Tom’s Big Picture

A great analysis of the decline of paleolibertarianism at LewRockwell dot com:

vdare.com/misc/080514_pendleton.htm

I can sometimes barely stand to read their reactionary blog anymore.

My take: Lew Rockwell, like Paul, is at heart an autistic libertarian with no loyalty to flesh-and-blood people, just his pet abstractions of liberty and limited government. Problem is that those abstractions, while worthy, can only be sustained by certain flesh-and-blood people. A foundation of European stock seems to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for liberty-respecting government.

After the 1994 Republican revolution, Rockwell thought that right-wing populism might provide a vehicle for his abstractions. But when the Heartland united behind Bush after 9/11, and Bush subsequently abused that trust to advance the Likud Party’s foreign policy agenda, Rockwell was horrified at the consequences. And on that I partially agree, though I am not as morally outraged. Whether it’s Saddam or U.S. troops, the people of Iraq are probably predestined to live under some sort of occupation since they are incapable of functional self-government and enjoy too many natural resources to be left alone in their squalor. If we’d just take their oil and stop building bridges and schools that they will blow up when we leave, the whole enterprise might at least break even and not ruin us.

So Rockwell writes an essay after the 2004 election titled “Red State Fascism” where he abandons the right wing and seeks an alliance with the anti-globalist Left. As a pragmatic ideologue, he’s simply trying another strategy. Since Ron Paul never even came close to the electoral success of Buchanan, it looks like a failed one.

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