The fruit doesn't fall far from the loop

The libertarian movement's crazy old uncle has another screed up today, apparently attempting to provoke a spat with the Rockwellites. Though the theme is typical and predictable, i.e. scream that Rockwell is a "racist bigot homophobe" on the flimsiest of evidence, the timing is curiously atypical.

First the background. The post in question concerns a story about a young man named Marcus Epstein. Sometime circa 2007, Epstein went through a severe bout of mental depression and developed a drinking problem. While stammering home one night in a state of alcohol-induced incoherence, he allegedly said the dreaded n-word to a black lady he encountered on the street. The incident occurred in Washington D.C., which has one of those "hate crimes" laws and Epstein was charged with a violation. He eventually pleaded it away by declining to contest the charges. Those who knew him attested that the incident was clearly alcohol-induced, and out of character for him. He nonetheless tendered the expected round of apologies, which the world would have likely never even noticed save for the fact that Epstein was a staffer at the time for a Republican political action committee, which he then left to take the heat off his bosses. Again, note that the incident itself occurred in 2007 and the political fallout concluded around June 2009 when the legal case was closed and Epstein resigned.

It is now February 2010 and the story is old news. Enter Tom Palmer, who has almost certainly never done anything he regrets while intoxicated (not that he bothered to disclose the pertinent detail of alcohol in his retelling of Epstein's Mel Gibson moment). As readers of this blog (or the other blog) are sure to note, The Libertarian Thinker (tm) has been taking a beating as of late over his bizarre fixation on Rockwell. This fixation never really goes away with Palmer, as some things never do. But the Rockwell one has flared up in recent weeks. Hence him trotting out the Epstein case.

Why? Because in Palmerland, Epstein's impolitic outburst simply *must* be attributable to the tutelage of Lew Rockwell. His evidence, if it can even be called that...well...it turns out that while he was an undergraduate at the College of William and Mary, Epstein posted a couple articles on Rockwell's voluminous web blog (including a glowing profile of the black libertarian poet Zora Neale Hurston). The most recent of them appeared in 2005, making Epstein the veritable Dauphin to Rockwell's blogging empire, no doubt.

But alcohol is not all Palmer declined to mention. Rockwell's site was not Epstein's primary publisher, or even his most recent. In fact, this kid published far more frequently with the typical run-of-the-mill op/ed factories that permeate the right-of-center press in this country.

Epstein wrote for such "racist fringe" periodicals as Human Events, Townhall.com, the Independent Review, and the Washington Examiner...or basically some of the very same outlets that Palmer himself routinely cavorts with...and conveniently uses to pad his shallow "Curriculum Vitae."

So why isn't Tom Palmer telling us that Epstein's nut doesn't fall far from the tree of the Independent Institute? Or that he's putting Human Events' secret racist ideas into practice? That he's proselytizing some spooky "racial collective" agenda that was hatched in a secret cabal by the Leadership Institute, Townhall.com, and National Review Online's John Derbyshire?

Or for that matter, why don't we simply tar Tom Palmer himself with Epstein's outburst? Palmer did, after all, publish, grant interviews to, and receive praise and favorable book reviews from many of those exact same sources. Hell, Palmer's current employer even hosts events with Epstein's former employer, which in turn hosted an event attended by racists according to some far left blog that carries banner ads for the Communist Party, thereby demonstrating once and for all that Palmer simply must have secret yearnings of his own to deliver crudely worded racial insults to the black people he encounters on the streets of Washington. And that he's also a secret communist.

Wait, that's not enough proof for ya? Well we don't need no stinkin' proof. Because this is exactly how these absurd Palmeresque guilt-by-association games work. Quod erat demonstrandum.