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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This is from the June 1971 edition of The Libertarian Forum.  I removed the original emphasis and added my own.

The question of whether a future free society will be “coop” or communal or capitalist brings up the most disturbing problem about the anarcho-syndicalists and communalists. This is the famous “question of Auban” – the question that “Auban”, the individualist anarchist hero of John Henry Mackay’s novel The Anarchists, put to the left-wing anarchists. In essence: would you, in your proposed anarchist society, permit those who so wished to have private property, to engage in free market transactions, to hire workers in “capitalist’ relations; etc.?[¹] The communist anarchists in Mackay’s book never answered the question clearly and lucidly, and neither do any leftwing anarchists that one may encounter today. (For the Auban speech from Mackay, see Krimerman and Perry, eds., Patterns of Anarchy (Doubleday, 1966), pp. 16-33.) Generally, the left-anarchists reply that, in their Utopian society, no one will be so base as to want to indulge in private property or in capitalist social relations. [²] But suppose they do? one persists. The answer is generally either a repeat of the Utopian answer or an evasive silence.

And when the left-anarchists can be pressed for an answer, the response is disturbing indeed. Take for example one of our most distinguished socialist-anarchists, Professor Noam Chomsky. Professor Chomsky has recently expressed a great deal of worry about the recent rise of our “right-wing” libertarian movement; apparently he is – I am afraid unrealistically – concerned that we might succeed in abolishing the State before the State has succeeded in abolishing private property! Secondly, Chomsky has written that the anarcho-capitalist society would constitute “the greatest tyranny the world has ever known”. (What, Noam? Greater than Hitler? than Ghengis Khan?) Whether or not anarcho-capitalism would be tyrannical is here irrelevant; the problem is that, in so expressing his horror at the possible results of complete freedom, Professor Chomsky reveals that he is not really an “anarchist” at all, indeed that he prefers statism to an anarcho-capitalist world. That of course is his prerogative, and scarcely unusual, but what is illegitimate is for this distinguished linguist to call himself an “anarchist”. And I very much fear that the same can be said for the other varieties of left-anarchists: communal, syndical, or whatever. Beneath a thin veneer of libertarian rhetoric there lies the same compulsory and coercive collectivist that we have encountered all too often in the last two centuries. Scratch a left-wing “anarchist” and you will find a coercive egalitarian despot who makes the true lover of freedom yearn even for Richard Nixon (Arghhl) in contrast.

If this analysis is correct, as I believe it is, then it makes all the more absurd the hankering by so many of our “left-wing” for an intimate comradely alliance with the anarcho-left. [³] Beneath superficial agreement in rhetoric, there is nothing in common between genuine libertarians and collectivist “anarchists”. Superficially, we both oppose the existing system – but so too do monarchists, Nazis, and those who hanker for a return to the Inquisition – scarcely enough for a warm and comradely dialogue. It is indeed fortunate for Liberty that the left-anarchists have about as much chance of victory as some of our Conservatives have to restore the Bourbon dynasty. For if they did, we would soon find that the embrace of left-anarchy is the embrace of Death.

1. Left-anarchists are not anarcho-capitalist fellow travelers when it comes to non-aggression.
2. Thick libero–utopian-arianism.
3. The obsession with reaching out to the statist and anarcho left as superior to the statist and anarcho right alienates a great many people through false characterizations (vulgar this, vulgar that) and partisan/adolescent clique games.

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h/t Stacy Herbert @ MaxKeiser.com

As readers of this blog know, stickK (shameless plug) is a commitment store that helps you stick to your goals. We’ll elicit support from your friends. We’ll nag you if you want. And most uniquely, we’ll let you put your own money at stake. It’s still hard for me to believe that in just over a year, people have been willing to put at risk more than $1 million in their contractual commitments.

Yeah, people have been willing to risk their money to do what they already consider to be the right thing.  Is this an efficient use of capital?
It gets better,

Economists tend to think of information and incentives as the core drivers of human behavior. But Cialdini and Positive Energy have me thinking that smiley faces may also play a useful role.

What would this scam be without an appeal to anti-intellectualism?  It’s based around collectivist confirmation rather than individualistic self-discipline.  Basically, you can’t succeed on your own.  Success is being as similar to your peers as possible.

As an aside, I’ve recently had to confront how I do business, and decide whether to pursue a lucrative but exploitative path, or a less lucrative and less exploitative path.  I chose not to take advantage of people with high time preferences.  For now.

Why? The reasoning is that too many people misunderstand the word capitalism and think it is the American economic system. It’s not even an argument that the word capitalism means something different than the Austrian or right-libertarian (anyone who is not a left-libertarian apparently) usage, but rather that since a lot of people misuse and misunderstand the word, they now own it. The word is now defined by it’s misuse.

This has already happened with terms like liberal, anarchist, anarchy, laissez-faire, liberalism and libertarianism to name a few.

I refuse to let the lowest common denominator define the language I will use. These are the same people who do not understand, and lack the curiosity to discover why inflation occurs. The same people who vote for the lesser of two evils. The same people who cheer for war when it starts, then cry about it later. The same people who want to bailout Main Street by placing a tax burden on their children, and their children’s children. The same people who worship Reagan and the Clintons. Who think that natural disasters are good for the economy and that America can spread freedom and democracy abroad with the barrel of a gun.

Why would I care what ignorant and loathsome people think?  Why would I allow them to frame the debate through their stunted and twisted perception of language?

The answer is, I don’t care, and I won’t allow someone to place limitations upon the debate.

Capitalism.  It’s a great thing.

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Google releases their new browser, named Chrome. Someone mentioned that it was difficult to find Chrome related domain names. Not too difficult for me. I scored 4 in 10 minutes.

Also, the release of Chrome is somewhat surprising. I’m not a tech gawker, and admit I had no idea it was coming even though it coincided with Google shutting down it’s CPA referral program (perhaps due to someone I know who had found a way to push massive conversions through it) where it promoted Firefox heavily. After doing so much work to move people to a browser that is now a competitor…

Maybe it was to give Microsoft a kick in the jiggly bits.

What’s fascinating to me is that the internet is evolving so rapidly that browsers are becoming more diverse and more disparate. Chrome is not like other browsers, although only the more technically minded folks will realize how different it really is. There truly is a lot of differentiation in the freest market mankind has ever seen.

FSK lost his job. That sucks. Although I think the drama of his workplace was starting to crush his soul, so maybe it is a good thing that he is now searching for a new mission. I’ve been there. I’ve always been better for the resets in my life, whether I pushed the button or someone else did.

I have 10 drafts, or unpublished, half-written, half-baked posts. With each passing day, I feel less connection to them, and the reasons I started them in the first place. While this holds true of what I thought might be a legendary post about the LRC Podcast, with the lack of podcasts for what feels like a couple weeks now, perhaps it is best that I didn’t get that one done or sink hours into transcribing audio quotes.

I totally abuse commas. So sue me.

I don’t like blogging. Bloggers have always seemed like soapbox self-promoters to me. There are so few who have something worthwhile to say, and many who just want acknowledgment for saying anything. But I have to admit that it is cathartic. And can be reflective.

On the Mises forum, someone asked, “How does an industry benefit from being taxed?”. What proceeded were explanations of the method by which companies benefit from taxation, and the conclusion that taxation functioned similarly to regulation as a barrier to entry.

I was going to add to the discussion and point out that lobbyists and corporations now write legislation, because whether it is tax or regulation, the government is the most efficient way for big business to control and limit competition. There doesn’t seem to be enough disgust with statism and the status quo for me in those discussions. At times, the environment seems very laissez-faire and in direct contradiction to Mises admonition, “tu ne cede malis”. I’m all for laissez-faire, but not when it comes to my oppression.

There are so many charades going on around us. The campaign charades, the legislative charade, the patriotic charades. Yesterday I listened to a few friends talk about Obama and Palin. They both acknowledge the system is a scam, that politicians are parasites and so forth, but are completely enthralled with the cult of personality that surrounds speech making and grandstanding.

“You should watch Bill Maher!” they tell me. Well, no I shouldn’t. I gave up Maher early in my transformation. He’s a cynical bigot whose primary contribution is attacking everything and everyone. The problem is, he does it indiscriminately. Literally, the loose cannon of left-intellectualism.

This guy, Francois Tremblay, does a Market Anarchist Carnival. I thought about signing up for it, but I don’t have a lot of content yet. I don’t know that he would let me run one.

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Advocating secession is, practically by definition, un-American.

Questions for Steve Benen…

What definition is that? What would you call the American Revolution? Were the colonies not seeking to secede from Great Britain?

Considering that the Revolution was a founding event in the history of America, your statement

Advocating secession is, practically by definition, un-American.

is stunningly ridiculous.

Steve, the world is already overflowing with people who post mindless jingoism. Please find a new shtick and stop trying to damage humanity.

And shame on AlterNet for reprinting you. Don’t they have anyone with any editorial integrity?

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