By Dylan Hales
Readers of this blog have probably realized that I have a pretty deep contempt for the phony libertarianism that has centered around Reason magazine in recent years. While I am not a strict libertarian, and have grave disagreements with certain aspects of the Austrian school, at the end of the day I see myself as being more-or-less on the same team as Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul. If nothing else their calls for a return to the Gold Standard and a truly non-interventionist foreign policy make them one of the only serious and radical intellectual movements in American life today. Reason on the other hand claims the libertarian mantle, but spends most its time obsessing over things like the so called "right" to have an abortion and other liberal identity politics issues.
While I am more culturally sympathetic to the Reason crowd than I am to the good folks at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, I am also interested in building working political coalitions and generally am uninterested in trying to impose my comparative libertinism on Catholics, snake handlers or Orthodox Jews. Like both Gore Vidal and Pat Buchanan, I am more than willing to call a cease fire in the culture wars. Let Branson be Branson and Manhattan be Manhattan. This seems a sane position to me and I live in a city that at least in theory does not share many of my cultural dispositions (it is worth noting that one of the reasons I support this retreat to human scale theory on the cultural wars is because I think eccentrics and minorities would actually be MORE protected in such an enviornment, as the backlash would be less severe and coordinated than it is now..but that is another post).
Taking all of the above into account, readers, friends and enemies may remember a piece I wrote on a series of Reason magazine hit pieces written on the Ron Paul campaign. In it I noted that the anti-beltway, populism of the Paul campaign and it's willingness to actually appeal to well adjusted middle americans was the primary reason that Reason's newest editor Matt Welch could not stomach its successes (as limited as I admit they were). The Welch's of the world are urbanites and backbenchers of the managerial elite. The last thing they want is Iowa evangelicals or Montana "gun nuts" having a say in the national political process. It is particularly offensive to them that these people would identify with a candidate known as a "libertarian", an ideology which to them has more to do with enjoying the work of Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Heinlein than it does with monetary policy or opposition to perpetual war.
Enter antiwar.com's Jusin Raimondo. Raimondo of course is something of a historian of the Old Right and the Libertarian movement in general. He is also a lifelong opponent of the warfare state and the quasi-libertarian apologists for it that have taken over certain wings of the Cato Institute, Reason magazine, et. In his recent piece for the takimag website, Raimondo rips into Welch and Reason in much the same manner I did a few weeks back. Here is a sample:
"Welch isn’t just a liberal, he’s a boringly typical representative of the species who responds with knee-jerk irrationality when confronted with people like Joe McCarthy, Pat Buchanan, and anyone who might be characterized as a right-wing populist. He feigns support for the Paul campaign, in spite of the fact that it sprang from – and owes its success to—this very same right-wing populist sentiment, which has always been the core of Paul’s national constituency."
"Welch hates Paul—and McCarthy, and Buchanan—for the same reasons the neocons hate populism in all its forms: it’s those right-wing yahoos making trouble again, disturbing the placid waters of the Washington Consensus. The neocons like to have faux-“libertarians” of Welch’s (and Nick Gillespie’s) ilk around, much as royal personages keep court jesters: to entertain them with displays of libertarianism as an intellectual game, and not a serious political philosophy with real roots in the country. That’s why Paul has built a genuine mass movement, and Reason magazine has well under 50,000 subscribers—and can’t get along without massive subsidies from numerous neocon foundations."
Raimondo as usual is spot on. While I could toot my own horn for posting my own piece first (toot, toot), Justin's is an awesome expose of Welch himself and the thoroughly liberal mentality that has taken over this wing of the libertarian movement. While I have no problem identifying myself as both a leftist, libertarian and a conservative, I have never been and never will be a liberal. The illogic of the Matt Welch's of the world is a perfect example of why I won't ever be one, and I thank Raimondo for yet another job well done.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
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4 comments:
Dylan,
You wrote:
> Like both Gore Vidal and Pat Buchanan, I am more than willing to call a cease fire in the culture wars
I’m afraid you’ve locked on to the main issue for the “cosmotarians/Beltwaytarians.”
Their complaints with Ron Paul over, say, immigration are not sufficient to explain their antipathy. But, what has come through, over and over again, was that Paul and his supporters are not sufficiently “cosmopolitan.”
This, too, is rather strange. A lot of us on the Ron Paul side of the fence are, after all, a good deal more cosmopolitan than almost any of the “cosmotarians.” I married into a Chinese immigrant family; my wife and I have three doctoral degrees between us. My kids and I are learning Mandarin Chinese. My wife and I have traveled abroad numerous times. We’re not religiously conservative: indeed our familial religious backgrounds are about as diverse as one could want – Buddhist, Catholic, Confucian, and Southern Baptist. And, I’m even the parent staying home with the kids – what the feminists have been telling us guys to do for so long!
We’re the very model of a modern cosmopolitan family.
I think that what the cosmotarians are really complaining about is that Ron Paul is what used to be called a “solid citizen”: he had a very successful career that required a great deal of preparation and hard work, he successfully raised a family, he is still married to his first wife, and he even seems to be comfortable in a coat and tie.
Aside from the coat and tie (personally, I hate ties!), none of this could conceivably count as provincial, non-cosmopolitan behavior. Indeed, my immigrant Chinese in-laws are even keener on professional success, marital fidelity, etc. than most American “rednecks.”
But, I fear, Ron Paul’s exhibiting of these traits, what most people from cultures around the world would consider virtues, seems to be taken as a severe affront by the “cosmotarians.”
And, I suppose, in a way, it really is an affront to them. After all, to behave virtuously in front of people who decline to be virtuous is to implicitly reproach them, even if one says nothing explicitly. To twist a phrase, resentment is the compliment vice pays to virtue.
I’ve only known a few of the Beltwaytarians personally (e.g., I knew Ed Crane some years ago), but this does fit what I know of them and of many less well-known libertarians of the same ilk whom I have known very well personally.
And, it seems unlikely that any amount of rational discussion will change their perspective on this. Self-identity has been central to politics for a very long time, and Ron Paul and people like him are a reproach to the self-image of the cosmotarians.
Those of us on the Rockwell-Ron Pall side of the split do not seem to feel this way. Raimondo, for example, has always been quite public about being gay (I knew Justin back around 1980, and he was “out of the closet” even then). None of us “paleo-libertarians” seem to be bothered by this.
Perhaps the reason is that we are secure enough in our self-identity that Raimondo’s being gay simply does not matter to us. I am, after all, quite certain I am not gay, and I therefore just do not care that some of my friends and relatives happen to be gay.
The cosmotarians seem to be a lot more insecure about their self-identity, and, I think, can therefore never be comfortable associating closely with ordinary Americans. In a very real sense, the “cosmopolitan libertarians” are not cosmopolitan at all but are far, far more provincial than the average American.
All the best,
Dave Miller in Sacramento
I liked his post. I think he defends the letters a little too much rather than making it clear that Paul never wrote it in the first place, but other than that I like his attacks on Reason and Cato.
Now, I am moving to LA and might intern for Reason, but it seems more and more often that they are less reliable to learn the ways of libertarianism.
There should be a new magazine. TAC is awesome, The New Individualist is a neoconservative version of libertarianism, and Reason is more concerned about the rights of transsexuals than the war in Iraq.
"Perhaps the reason is that we are secure enough in our self-identity that Raimondo’s being gay simply does not matter to us. I am, after all, quite certain I am not gay, and I therefore just do not care that some of my friends and relatives happen to be gay."
"The cosmotarians seem to be a lot more insecure about their self-identity, and, I think, can therefore never be comfortable associating closely with ordinary Americans. In a very real sense, the “cosmopolitan libertarians” are not cosmopolitan at all but are far, far more provincial than the average American."
All of this is absolutely true. Though I don't talk about it on this blog much, I was raised by a Catholic Worker admiring, quasi-anarchist mother and a midwestern agrarian populist father. My godfather is a gay man and I was aware of this from the age of seven or eight (possibly earlier..it never seemed strange to me). My whole family is filled with intellectuals and in my formative years I attached myself to the punk rock/hardcore scene. By all accounts I am a "culturally permissive" person, which in theory makes me a "cosmopolitan" guy.
On the other hand I am not interested in imposing my culture on others who are more traditionalist in nature then I am. There are a lot of reasons for this, but no doubt one of them is that I know who I am and don't feel threatened by Family Farming Southern Baptist..in fact I quite admire them for being who they are and defending their values against the Power Elite.
I respond to Raimondo & Welch here.
I remember Steve Horwitz of The Austrian Economists said he couldn't support Paul because he was insufficiently cosmpolitan, and Pete Boettke agreed, but they were otherwise rather favorable to Paul and have been consistently anti-war & anti-Fed.
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