Demand an answer from Lew Rockwell

Miscellaneous General
1

I’m quoting a blog on the current debate regarding the Ron Paul newsletters:

"When it comes to Ron Paul´s old newsletters, there is a growing consensus that they were indeed written by somebody else. So Paul is not guilty of writing these ugly things, but of letting someone do it in his name for such a long time, which is bad enough. Most insiders seem to think that the chief ghostwriter was Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr, founder of the Mises Institute, who joined Murray Rothbard in his break with other libertarians in the late 1980s and tried to build a “paleo”-coalition with right-wing populists and social conservatives.

Worst of all, when Rockwell commented on the newsletter, he did not seem to be the least troubled by anything in it and didn´t even argue that the quotes were taken out of context. Instead he attacked the messenger."

The whole issue is handled extremely poorly. While I do agree with Lew that this is basically a smear campaign, it doesn’t take away the problem with the ugly remarks in the newsletters. Not only is it hurting Paul and Rockwell, but it also puts the Mises Institute in an uncomfortable situation and questions its respectability.

Of course reasonable individuals will make a sharp distinction between the Austrian school of economics, Ludwig von Mises, and those views held by the current staff at the Mises Institute - but everyone must realize that those not too familiar with the LvMI will judge it by those articles at Reason and The New Republic, and various blogs.

The only right thing to do for Rockwell is to make a clear statement, not simply accusing the opponents of smear-campaigning, but more importantly to clean up the past. He needs to tell the truth about who’s responsible for the remarks, why it was done, put it in context, and explain his current view and affiliations with certain groups. It’s already bad as it is - the word is spreading rapidly, and he will never be able to clean his name because right now, everybody basically thinks he’s a racist attending KKK-meetings.

Even if the truth might be somewhat ugly, it will help him and the Mises Institute to get a fresh start, enabling them to go on from this. The past will hopefully be the past, but if the only comments are counter-attacks, it will only get worse.

2

I found mises.org almost a year ago and it’s been my number one source for information ever since. It singled handedly converted me to libertarianism and anarchism. However, this worries me very much. Lew most definately needs to come out and explain exactly what he knows about those newsletters, and if he is responsible for the now infamous remarks, God I hope not, needs to explain why. This is not because of the Ron Paul campaign or because I’m offended by the remarks, I couldn’t car less about these things, but because the credibility of the Mises Institute and LRC in the eyes of many people could be seriously damaged. I really hate to have to worry about what other’s think but considering that I often cite the LvMI in arguments that I have with people this will reflect badly on me and anyone else that uses the LvMI as a major source.

Lew, you just need to give us some straight answers.

And I hope your eye balls are doing OK.

3

To be frank, I think the quotes have been blown way out of proportion. Are they radical? Yes. Are they a kick in the teeth to “polite” discourse? Yes. But isn’t that what libertarians often come across as? Isn’t that what the writings of authors like Lew Rockwell often are?

And how many of these quotes are untrue, even if they are blunt?

  1. “opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions” - That’s about in line with America as a whole. If even 5%. Whether we want to believe it or not, Americans are a brainwashed, state-worshipping bunch. In no way would I classify the great majority of political positions 95% of Americans have as “sensible.”

  2. “if you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be” - if they weren’t fleet-footed, they wouldn’t last long as robbers, no?

  3. black representative Barbara Jordan is “the archetypical half-educated victimologist” whose “race and sex protect her from criticism.” - sounds about right. Most all politicians are either ignorant or evil. Most minority politicians play on the fact that they are a minority. These are not controversial statements if we abandon our politically correct inclinations for a moment.

  4. “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began” - In 1992, 33.4% of blacks were below the poverty line, the highest number among all racial groups. What stopped the riots is anyone’s guess, but this hypothesis cannot be dismissed out of hand.

  5. “mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white ‘haves.’” - Isn’t that what already occurs, but instead of personally stealing they allow the state to do it for them?

  6. “blacks poured into the streets of Chicago in celebration. How to celebrate? How else? They broke the windows of stores to loot.” - can anyone say that it is untrue? People in general, it seems, tend to celebrate by vandalism in cities.

  7. “I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.” - That’s not calling all blacks animals, that is calling criminals animals.

  8. South Africa’s transition to multiracial democracy was portrayed as a “destruction of civilization” that was “the most tragic [to] ever occur on that continent, at least below the Sahara” - Democracy is the path towards decivilization and barbarism.

  9. King was described as “a comsymp, if not an actual party member, and the man who replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration.” - Thomas Woods backs up this assertion in 33 Questions About American History You Aren’t Supposed To Ask.

  10. “our priority should be to take the anti-government, anti-tax, anti-crime, anti-welfare loafers, anti-race privilege, anti-foreign meddling message of Duke, and enclose it in a more consistent package of freedom.” - So basically they just said that they should keep their principles…

  11. “Homosexuals,” it said, “not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities.” - Gay pride parades make this point pretty self-evident.

  12. Readers were warned to avoid blood transfusions because gays were trying to “poison the blood supply.” - Not long ago didn’t Mises.org or LRC post a story on Haitians (I think?) suing the Red Cross over not taking their blood despite extremely high rates of AIDS among them? It’s no different.

  13. “[T]hese men don’t really see a reason to live past their fifties. They are not married, they have no children, and their lives are centered on new sexual partners.” - Hoppe has made the point of time preference among homosexuals as well and suffered harsh criticism. But doesn’t it make sense that unmarried, childless adults would have a high time preference? The quote here is simply saying that in words someone who isn’t an economist might understand.

  14. A 1987 issue of Paul’s Investment Letter called Israel “an aggressive, national socialist state” - true and true.

  15. Indeed, the newsletters seemed to hint that armed revolution against the federal government would be justified. - GASP! Never! That is quite a weighty claim! Hinting tha defending yourself against a gang of thugs would be justified is completely beyond belief.

  16. It warned militia members that they were “possibly under BATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] or other totalitarian federal surveillance” - And it turns out they were, or at least by the FBI who often infiltrated groups.

  17. promoting his distrust of a federally regulated monetary system utilizing paper bills. - Because it deserves our undying trust?

Pretty much, there isn’t a lot of quotes in there that make me gasp and cry out for finding those responsible. They are overly blunt and overgeneralize but there isn’t anything patently racist and terrible in there that I saw.

4

Once you admit that this is nothing but a smear campaign aaginst a politician who was doing better than he was supposed to, I would think the question of “guilt” would go away. As the original poster said, this is nothing but an attack and attempt to discredit a movement which is too popular. I give people credit - if the smears are directed at LvMI, and the liberals attack LvMI in the media, the only effect will be to dramatically increase applications to this year’s summer programs. In the days of the internet, the only effect of attacking LvMI in the media is causing more people to look it up, and learn what it’s really about. Not that I’m happy for an attack - I think people who launch these attacks are despicable and, in the case of Cato, all the more so because they should know better. I just think that smear campaigns are less likely to have their desired effect nowadays, and more likely to backfire against those who use them.

On the other hand, it is interesting to watch, for a second time, the liberals mindlessly repeating smears from their supposed enemies. First, it was repeating Buckley’s and Goldberg’s attacks on Buchanan, now Cato’s attacks on Paul and LvMI. Just goes to show that the liberals clearly understand who their enemies are - and that the National Review and Cato crowds are not real opponents of centralized government, welfare statism, and so on. They realize that establishment right, and establishment libertarian, will side with them in the end, and that only groups like LvMI are principled enough to actually oppose them. By liberal, of course, I mean modern American liberalism, not true liberalism.

5

I agree with Morty. Perhaps these statements are controversial and politically incorrect, but they are by no means racist. If I were to to see these statements completely unaffected by modern culteral bias and propoganda I would undoubtedley perceive them as interesting hypotheses free of any racial element. Just because the comments concern blacks or homosexuals and make analytical statements about them, does not mean they’re racist. In fact, it is far more characteristically “racist” of those who actually deem such comments racist since they themselves perceive it as degradation.

The sad thing is, no progress can be made in terms of a solution for the plight of the blacks if we can’t speak truthfully and rationally about the problem in the first place.

6

This seems to assume that the majority of welfare recipients are black, which simply isn’t the case, at least anymore.

Since when has this social pressure really stopped? And since when are most gay people particularly “open” about it and are waving their personal buisiness in the public eye? takes a look around I don’t exactly see men sodomizing eachother in the streets. Everybody run! The gays are coming! They’ll make our minds melt with their lisps!

I agree that some of the statements are either out of context or are not expliticly bigoted (like when support for secession, skepticism towards the civil war and Lincoln are equated to racism, an ignorant premise, or when opposition to the state of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism is equated to anti-semetism), but I think it is absolutely absurd to argue that all of these statements are completely void of any bigotry. In either case, why can’t the “ghost writter” just be named and we can get this stupid controversy over with?

7

This seems to assume that the majority of welfare recipients are black, which simply isn’t the case anymore.

8

Who are you to demand an explanation from anyone? Somebody on a blog speculating that Rockwell wrote the offensive statements doesn’t mean he owes an explanation to anyone. He has an an enormous archive of writings here, on his own site, and at World Net Daily. If you can find anything like the offensive newsletter comments in any of those hundreds of columns then come back and ask for an explanation. (criticizing the economics of Dr. King does not make someone a racist. btw)

People who demand these sorts of explanations are rarely interested in a response. It’s a tactic to make their opponent look bad and avoid debate. I’m not suggesting that is what you are doing though.

Paul should have been asked about the newsletters but he has responded. If you or the blogger quoted are not satisfied by the explanation so be it.

9

The fact that the two earliest caucus/primary states both showed more than 5% support for Paul seems to indicate that Americans are not as state-worshipping as some may think. Voters in later primaries have to deal with an even bigger “electablity” issue. Besides, hardcore anarchists do not vote. If you really want to see a country that is into state-worshipping, check out India, where voter turn out is around 90% in elections. They really believe in state-sanctioned robbery is valuable, and many of the poor simply want their share.

In any case, I doubt even patent racists like Al Sharpton would say something or get away with declaiming 95% percent whites being brainwashed. It’s just racialistic inflamatory.

First of all, blacks do not constitute the majority of welfare recipients. More importantly, if one really wants to put it in racialistic terms, I’m just being a devil’s advocate here: “the oppressive thieving state that you are berating is mostly the handiwork of the dumb whites” After all, it is an inconravertible fact that most voters are whites, and every single president-elect recieved more white votes than from any other ethnic group; that incudes Lincoln, FDR, Wilson and all the other demonic statists. How do you feel about the statement that I just proposed? IMHO, it’s quite unnecessarily racialistic. Of course I’m not suggesting banning such speech . . . however, would I want to associate myself with such blatant race-baiting? Probably not.

For the context of the publishing and the intended readership of the circular, I suppose there was probably an element of hyperbolic sense of humor . . . in the long run however, it goes to show the dangers of being too clever by half . . . almost as silly as the Petreous/Betray-Us debacle. Typical perils of wordsmiths becoming too fond of listening to their own echoes.

10

“11) “Homosexuals,” it said, “not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities.” - Gay pride parades make this point pretty self-evident.”

Only the homosexuals can decide whether they are better off or not, according to their own subjective preferences. And there is no agreed-upon way of calculating whether society is better off or not - a utilitarian question. Measured in terms of quantity of gay pride parades, society is much better off.

“5) “mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white ‘haves.’” -”

So is that implying that most of the welfare recipients are black? Or does it mean that the individuals possessing more than 50% African heritage will feel justified?

These writings are just sloppy and bitter claptrap.

11

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“Since when has this social pressure really stopped? And since when are most gay people particularly “open” about it and are waving their personal buisiness in the public eye? takes a look around I don’t exactly see men sodomizing eachother in the streets. Everybody run! The gays are coming! They’ll make our minds melt with their lisps!”

I don’t think that anyone was claiming that social pressure towards gays has completely stopped, that’s absurd. But I doubt many would argue with the notion that social pressure towards gays has most assuredely lessened in intensity (in the US). To see the act of a man or woman leaving there spouse for a same sex partner be celebrated (something which is happening more and more often because of less social pressure) on Opera is quite astonishing considering the state of society even ten years ago. Further, where was it said that most gay people are particularly “open” about their sexuality? It was my understanding that it meant to say more, than before, are “coming out” or are more open. I don’t see any over generalization there. In fact, the only person guilty of over generalization is you Brainpolice, claiming that social pressure has stopped not lessened, that most rather than more gays have been open. Based on other posts I expect more from you. You seem to be overly influenced by present cultural or societal bias more than I thought. To make such statements does not in any way provide evidence of “homophobia” as you seem to think. They’re merely statements which propose that; due to lessened social pressure more gays have become more open about their sexuality, which in certain ways should not necessarily be considered “progress” in terms of their health or in other regards, as so many seem to think.

12

I’d say that the second option would be the correct interpretation of this statement. I recall how someone (can’t remember who anymore) once said that the worst person to be in America is a middle-aged educated white man with a family and a job, since he’s the one that can not be disriminated. Infact, sometimes I think that they’re really the ones being discriminated, since everybody else seem to have some privileges.

“There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.” - F.A. Hayek

13

In Estonia, some actually had the idea of organizing a parade for heterosexuals. Personally, I don’t see them having any useful effect. I’m certainly not against them and if they like, they can march all they like. But simply all it seems to do is celebrate that they are different and perhaps even special. Instead of promoting solidarity they seem to attract everykind of conservative people. Also, many prestigous homosexuals have said that they don’t see any point in coming to the street and ‘screaming’ what they like to do in bed. This open homosexuality actually seems to be a new wave of pop-culture, just like punk or hippies were.

14

Morty, you are bang on the money. These people who attempt to smear Lew, Paul and the LvMI use pejorative words and anti-concepts to stifle debate. You should read my thread What Actually is Racism?

15

I knew some people (who happen to not be black, but that’s neither here nor there) who felt completely justified in accepting any and all asistance from the state that they could get. They felt that way because they were completely convinced that the system is inherently rigged against them. The ironic thing is that they’re right. The problem is that, having read a lot of Marx, they had absolutely no clue what the true nature of their exploitation was.

Marx was not at all the first person to articulate the notion of class conflict. Class exploitation used to be an in-your-face fact of everyday life. The parasitic classes simply were the privileged classes—the classes for whom the rules were different. It was in response to exactly this institutionalized privilege that (classical) liberalism (a.k.a. libertarianism) arose. The response of the privileged classes to this onslaught of rationality was—and is—argument by obfuscation. Thus, in steps the profesional intellectual.

While Marx might acknowledge class conflict in the form of “free man and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman,” Marx conspicuously circumvents any suggestion that differences in rules regarding property were exactly what distinguished oppressor and oppressed in these class conflicts. Instead, we are supposed to concern ourselves with a newer notion of exploitation that is much more ethereal. By no coincidence, Marx’s diagnosis is that it is exactly the establishment of (mutually-binding rules of) property rights and free trade by which the bourgeois exploit the proletarian. By no coincidence, his prescriptions are that the means of production belong in the hands of ‘society,’ which, by no coincidence, in practice, puts the means of production into the hands of the State (as even the Communist Manifesto explicitly advocates, if only as an intermediate step toward ‘true’ communism).

Thus the interests of the parasitical class are served by the very fact that everyone knows that they are somehow being exploited by a parasitical class.

16

I think you stupid hippies need to get over yourselves.

17

Justin Raimondo has written a good article on this.

18

No, he is not.

And even if he were, the issue of racism is such a poisonous one to ANY AND ALL MOVEMENTS EVERYWHERE, you would be best to admit ONE member is a racist and shun him than to completely derail an entire body of thought.

19

Raimondo is kind of a traitor to libertarianism as a whole in any case, but I love his writing style and if you ever wanted a venomous writer on your side, it would be him.

20

Yeah, that isn’t going to fly with anyone, nor should it. The fact that most people are completely politically fu/cked is not what that quote was getting at, obviously.

Oh please, do you realize how much of a religious, Paulian you sound like?

All hail, the lord Ron Paul. Give me a break. Please, Lew Rockwell.com is already sh/it, don’t turn LvMI into it too.

Most people won’t, though this is less controversial in my eyes, it should never have been said and you should still separate yourself from the man.

…

[:|]

You can’t be serious…

Doesn’t mean you single one out. Quit rationalizing these blatantly racist comments.

Again, you don’t say it.

I can’t read anymore. You people make me sick.