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For The Record  

FTR #758 The Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook, Part 5: Dramatis Personae, Part 5 (Deep Fifth Column)

Lis­ten: MP3

 

Side 1  Side 2  (Note that the show is misiden­ti­fied as “Eddie the Friend­ly Spook, Part 4: Drama­tis Per­son­ae, Part 4”–it is actu­al­ly part five.)

Intro­duc­tion: The pro­gram begins with a Bill Moy­ers op-ed piece, in which he cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fies the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic process being man­i­fest­ed by the GOP as seces­sion. We we have seen, the milieux of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook [Snow­den], Ron Paul and the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment. The lat­ter not only jus­ti­fies African-Amer­i­can slav­ery dur­ing the years pri­or to the end of the Civ­il War, but favors a “re-seces­sion” of the South­ern states.

Like Alex Karp (CEO of Palan­tir, the com­pa­ny that appar­ent­ly makes the PRISM soft­ware at the cen­ter of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s “dis­clo­sures”), Hans Her­mann-Hoppe was a stu­dent of Juer­gen Haber­mas, dis­cussed in FTR #757. Like Ron Paul, Snow­den’s Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice and the man whose super PAC was financed pri­mar­i­ly by chief Palan­tir investor Peter Thiel, Hans Her­mann-Hoppe is a dar­ling of the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute.

The von Mis­es Insti­tute also has a tan­gi­ble pro-monar­chist bent, with par­tic­u­lar favor shown toward the Hab­s­burg dynasty and its suc­ces­sors.

A paper which presents a “Hop­pean analy­sis” was pub­lished through the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute’s web­site. It extols Liecht­en­stein as an ide­al exam­ple of “lib­er­tar­i­an” val­ues. As we have seen in FTR #530, Liecht­en­stein was home to many of the Al-Taqwa relat­ed firms that were deeply involved in the fund­ing of the 9/11 attacks. One of those fronts was the Asat Trust, which was head­ed up by Mar­tin Wachter, a dis­tant rel­a­tive of the rul­ing fam­i­ly of Liecht­en­stein. As we saw in FTR #536, Liecht­en­stein is a lean, mean, mon­ey-laun­der­ing machine, with three cor­po­rate fronts for each of its 30,000 cit­i­zens.

Liecht­en­stein’s roy­al fam­i­ly is very close to the Hab­s­burgs, whose UNPO inclines in the direc­tion of the breakup of the Unit­ed States. (That would, of course, be delight­ful to the neo-Con­fed­er­ates of the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute.)

After a review of Hitler’s speech to the Indus­try Club of Dus­sel­dorf, the pro­gram high­lights the pro­found sim­i­lar­i­ty between the views of Hans Her­mann-Hoppe and those expressed in Hitler’s sem­i­nal address.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Hitler’s view that democ­ra­cy auto­mat­i­cal­ly leads to com­mu­nism; Hitler’s opin­ion that the pol­i­tics of per­son­al­i­ty and achieve­ment trumped a need for democ­ra­cy, which he viewed as a mob-beast; Hoppe’s view of democ­ra­cy as “mob rule;” Hoppe’s con­tempt for uni­ver­sal health care, some­thing which clear­ly res­onates with the GOP fanat­ics hold­ing the U.S. gov­ern­ment hostage.

1. The pro­gram begins with a Bill Moy­ers op-ed piece, in which he cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fies the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic process being man­i­fest­ed by the GOP as seces­sion. We we have seen, the milieux of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook [Snow­den], Ron Paul and the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment. The lat­ter not only jus­ti­fies African-Amer­i­can slav­ery dur­ing the years pri­or to the end of the Civ­il War, but favors a “re-seces­sion” of the South­ern states.

“Let’s Call The Shut­down What It Is: Seces­sion By Anoth­er Means” by Bill Moy­ers; TPM Cafe: Opin­ion; 10/08/2013.

Repub­li­cans have now lost three suc­ces­sive elec­tions to con­trol the Sen­ate, and they’ve lost the last two pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Nonethe­less, they fought tooth and nail to kill Pres­i­dent Obama’s health care ini­tia­tive. They lost that fight, but with the cor­po­rate wing of Democ­rats, they man­aged to bend it toward pri­vate inter­ests.

So, we should be clear on this: Oba­macare, as it is known, is deeply flawed. Big sub­si­dies to the health insur­ance indus­try, a bonan­za for lob­by­ists, no pub­lic option and, as the New York Times report­ed this week, “Mil­lions of Poor Are Left Uncov­ered by Health Law” — large­ly because states con­trolled by Repub­li­cans refused to expand Med­ic­aid.

[...]

Despite what they say, Oba­macare is only one of their tar­gets. Before they will allow the gov­ern­ment to reopen, they demand employ­ers be enabled to deny birth con­trol cov­er­age to female employ­ees; they demand Oba­ma cave on the Key­stone pipeline; they demand the watch­dogs over cor­po­rate pol­lu­tion be muz­zled and the big bad reg­u­la­tors of Wall Street sent home. Their ran­som list goes on and on. The debt ceil­ing is next. They would have the gov­ern­ment default on its oblig­a­tions and respon­si­bil­i­ties.

When the pres­i­dent refused to buck­le to this extor­tion, they threw their tantrum. Like the die-hards of the racist South a cen­tury and a half ago, who would destroy the union before giv­ing up their slaves, so would these peo­ple burn down the place, sink the ship.

[...]

At least, let’s name this for what it is: sab­o­tage of the demo­c­ra­tic process. Seces­sion by anoth­er means.

2. Like Alex Karp (CEO of Palan­tir, the com­pa­ny that makes the PRISM soft­ware at the cen­ter of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s “dis­clo­sures”, their dis­claimers to the con­trary notwith­stand­ing), Hans Her­mann-Hoppe was a stu­dent of Juer­gen Haber­mas, dis­cussed in FTR #757. Like Ron Paul, Snow­den’s Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice and the man whose super PAC was financed pri­mar­i­ly by chief Palan­tir investor Peter Thiel, Hans Her­mann-Hoppe is a dar­ling of the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute.

Explic­it­ly opposed to democ­ra­cy, explic­it­ly in favor of the Con­fed­er­a­cy, inex­tri­ca­bly linked to the pro-seces­sion­ist neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment and favor­ably dis­posed toward slav­ery itself, the von Mis­es Insti­tute is the source for the eco­nom­ic ide­ol­o­gy of Ron Paul, his son Sen­a­tor Rand Paul and Eddie the Friend­ly Spook.

The von Mis­es Insti­tute also has a tan­gi­ble pro-monar­chist bent, with par­tic­u­lar favor shown toward the Hab­s­burg dynasty and its suc­ces­sors.

A paper which presents a “Hop­pean analy­sis” was pub­lished through the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute’s web­site. It extols Liecht­en­stein as an ide­al exam­ple of “lib­er­tar­i­an” val­ues. As we have seen in FTR #530, Liecht­en­stein was home to many of the Al-Taqwa relat­ed firms that were deeply involved in the fund­ing of the 9/11 attacks. One of those fronts was the Asat Trust, which was head­ed up by Mar­tin Wachter, a dis­tant rel­a­tive of the rul­ing fam­i­ly of Liecht­en­stein. As we saw in FTR #536, Liecht­en­stein is a lean, mean, mon­ey-laun­der­ing machine, with three cor­po­rate fronts for each of its 30,000 cit­i­zens.

Liecht­en­stein’s roy­al fam­i­ly is very close to the Hab­s­burgs, whose UNPO inclines in the direc­tion of the breakup of the Unit­ed States. (That would, of course, be delight­ful to the neo-Con­fed­er­ates of the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute.)

 “Free­dom and Pros­per­i­ty in Liecht­en­stein: A Hop­pean Analy­sis” by Andrew Young;Jour­nal of Lib­er­tar­i­an Stud­ies; Vol­ume 22 (2010); pp. 274, 291.

. . . . The work of econ­o­mist and polit­i­cal philoso­pher Hans-Her­mann Hoppe, specif­i­cal­ly his sem­i­nal book Democracy—The God That Failed: The Eco­nom­ics and Pol­i­tics of Monar­chy, Democ­ra­cy, and Nat­ur­al Order gives us a frame­work for ana­lyz­ing Liechtenstein’s devel­op­ment. In his
. . . .

. . . . Liechtenstein’s free­dom and pros­per­i­ty also gives lib­er­tar­i­ans an idea of what may be the most tol­er­a­ble form of state in exis­tence today. This study sug­gests that, if there must be a state in its mod­ern, demo­c­ra­t­ic form—a return to the old regime, in which the state is the monarch’s prop­er­ty, seems impossible—then the most tol­er­a­ble form is a con­sti­tu­tion­al monar­chy, with the monarch retain­ing exten­sive pow­ers to dis­cour­age dem­a­goguery. The state should also be restrict­ed to a small area (in both pop­u­la­tion and ter­ri­to­ry), giv­ing politi­cians lit­tle incen­tive to expand the state. Under such a sit­u­a­tion, as Liecht­en­stein shows us, monar­chy is, in the words of Charles Mau­r­ras, “the least evil and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of some­thing good.” . . . .

3. The pro­gram fea­tures an excerpt from Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M11, Side 3. High­light­ing Hitler’s Speech before the Indus­try Club of Dus­sel­dorf in 1932, the broad­cast under­scores Hitler’s point that democ­ra­cy was counter-evo­lu­tion­ary and led to com­mu­nism. The essence of Hitler’s argu­ment was that peo­ple of wealth and means were clear­ly superior–hence their ele­vat­ed eco­nom­ic sta­tus.

If “infe­ri­or” peo­ple were allowed to run the polit­i­cal process, they would pro­duce a degen­er­a­tion of soci­ety, by struc­tur­ing things after their own fash­ion.

4. Com­pare what Hitler said in his Indus­try Club of Dus­sel­dorf speech with the doc­trine espoused by Hans Her­man-Hoppe. In addi­tion to his overt con­tempt for democ­ra­cy, Hoppe favors a qua­si-eugen­ics view­point eeri­ly rem­i­nis­cent of the Nazi eugeni­cists and their intel­lec­tu­al and polit­i­cal back­ers in the West­ern elites.

Note, also, Hoppe’s fierce oppo­si­tion to uni­ver­sal health care. It is no mys­tery that Hoppe’s views would res­onate among the “Paulis­tini­ans.”

In addi­tion, Hoppe favors small, idio­syn­crat­ic states, not unlike the land­scape favored by Peter Thiel and oth­er seast­ead­ers, as dis­cussed in FTR #744.

“Anar­cho-Fas­cism: the Lib­er­tar­i­an Endgame” by “Downeast­Dem”; Dai­ly Kos; 6/15/2010.

. . . .But most of Pro­fes­sor Hoppe’s ideas on the evils of democ­ra­cy can be found in his book Democ­ra­cy: The God that Failed, large chunks of which can be accessed via Google Books. Democ­ra­cy: the God that Failed starts out with a revi­sion­ist analy­sis of World War I. If only, Hoppe writes, the Unit­ed States had not entered the war the Euro­pean monar­chies would have been pre­served. As men­tioned ear­li­er, Hoppe is an anar­cho-fas­cist where the ide­al sys­tem would be a con­fed­er­a­tion of small pri­vate­ly-owned units con­trolled by “nat­ur­al elites” — i.e. Her­ren­men­schen. But until anar­chy is pos­si­ble, a monar­chy is far supe­ri­or to a democ­ra­cy:

Democ­ra­cy, Pro­fes­sor Hoppe tells his read­ers (and pre­sum­ably his stu­dents at UNLV) is noth­ing more than mob-rule, and has result­ed in a seri­ous decline in civ­i­liza­tion:

The mass of peo­ple, as La Boetie and Mis­es recog­nised, always and every­where con­sists of “brutes”, “dullards”, and “fools”, eas­i­ly delud­ed and sunk into habit­u­al sub­mis­sion. Thus today, inun­dat­ed from ear­ly child­hood with gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­da in pub­lic schools and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions by legions of pub­licly cer­ti­fied intel­lec­tu­als, most peo­ple mind­less­ly accept and repeat non­sense such as that democ­ra­cy is self-rule and gov­ern­ment is of, by, and for the peo­ple. (Democ­ra­cy: The God that Failed)

Even worse than the sta­tist cap­i­tal­ism of the Unit­ed States is Euro­pean social democ­ra­cy and its myr­i­ad social pro­grams. Uni­ver­sal health care, for exam­ple, is espe­cial­ly evil accord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Hoppe:

As a result of sub­si­diz­ing the malin­ger­ers, the neu­rotics, the care­less, the alco­holics, the drug addicts, the Aids-infect­ed, and the phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly chal­lenged through insur­ance reg­u­la­tion and com­pul­so­ry health insur­ance, there will be more ill­ness, malin­ger­ing, neu­roti­cism, care­less­ness, alco­holism, drug addic­tion, Aids infec­tion, and phys­i­cal and men­tal retar­da­tion. (Democ­ra­cy: The God that Failed)

Democ­rats, in this rad­i­cal lib­er­tar­i­an phi­los­o­phy, are no bet­ter than com­mu­nists, since democ­rats rely on sta­tist solu­tions that are anti­thet­i­cal to the “nat­ur­al order” and the cult of pri­vate prop­er­ty. So Pro­fes­sor Hoppe has the fol­low­ing words of advice for the “nat­ur­al elites”, the Her­ren­men­schen, who would build his anar­cho-fas­cist utopia: . . .

 

 

 

Discussion

5 comments for “FTR #758 The Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook, Part 5: Dramatis Personae, Part 5 (Deep Fifth Column)”

  1. Green­wald is head­ing up a new media ven­ture fund­ed by Ebay CEO Pierre Omid­yar. I post­ed a link to a sto­ry about this on anoth­er one of Dav­e’s posts (to be hon­est I for­got which one. It’s “Hades” being old). Any­way, here an inter­est­ing item in a sto­ry from the Atlantic Wire:

    Until reports named Omid­yar as Green­wald’s backer, spec­u­la­tion on pos­si­ble investors includ­ed Face­book sup­port­er Peter Thiel and the $40 mil­lion fund­ing round Vox Media just amassed for no par­tic­u­lar rea­son.

    Here is the link to the Atlantic sto­ry:

    http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/10/glenn-greenwald-leave-guardian-new-media-outlet/70575/

    Hmm­mm. Is it pos­si­ble things are NOT as they present them­selves? Hmm­mm.....

    Posted by Kathleen | October 17, 2013, 1:53 pm
  2. @Kathleen–

    Your spec­u­la­tion about Thiel isn’t far off.

    Omid­yar isn’t the CEO of Ebay, he’s the founder. Ebay bought Pay­Pal about 10 years ago, which places him in the same milieu as Peter Thiel.

    Thiel is the “capo” of the “Pay­Pal Mafia” as they are known. Thiel was one of the founders of Pay­pal.

    A recent CEO of Ebay is Meg Whit­man, now CEO of Hewlett-Packard.

    Same string, dif­fer­ent yo yo.

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | October 18, 2013, 4:35 pm
  3. With a grow­ing chunk of the GOP field now advo­cat­ing for repeal of the 14th amend­ment in order to con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly allow the depor­ta­tion of chil­dren born in the US to undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants, here’s an exam­ple of the kind of “solu­tions” we should expect to fol­low:

    Media­Mat­ters
    A Radio Host Jan Mick­el­son: Enslave Undoc­u­ment­ed Immi­grants Unless They Leave
    Mick­el­son, Who Recent­ly Host­ed Walk­er, Fio­r­i­na, Car­son, And San­to­rum, Asked, “What’s Wrong With Slav­ery?”
    Blog ››› 8/19/2015 ››› DANIEL ANGSTER & SALVATORE COLLELUORI

    Iowa radio host and influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive king­mak­er Jan Mick­el­son unveiled an immi­gra­tion plan that would make undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants who don’t leave the coun­try after an allot­ted time “prop­er­ty of the state,” ask­ing, “What’s wrong with slav­ery?” when a caller crit­i­cized his plan.

    On the August 17 edi­tion of his radio show, Mick­el­son announced that he had a plan to dri­ve undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants out of Iowa that involved mak­ing those who don’t leave “prop­er­ty of the state” who are forced into “com­pelled labor,” like build­ing a wall on the US-Mex­i­can bor­der. Lis­ten (empha­sis added in tran­script):

    JAN MICKELSON: Now here is what would work. And I was asked by an immi­gra­tion open bor­der’s activist a cou­ple of weeks ago, how I would get all the ille­gals here in the state of Iowa to leave. “Are you going to call the police every time you find an ille­gal, are you going to round them up and put them in deten­tion cen­ters?”

    I said, “No you don’t have to do any of that stuff.”

    “Well you going to invite them to leave the coun­try and leave Iowa?”

    And I said, “Well, sort of.”

    “Well how you going to do it, Mick­el­son? You think you’re so smart. How would you get thou­sands of ille­gals to leave Iowa?”

    Well, I said, “Well if I want­ed to do that I would just put up some signs.”

    “Well what would the signs say?”

    I said, “Well I’d would put them on the end of the high­way, on west­ern part of the inter­state sys­tem, and I’d put them on the east­ern side of the state, right there on the inter­state sys­tem, and in the north on the Min­neso­ta bor­der, and on the south Kansas and Mis­souri bor­der and I would just say this: ‘As of this date’ — when­ev­er we decide to do this — ‘as of this date, 30–’ this is a total­ly arbi­trary num­ber, ’30 to 60 days from now any­one who is in the state of Iowa that who is not here legal­ly and who can­not demon­strate their legal sta­tus to the sat­is­fac­tion of the local and state author­i­ties here in the State of Iowa, become prop­er­ty of the State of Iowa.’ So if you are here with­out our per­mis­sion, and we have giv­en you two months to leave, and you’re still here, and we find that you’re still here after we we’ve giv­en you the dead­line to leave, then you become prop­er­ty of the State of Iowa. And we have a job for you. And we start using com­pelled labor, the peo­ple who are here ille­gal­ly would there­fore be owned by the state and become an asset of the state rather than a lia­bil­i­ty and we start invent­ing jobs for them to do.

    “Well how would you apply that log­ic to what Don­ald Trump is try­ing to do? Try­ing to get Mex­i­co to pay for the bor­der and for the wall?”

    “Same way. We say, ‘Hey, we are not going to make Mex­i­co pay for the wall, we’re going to invite the ille­gal Mex­i­cans and ille­gal aliens to build it. If you have come across the bor­der ille­gal­ly, again give them anoth­er 60-day guide­line, you need to go home and leave this juris­dic­tion, and if you don’t you become prop­er­ty of the Unit­ed States, and guess what? You will be build­ing a wall. We will com­pel your labor. You would belong to these Unit­ed States. You show up with­out an invi­ta­tion, you get to be an asset. You get to be a con­struc­tion work­er. Cool!’

    When a caller con­front­ed Mick­el­son and said his plan amount­ed to “slav­ery,” Mick­el­son replied, “What’s wrong with slav­ery?” Mick­el­son told the caller his plan was “moral,” “legal,” and “polit­i­cal­ly doable” and should be mod­eled after Mari­co­pa Coun­ty (Ari­zona) Sher­iff Joe Arpaio’s “tent vil­lage” (empha­sis added in tran­script):

    MICKELSON: So any­way back to the point. Put up a sign that says at the end of 60 days, if you are not here with our per­mis­sion, can’t prove your legal sta­tus, you become prop­er­ty of the state. And then we start to extort or exploit or inden­ture your labor. This is Fred. Good morn­ing Fred.

    CALLER: Hey good morn­ing, how are you?

    MICKELSON: I’m doing great.

    CALLER: Great. Well you caught me–I was up at 4 o’clock this morn­ing, I’m trav­el­ling from Tul­sa through Des Moines. I think I’ll stop by the state fair to see Car­ly and them, but your idea is clever on the face but it sounds an awful lot like slav­ery. I don’t think — I think it’ll go over like a lead bal­loon.

    MICKELSON: No, just read the Con­sti­tu­tion, Fred. What does the Con­sti­tu­tion say about slav­ery?

    CALLER: Well did­n’t we fix that in about 1865?

    MICKELSON: Yeah we sure did and I’m will­ing to live with their fix. What does the 13th Amend­ment say?

    CALLER: Well you know I don’t have my Con­sti­tu­tion in front of me and you know like I say, it sounds like a clever idea and maybe you can make it — put it in action, but I think the fall out would be so sig­nif­i­cant. And I, you know –

    MICKELSON: What would be the nature of the fall out?

    CALLER: Well I think every­body would believe it sounds like slav­ery?

    MICKELSON: Well, what’s wrong with slav­ery?

    CALLER: Well we know what’s wrong with slav­ery.

    MICKELSON: Well appar­ent­ly we don’t because when we allow mil­lions of peo­ple to come into the coun­try who aren’t here legal­ly and peo­ple who are here are inden­tured to those peo­ple to pay their bills, their edu­ca­tion of their kids, pay for their food, their food stamps, their med­ical bills, in some cas­es even sub­si­dize their hous­ing, and some­how the peo­ple who own the coun­try, who pay the bills, pay the tax­es, they get inden­tured to the new peo­ple who are not even sup­posed to be here. Isn’t that a lot like slav­ery?

    CALLER: Well you know, you’re singing my song; we’re all slaves today the way the gov­ern­ment is grow­ing -

    MICKELSON: If that’s the case, maybe it’s time to reverse the process. Isn’t this a per­fect­ly good time to do that?

    CALLER: Well that’ll swing the pen­du­lum back in a pret­ty broad swing and maybe too far and we may end up swing­ing back the oth­er way fur­ther left than we are right now. I take it about halfway Jan. I think it’s a clever idea, it’s worth throw­ing out there. It isn’t an easy top­ic -

    MICKELSON: No this is pret­ty sim­ple, actu­al­ly this is very sim­ple, what my solu­tion is moral and it’s legal. And I can’t think — and it’s also polit­i­cal­ly doable.

    CALLER: So are you going to house all these peo­ple who have cho­sen to be inden­tured?

    MICKELSON: Yes, yes, absolute­ly in a min­i­mal fash­ion. We would take a les­son from Sher­iff [Joe] Arpaio down in Ari­zona. Put up a tent vil­lage, we feed and water these new assets, we give them min­i­mal shel­ter, min­i­mal nutri­tion, and offer them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work for the ben­e­fit of the tax­pay­ers of the state of Iowa. All they have to do to avoid servi­tude is to leave.

    CALLER: [laugh­ing] Hey, good luck.

    MICKELSON: All right, thank you very much I appre­ci­ate it.

    CALLER: You bet. You bet.

    MICKELSON: You think I’m just pulling your leg. I am not.

    Mick­el­son has a his­to­ry of mak­ing racial­ly-charged, anti-immi­grant remarks but he also has a strong pull with con­ser­v­a­tive cau­cus vot­ers in Iowa. His influ­ence is so big that he recent­ly host­ed sev­er­al 2016 GOP can­di­dates on his show, includ­ing Car­ly Fio­r­i­na, Rick San­to­rum, and Ben Car­son dur­ing their vis­its to the Iowa State Fair. After Mick­el­son defend­ed his immi­grant-slave plan, Gov. Scott Walk­er (R‑WI) appeared on his show. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Mick­el­son’s immi­gra­tion plan did­n’t come up.

    “We would take a les­son from Sher­iff [Joe] Arpaio down in Ari­zona. Put up a tent vil­lage, we feed and water these new assets, we give them min­i­mal shel­ter, min­i­mal nutri­tion, and offer them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work for the ben­e­fit of the tax­pay­ers of the state of Iowa. All they have to do to avoid servi­tude is to leave.”
    It sounds like we might have to ditch more than just the 14th amend­ment if Iowa’s “king­mak­er” sees his vision come to fruition. So long, 8th Amend­ment! We hard­ly knew ye.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 19, 2015, 2:55 pm
  4. It’s worth not­ing that pro-Monar­chist/pro-slav­ery anar­cho-cap­i­tal­ist Hans Her­mann Hoppe char­ac­ter­ized Mur­ray Roth­bard, the god­fa­ther of anar­cho-cap­i­tal­ist lib­er­tar­i­an­ism, as his ide­o­log­i­cal men­tor and close friend. It’s some­thing espe­cial­ly worth not­ing this elec­tion sea­son since Mur­ry Roth­bard is sort of an ide­o­log­i­cal god­fa­ther of Don­ald Trump’s “Alt Right” super­fans too:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Where did Don­ald Trump get his racial­ized rhetoric? From lib­er­tar­i­ans.
    The inter­sec­tion of white nation­al­ism, the alt-right and Ron Paul

    By Matthew Sheffield
    Sep­tem­ber 2

    Hillary Clin­ton and her cam­paign have been going out of their way to make a sur­pris­ing argu­ment about Don­ald Trump: He’s not real­ly a Repub­li­can.

    At the Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­ven­tion, sev­er­al speak­ers said Trump rep­re­sent­ed a com­plete break from the con­ser­v­a­tive tra­di­tions of the GOP. Last month, Clin­ton deliv­ered a sim­i­lar mes­sage in a speech link­ing Trump to the white-nation­al­ist polit­i­cal move­ment known as the “alt-right.” “This is not con­ser­vatism as we have known it,” she assert­ed.

    Accord­ing to Clin­ton — and many con­ser­v­a­tive intel­lec­tu­als who oppose Trump — the con­spir­a­to­r­i­al, wink­ing-at-racists cam­paign he has been run­ning rep­re­sents a nov­el depar­ture from Repub­li­can pol­i­tics.

    That’s not quite true, though. Trump’s style and posi­tions — endors­ing and con­sort­ing with 9/11 truthers, pro­mot­ing online racists, using fake sta­tis­tics — draw on a now-obscure polit­i­cal strat­e­gy called “pale­olib­er­tar­i­an­ism,” which was once quite pop­u­lar among some Repub­li­cans, espe­cial­ly for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Ron Paul.

    For­mal­ly, Sen. Rand Paul (R‑Ky.) may be his father’s polit­i­cal heir. But there’s no ques­tion that the para­noid and semi-racial­ist mien fre­quent­ly favored by Trump orig­i­nates in the fevered swamps that the elder Paul dwelled in for decades. Most peo­ple who back Trump don’t do so for racist rea­sons, but it’s incred­i­ble how many of the same white nation­al­ists and con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists to whom Ron Paul once catered are now ardent Trump sup­port­ers. It’s because Trump and Paul speak the same lan­guage.

    Main­stream lib­er­tar­i­ans have been ago­niz­ing over this lega­cy among them­selves for some time, hop­ing that either the elder or younger Paul would defin­i­tive­ly denounce the movement’s racial­ist past, but no such speech has ever come. Instead, the pale­olib­er­tar­i­an strat­e­gy con­coct­ed decades ago as a way to push for min­i­mal gov­ern­ment threat­ens to replace right-wing lib­er­tar­i­an­ism with white nation­al­ism.

    * * *

    The fig­ure whose ideas uni­fy Pauline lib­er­tar­i­ans and today’s Trump­ists is the late Mur­ray Roth­bard, an econ­o­mist who co-found­ed the Cato Insti­tute and is wide­ly regard­ed as the cre­ator of lib­er­tar­i­an­ism.

    Nowa­days, many lib­er­tar­i­ans like to por­tray their ide­ol­o­gy as one that some­how tran­scends the left-right divide, but to Roth­bard, this was non­sense. Lib­er­tar­i­an­ism, he argued, was noth­ing more than a restate­ment of the beliefs of the “Old Right,” which res­olute­ly opposed the New Deal and any sort of for­eign inter­ven­tion in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. Many of its adher­ents, such as essay­ist H.L. Menck­en, espoused racist view­points, as well.

    As mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans such as Dwight Eisen­how­er and “New Right” Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives such as William F. Buck­ley became more influ­en­tial with­in the Repub­li­can Par­ty in the 1950s and ’60s, the future cre­ators of lib­er­tar­i­an­ism grav­i­tat­ed instead toward the work of sec­u­lar anti-com­mu­nist thinkers such as econ­o­mist Lud­wig von Mis­es and nov­el­ist Ayn Rand.

    There had always been some sym­pa­thy for racism and anti-Semi­tism among lib­er­tar­i­ans — the movement’s house mag­a­zine, Rea­son, ded­i­cat­ed an entire issue in 1976 to “his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism,” includ­ing Holo­caust revi­sion­ism. It also repeat­ed­ly ran arti­cles in defense of South Africa’s then-seg­re­ga­tion­ist gov­ern­ment (though by 2016, the mag­a­zine was run­ning arti­cles like “Don­ald Trump Enables Racism”). But it was Rothbard’s found­ing of the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute in 1982 that enabled the fledg­ling polit­i­cal move­ment to estab­lish affin­i­ty with the neo-Con­fed­er­ate Lost Cause move­ment.

    Almost imme­di­ate­ly after its cre­ation, the Mis­es Insti­tute (head­quar­tered in Auburn, Ala.) began pub­lish­ing crit­i­cism of “com­pul­so­ry inte­gra­tion,” attacks on Abra­ham Lin­coln and apolo­gia for Con­fed­er­ate lead­ers. Insti­tute schol­ars have also spo­ken to racist groups such as the League of the South. Roth­bard even pub­lished a chap­ter in his book “The Ethics of Lib­er­ty” in which he said that “the pure­ly free soci­ety will have a flour­ish­ing free mar­ket in chil­dren,” although he didn’t spec­i­fy the races of the chil­dren who might be sold.

    These and many oth­er con­tro­ver­sial views advo­cat­ed by Mis­es writ­ers make sense from a fanat­i­cal lib­er­tar­i­an view­point. But they also orig­i­nate in a polit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tion Roth­bard revealed in a 1992 essay lament­ing the defeat of Repub­li­can white nation­al­ist and for­mer Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke in the 1991 Louisiana governor’s race by a bipar­ti­san coali­tion.

    Expand­ing on themes raised two years ear­li­er by his long­time part­ner and friend Llewellyn “Lew” Rock­well, an edi­tor and fundrais­er for lib­er­tar­i­an caus­es, Roth­bard argued that Duke’s can­di­da­cy was vital­ly impor­tant because it made clear that the “old Amer­i­ca” had been over­thrown by “an updat­ed, twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry coali­tion of Throne and Altar” and its “State Church” of gov­ern­ment offi­cials, jour­nal­ists and social sci­en­tists.

    Besides com­mend­ing Duke as an exem­plar of the kind of can­di­date he was look­ing to sup­port, Roth­bard also invoked the “excit­ing” for­mer sen­a­tor Joe McCarthy of Wis­con­sin — not because of his eco­nom­ic views but because he was a brash pop­ulist prone to doing errat­ic things. Rothbard’s descrip­tion of McCarthy seems eeri­ly sim­i­lar to the cam­paign that Trump has been run­ning:

    “The fas­ci­nat­ing, the excit­ing, thing about Joe McCarthy was pre­cise­ly his ‘means’ — his right-wing pop­ulism: his will­ing­ness and abil­i­ty to reach out, to short-cir­cuit the pow­er elite: lib­er­als, cen­trists, the media, the intel­lec­tu­als, the Pen­ta­gon, Rock­e­feller Repub­li­cans, and reach out and whip up the mass­es direct­ly. ... With Joe McCarthy there was a sense of dynamism, of fear­less­ness, and of open-end­ed­ness, as if, whom would he sub­poe­na next?”

    To solve the prob­lem that few Amer­i­cans are inter­est­ed in small gov­ern­ment, Roth­bard argued that lib­er­tar­i­ans need­ed to align them­selves with peo­ple they might not like much in order to expand their num­bers. “Out­reach to the Red­necks” was need­ed to make com­mon cause with far-right Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives who hat­ed the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, dis­liked drugs and want­ed to crack down on crime.

    All of these pale­olib­er­tar­i­an posi­tions were offered in Duke’s 1990 Sen­ate cam­paign and 1991 guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paign. But they were also offered by anoth­er politi­cian Roth­bard admired: Ron Paul, the Lib­er­tar­i­an Party’s pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in 1988.

    Roth­bard and Paul had known and worked with each oth­er in the 1970s, when they came to know Rock­well. Rock­well would work close­ly with both men, serv­ing as Paul’s con­gres­sion­al chief of staff until he left to found the Mis­es Insti­tute with Roth­bard.

    Rock­well also was the edi­tor of a series of print­ed newslet­ters for both men in the ensu­ing decades. Paul’s pub­li­ca­tions became famous dur­ing his Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns. Their con­tro­ver­sial nature is no sur­prise, giv­en that Paul had coy­ly endorsed the pale­olib­er­tar­i­an strat­e­gy short­ly after it was devised.

    Sold under var­i­ous titles, the high­ly lucra­tive newslet­ters fre­quent­ly stoked racial fears, sim­i­lar to what Trump has been doing this year, though they went fur­ther — one even gave advice on using an unreg­is­tered gun to shoot “urban youth.” Anoth­er issue mocked black Amer­i­cans by propos­ing alter­na­tive names for New York City such as “Zooville” and “Rapetown,” while urg­ing black polit­i­cal demon­stra­tors to hold their protests “at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.”

    The pub­li­ca­tions also repeat­ed­ly pro­mot­ed the work of Jared Tay­lor, a white nation­al­ist writer and edi­tor who is today one of Trump’s most promi­nent alt-right back­ers. Arti­cles also fea­tured anti-Semit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and fre­quent rants against gay men.

    Paul lat­er said he didn’t write the newslet­ters. But regard­less of their author­ship, the image they cre­at­ed made him attrac­tive to white nation­al­ists. Those sup­port­ers weren’t numer­ous enough to get Paul the GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, how­ev­er, and pale­olib­er­tar­i­an­ism began fiz­zling out.

    In the past few years, how­ev­er, it’s been reborn as the alt-right, as a new gen­er­a­tion of lib­er­tar­i­ans dis­cov­ered their hid­den her­itage and began embrac­ing racism and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. Many alt-right writ­ers trace their roots to Roth­bard. As one of them, Gre­go­ry Hood, put it, pale­olib­er­tar­i­an the­o­ries about race and democ­ra­cy “helped lead to the emer­gence [of the] Alter­na­tive Right.” Rothbard’s call for “sov­er­eign nations based on race and eth­nic­i­ty” is very sim­i­lar to beliefs Trump’s alt-right sup­port­ers express today.

    In 2016, many, if not most, of the extrem­ists who for­mer­ly sup­port­ed Paul have ral­lied to Trump’s side. In 2007, Paul won an endorse­ment and a $500 cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion from Don Black, the own­er of Storm­front, a self-described “white pride” Web forum. Despite a tor­rent of crit­i­cism, Paul refused to return the mon­ey. This March, Black encour­aged his radio lis­ten­ers to vote for Trump, even if he wasn’t per­fect.

    ...

    After Rand Paul came to the Sen­ate in 2011, and as he even­tu­al­ly began plan­ning his own pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, there was some spec­u­la­tion that con­ser­v­a­tives might be enter­ing a “lib­er­tar­i­an moment.” Things didn’t turn out that way. Instead, the Amer­i­can right seems to have entered a pale­olib­er­tar­i­an moment.

    “Expand­ing on themes raised two years ear­li­er by his long­time part­ner and friend Llewellyn “Lew” Rock­well, an edi­tor and fundrais­er for lib­er­tar­i­an caus­es, Roth­bard argued that Duke’s can­di­da­cy was vital­ly impor­tant because it made clear that the “old Amer­i­ca” had been over­thrown by “an updat­ed, twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry coali­tion of Throne and Altar” and its “State Church” of gov­ern­ment offi­cials, jour­nal­ists and social sci­en­tists.

    That’s right, the ide­o­log­i­cal god­fa­ther of the “Alt Right” move­ment that’s bring­ing neo-Nazi memes into the main­stream, Mur­ray Roth­bard, was a co-founder of the Cato Insti­tute, the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute, and a big fan of David Duke’s polit­i­cal runs in 1990–91. What a shock­er. And one of the rea­sons he was so fond of Duke’s cam­paign was the num­ber of sim­i­lar­i­ties it had to Ron Paul’s 1988 Lib­er­tar­i­an bid:

    ...
    All of these pale­olib­er­tar­i­an posi­tions were offered in Duke’s 1990 Sen­ate cam­paign and 1991 guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paign. But they were also offered by anoth­er politi­cian Roth­bard admired: Ron Paul, the Lib­er­tar­i­an Party’s pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in 1988.
    ...

    So David Duke’s pri­or elec­toral bids were basi­cal­ly a rehash of Ron Paul’s bid a few years ear­li­er. And here were are, decades lat­er, talk­ing about how that very move­ment has over­tak­en the GOP. Again, what a shock­er.

    It’s all the kind of top­i­cal his­to­ry that rais­es a num­ber of dis­turb­ing ques­tions. So many dis­turb­ing ques­tions that hard to know where to start. So why not start with ques­tions about how best to set up flour­ish­ing free mar­kets for sell­ing chil­dren:

    ...
    Almost imme­di­ate­ly after its cre­ation, the Mis­es Insti­tute (head­quar­tered in Auburn, Ala.) began pub­lish­ing crit­i­cism of “com­pul­so­ry inte­gra­tion,” attacks on Abra­ham Lin­coln and apolo­gia for Con­fed­er­ate lead­ers. Insti­tute schol­ars have also spo­ken to racist groups such as the League of the South. Roth­bard even pub­lished a chap­ter in his book “The Ethics of Lib­er­ty” in which he said that “the pure­ly free soci­ety will have a flour­ish­ing free mar­ket in chil­dren,” although he didn’t spec­i­fy the races of the chil­dren who might be sold.
    ...

    So if it ever feels like the US in the process of sell­ing out the future, keep in mind that one of the philo­soph­i­cal guid­ing lights for the con­tem­po­rary far-right is a guy who thought a free mar­ket in chil­dren is required for a tru­ly free soci­ety. You can see why Hoppe and the Alt-Right love him so much.

    And now you know: The core inspi­ra­tions of the “Alt-Right” Trumpian super­fans isn’t lim­it­ed to Hitler. It also includes a guy who advo­cat­ed for a flour­ish­ing free mar­ket in sell­ing chil­dren.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 7, 2016, 6:09 pm
  5. @Pterrafractyl–

    Nev­er lose sight of the fact that Paul, Sr. is Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s and Julian Assange’s Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice.

    Alt.right, FACE!

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | September 8, 2016, 1:38 pm

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