case.
Of course, Marx wasn’t the only influence on fascism. Now we get to the root reason why the American left has to deny the facts and rewrite history. The truth is that there was a great deal of intellectual intercourse between fascists and American progressives.
FDR on Mussolini, 1933.
As an economic system of organization, there is really no difference between Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany, Wilson’s WWI war economy, and FDR’s National Recovery Act.
In the 1930s, before fascism became an epithet and Hitler was known to be a genocidal monster, socialists on both sides of the Atlantic agreed on almost everything.
April 21, 2010, 3:53 pmMichael B says:
Re, Mussolini, Marxism and Fascism, the following:
Mussolini morphed his early Marxism into Italian Fascism. Mussolini was a dedicated Marxist throughout the first decade of the 20th century who provided both the primary intellectual leadership (e.g., he was a formidable social theorist and agitator, spoke seven languages fluently) and subsequently the leadership in terms of praxis and governance.
Regardless of any arguments concerning equivalency or identity between the two, largely via Mussolini Fascism grew directly out of Marxism.
April 21, 2010, 4:14 pmnoahp says:
After I read “Liberal Fascism” it seemed so clear! (I wasn’t online at the time so I am not familiar with whatever debate that book might have provked here). But surely everyone is aware of Mussolini’s lifelong admiration of all socialist ideas.
When I was in high school the debate topic was to propose a scheme for world government and be prepared to defend it. I found that you could describe Fascism without using the words “fascism” or “socialism” and it sounds pretty benign…”stakeholders” “subsidies” “public-private partnerships” “community” (to use the phrases of today). Fascism of all totalitarian ideologies was clearly the most benign…but as far I am concerned it must be considered socialist. And since American progressives loved Mussolini…
So I find the debate on this thread a bit bizarre…totalitarianism of a “right” vs “left” variety seems like a distinction without a difference except maybe a different “nomenklatura” oppressing the rest of us.
We tea partiers prefer the vision of the Founders, period, end of story, finis.
April 21, 2010, 4:22 pmKristo Miettinen says:
Jabba, yes it was in one of his letters to the Lockport paper. Ilya won’t find it in Lexis; you have to read “American Terrorist” or something equivalent to get those details.
McVeigh was difficult to classify politically, and perhaps a new label is needed for his denomination. He opposed taxes, but mainly it seems because the money was wasted (or used to line the pockets of politicians and government employees); he never that I read of articulated any basis for tax opposition rooted in our right to keep our own money. He definitely was sympathetic to government services, such as universal health care, and he presumably knew that such services would cost lots of money.
What he always expressed opposition to was government aggression, intervention, or arrogance, in all sorts of forms, from Ruby Ridge and Waco to restricting abortions. He was clearly paranoid and felt the government had declared war on the citizens, and by exension on himself.
So what do we call a political vision that sees government having a high level of service but a low level of intrusion? That doesn’t fit any of our labels all that well.
April 21, 2010, 4:26 pmsookie says:
It’s wasn’t Scalia’s decision. It was a SCOTUS decision (with the majority opinion written by Scalia I think).
However, probably yes he would have agreed with the decision and so do a lot of people. Republican, Democrats, Independents, non-affiliated, yada, yada, yada. Many people, the majority in all the polls I’ve seen think the 2nd amendment pertains to an individual’s right. Not a state or government right.
Why does that have to do with this have to do anything?
April 21, 2010, 4:26 pmAnonsters says:
So you’re pro-slavery, then, eh?
April 21, 2010, 4:29 pmSteverino says:
Slavery wasn’t part of the vision of the founders; it was a legacy of our colonial past.
Why is it you insist that this was somehow the idea of the founders?
April 21, 2010, 4:33 pmAnonsters says:
They did a hell of a job of protecting it through various constitutional compromises. (Not to mention that many of them were themselves slaveholders. And don’t tell me that they couldn’t do anything about their own personal slaveholding, because that is pure bullshit.)
April 21, 2010, 4:36 pmFederal Farmer says:
Regardless of the petty squabbling going on here about whether or not McVeigh was a libertarian or liberal or conservative it seems like many of the views held by McVeigh are also held by many other people, yet only one is a mass murderer.
April 21, 2010, 4:38 pmSeems to me the defect is in the man more than anything else.
Mark Field says:
As a conservative, you’d have lived in Germany and died in Russia.
April 21, 2010, 4:46 pmSteverino says:
Compromises? You mean like not allowing slave-holders to count their slaves as persons solely to amass political power in Congress? Prohibiting Congress from stopping the slave trade before 1808?
It would seem to me that the fact they had to make compromises would suggest that there were founders very much against slavery. In fact, most of the founders were not slave owners and were in fact abolitionists.
Of course, when they put the Constitution together their most immediate task was establishing a nation. The compromises you find so vile, to me portend the end of slavery. They also reflect the fact that the founders who were opposed to slavery made serious political efforts to end it.
Unlike either one of us they were dealing with reality as it existed at that time. For instance, the abolitionists hoped to come up with a plan to buy the slaves from their owners and emancipate them, but the country simply couldn’t afford it.
So, no, slavery was not part of the founders vision. It was part of a legacy they had to find a way to rid ourselves of in order to complete that vision.
Most of the abolitionists, such as John Adams, realized that their failure to come up with some workable plan doomed the country to fight a second war over the issue. They had just come throught one war and couldn’t afford (in a variety of ways, not just financially) to jump into the second fight right away:
Do you have any realistic alternatives to offer, workable at that particular time and place, that could have abolished slavery and avoided that second war?
Or just what amounts to cheap shots?
April 21, 2010, 5:27 pmcboldt says:
noahp: We tea partiers prefer the vision of the Founders, period, end of story, finis.
April 21, 2010, 5:32 pmAnonsters: So you’re pro-slavery, then, eh?
Is “so you’re pro-slavery” a non sequitur diversion, an independent rationale for rejecting the vision of the founders / American revolution, or something else?
noahp says:
The Founders sought to diminish the power of slave states by the 3/5 person counting. But you know that. Cheap shot.
That sort of argument brings to mind the perennial argument by feminists about “equal pay for equal work”…but you dig down just a bit you find out that even feminists don’t believe their own bullcrap!
But rational people seem to be doomed forever to the task of refuting the same ignorant arguments! Camus was prophetic!
April 21, 2010, 5:53 pmAnonsters says:
This is totally false.
How’d that work out? Before 1865, I mean.
Citation? The only such plan I’m aware of comes about around the late 1820s under the auspices of the American Colonization Society. Surely you’re not going to try to defend that?
So, in other words, they created a government they knew was doomed to failure and then sealed their children or their grandchildren to fighting a civil war, which is never a happy circumstance. Hmm.
It’s an independent rationale for thinking the framers of the Constitution were not the fount of all wisdom and goodness when it comes to government, liberty, etc. It suggests to me that slavish devotion to what the framers thought or intended about the government is only one very small data point to be considered when examining how we ought to govern ourselves and how to interpret our Constitution.
Check out the story on page A1 of the NYT on 7 May 1987, “Marshall Sounds Critical Note on Bicentennial” for more, if you want a more respectable source of criticism than, say, me (which God knows you should :P).
April 21, 2010, 6:07 pmAnonsters says:
For some reason, I can’t edit my post above. The penultimate paragraph should read:
April 21, 2010, 6:10 pmBM says:
Anonsters,
“Nazis were fascists. Fascists are pretty damned right-wing.”
No, the fascists were left wing authoritarians. Mussolini, the father of Fascism, was a life long leftist. Fascism itself is a socialist ideology. Not all socialists are fascists but all fascists are socialists.
April 21, 2010, 6:48 pmMark Field says:
That’s too glib. Some of the Founders — Gouverneur Morris, for example — wanted to not count slaves at all because he didn’t want to reward slavery. Some of the Southerners wanted a 5/5ths rule because they wanted to increase the power of slaveholders. The 3/5 rule was a compromise, intended as a limitation by some, accepted as the best they could get by others.
April 21, 2010, 6:49 pmAnonsters says:
Cut and paste from my dictionary:
April 21, 2010, 7:02 pmAnonsters says:
You can, apparently, never be too glib when you’re making obeisance before the Holy Name of the Founders.
April 21, 2010, 7:03 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Mark Field,
As I understood it, the states with many slaves wanted to count slaves as citizens for representation purposes, but not for taxation purposes; the states with few or no slaves wanted the reverse; and the 3/5 (for representation and taxation purposes) was the compromise.
April 21, 2010, 7:12 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Anonsters,
fascism |ˈfæˌʃɪzəm| (also Fascism) noun
an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.
Well, it is in your dictionary, so obviously it’s true. Mussolini got through his first decade or so without anyone calling him “right-wing.”
• (in general use) extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice.
Well, that puts paid to Mussolini, yes? I mean, the guy was a fascist.
April 21, 2010, 7:24 pmleo marvin says:
However numerous the abolitionists may have been, when the slave-owning contingent includes Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Franklin, I think it’s a bit much to paint it as some sort of inconvenient anomaly.
April 21, 2010, 7:25 pmcboldt says:
Wiki’s definition of fascism also says it is a far-right according to some scholars. It also says, “They claim that culture is created by collective national society and its state, that cultural ideas are what give individuals identity, and thus rejects individualism.”
April 21, 2010, 7:31 pmleo marvin says:
So did David Horowitz.
April 21, 2010, 7:35 pmSteverino says:
We’ll stick with that “small” data point, thank you very much.
You try to fit a lot in that penultimate paragraph, which weakens the force of your argument.
I doubt the founders would have said they were the font of all wisdom. That’s why they set up a system of self-government.
But when it comes to the Constitution, their views are not the small data point you wish to pretend. They wrote the document; the authors’ views on the subject remain authoritative.
Of course, if one is hostile to their views, than that simple truth can not be admitted. Which brings us to you. Your argument is the same tired argument that everyone hostile to the founding principles has made and continues to make, once they find they can’t make a better argument. Can’t make a persuasive argument that would garner the support of 2/3 of the legislature and 3/4 of the states and actually change the document? They pretend they have superior insights, have made that pursuasive argument, and attempt to subsitute their own judgements.
It is simply the argument of the authoritarian. And by authoritarian, I mean the traditional American progressive. You might think a fascist wrote this:
Technically, no. Benito and Adolph were still in the trenches at the time. It was Woodrow Wilson. But as I pointed out earlier, Mussolini really liked the cut of Woodie’s jib. Hence the family resemblance.
When we, the people, start hearing the lecture about how we don’t need to listen to “them” anymore because “they” weren’t all that, we’d like to know why we should listen to you on that subject, or any other. And it turns out, you can’t really make one. You’re not alone.
So it stops being a conversation; it becomes a monologue. The American progressive simply convinces himself that the average man or woman on the street is simply too stupid to comprehend.
As an aside, in addition to ignoring the Constitution while claiming otherwise, it’s not just the electorate the government chooses to ignore. It’s other parts of the government. How fun is that!
This is actually a feature of American progressivism, and something the fascists in Europe esteemed. As Hitler told a NY Times reporter:
When you’re on the people’s business, doing what’s right, you can’t let anything get in the way.
If we’re going to march toward that bright utopian future, we have been told time again since the late 1800s and the rise of progressivism, we’re going to have to quit “bitterly clinging” to our narrow opinions. Such as our opinion the Constitution put limits on government, and protects individuality and liberty.
That needs to go by the wayside. Or, if that proves too much to flush all at one time, become a “samll data point.” It interferes with the larger vision: we’re going to have to modernize.
Alles muss anders sein!
Which is german for, “we are days away from fundamentally transforming our country.” Or more accurately, everything must be different.
You simply cannot achieve the progressive goal of substituting collectivism for individuality, and statism for markets, unless you first substitute some different interpretation of the Constitution for the original one.
Your rationale isn’t nearly as independent as you believe it to be. It’s also not new. It is as old as the hills and solidly in the mainstream of American progressivism.
April 21, 2010, 7:41 pmAnonsters says:
To be fair to my dictionary, it also includes the following under “fascism:”
April 21, 2010, 7:42 pmAnonsters says:
Yes, I’m aware. Thanks.
BTW, I’m not a fan of “collectivism.” Not at all, in fact.
April 21, 2010, 7:44 pmAnonsters says:
Sound like neo-conservatism to anyone else?
April 21, 2010, 7:45 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
[me:] Mussolini got through his first decade or so without anyone calling him “right-wing.”
[Leo Marvin:] So did David Horowitz.
Very well played. I mean, Horowitz did actually switch sides in a rather public way, but otherwise the two cases are completely parallel.
April 21, 2010, 7:46 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Anonsters,
Fascism tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic approach.
Sound like neo-conservatism to anyone else?
You must be one of the privileged few who know what “neo-conservatism” is. Explicate, please.
April 21, 2010, 7:53 pmBill Twist says:
Wait, wait, I know this one!
You only need to ask one guard a single question:
“Is the door behind the lying guard the way to libertarian paradise?”
If he answers “Yes”, you go to the other door, because if the guard was telling the truth then obviously the death door is behind him, and if he is lying, then the death door is also behind him.
If he answers “No”, then you go in that door, because he’s either telling the truth and the liar is in front of the death door, or he’s lying, and in front of the paradise door.
Back on topic, though, I really think Ilya was off base on this subject, and I notice a bit of back-tracking on his part. McVeigh had contact with some neo-nazis and other unsavory elements. None of them ever claimed him as their own, though, and he never claimed to be one of them.
The only real solid data point is that he liked “The Turner Diaries”, a book that at one time was really the *ONLY* novel about attacking the government. There isn’t any really evidence that he particularly enjoyed or agreed with the racist parts, but we do know he was enamored of the part where a government building is attacked with a truck bomb.
Pretty much all the other evidence of him being some kind of fascist or racist is guilt by association or pretty weak inference.
Bottom line: The guy was a nut case whose only real ideology seemed to be solidly based on the Second Amendment and little else. At least, that was the core of his anger towards government, which we must all remember at that time had just enacted the assault weapons ban and the Brady law, and had royally screwed up Ruby Ridge and Waco.
April 21, 2010, 8:03 pmSteverino says:
The problem is, what constitutes “right wing” varies depending upon who’s writing history. Yes, fascism is right wing. If you’re a Bolshevik.
But in this country, it’s the “right” that is accused of letting capitalism run rampant. The current administration is blamining our most recent economic collapse, like everyone before it, on the right’s lust for deregulation.
But how does that fit in with Ludwig Von Mises’ close observation of Nazi economics (the Austrian Jew only escaped in 1940):
Not exactly laissez faire from where I sit. How can the rapacious capitalist Republican “deregulators” and the nationalist socialists both be “right wing?”
Actually, it’s an easy answer. The logic, if you can call it that, goes something like this:
“We leftists are good-hearted people who only want the best for everyone. That’s why we want to reign in if not abolish capitalism because it’s unfair. We want to decide outcomes.
Ergo, if something proves to be a really, really bad idea, it must be those evil rightists who thought it up.
And since we run the history department, that’s just what we’ll say. And that’s just what Wikipedia will say. And if someone wants to say differently, we’ll suspend their ability to edit.”
April 21, 2010, 8:11 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Bill Twist,
The only real solid data point is that he liked “The Turner Diaries”, a book that at one time was really the *ONLY* novel about attacking the government.
Now, that I do not believe. There are hundreds of novels whose theme is attacking the government.
Oh, it has to be the American government? And using only current technology? My bad.
There isn’t any really evidence that he particularly enjoyed or agreed with the racist parts, but we do know he was enamored of the part where a government building is attacked with a truck bomb.
“Enamored.” Right.
April 21, 2010, 8:13 pmcboldt says:
– The problem is, what constitutes “right wing” varies depending upon who’s writing history. Yes, fascism is right wing. If you’re a Bolshevik. –
April 21, 2010, 8:25 pmI don’t put much stock in labels anyway. I avoid taking label-affixing as a point of persuasion; and labels are often used as juvenile insults and taunts. A better route in reasoned debate is to probe the issue in alternative terms.
Other people can (and do) argue over labels, but in practice the action seems to generate more smoke than illumination.
I found the remark that fascism is contra-individualism to be much more informative than the remark that most scholars pigeon hole fascism “right,” and others scholars disagree.
Steverino says:
That’s good to know.
But the Tea Partiers are?
I’m having a hard time squaring how the Tea Partiers demands for smaller, less intrusive government, and the Nazi’s all intrusive government where no “enterprise was free to deviate in the conduct of its operations from the orders issued by the government. Price control was only a device in the complex of innumerable decrees and orders regulating the minutest details of every business activity and precisely fixing every individual’s tasks on the one hand and his income and standard of living on the other” are both examples of right-wing extremism.
April 21, 2010, 8:27 pmMark Field says:
It got a little more complicated than that, but that’s the basic trade-off.
April 21, 2010, 8:31 pmSteverino says:
cboldt, I’m mostly poking fun at the labels. I just find it amusing that two groups such as libertarians and contra-individual fascists can both acquire the same one.
“Right wing” at the very least is a grab bag.
April 21, 2010, 8:35 pmleo marvin says:
See? I knew you were reasonable. We agree!
April 21, 2010, 8:36 pmBM says:
Anonsters,
As has been pointed out numerous times right and left mean something different here than in Europe, and the terms have also mutated over time. Mussolini far to the left from the perspective of any libertarian, republican, or any other US political ideology here in the US.
In the US the right has never been about ethnic supremacy, nor about being against laissez-faire like Mussolini. In fact it’s the Democrats who were the party of slavery and the South and it was Democrat progressives who were in league with Mussolini. It was progressives who were also for eugenics. Look up the history planned parenthood.
The US left also extolled the efficiency of Hitlers Germany. The left also was supportive of Stalin. Always the same thing. Look up Chomsky and his defense of Pol Pot, another authoritarian totalitarian dictator. Castro, and so on.
Current darling of the left Chavez. Screw you Sean Penn.
April 21, 2010, 8:39 pmcboldt says:
– I’m mostly poking fun at the labels. I just find it amusing that two groups such as libertarians and contra-individual fascists can both acquire the same one. –
April 21, 2010, 8:48 pmYes, your points are well made, and I find them persuasive. The label “right wing” isn’t useful in the present debate.
The other argument going on, relating to the wisdom of the founders, appears to be a case of discounting substantial parts of the constitutional arrangement (checks and balances, limited powers, etc.) on account of the fact of slavery. Epic fail as far as justification for the discounting goes, but it’s entertaining to read.
Steverino says:
How about dealing with someone who is unreasonable. If by unreasonable, you mean someone who acknowledges Mussolini never switched sides. As I said earlier, Mussolini considered fascism his adaptation of marxism to Italy. Marx said that capitalism is a necessary stage before you can achieve the higher forms of socialism.
His corporate state was necessary to shepherd Italy throught that phase.
He always considered himself a marxist, and a purer marxist than the Bolsheviks who, as far as Mussolini was concerned, ignored Marx.
April 21, 2010, 8:53 pmAnonsters says:
Hey, there was that Tom Clancy book where some Japanese airline pilot flew his plane into the Capitol during the SotU!
April 21, 2010, 8:54 pmAnonsters says:
This may shock you, so please, hang on to your chair/wig/skirt/dog: “Left wing” is a grab bag, too.
April 21, 2010, 8:56 pmAnonsters says:
First, the fact of slavery was so pervasive, and so fundamental to the Republic, that it’s not just some random footnote to history. Virtually for the entire first 75 years of politics was about slavery in some way; that’s certainly the case starting in the late 1810s. Consider that we only made it 74 before we had a civil war. Over slavery. Since abolishing slavery, we’ve gone 145 years without another major convulsion like that, with one substantial exception: the Civil Rights movement. Which was necessary given the compromises made during Reconstruction to allow the white South to subjugate blacks yet again. I am of the school of thought that the Civil War was, in fact, inevitable, given on the one hand the ideas and principles underlying the Revolution and on the other hand the compromises the framers made when writing the Constitution. They were bound to clash, and violently so, given the slaveholders’ commitment to holding slaves. (And yes, I know they often used rhetoric of wishing they couldn’t, wishing it would go away, etc. But actions are vastly more revealing than rhetoric.)
Second, I’m somewhat enamored of the ideas underlying the Revolution, although honestly, I’m even more enamored of the ideas underlying the Second Revolution, the ideas motivating the Radical Republicans during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Did the first framers manage to create some useful and good things? Of course. At the same time, slavery was a fundamental evil. They perpetuated it, and they knew they were doing so. Some of them were self-aware enough to know that their acts and their principles were in conflict, and some of those who were thus self-aware also could see that the end would ultimately be violent. And it was. And it was a world that they helped, at least, perpetuate.
Some commenters want to whitewash that fact, want to buy the rhetoric that was used through the early 19th century that it was just an evil heritage that Americans had to live with and mitigate if possible. Given the course of what happened, the types of arguments made, the types of strategies deployed by the vast majority of slaveholders, I see it as nothing but a bunch of rhetoric. I don’t buy it.
April 21, 2010, 9:10 pmAnonsters says:
BTW, since I think an earlier comment got lost in moderation for some reason, I’ll repost this paragraph:
April 21, 2010, 9:21 pmcboldt says:
– At the same time, slavery was a fundamental evil. They perpetuated it, and they knew they were doing so. Some of them were self-aware enough to know that their acts and their principles were in conflict, and some of those who were thus self-aware also could see that the end would ultimately be violent. And it was. And it was a world that they helped, at least, perpetuate –
Not to put wealth transfer, “New Deal” and “Great Society” in the same category as slavery (and readers who take this post as so much as hinting that I am drawing that equivalence are engaging in nasty diversion), I think similar “down the road nasties” are inevitable as the federal government has promised more in the way of material wealth than it can deliver.
April 21, 2010, 9:39 pmThose who crafted the massive wealth transfer and “guaranteed leveling of outcome; no bad outcome” programs are, for the most part, progressives; and imposing these programs involved and involves an interpretation of the US Constitution that is foreign to the notion of “limited federal government.” Some of the architects of these destined-to-fail programs are self-aware enough to know that the current fiscal path is unsustainable. Their mission isn’t to fix it, it is to avoid being held accountable.
Steverino says:
How so?
If I recall my history correctly (and if I get this wrong I’m sure someone will accuse me of “lying”) left and right wing refers to a European parliament. The monarchists sat on the right, the socialists sat on the left.
After the revolution, there were no more (open) monarchists here. At least, not until JFK and Camelot. But I digress. On the other hand, there were still those who advocated the abolition of private property, equality of outcomes, elimination of markets as the means of distributing goods, etc. These aren’t exactly new ideas. They preceded Marx, and the founders were aware of the concept of socialism. They also rejected it.
From that point on, again from my perspective, what constituted “right wing” was simply that which was in opposition to left wing. Or, that which embarrassed the left wing.
The upshot is it became something like what was anti-Federalist was that which was in opposition to the Federalists. In both cases, the latter still represented a particular POV. The former, it could represent a variety, from all points of the compass.
I mean, I hear those on the left telling me that those “other” leftists are nothing like them and not leftists at all. But when the case is attempted to be made to an outsider like myself, it sounds a lot like some religious war where one side slaughters the other because they cross themselves from left-to-right instead of the proper way from right-to-left.
I just don’t see the polar opposites that are lumped into the “right wing” grab bag.
April 21, 2010, 9:48 pmcboldt says:
– I think an earlier comment got lost in moderation for some reason … –
I think it got hung up in a software glitch, as you were doing the edit. Anyway, I saw the reference to the NYT article, looked it up (link), read it. That article was in mind when I wrote “discounting substantial parts of the constitutional arrangement on account of the fact of slavery … ”
April 21, 2010, 9:50 pmThurgood Marshall’s comments appear to be limited to slavery and its artifacts; and he too uses that to discount any part of the constitution that he feels like discounting. He’s not proud of the country that gave him his position. Feh. Ungrateful sack. I think he’s a creep.
Mark Field says:
Just to flesh out my previous comment, there’s some evidence that the 3/5 clause was part of the deal which led to the Senate. In this view, the smaller Northern states agreed with the deep South to support the 3/5 clause in return for the support of the deep South on equal representation in the Senate.
If this deal did happen, it was made off the floor of the Convention, so there’s no proof.
April 21, 2010, 9:56 pmleo marvin says:
And as others have pointed out, we don’t just accept uncritically the self-descriptions and justifications of lunatics and tyrants. We define them by their actions. David Koresh wasn’t Christian. North Korea isn’t democratic. And neither nazi Germany nor fascist Italy was socialist.
April 21, 2010, 10:00 pmAnonsters says:
Quote?
Quote?
This may not come as a surprise to you, but he is, far and away, my favorite justice.
April 21, 2010, 10:03 pmDesiderius says:
Anonsters,
“This may shock you, so please, hang on to your chair/wig/skirt/dog: “Left wing” is a grab bag, too.”
+1
If libertarians are ever to make it out of the institutional wilderness, the road will begin with that realization.
April 21, 2010, 10:16 pmMark Field says:
I don’t think you’re lying, but you’re not quite right either. Yes, the monarchists sat on the right. It was mostly the republicans, though, who sat on the left. There were few socialists in the French Revolution — the word didn’t exist then, but historians have labeled people such as Babeuf “socialist”. However, the radicals of the Revolution (the Jacobins) were generally called The Mountain, rather than “the left”, because they sat high up in the back benches of the Parliament.
So, the basic deal is this: the term “left” originally referred to those opposed to monarchy (or in favor of very limited constitutional monarchy) and usually opposed to the established church, including republicans. It later expanded to include others such as socialists and communists, even though these often had little in common with each other. The term “the right” referred originally to those who supported monarchy and the established church, and later to those who supported other forms of authoritarian rule such as Fascists.
That’s in Europe, and it works until about WWII. Because of this tradition, European conservatives after the War were considered to be on the “right”, while neo-fascists and other racist parties are “far right”. The term “left” includes socialists and some others.
The US situation is less clear because the terms “left” and “right” only really began to be used during FDR’s time. In practical effect, the “left” became those who supported FDR (including socialists, even though they weren’t formally part of his coalition), while the “right” became those opposed to it. Positions on particular issues (say, military spending or balanced budgets) have shifted over time, sometimes being “right wing” and sometimes “left wing”, which makes the use of the terms problematic.
As you can see from the linked article on Babeuf, this is wrong. The term “socialist” didn’t exist in 1789. Putting aside individuals like Babeuf, who only later became identified with the term, the first “socialists” are generally considered to be the followers of Saint-Simon, whose first writings were shortly after 1800.
April 21, 2010, 10:22 pmDesiderius says:
Anonsters,
I think you need to be a little more specific as to how the argument for limited government embodied in the Declaration/Constitution is compromised by slavery (and likewise is compromised today by other factors that you need to establish as salient) to make any headway.
MarkField,
“John McCain doesn’t stand for any of these things and never has. And I’m not directing this at you; I know you voted for Obama.”
McCain lacked the stature (as did Kerry/Edwards/Gore) to earn my vote, but it should come as no surprise that I’d be generally more comfortable voting for R’s (like, say, Kasich) than D’s, all other things equal. My passion is fighting the illiberalism of the Left, yours likewise that of the Right. Both are necessary. I think that’s better than us all gathering into one tent just to see it burned down by a majority whose first priority is not liberty, for reasons (and irreasons) good, bad, and ugly.
April 21, 2010, 10:28 pmDesiderius says:
I nominate MarkField’s latest comment to be elevated to Post status. “Left” does not have to mean “socialist”.
April 21, 2010, 10:32 pmcboldt says:
Thurgood Marshall quote from the linked article: “Thus, in this bicentennial year, we may not all participate in the festivities with flag-waving fervor. Some may more quietly commemorate the suffering, struggle and sacrifice that has triumphed over much of what was wrong with the original document, and observe the anniversary with hopes not realized and promises not fulfilled. I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document, including the Bill of Rights and other amendments protecting individual freedoms and human rights.”
This set of statements is where I draw the inference that he is not proud of the founding, and that he is ungrateful. A different part of the article notes that he sees “for the general welfare” as a blank check for expanding the federal government.
April 21, 2010, 11:16 pmI share the discomfort over the fact of slavery. Slavery was accepted (for a time limited period) in the constitution, but it had to be addressed in order to form the union. What were the alternatives at the time? Two countries, one slave-holding? I have no disagreement that there was a need (probably still is, on a case by case basis) to address persistent racial discrimination.
My view is that the issue of racial discrimination doesn’t justify wholesale expansion of federal power, nor does it justify a sweeping claim that much (else) is wrong with the original document.
I also believe that affirmative action as established by the government is an unmitigated disaster. Institutionalizing racial preference is not good.
FWIW, I think Barack Obama is in a similar mold – rejecting the vision of the founders (and being sure his vision is superior anyway, so the rejection is justified); not proud of the country’s heritage (aside from slavery); and ungrateful. He’s a creep too.
Anonsters says:
What, exactly, should Thurgood Marshall have been “grateful” for?
And what, exactly, does it mean to be “proud of the founding?”
April 21, 2010, 11:27 pmDesiderius says:
Anonsters,
“What, exactly, should Thurgood Marshall have been “grateful” for?”
Being nominated, by his President, and confirmed, by the elected representatives of his people, to his Supreme Court Justiceship?
“And what, exactly, does it mean to be “proud of the founding?””
At the least, that the human race is capable of such a thing, given the demonstrable alternatives, both in that place and time and across others?
Good, meet perfect. Perfect, good. Can’t we all just get along?
CBoldt,
I think you’re (quite a ways) off on Obama. He is the descendant of voluntary immigrants, and thus more likely to share the natural sense of gratitude passed down in families that made the decision to come here. It’s understandably harder for those whose ancestors came here in chains. His vision of the founders is that they of all people weren’t content to stand pat, so he isn’t either. I’m not exactly thrilled with some of the new directions he wants to go, but a passion for progress is very consistent with the founders’ vision.
April 21, 2010, 11:42 pmAnonsters says:
There’s nothing in the article to indicate he wasn’t grateful for that.
In the article, he’s quoted as saying:
Sounds like he’s proud of those people to me. Another quote from the article:
April 21, 2010, 11:49 pmcboldt says:
– And what, exactly, does it mean to be “proud of the founding?” –
April 22, 2010, 12:18 amWhat I have in mind with that is to have a sense of pride or good fortune to be in a country that was founded on the radical proposition that the people are in charge of the government. That those who fought for and drafted a document that aims to preserve self-government merit credit.
I get the sense that Thurgood Marshall is missing the point of self government. Well, to him, maybe it is self government, because the rules he proposes suit his sensibilities perfectly.
“credit does not belong to the framers,” he says (roughly referring to abolition of slavery). The founding document has a date certain limit on slave trade.
“sensitive understanding of the Constitution’s inherent defects” is a vacuous slam. Name the defects, point to the defective phrases; and suggest an improvement or correction.
Is it your belief that Marshall was proud of an inherently defective constitution? He’s not going to wave any flags, he says. He’s going to meditate on those who rearranged the constitution. The 200 year anniversary of the constitution, and that puts him in a funk. Gratitude? Not in my book, no sir.
– [Obama's] passion for progress is very consistent with the founders’ vision. –
Obama’s vision of the constitution as mandating the government to act is contrary to the founders vision of limited government.
leo marvin says:
Seconded.
April 22, 2010, 12:21 amSteverino says:
I said the founders were familiar with the concept of socialism. I deliberately avoided saying they were aware of the term “socialism.”
It’s akin to saying tah
April 22, 2010, 12:38 amcboldt says:
On the subject of gratitude, I’m grateful to have been born at a time after the US was founded, into a country whose founders memorialized the principle of self government, and a system of limited government (under the people) with checks and balances that aim to keep the government under the people’s thumb.
April 22, 2010, 12:39 amThat’s the sort of gratitude that I had in mind. I wasn’t thinking of his rise to SCOTUS, his success as a student, lawyer, husband and father. Just the simple luck of the draw, as it were, to be in this place, at this time in history – of all the places and times.
Even though I perceive a number of highly substantial deviations from the founding principles, and even from basic honesty, fairness and justice, I’m still grateful to be HERE, NOW. What the founders said, and put into force with their blood and treasure, gives me a sense of awe.
I think Thurgood Marshall was a destructive force to self-government, in the long run.
Steverino says:
My laptop has developed evil electronic gremlins. It’s executing commands that I never intended.
If I can finish, it would be akin to saying that the first state you can describe as fascist is Sparta. Many have made the case. But it isn’t at all the same as saying they would have called themselves fascists, as the term hadn’t been invented.
April 22, 2010, 12:42 amSteverino says:
When you do look critically at what these self-described fascists actually did when in power, and compare it what other self-described socialists were advocating at the time, there really is no difference. That’s the test.
April 22, 2010, 12:46 amRicardo says:
Nearly every socialist regime in history tried collective farming at some point. Nazi Germany never considered the idea. They idealized the family farm provided it was owned by hearty individuals of pure Nordic blood.
April 22, 2010, 1:02 amAnonsters says:
No, it didn’t. It merely said Congress couldn’t do anything about the slave trade until 1808.
This is so stunning that I can only conclude you are wholly ignorant of who Thurgood Marshall was.
April 22, 2010, 1:02 amSteverino says:
Not at all true. Poland, to pick one example, never collectivized the farms.
April 22, 2010, 1:16 amcboldt says:
– It merely said Congress couldn’t do anything about the slave trade until 1808. –
April 22, 2010, 1:24 amI stand corrected.
– This is so stunning that I can only conclude you are wholly ignorant of who Thurgood Marshall was. –
You’d be reaching a false conclusion on that point.
Any justice that parlays the “general welfare” phrase in the constitution as giving the feds power to create what is euphemistically called “the welfare state” is contributing to an increase in dependency. Dependents don’t self-govern.
I speculate the disconnect arises on a difference in how we view the relationship between voting and self-government (or freedom from government interference). If the calculus is “more voters = more self government,” then I have to agree that Thurgood Marshall facilitated that transition.
But freedom to cast a ballot is not the same as freedom.
Anonsters says:
I suspect Thurgood Marshall understood the ins and outs of freedom better than you or me.
April 22, 2010, 1:42 amray says:
You say that McVeigh was a neo-Nazi and inspired by the Turner Diaries, but you offered absolutely no evidence of that. Instead, you went directly to castigating the book. What is your documentation or evidence that he was a neo-nazi or that this was his “inspiration”?
April 22, 2010, 3:11 amRicardo says:
Not true. They didn’t force people into farming collectives but they were still widespread. Meanwhile, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, the Soviet Union, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, China, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, Cambodia and Cuba did in a considerably more aggressive manner.
April 22, 2010, 3:12 amBill Twist says:
That was “Debt Of Honor”, published in 1994. At that point, McVeigh was already planning his attack. One could also look at “Sum Of All Fears”, where a nuclear bomb is detonated at the Superbowl. In both cases, though, the ‘bad guys’ are outsiders (A Japanese airline pilot in one, radical Palestinians in another). Plus, neither novel touches on gun rights in the United States.
April 22, 2010, 7:36 amdesiderius says:
Anonsters,
What cboldt is doing with Marshall is what you’re doing with the founders.
April 22, 2010, 9:50 amdesiderius says:
cboldt,
“On the subject of gratitude, I’m grateful to have been born at a time after the US was founded, into a country whose founders memorialized the principle of self government, and a system of limited government (under the people) with checks and balances that aim to keep the government under the people’s thumb.
That’s the sort of gratitude that I had in mind. I wasn’t thinking of his rise to SCOTUS, his success as a student, lawyer, husband and father.”
The two are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, close to its opposite.
April 22, 2010, 9:52 amMark Field says:
Putting aside your views of the Spartans, the Founders couldn’t have had any knowledge of the basic components of socialism because those components hadn’t been identified (and in some cases — the industrial working class — didn’t even exist).
April 22, 2010, 10:12 amStephen B. says:
Key here is the misuse, or perhaps rather the abuse, of the word ‘libertarian.’ For many of us, anyone who does not accept the non-initiation-of-force principle is not a libertarian. This would specifically include McVeigh — no matter what he chose to call himself. If he called himself a cabbage it would have made him one, nor would the New York Times have been justified in claiming the Oklahoma City Federal building had been blown up by a cabbage.
Neo-Nazis like McVeigh, however, are not the only ones who use the word libertarian in too liberal a fashion. It is frequently misused, and often by those who consider themselves friends of liberty, but who are not truly libertarians.
I would encourage anyone who waffles on the issue of the non-initiation-of-force principle — be it in regards to Iraq, enforcing drug laws, or collecting taxes — to remember these McVeigh-smears the next time you chose to describe yourself as a ‘libertarian’ rather than ‘having libertarian sympathies.’ You are, by describing yourself as something you are not, robbing the word ‘libertarian’ of its substantive political meaning and in the process playing into the hands of the enemies of a free society.
April 22, 2010, 11:43 amcboldt says:
– The two are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, close to its opposite. –
April 22, 2010, 11:57 amNo argument from me on that, I just wanted to make my frame of mind and reference clear.
Dan M. says:
The 3rd update is weak. There’s no evidence that McVeigh was a neo-Nazi at all. Ilya, why are you so definitive in assuming that McVeigh had anything in common with neo-Nazis just because he liked a book, but only grudgingly acknowledge that he actually professed many sentiments in common with libertarians.
Timothy McVeigh, with regards to his political views, demonstrably shared more with libertarians than he can be shown to share with neo-Nazis, which is none, apart from his willingness to kill government agents and accept collateral damage.
Oh, and if the non-aggression principle is the be-all and end-all of libertarianism, wouldn’t you have to exclude anyone who approves of the American Revolution or the Civil War from the ranks of libertarianism?
April 22, 2010, 2:07 pmSteverino says:
First of all, that’s not my view of the Spartans. It’s how the Spartans have been described by people of a certain ideological bent.
Second, the founders most certainly were familiar with components of socialism. Colonies on our own shores, New England if memory serves, had experimented with such concepts as the abolition of private property and the elimination of markets. With disatrous results.
“Das Kapital” was published 80 years after the Philadelphia Convention. Which, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t a great deal of time. So just as I went out of my way to avoid saying the founders were not familiar with the term “socialism,” I must admit they were not familiar with every concept that was eventually included under that particular umbrella. But on the other hand, most of those concepts existed when the Constitution was written, and the framers knew of them.
April 22, 2010, 6:54 pmSteverino says:
I’m still at a loss. How does the fact the fascists never collectived the farms prove they weren’t socialists. Especially in light of the fact that not all communist countries, to use your words, “didn’t force” farmers into collectives?
One exception is all I need.
If you can still be communist without forcing farmers into collectives, how does the fact the fascists also didn’t force farmers into collectives somehow preclude them from being socialists?
April 22, 2010, 7:23 pmMark Field says:
You’re just making this stuff up. Yes, there was a very brief experiment in communal property by the Plymouth colony in 1622 or so, but it ended quickly and I doubt any of the Founders outside of New England knew of it.
As for the rest, modern socialism involves concepts that never occurred to the Founders and couldn’t have because the conditions didn’t exist. There was no capitalist class, there was no industrial working class, etc.
80 years? That’s a long time, almost four score and seven, in fact. In that time the population of the US increased by a factor of 10, we fought a Civil War (and two others as well), quadrupled (that’s a guess) the land area of the nation, abolished slavery, crossed the continent with railroads, etc. Changes in Europe were even more dramatic. All of those things were undreamt of in the philosophies of the Founders (except perhaps slavery). So was socialism.
If you have some cites to support your claims, you might want to provide them.
April 22, 2010, 7:25 pmSteverino says:
If you’re aware of it, how can I be making it up?
April 22, 2010, 8:52 pmDesiderius says:
MarkField,
Re: your previous comment: What is your take on this account? And of course Goldberg is a heartless bastard and robs widows for sport. Tell me how to take apart what he says.
April 22, 2010, 11:23 pmMark Field says:
You know, Des, reading Jonah Goldberg diminishes your IQ. Maybe you can afford the loss, but I can’t. Just for you and just this once.
The problems with Jonah can be summed up in 3 consecutive sentences he writes:
So far, so good.
Epic fail. It’s wrong for at least 3 critical reasons:
1. Contrary to his ipse dixit, this is NOT some standard or consensus definition, particularly the “intrusive and domineering role” language.
2. Because the term “socialism” gets applied to so many different things — just as “conservative” and “liberal” do — it’s wrong to use a pejorative definition in particular.
3. Obama’s actions certainly do not fit this definition, Jonah’s claims notwithstanding.
Take health care, for example. First, it’s not “undemocratic”, and it certainly does not show an “antipathy to democracy when democracy proves inconvenient”. The bill passed by majority vote in the House and Senate; that’s “democracy” in our lingo.
Second, the health care system is subject to a number of market failures, such that government intervention can actually improve the outcomes. It’s not “domineering” to legislate on issues like that, any more than it is to tax externalities. That’s assuming the term “domineering” has some meaning in the context of a bill passed by democratic process.*
Now for some other statements he makes:
A silly statement. First, if reforms expand the authority of the state beyond its Constitutional bounds, they’ll be struck down. If not, there’s no expansion; the power was already there.
Second, reforms implement what people want. That’s what a democracy is supposed to do. Now, that doesn’t mean we implement every whim of the electorate, but it does mean that the whole point of republican government is to enact laws which protect the “permanent and aggregate interests” of the people. Reforms are a feature of democracy, not a bug.
An outright lie. There is no grand conspiracy to impose socialism on the US. There’s only a commitment to solve perceived problems.
*It could in a majority tyranny sense, but that doesn’t seem to be Jonah’s point. His point seems to be that “domineering” is contrary to democracy, which the health care bill was not.
April 22, 2010, 11:59 pmleo marvin says:
Jonah did get one thing right. Obama is as socialist as Teddy Roosevelt. I wonder why that isn’t the Tea Party battle cry.
April 23, 2010, 2:03 amleo marvin says:
And by the way, I’ve never heard anyone accuse Goldberg of robbing widows for sport. He does it for the money, right?
April 23, 2010, 2:53 amStephen B. says:
Because, while it’s true, it is also functionally meaningless as a political message.
April 23, 2010, 3:35 amTHarms says:
Libertarians are not pacifists. They are merely patient and have a good understanding of the law of returns that must be considered when choosing whether or not to shake off the hangers-on. There is a point on a curve at which the amount of bullying will no longer be worth maintaining the illusion of a civil society and at that point you will see a response. But know this, it will be a response to the force and bullying that each of us has already endured every day, indeed every hour of our lives. The Founding Fathers then, nor any Tea Partiers now, were not and are not initiators of force. The first blows against the people were struck by the government long ago, and we’ve been quietly playing the role of battered housewife now for decades. When that stops, there will be no ‘initiation,’ only justice — and therein lies the greatest risk. If we let things continue on the current path, continuing to deprive libertarians and independents from a fair and equal seat at the table, their anger will be so great when they finally take power that America will be risking a terror rather than a plebiscite.
April 23, 2010, 3:57 amleo marvin says:
Actually it’s a very meaningful political message. It just happens to be the last meaning they’d want to convey.
April 23, 2010, 6:04 amChris Travers says:
I don’t believe you ;-)
April 23, 2010, 12:42 pmChris Travers says:
Actually my own studies suggest that the NSDAP was in essence a fusion between the pro-Soviet Deutche Arbeiterpartie and a nationalist movement which was not particularly organized at the time. I would say it was “socialist” only in the same sense that the USSR was also socialist.
April 23, 2010, 12:54 pmDesiderius says:
LM,
“Actually it’s a very meaningful political message. It just happens to be the last meaning they’d want to convey.”
You might be surprised. Remember, the Bull Moose convention closed with 86 choruses of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and was the warm up for Prohibition.
TR’s rep ain’t what it used to be. If the Dems want to remake themselves as the Christian Democratic party of the U.S., there’ll be no shortage of resistance whether the TP wants to tap it or not.
April 23, 2010, 1:27 pmDesiderius says:
MarkField,
“You know, Des, reading Jonah Goldberg diminishes your IQ. Maybe you can afford the loss, but I can’t. Just for you and just this once.”
So sorry – should have been more considerate. At least I can’t be called intellectually incurious, right? Good thing I’m not a cat.
Just trying to get a sense of where sensible liberals are most sensitive, soas not to senselessly incense you.
April 23, 2010, 1:31 pmleo marvin says:
No argument here. I never suggested TR was any kind of ideal for Democrats. All I’m saying is I’d welcome being called “as socialist as Teddy Roosevelt” or, for that matter, “as socialist as a Christian Democrat.”
April 23, 2010, 1:53 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Mark Field,
You know, Des, reading Jonah Goldberg diminishes your IQ. Maybe you can afford the loss, but I can’t. Just for you and just this once.
Oh, dear, Mark. Can’t dissect the whole post in the time I have available, but, e.g.,
A silly statement. First, if reforms expand the authority of the state beyond its Constitutional bounds, they’ll be struck down. If not, there’s no expansion; the power was already there.
Brilliant. If government puts out an exploratory finger in the direction of more regulation and it isn’t swatted back, hey presto! nothing at all has changed. Well, something has changed: Now we know that the Supreme Court doesn’t see a problem here, whereas before we weren’t sure. But that’s nugatory, yes?
IANAL, but doesn’t look nugatory to me.
April 23, 2010, 1:53 pmMark Field says:
His specific statement (one of them, anyway) was that liberal reforms expand the “authority” of the state. Maybe I read it wrong, but to me “authority” comes from the Constitution. Laws passed by Congress cannot, by definition, expand that authority.
If you think he meant something else by use of that word, let me know.
April 23, 2010, 3:24 pmleo marvin says:
Des,
Here’s my lowbrow version of Mark’s takedown. JG’s piece screams “destination driven.” He may not have Mapquested it turn by turn, but he sure seems to have known when he left the house where he wanted to go. Even if you accept his sometimes far-fetched read on Obama’s intentions, by Goldberg’s own terms Obama might qualify as “social-ist,” but certainly not as any kind of “socialist.” So when he finally admits that “social democrat” and “progressive” are perfectly accurate descriptions, yet he opts conveniently for “neo-socialist,” the populist appeal of anything socialist as a rhetorical knee to the groin is too much to ignore. That he marries it to the also sinister-sounding “neo” is just a cherry on top.
April 23, 2010, 3:57 pmleo marvin says:
BTW, if someone told me they thought Obama was a social democrat, I’d say they missed left, but at least they’re in the right ballpark and deserve a good faith discussion. As far as I’m concerned the least misleading term is what we’ve called politicians with Obama’s agenda in this country for more than half a century, i.e., “liberal” or if you prefer, “New Deal liberal.” But “socialist?” Obama is no more a socialist (or a neo-socialist) than George Bush is a fascist (or a neo-fascist). Unless of course your standard for socialists is Teddy Roosevelt.
April 23, 2010, 4:06 pmMark Field says:
I basically agree with leo. I’d describe Obama as having egalitarian principles which he’d like the federal government to achieve with market-based reforms.
That’s domestically; foreign affairs needs a different characterization.
April 23, 2010, 4:33 pmjames of england says:
Scott Eudaley, I’d be very grateful if you could cite something for your quote from Hitler on de facto socialism, the contentless piece of paper quote. If anyone else can find it, I’d be similarly grateful to them. Thank you.
April 23, 2010, 5:11 pmmattski says:
I wish I’d gotten to this thread earlier…
But I just want to say: I love Mark Field & Leo Marvin.
April 23, 2010, 6:58 pmMark Field says:
Geez, mattski, now you’ve given them all the evidence they need to prove that Obama’s not only a socialist, he’s gay. Please don’t tell Clayton Cramer.
Really, though, thanks.
April 23, 2010, 8:09 pmleo marvin says:
My girlfriend’s response: “Over my dead body.”
That’s right, you’re not the only one who loves Mark.
(Thanks)
April 23, 2010, 10:09 pmmattski says:
These internet romances are so sweet!
April 24, 2010, 7:08 amDesiderius says:
LM,
“And by the way, I’ve never heard anyone accuse Goldberg of robbing widows for sport. He does it for the money, right?”
What’s a Goldberg need with money? Hmm, rules out sport(s), too. Guess that leaves raw, unadulterated malice. Typical marxist.
Mattski,
“These internet romances are so sweet!”
Yeah, it’s all fun and games until you wake up next to a guy in a Che t-shirt.
April 24, 2010, 11:52 amDesiderius says:
LM,
“That he marries it to the also sinister-sounding “neo” is just a cherry on top.”
Ask yourself how you got to a point where “new” sounds sinister to you. Doesn’t sound sinister to me, or JG, or anyone who appreciates what Irving Kristol was getting at.
As for whether Obama (or more to the point, the base he has to answer too) is actually socialist, I’m unsure how many more angels will fit on the head of that pin.
April 24, 2010, 12:05 pmDesiderius says:
MF,
“Second, the health care system is subject to a number of market failures, such that government intervention can actually improve the outcomes. It’s not “domineering” to legislate on issues like that, any more than it is to tax externalities. That’s assuming the term “domineering” has some meaning in the context of a bill passed by democratic process.*”
I think you’re at one level of abstraction too high. It’s not domineering to legislate, but this legislation (i.e. the Health Insurance bill, nee Obamacare) is, in fact, often domineering in nature. Your first sentence above begs some important questions, although, again, taken on a level of sufficient abstraction, it’s a commonplace.
“Meanwhile, more sophisticated ideologues understand that they are supporting a camel’s-nose strategy.
An outright lie. There is no grand conspiracy to impose socialism on the US. There’s only a commitment to solve perceived problems.”
You say pragma, I wonder praxis. Am I mistaken? Is it so far from the Will to Believe to the Will to Power? No conspiracy necessary, grand or otherwise.
Why do you reflexively jump to the defense of sophisticated ideologues? You have no need for either sophistry or ideology, by your own lights. Just because you risk being found spuriously guilty by association, it does not follow that you have a stake in refuting the guilt of those (false) associates, anymore than libertarians need either defend McVeigh or try to claim he was not a libertarian.
“*It could in a majority tyranny sense, but that doesn’t seem to be Jonah’s point. His point seems to be that “domineering” is contrary to democracy, which the health care bill was not.”
Might not be his point, but it’s sure as hell mine. The Road to Gerontocracy.
“I’d describe Obama as having egalitarian principles which he’d like the federal government to achieve with market-based reforms.”
Yeah, and Bush had classical liberal principles that he pursued with Wilsonian means. Would have helped if he wasn’t learning the Wilsonianism as he went, by trial and error. Same problem. The Wilsonians weren’t happy then, nor the marketeers now. Don’t blame either one.
April 24, 2010, 12:33 pmMark Field says:
I’m the last person in the world to defend Obama “reflexively”, or even much at all. I’m not at all happy about many of his policies. I personally don’t see the health care bill as any big infringement on anyone (though I’m not very happy about the mandate). I’ve known socialists. Obama’s no socialist.
I’d probably plead guilty to reflexively opposing anything Jonah Goldberg wrote.
As I said, I think more’s been made of the health care bill than it could justify. Unwise it might be, “tyrannical” it’s not.
I’m no fan of Wilson, which is one reason I was no fan of Bush’s (and one reason why I’m not so happy with Obama either).
April 24, 2010, 4:37 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
I have a question for all those people who want to narrowly draw the bounds of socialism: how do you characterize Bernie Sanders?
April 24, 2010, 5:39 pmleo marvin says:
As a smart man once said, “I think you’re at one level of abstraction too high.” At that level, sure, I’m a big fan of neo. But not everything neo is good, e.g., Neo Coke. And the most prominent recent political neo’s (neo-nazism, neo-fascism, and yes, to some extent neo-conservatism) have indeed tainted “neo” with sinister connotations in the popular mind.
April 24, 2010, 6:04 pmleo marvin says:
Pretty much all I know about Bernie Sanders is that he’s a self-identified Socialist Senator from Vermont, so that’s how I’d characterize him.
April 24, 2010, 6:49 pmMark Field says:
Since Bernie describes himself as a socialist, I’d call him that. My general view is to follow that practice unless I think someone’s abusing the term.
Whether I would call myself a socialist if I believed what Bernie does, I can’t say because I don’t know enough about him.
April 24, 2010, 7:49 pmDesiderius says:
MF,
“I’d probably plead guilty to reflexively opposing anything Jonah Goldberg wrote.”
Considering that he’s been moving in your direction for the last ten years, perhaps that’s not the worst strategy. I’d lay even odds that he’ll be calling himself a liberal within five. He’s already, regrettably, a better one than many who do so, even if he needs a better scorecard for telling the players.
“I’m the last person in the world to defend Obama ‘reflexively’”
I wasn’t speaking of Obama, but those pursuing a “camel’s nose” strategy (toward monopsony – aka single payer). It’s unclear where he stands on the matter, as on much else. He showed a remarkable ability to articulate (social) conservative arguments during the campaign (if only to disagree – the recognition alone was a large part of his success), but I’d guess he’s only now discovering the existence of principled libertarian affirmative ideas, as opposed to anti-progressive ones, as the political lay of the land forces him to confront them. Given his mother’s experience with micro-lending, he may find some things there he can work with.
Do you disagree that progressive opposition to the bill was soothed by promises of further moves in the monopsony direction, or at least a Cloward-Pivenish inevitability of moves in that direction, regardless of intention?
April 24, 2010, 11:32 pmDesiderius says:
LM,
“And the most prominent recent political neo’s (neo-nazism, neo-fascism, and yes, to some extent neo-conservatism) have indeed tainted “neo” with sinister connotations in the popular mind.”
Maybe I missed all the neo-nazi representatives that have been elected to Congress recently. Such sleight of hand is below your normal standards. I may disagree with much that passes for neo-conservatism these days, but I’m a big fan of neo-liberalism, and have noted who uses the term as a slur. I think you misplace the source of the taint, as well as overestimating its popularity.
April 24, 2010, 11:35 pmMark Field says:
Yeah, I’d disagree with this. I think those who opposed it from the left eventually realized this was all they could get and the issue was too important. Plus, there’s no doubt that the sheer desire to see Republicans lose was a motivator. I don’t think anyone has expectations of single payer in the near future, nor do I think any promises or even hints were made in that direction. There probably are quite a few who expect a public option is inevitable.
Personally, I’m skeptical of the bill’s overall benefits, though there are certainly clauses I support. OTOH, it never was an issue I could claim much expertise on, so I could be wrong about lots of things when it comes to the bill and the issue generally.
Just in general, btw, I’m not much of a believer in the idea that policies will move to a specific conclusion if we just take a step in that direction. Life is too random for that; if anything I’d say the tide is running against the sort of government involvement necessary for a single payer system.
I do favor steps in the right direction nevertheless, at least on those rare occasions when I can see that direction through the underbrush. Long before we get there, though, I expect someone else will come along and convince everyone that the right direction is not exactly where I thought it was. And off they’ll go….
April 25, 2010, 12:20 amleo marvin says:
Des,
You may have misunderstood what I meant by “prominent.” I was talking public recognition, not power. Yes, we know neo-liberalism is an influential “ism” in world affairs, and neo-nazism hardly registers, but I’ll bet public awareness of the term “neo-nazi” dwarfs that of “neo-liberal,” at least in the U.S. If you re-read my comment I think you’ll see that’s the only metric that’s relevant for what I was driving at.
April 25, 2010, 12:35 amleo marvin says:
By the way, I agree that many who do know what neo-liberalism is oppose it, and most of them are on the left (though many are also anarchists, so are they left or right?). But so what? My point was just that whether it’s rational or not, and whatever the source, “neo” has sinister connotations for a lot of people. Adding “neo-liberal” to those I mentioned just reinforces the point.
April 25, 2010, 12:56 amDesiderius says:
MarkField,
“if anything I’d say the tide is running against the sort of government involvement necessary for a single payer system.”
I’m curious for your empirical evidence of that tide. In the corners of the world I’ve stumbled into recently, the tide seems regrettably strong in the other direction. The regret being that there are so few Mark Fields to oversee such involvement, and so much overseeing that would need doing.
April 25, 2010, 1:03 amDesiderius says:
LM,
“anarchists, so are they left or right?”
The fallacy that creates the confusion is that concentrated power is progressive. Given that it demonstrably is not, they’re left; not that they’re very effective, as their attacks, fueled by that fallacy, often target more progressive liberals.
April 25, 2010, 1:09 amDesiderius says:
LM,
““neo” has sinister connotations for a lot of people”
Those sinister connotations didn’t come out of thin air, and I don’t think those working to create them are as liberal, or truly progressive, as you believe.
April 25, 2010, 1:12 amleo marvin says:
I don’t understand why that follows.
Again I don’t completely follow so I can’t be sure, but you seem to know something I don’t about what I believe.
April 25, 2010, 2:01 amDesiderius says:
LM,
“Again I don’t completely follow so I can’t be sure, but you seem to know something I don’t about what I believe.”
As a smart man I knew once said, “As a smart man once said, ‘I think you’re at one level of abstraction too high.’.”
You stated your belief that neo bore sinister connotations in the popular mind. I’d say it bears unpopular connotations in the popular mind presently, as is perhaps inevitable as long as that mind views itself as having superpowers, and unique ones at that. Why fix what ain’t broken?
Well, if we ain’t broken, at least we’re broke, and that’s close enough for government work.
As for the sinister connotations, they may be popular among the set that sees concepts like free enterprise as mere code words, or thinks social justice is just an excuse to create a dependency culture vote machine, but the people I know who are stirred by such concepts are just trying to make sense of a crazy world and do their best to improve it. You strike me as part of the latter set, not the former.
“I don’t understand why that follows.”
In the harsh light of day, my response there seems about twelve levels too abstract. Let’s just say that like my rich students who favor the droopy drawers look, only way more pathetic and slightly more dangerous, today’s anarchists tend to be the spoiled spoiling for a fight. They don’t rise to the level of left or right, let alone to the forward or above the best reach.
April 25, 2010, 9:34 amDesiderius says:
MarkField,
Back on topic.
April 25, 2010, 10:07 amMark Field says:
It’s more a sense of the zeitgeist than anything based on evidence. But the fact that single-payer was a non-starter in the health care debates, combined with the modesty of the stimulus package (and it’s form) and similar issues (banking crisis) all lead me in that direction.
Sorry, but I can’t get the Reason article to load.
April 25, 2010, 10:47 amDesiderius says:
On the off chance that there is anyone still here, I want to make clear that I recognize that while tweaking the stereotypes of one’s own is good fun, doing so with the stereotypes of another, such as here, is bad form, and while I hail from a (two millenia) long line of Jewish wannabes, I am not myself a Jew, no matter how deep my philosemitism.
Sincerest (seriously) apologies if I caused offense. Feel free to make fun of hillbillies like yours truly until the cows come home, as long as you share my warm regards for the subject of your fun.
April 25, 2010, 11:04 pmleo marvin says:
Des, when I made that joke Goldberg’s Judaism was the farthest thing from my mind. I didn’t make the connection until you just pointed it out. So no, I wasn’t tweaking my own stereotype. If that had crossed my mind I wouldn’t have made the joke, not because I’m averse to self-tweaking, but because reading it in this light I can see how it might imply you were hinting at the stereotype with your own joke. You obviously intended nothing of the sort, so I apologize if I inadvertently gave that impression.
April 26, 2010, 3:05 amleo marvin says:
As for the comment you linked to, that sort of joke would only bother me coming from someone whose intentions I had reason to doubt, which doesn’t include you. In any event, in this case I was the one who (inadvertently) introduced the stereotype, so I don’t see how you can be faulted for continuing the joke.
April 26, 2010, 3:25 amDesiderius says:
You didn’t introduce the stereotype, I did, although I originally meant to riff off the name (mountain of gold), the sports sterotype was too tempting to pass over, given the previous lines of banter.
April 26, 2010, 7:37 amleo marvin says:
My saying he robs widows for money didn’t introduce the stereotype? If your preceding quip (i.e., that he does it for sport) conforms to a stereotype, it’s too subtle for me. And you were defending him, not attacking. Anyway, Kirk Douglas is Jewish, so I’m Sparticus.
April 26, 2010, 4:49 pmDesiderius says:
The only thing worse than explaining a joke is explaining a joke one wishes one hadn’t made, and evidently fell flat anyway.
Especially egregious since the best of all-time played his college ball in my backyard.
April 26, 2010, 9:19 pmTed says:
How come the Ryder truck was filmed being parked near a US army base?:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/OK/TRUCK/truck.html
What about McVeigh’s so called disappearance in 1992?:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2006/181206mcveighvideo.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtrrc0-JFqY
May 18, 2010, 1:57 pm