I don’t support Ron Paul’s candidacy, then, because my own talents, proclivities, and commitments lie with the Agorist and left-libertarian projects, and I value the promotion of those projects over the short-term benefits that Paul’s candidacy might gain at the expense of those projects. But I can’t see that this preference is compulsory for everybody. Even if every libertarian ought to be an Agorist and a cultural lefty (and so they ought! – there are limits to my Aristotelean pluralism), it seems to me that it does not follow that every libertarian ought to make the trade-off between those long-run projects and the possible short-run gains from Paul’s candidacy the same way I do.

I’m all for people changing their mind or revising their assessments, but in light of Rod Long declaring that he will run for the LP Chair in Alabama, I can’t help wondering if he no longer values agorist and left-libertarian projects over politics.

A shift in time preference may be afoot.  Perhaps the left-libertarian capital stock has been depleted, and long term projects have to be abandoned by the master builder.

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One such item is the excommunication from the anarchist blogosphere (yeah, think about that) of a fella named Keith Preston. Seems Keith wrote some things that upset some people, namely Charles Johnson, Brad Spangler and Kevin Carson, amongst others.

I had never heard of Keith Preston until I saw this post on No State, and it intrigued me, because I have recently been cutting ties with paleos who are more conservative than libertarian.

So yesterday, I finally got around to giving the offending post by Preston a rigorous examination with a clear mind and a critical eye.

The article is approx. 7700 words, excluding the three quotations that lead it off but including quote blocks in the post proper.

NoState points out a 68 (give or take) word section as offensive.

Do we really attract more people into our ranks by having so many self-hating whites, bearded ladies, cock-ringed queers, or persons of one or another surgically altered “gender identity” in our midst? Is this really something the average rebellious young person wants to be associated with? Could we not actually attract more young rebels into our ranks if all of this stuff was absent? I believe we could.

Ironically, most of the post indicates out how Keith  could care less about people’s personal preferences, but when he singles out specific stereotypes (admittedly, in an inflammatory manner) it’s implied to be hate speech, when it clearly is nothing of the sort.  I don’t know if being gay or bisexual is a choice or not, I assume some people could choose to have those sexual perspectives, but Keith makes a fantastic point about the conflation of gay rights with racism, and I can see that in how the PC crowd begins to extend discrimination so widely, it is nearly impossible to remark without self-censorship.

Keith seemed to be making clear that he wasn’t comfortable with alternative agendas and preferences leading because he doesn’t think that is good for big tent anarchism.  And it probably is not, because fringe anarchists and cultural preferences don’t have a mainstream appeal, and in the blogosphere in particular, there seems to be a drowning out of alternatives to alternative  ideas and preferences.

It’s interesting to read the responses to Keith’s post, overlooking all of the good, for a paragraph or two of inflammatory rhetoric.  I don’t think he could have done much more to qualify his statement in advance, dedicating what seemed like half of the very long post to laying out his own ideas, experiences and preferences.  He could have toned down his rhetoric, but if he is as frustrated as I am with certain parts of the libertarian and anarchist left, then I can understand his questionable judgment.

Brad Spangler;

The first thing that came to mind for myself was that Preston’s colorful call to purge the queers reeks of the influence of the sort of strutting leather-boys with way to much Fallschirmjäger memorabilia who think that they’re not gay as long as they’re always the top.

Seems Spangler didn’t notice the comment (mid-post) about gays that Preston respects

For instance, I’ve gone out of my way to promote the work of Justin Raimondo, not because Raimondo is gay (who cares?), but because Raimondo is one of the very best critics of U.S. imperialism to be found. One of the very best critics of the police state is Glenn Greenwald, a gay man. One of my favorite political writers is Gore Vidal, who is a homosexual.

and (emphasis mine)

As for homosexuals, let them be evaluated according to what they actually contribute to our movement rather than simply for their status as homosexuals. We need the likes of Justin Raimondo or the late Alisdair Clarke. I’m not so sure we need some of these others.

So taking the previous comments into account with other statements in the post, Preston has no issue with gays (ie. “who cares?) and states that he appreciates and respects several gays, but wants anarchists to be evaluated on their merit, not their social preferences.  That is significantly different than what has been criticized by Spangler.

RadGeek in response to another commenter at NoState;

I dunno, dude, when someone starts complaining about “cock-ringed queers,” “bearded ladies,” “pissed-off, man-hating, dykes with an excess of body hair,” and “persons of one or another surgically altered ‘gender identity,’” quote-unquote, and states, without any qualification, that fewer such people ought to be “in our midst,” in order to make the kind of person he thinks of as the “average young rebel” (who, we can glean from the textual evidence, is supposed to be white, male, straight, and not an immigrant) more comfortable joining up — well, I get the impression that he does care, and moreover that he expects other people to care. Not so much about the fact of sexuality per se, but more about how far one is open about sex and gender in a way that makes things uncomfortable for those who believe in a very rigid set of gender norms.

If RadGeek has read the entire article (he may have) then I don’t know how he can draw some of the conclusions he stated in the above.  Keith makes clear he cares about what gays contibute, not what sort of sex they participate in, because it is irrelevant.

Textual evidence is nonsense, in that Preston infers that what is desirable and missing from anarchism is more racial and sexual diversity.  The textual evidence is RadGeek’s hangup about Preston’s views on immigration, which are a testy second-best issue for many libertarians, present company included.  No need to shift the goalposts.

And the last sentence is a strawman, in that Preston makes clear that sexual preference is not the issue at several points in the post.

Kevin Carson;

But while I could respect your willingness to tolerate loathsome people on pragmatic grounds, I can’t remain neutral when you advocate purging the anti-state movement in order to appease those loathsome people.

He’s not talking about appeasing anyone.  Note to readers, anytime someone uses the word appeasement, they are trying to portray another party in a weakened or submissive state.  Cheap rhetorical trick.

You have “evolved,” if you can call it that, from a willingness to share a tent with racists and homophobes for the sake of defeating Empire as the primary enemy, to promoting an active purge of anti-racists and gays from the anti-Empire movement because the majority of your anti-state coalition might find them offensive.

I bolded the two strawmen.  Nowhere did Keith call for a purge of gays and I’m not sure he called for a purge of anti-racists either.  I also don’t recall that any purge was necessary to appease the current coalition, but that the elements he thinks should be purged, are hindering the growth of anarchism from the outside.  And if the various left anarchist groups, coalitions and think tanks are any indication, I would have to agree.  The cultural-leftism is a big turnoff to massive swathes of libertarians, almost all minarchists, conservatives and anarcho-capitalists.

The “cultural left” as Carson goes on to talk about, is ridiculous anyway.  Cultural norms, personal preferences, and value are all subjective. I don’t care about the preferences of others as a matter of justice, as long as they conform to the NAP.

Now all of that said, I don’t know the body of Keith Preston’s work, so maybe this post was dishonest, and he really hates gays and loves Nazis.  But with regards to the comments on this particular post by prominent market anarchists [sic], I don’t see where he crossed a moral line.

Anyway, that’s my 3 cents on the matter.

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h/t Stacy Herbert @ MaxKeiser.com

Comment #29 on this blog post.

In response to this comment,

Give Him a Break

Everyone is blowing the stupid special olympics comment out of control. It is very easy for the media to ruin any interview by only showing the bad little bits and pieces of it. If anyone actually watched the interview and developed their own opinion on it rather than being spoon fed an opinion from the media im sure that the public would think that the interview was relatively succesful. Now a days you have to be so careful what you say or else some organization will be breathing down your neck. I think everone should focus on how he is trying to help our nation as opposed to constantly trying to find the flaws. As Obama said last night, we need to stop trying to point the finger and instead try and solve the problem that we we are currently faced with.

I wrote

Yeah give Obama a break

Obama deserves a fair break just like all of the Afghan children his predator missile drones murder each week.

It’s not fair to judge Obama by how he did on a talk show. The hallmark of any great American president is how many brown people they can kill in foreign countries to increase the profits of the military industrial complex.

My comment on Obama and how he deserves a break for being a great killer but a lousy talk show guest.

This post is brought on due to this article, which was linked at LewRockwell.com in the blog, then strangely removed.

The coming evangelical collapse

And this is the author credit,

Michael Spencer is a writer and communicator living and working in a Christian community in Kentucky. He describes himself as “a postevangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality.” This essay is adapted from a series on his blog, InternetMonk.com

Even if you are an atheist, you might want to give the article a read.  If you are a theist, you might want to check out the InternetMonk blog, on a quick perusal, I found it fairly interesting, considering it’s really not my cup of tea.

But back to the title of this post, the bankruptcy of evangelicals, baptists, catholics, protestants, lutherans, whatever is tied directly to the fact that as long as they tolerate a state that steals, and a state that murders, then they are bankrupt in their beliefs.  Anyone who advocates murder is not a libertarian.  That goes for your Eric Dondero Libertarian Republicans as well.  It is not acceptable to take one innocent life in a war (even to harm an innocent or their property), morality and justice does not wither under tests of scale, only weakness of character.

The democratic institutions which have harmed Christians and their values, as much as it has teased them with empowerment, are also to be rejected as being in direct conflict with the values of Jesus and the Kingdom of Heaven.

Any Christian who lectures on any social values, while supporting the corrupt, immoral, and sinful state and it’s lies, violence and theft, has no credibility at all

I’m an atheist, but I was a theist at one time.  All that changed, is that I understand that morality doesn’t have to originate with divine decree.  It can be self-evident, that the rational path, the most productive path, is peaceful, voluntary, free market relations.  The likes of which Jesus of the Bible, advocated through his disciples’ writings.

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Lew posted the Top 10 Podcast link today.

1. $2000 Gold and the Break up of the US: Gerald Celente
2. The Biggest Bubble in the History of the World: Ron Paul
3. America’s Slow-Motion Fascist Coup: Naomi Wolf
4. The Greatest Depression in History: Gerald Celente
5. Thanks for the Inflationary Depression: Peter Schiff
6. How the Government Wrecked the Economy: Peter Schiff
7. The Panic of ’08: Lew Rockwell interviews Ron Paul
8. The Crash of ’08: Lew Rockwell interviews Jim Rogers
9. Stop the Bailout!: Lew Rockwell on the Michael Reagan Show
10. There Is Hope: Ron Paul

My favorite of this lot, is the amazing Naomi Wolf interview.  Perhaps I have listened to too much Ron Paul, Peter Schiff and Gerald Celente (who are all excellent btw), but the Noami Wolf interview was a great gateway to the left, and a really special moment where it turned into a conversation between two intelligent people sharing information and ideas.

Sadly, the left-libertarian doorstops (they have to be good for something) haven’t seemed to have done much to help promote it.

Some of my other favorites include (in no particular order)

28. What is Neoconservatism?

65. A Libertarian in the USSR

32. Intellectual “Property”

13. The Old Right

15. Democracy: The God That Failed

68. Are You an Anarchist?

8. The Scam Called the State

I hope more libertarians blog about and share these around.  They appeal to all sorts of different groups, from anarchists to Reagan republicans, antiwar protestors to wall street observers.

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The one place that provides an escape from the state and the scarcity of “property” (in the loosest sense, elbow room) is space.

Sure, it might not be feasible to live generationally on space ships or stations.  Sure, there may not be many or any easily habitable planets.  But it seems to me that we’re getting closer and closer to commercial space travel.  And when that day happens, someone is going to wander off the accepted and beaten path, and attempt to blaze their own trail.  It’s quite likely many will.

My goal is to never stop looking upwards with hope no matter how much the state wants me to focus my gaze down.

I’m bringing this up because (1) I am in a sci-fi mood lately, (2) libertarians/austrians/anarchists seem to do a lot more staring backwards than forwards, and (3) a young fella on the Mises Forums inspired it.

Serj (lead vocals) always reminds me of David Yow from The Jesus Lizard, another amazing small club act.  Of course, reminds me of Yow without the nudity or drunkenness.   But the performance aspect is totally there.

System Of A Down – War?

Dark is the light,
The man you fight,
With all your prayers, incantations,
Running away, a trivial day,
Of judgment and deliverance,
To whom was sold, this bounty soul,
A gentile or a priest ?
Who victored over, the Seljuks,
When the holy land was taken

We will fight the heathens, We will fight the heathens
We will fight the heathens, We will fight the heathens

Was it the riches, of the land,
Powers of bright darkness,
That lead the noble, to the East,
To fight the lord

We will fight the heathens, We will fight the heathens
We will fight the heathens, We will fight the heathens
We will fight the heathens, We will fight the heathens
We will fight the heathens, We will fight the heathens

We must call upon our bright darkness,
Beliefs, they’re the bullets of the wicked,
One was written on the sword,
For you must enter a room to destroy it, destroy it, destroy it.
No International security,
No Call of the righteous man,
Needs a reason to kill a man,
History teaches us so,
The reason he must attain,
Must be approved by his God,
His child, partisan brother of war,

Of war, we don’t speak anymore,
Of war, we don’t speak anymore,
Of war, we don’t speak anymore,
Of war, we don’t speak anymore,

We will fight the heathens, We will fight the heathens
We will fight the heathens, We will fight the heathens
We will fight the heathens, We will fight the heathens
We will fight the heathens, We will fight the heathens

-

Some other SOAD worth listening to;

Sugar

Spiders

I remember first listening to this band on the bus ride home from work in Vancouver. I don’t know where I got the tape from.  Tapes.  lol

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Courtesy of Last Free Voice, the LP takes down a poll that gets a radical response, after being chastised for not being radical enough.  You’d think they would learn their lesson, and stop putting up polls about liberty, when they don’t even understand the basics of libertarianism themselves.

IT IS NOT LEW ROCKWELL’S JOB TO EDUCATE YOU!  Even if he is your libertarian daddy.

Seems to me, the LP has one flavour, and that is vanilla.  They are so vanilla, someone could mistake them for white latex paint, and as David Nolan recently alluded to in a Lew Rockwell podcast, there is no point in having a 3rd party if it is not going to be radical.

With the money drying up and the results stuck on stuck, seems to me the LP is just a big parody of what a radical 3rd party should be.

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Iraqi Journalist Throws Shoe at Bush – AP

Nice work George, you’re a hero the world over!

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