In Defense of Lew Rockwell (Part 2)

In my first post, I responded to two major criticisms of Lew Rockwell that have surfaced in the libertarian movement, in part due to his alleged "racism" and his extreme radicalism.

And in my second post on Lew Rockwell, I intend to address several other criticisms regarding his libertarianism and his strategy. I intend to defend Lew again against certain attacks that have surfaced against his work in some libertarian circles, particularly in left-libertarian (or "cosmopolitan libertarian") circles.

1. Lew Rockwell's strategy is too hostile to libertarians that are not in perfect agreement with either Rothbard or Rockwell—in short, Lew Rockwell doesn't welcome disagreements very well. Many libertarians who disagree with Rockwell or Rothbard on certain issues often argue that Rockwell doesn't welcome them very well and harbors personal resentment against such libertarians. They see Rockwell as a bitter and cranky man that can't agree to disagree. So they often dismiss him and his work because they see him as not worth spending time with.

However, I think this is somewhat far-fetched. It is true that Lew Rockwell disagrees with several libertarians on many issues. For example, he is a culturally conservative Catholic himself while some of the folks at the Ludwig von Mises Institute (LvMI) (Roderick Long, for example) hold to different cultural and social values. However, he has respected them and welcomed them into his institute. Also, he disagrees with Ron Paul with regards to the State (Lew Rockwell is an anarcho-capitalist while Ron Paul is a minarchist-constitutionalist), but Lew has been known to be very good friends with Ron Paul and has often praised Ron's work. 

And even when he diverges from what some libertarian would believe, he doesn't deny that they are libertarians. Far from it, he acknowledges that they are libertarians. However, Rockwell is clear that his strategy would be different from those other libertarians who hold different cultural and social values from him. He himself says in a 2006 interview:

I've noticed a general tendency here. When the right is in control, the left looks better to libertarians. When the left is in control, the right looks better. We are all generally drawn to the merits of the people who are not in power! So it is hardly surprising to see a rise of "left libertarians" in a time when the chief threat to liberty comes from the right, that is, from the red-state fascists who celebrate militarism and see no downside to every form of human-rights violation. Right now, it seems as if most of the intelligent non-libertarians are on the left. I would only caution that the left is beset with as many problems as the right. They want freedom without markets, peace without free trade, civil liberties without property rights. This can't work.

So while he does welcome some disagreements well, he doesn't welcome compromise on essential libertarian principles. And while it can get counterproductive at times (mostly because left-libertarians can huff and puff at that), I think that is a respectable position to hold.

2. Lew Rockwell promotes dangerous conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism, and all that crazy stuff. Another major criticism of Rockwell is with regards to his alleged promotion of conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism/anti-Israel stuff, racism, and most politically incorrect ideologies that many of his detractors despise. They argue that since the general public dislikes such stuff, Lew Rockwell's work is then a hindrance to the liberty movement, not a boon. However, I don't think that such things are harmful to the liberty movement. Yes, such stuff can be counterproductive, but I don't believe it is half as bad as the detractors make it out to be. I believe the conspiracy theories don't go to the extremes of Infowars.com (though Lew himself admires Alex Jones), and most of the "anti-Semitic" stuff is mainly rational, logical thought that refuses to look at the Israel issue with emotionally-charged eyes. As a dispensational premillennialist who believes that God still has a plan for the Jewish people, I don't exactly support much of what the neocon and Israel lobby spouts—they often support war-mongering in the name of national security, economic sanctions on "rogue" nations, and the use of statism/force in furthering their goals. I also believe that it could be argued that the Palestinian people can have a better claim to the land on propertarian/property-rights grounds and that the Zionists' actions in 1948 can be called aggression and initiation of force against civilians. And at the end of the day, I would like to close with this statement of Rockwell's himself:

Lew strives to present a diverse daily selection of interesting articles from our writers and other sites, but he does not necessarily endorse every view expressed. He does, however, believe that each piece will repay your reading.

That means that Rockwell doesn't endorse everything he publishes on the site. So keep that in mind whenever you see some "wacky" article on LRC. And sometimes the "wacky" stuff may not be so bad after all—maybe the reaction to it might not be due to the wackiness of the content per se; it may be because of the over-sensitivity of the reactor. And even the revisionist history from LRC and Mises.org (two of my favorite sites) is very eye-opening and thoughtful. It invites deeper thought and smashes long-established myths that have been taught to us about history, regarding hot topics like Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, WWI, the national-security state apparatus, WWII, the Vietnam War, and even certain aspects of the Founding. Such revisionism and history is necessary to understand the motivations of the "power elite."

Murray Rothbard argued long ago in an article on revisionism:

Revisionism is an historical discipline made necessary by the fact that all States are governed by a ruling class that is a minority of the population, and which subsists as a parasitic and exploitative burden upon the rest of society. Since its rule is exploitative and parasitic, the State must purchase the alliance of a group of "Court Intellectuals," whose task is to bamboozle the public into accepting and celebrating the rule of its particular State. The Court Intellectuals have their work cut out for them. In exchange for their continuing work of apologetics and bamboozlement, the Court Intellectuals win their place as junior partners in the power, prestige, and loot extracted by the State apparatus from the deluded public. 

The noble task of Revisionism is to de-bamboozle: to penetrate the fog of lies and deception of the State and its Court Intellectuals, and to present to the public the true history of the motivation, the nature, and the consequences of State activity. By working past the fog of State deception to penetrate to the truth, to the reality behind the false appearances, the Revisionist works to delegitimate, to desanctify, the State in the eyes of the previously deceived public. By doing so, the Revisionist, even if he is not a libertarian personally, performs a vitally important libertarian service.

Thus, revisionism is actually far more noble than its detractors, libertarian or otherwise, would like to believe. And Lew Rockwell's resources—Mises.org, LewRockwell.com, and the other stuff—do that brilliantly. They shine light and promote liberty, and they do a fine job at that.

In Defense of Lew Rockwell (Part 1)

Recently, Lew Rockwell announced that he was writing a new book — Against the State: An Anarcho-Capitalist Manifesto. However, Eglė Markevičiūtė, member of the International Executive Board for Students for Liberty (SFL), decided to attack Lew Rockwell. Robert Wenzel responded to her quite well. However, he also suggested that one can increase one's blog traffic by speaking in favor of Lew Rockwell and libertarian purity. I will embark upon this attempt to defend Lew Rockwell and his libertarian work against certain criticisms that he has received from some libertarians, not just to increase the blog traffic but also because I want to clear up some misinformation that has been spread about this man.

My personal views on Rockwell are this: while he is not a flawless man and while he is human, I think Rockwell is a boon to the liberty movement, a tireless and fearless defender of liberty, not afraid to ruffle a few feathers (even among libertarians), and he is always willing and able to stand fast to the liberty message.

However, some libertarians don't share as fond a view of Rockwell that I do (his work has been instrumental in my becoming a libertarian). Many see him as a bitter egomaniac and a right-wing racist who is bad for the liberty movement, often because of Rockwell's controversial views on certain things (federalism, Lincoln, etc.). I intend to respond to a few criticisms of Rockwell that I have encountered among some libertarians and clear up certain misconceptions that I have found.

1. Lew Rockwell is a racist who was responsible for the Ron Paul newsletters and isn't man enough to admit it. This is one of the most interesting criticisms of Lew Rockwell that I have encountered, as it recollects to the controversial Ron Paul newsletters that the mainstream media dug up in light of the Ron Paul revolution of 2008 and 2012. Some libertarians have suggested that Lew Rockwell, a friend of Ron Paul and the late Murray Rothbard, was responsible for writing the newsletters and that he should come clean about it. Particularly notable is the libertarian magazine Reason's coverage of the issue, which pinned the whole thing on Lew Rockwell and the "paleo-libertarian" strategy that Rockwell and Rothbard advocated in the 1990s.

However, Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com addresses this issue very ably in his column for Taki's Magazine on the issue. He points out that the so-called "racist" statements are actually far from racism and that those statements are actually not anti-libertarian or a stumbling block to libertarianism. He said this of Ron Paul that can be safely applied to Lew Rockwell:

It’s no mystery, really: Ron Paul is, in many ways, the exact opposite of the Beltway fake-“libertarians.” He’s a populist: they suck up to power, he challenges the powers-that-be; they go along to get along – he has never gone along with the conventional wisdom as defined by the arbiters of political correctness, Left and Right. And most of all, he’s an avowed enemy of the neoconservatives, whom he constantly names as the main danger to peace and liberty – while the Beltway’s tame “libertarians” are in bed with them, often literally as well as figuratively.

2. Lew Rockwell's political incorrectness, radicalism and right-wing extremism are dangerous for libertarianism. Another corollary criticism of Lew Rockwell and the Mises Institute is that regarding Lew Rockwell's politically incorrect ideas, radical interpretation of libertarianism and culturally conservative views, as well as Rockwell's own rejection of leftist values and political correctness. Left-libertarians and culturally liberal libertarians often protest that Lew Rockwell's "backwards" values will hinder the liberty movement from growing and will ultimately hinder libertarianism.

One author argues:

Mentioned in Weigel and Sanchez’s piece was another libertarian giant, Murray Rothbard, who was mostly an advocate of what is known as “anarcho-capitalism.” This is what libertarians are typically branded with by those on the right and left, that we want to create a world where there is no government, where everything is handled by private companies (including courts, fire departments, police, highways, you name it, it’s private.) While I feel that anarcho-capitalism does get a bum rap, most libertarians do not espouse this position. Most of us instead believe a minimal government is ideal, even some of us (myself included) may be “philosophical anarchists,” that it would be nice to have anarchy, that it would be a great ideal, but it’s just that—an ideal, something that will not work in the real world.

Ah, just more "anarcho-capitalism is great in theory but bad in practice." However, even if most libertarians are not anarchists, I believe that the non-anarchist is being somewhat naive in believing that there is such a thing as limited government, for the State doesn't limit itself but in fact will use what is intended as a limit to expand its own power. For example, certain phrases in the Constitution that could be interpreted as limited government platitudes by one group can then be interpreted as statist platitudes in one instance. Murray Rothbard himself said in "Anatomy of the State":

Certainly the most ambitious attempt to impose limits on the State has been the Bill of Rights and other restrictive parts of the American Constitution, in which written limits on government became the fundamental law to be interpreted by a judiciary supposedly independent of the other branches of government. All Americans are familiar with the process by which the construction of limits in the Constitution has been inexorably broadened over the last century. But few have been as keen as Professor Charles Black to see that the State has, in the process, largely transformed judicial review itself from a limiting device to yet another instrument for furnishing ideological legitimacy to the government's actions. For if a judicial decree of "unconstitutional" is a mighty check to government power, an implicit or explicit verdict of "constitutional" is a mighty weapon for fostering public acceptance of ever-greater government power.

So basically, the "great in theory but bad in practice" can truly be applied to the belief in "limited government" rather than anarcho-capitalism.

And as to Rockwell's political incorrectness and right-wing leanings, I would like to give extended comment. In many of Rockwell's writings, I haven't noticed any attempt to claim that his "right-wing values" are libertarianism, whereas in many of his left-wing detractors' writings, I have noticed attempts to merge libertarianism and culturally leftist values into one holistic philosophy. Yes, Lew Rockwell probably believes his views fit more nicely with libertarianism, but that does not mean he wants to incorporate it into a "holistic" libertarianism; in fact, he is a "thin" libertarian who believes that libertarianism is only a political philosophy dealing with the non-aggression principle/axiom and the use of force in society. In his recent article "What Libertarianism Is, And Isn't," Rockwell rightly says:

Libertarianism is concerned with the use of violence in society. That is all. It is not anything else. It is not feminism. It is not egalitarianism (except in a functional sense: everyone equally lacks the authority to aggress against anyone else). It has nothing to say about aesthetics. It has nothing to say about religion or race or nationality or sexual orientation. It has nothing to do with left-wing campaigns against “white privilege,” unless that privilege is state-supplied. 

Let me repeat: the only “privilege” that matters to a libertarian qua libertarian is the kind that comes from the barrel of the state’s gun. Disagree with this statement if you like, but in that case you will have to substitute some word other than libertarian to describe your philosophy.

Libertarians are of course free to concern themselves with issues like feminism and egalitarianism. But their interest in those issues has nothing to do with, and is not required by or a necessary feature of, their libertarianism. Accordingly, they may not impose these preferences on other libertarians, or portray themselves as fuller, more consistent, or more complete libertarians. We have seen enough of our words twisted and appropriated by others. We do not mean to let them have libertarian.

So this should put to rest some concerns that Rockwell is trying to make libertarianism right-wing. And if by right-wing it is meant consistency and purity in libertarianism, then I am all for it, as it is not an attempt to insert cultural values into libertarianism.

Logan Albright also notes:

The trouble is that by attempting to redefine a narrow political philosophy to encompass all things that we like and think are nice – like non-discrimination, like treating people as ends rather than means – we dilute its power and simplicity. We destroy what makes it great. Once we proceed down the road of declaring everything we think is good to be “libertarian,” we will quickly find that libertarianism suddenly has no meaning at all.

So I have noticed that many of Rockwell's detractors have often criticized him for not being "thick" enough, for being too strict and all that.

However, this strictness is what keeps libertarianism from being convoluted, and I am all for that.

Next up: Part 2, where I deal with more criticisms of Lew Rockwell and his strategies for liberty.

Thoughts on "Thick" Libertarianism: Part 1 - Is Libertarianism More Than Anti-Statism?

There has been a recent controversy in the libertarian movement over the issue of "thin" vs. "thick" libertarianism. Some have argued that libertarianism shouldn't be "thick" while others (particularly of a more leftish inclination) argued that "thick" libertarianism is a necessary and a good thing.

So I have decided to give my few cents on this issue, from both a libertarian and a Christian standpoint.

In one article, left-libertarian Cory Massimino argued that libertarianism is more than just anti-statism and Sheldon Richman (a great writer, BTW) argued in favor of "thick libertarianism." However, many others have argued convincingly that libertarianism doesn't require being "thick" to be a good and that libertarianism, as a political philosophy, doesn't need any "thickness" added to it.

And now, I intend to give some of my thoughts on the "thick-libertarian" phenomenon, and why I think it is wrong-headed not only personally but also for the liberty movement in general.

I will also note that this will not be in-depth, for many great articles have been written on this subject, all of which can be found by a simple search on the Internet.

Is Libertarianism More Than Anti-Statism?

The great Catholic anarcho-capitalist writer Lew Rockwell wrote a column defining libertarianism and explaining what it both was and wasn't. Many libertarians took it to heart and agreed. However, left-libertarian Cory Massimino argued that libertarianism shouldn't be just anti-statism. It should be a holistically leftist movement committed to the non-aggression principle plus the leftist ideals of anti-racism, anti-homophobia, and feminism, all as essential to libertarianism.

First, Massimino argues this:

The reason I concern myself with violations of peoples’ liberty that don’t owe their origin to the state is explained by Rockwell when he writes, “Our position is not merely that the state is a moral evil, but that human liberty is a tremendous moral good.” Exactly! I am against authoritarianism, domination, and believe in equality of authority. That is why I am opposed to statism. But it’s also why I am for a world free of institutional oppression in the form of patriarchy, racism, gay and trans shaming, and autonomy-destroying, hierarchical workplaces.

At the onset of the tone, it is clear that Massimino wants to infuse leftist ideals and concepts into libertarianism, thus imbibing certain leftist narratives and attempting to combine libertarian opposition to statism with opposition to all authority. But libertarianism, in its commitment to the non-aggression principle and it's recognition of voluntary organization and cooperation, allows for authority of various kinds, provided it is not gained through the use of force and an attaining of monopoly over a parcel of territory, like the State does. That means that gay and trans shaming, patriarchy, racism, and yes, hierarchical workplaces would exist in the libertarian society. They may not be as abundant or as widely-accepted as some right-wing libertarians would wish, but they would definitely exist. And discrimination (ah, that bogeyman of the left) will surely exist.

Later, Massimino says:

Rothbard’s argument shows how liberty is needed for each person to find their own purpose and achieve their own good. This goes beyond the actions of the state. Repressive cultural norms and domineering social customs also prevent people from flourishing. They, too, lessen people’s liberty. A black person can’t flourish if he lives in a staunchly racist community with employers and businesses who refuse him service. They wouldn’t be violating his rights, but they would certainly be diminishing his ability to achieve his own good. He would hardly be considered free in such an oppressive society. 

Rothbard continues, “Libertarians agree with Lord Acton that “liberty is the highest political end” – not necessarily the highest end on everyone’s personal scale of values.” While this is an excellent quote by Lord Action, it doesn’t go far enough. Why would liberty only be relevant in the political sphere? It is certainly affected by various other factors. There is no reason to end our concern for human freedom at the doorstep of the capitol building. In order to remain consistent, we ought to extend that concern to all human interactions.

It is true that these types of relationships Massimino describes may be a horrible thing and a very sad one too. Liberty, however, means being free from the tentacles of being aggressed against, meaning that this freedom is a "negative" freedom. While libertarians may share admirations for other types of freedom, the "negative" ideal of freedom (not interfering with people's rights) is the primary political end. Other freedoms (freedom from sin, freedom from want, etc.) can occur safely within the bounds of negative freedom and are reconcileable with it, but they should not require the violation of other people's rights to provide for those rights. For example, "freedom from want," at least as interpreted by progressive activists, would require taking people's money against their will (taxation) to give to others. However, the freedom to take an unowned parcel of land and mix your labor with it does not violate another's rights, for that does not require the use of aggressive force and/or violence in doing so. So while repressive cultural norms and social customs may be restrictive of freedom in other senses, as long as there is no exploitation and initiation of force involved, then these social customs do not violate "negative" liberty. Also, since the Austrian economic theory teaches us that value is subjective, what defines "repressive" and "domineering"? Some may find the "repressive" traditions (no sex outside of marriage, no homosexuality, no adultery, etc.) to be not so repressive and in many ways liberating in their own way.

As for the example Massimino uses, the black person can then find another place where he can flourish, either by taking unowned land and mixing his labor with it (making it his property) and/or through voluntary exchange and market forces. The beauty of the libertarian society is that it offers options, and in such a society there will be options that don't always require the "crushing" of "repressive" norms, leaving almost no one's rights violated in the process. 

And is "liberty" be relevant only in the political sphere? In a way, that answer is not exactly yes or no. "No" in the sense that libertarianism is a political philosophy, not a holistic one, so the liberty that libertarianism advocates is a negative freedom to not have one's rights violated. Extensions to all human interactions will exist, but even then, as human interactions will become freer, there is not as big a need to make libertarianism holistic as Massimino and others would argue.

Later on, Massimino argues that making libertarianism "thick" is only a small branching out of core libertarian principles rather than extrapolating and adding to them. However, when one argues that libertarianism's foundations requires leftist principles and social constructs, then it is hard to consider this anything but adding onto libertarianism. And personally, I think the whole "pizza" comparison is a little offbase.

Lew Rockwell Makes The Case for Anarcho-Capitalism

Lew Rockwell, the great libertarian entrepreneur, writer, economist, and scholar, makes the case for anarcho-capitalism, the branch of libertarianism that goes further than classical (limited-government) libertarianism and advocates for the complete abolition of the State in favor of the free market providing almost everything, including defense and security services.

In his recent article "Why I Am An Anarcho-Capitalist," Rockwell states:

A great many people – more than ever, probably – describe themselves as supporters of the free market today, in spite of the unrelenting propaganda against it. And that’s great. Those statements of support, however, are followed by the inevitable but: but we need government to provide physical security and dispute resolution, the most critical services of all.
Almost without a thought, people who otherwise support the market want to assign to government the production of the most important goods and services. Many favor a government or government-delegated monopoly on the production of money, and all support a government monopoly on the production of law and protection services.
This isn’t to say these folks are stupid or doltish. Nearly all of us passed through a limited-government – or “minarchist” – period, and it simply never occurred to us to examine our premises closely.
To begin with, a few basic economic principles ought to give us pause before we assume government activity is advisable:

• Monopolies (of which government itself is a prime example) lead to higher prices and poorer service over time.

• The free market’s price system is constantly directing resources into such a pattern that the desires of the consumers are served in a least-cost way in terms of opportunities foregone.

• Government, by contrast, cannot be “run like a business,” as Ludwig von Mises explained in Bureaucracy. Without the profit-and-loss test, by which society ratifies allocation decisions, a government agency has no idea what to produce, in what quantities, in what location, using what methods. Their every decision is arbitrary, in a way directly analogous to the problem facing the socialist planning board (as Mises also discussed, this time in his famous essay “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth”).

In other words, when it comes to government provision of anything, we have good reason to expect poor quality, high prices, and arbitrary and wasteful resource allocation.
There are plenty of other reasons that the market, the arena of voluntary interactions between individuals, deserves the benefit of the doubt over the state, and why we ought not assume the state is indispensable without first seriously investigating to what degree human ingenuity and the economic harmonies of the market can get by without it. For instance: 

• The state acquires its revenue by aggressing against peaceful individuals.

• The state encourages the public to believe there are two sets of moral rules: one set that we learn as children, involving the abstention from violence and theft, and another set that applies only to government, which alone may aggress against peaceful individuals in all kinds of ways.

• The educational system, which governments invariably come to dominate, encourages the people to consider the state’s predation morally legitimate, and the world of voluntary exchange morally suspect.

• The government sector is dominated by concentrated interests that ( I don’t think “interests” would be taken as meaning people) lobby for special benefits at the expense of the general public, while success in the private sector comes only by pleasing the general public.

• The desire to please organized pressure groups nearly always outweighs the desire to please people who would like to see government spending reduced (and most of those people, it turns out, want it reduced only marginally anyway).

• In the United States, the government judiciary has been churning out preposterous decisions, with little to no connection to “original intent,” for more than two centuries.

• Governments teach their subjects to wave flags and sing songs in their honor, thereby contributing to the idea that resisting its expropriations and enormities is treason.

I am not an anarcho-capitalist yet, but still his article makes for good reading. One might object to them saying, "Without a state, we won't have order? Do we want society to collapse?" The anarcho-capitalist gives this interesting insight into libertarianism: there is a gulf between society and the state, between the productive forces exemplified by the free market and voluntary groups and institutions and the exploitative forces of the state and the political realm. He sees the state as being born out of conquest and not through some "social contract" (the only systems coming close to this were the constitutions during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). Thus, he holds that the state is unnecessary and has a negative influence on society and proper governance (which they hold comes through voluntary action). Some prominent thinkers who held this view include Murray Rothbard, Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, and many others. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a prominent anarcho-capitalist theorist, has compiled a bibliography of resources that defend this theory.

As for me, while I sympathize with anarcho-capitalism, I still wrestle with questions here and there. But I do agree that the State is prone to corruption, as it never gives up its power voluntarily and lords its power over the citizens (Matthew 20:25). Thus, I do not love the State and adore it, much less worship it. And neither did most of the classical liberals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 

I am still reading on this issue, and I am in the process of reading Murray Rothbard's For A New Liberty. I am looking at the literature of libertarianism, how it relates to Christianity, and other things. So I have yet to develop fully into an anarchist. I am not yet convinced, but some day I might become convinced fully that Christianity and anarcho-capitalist libertarianism are as fully linked to one another as classical libertarianism is to Christianity.