Cato Unhinged

So who is the Cato & Reason crowd donating now?

2011-12-26T12:22:00.004-07:00

Lots of mainline Republican milquetoast of the Scott Brown variety, and a single Rand (but not Ron) Paul.

BOAZ, DAVID D ARLINGTON,VA 22201 CATO INSTITUTE/EXECUTIVE - 6/28/11 - $600 - Term Limits America

CALABRIA, MARK WASHINGTON,DC 20009 CATO/POLICY ANALYST - 10/19/10 - $250 - Rubio, Marco (R)

CRANE, EDWARD H III WASHINGTON,DC 20001 CATO INSTITUTE/PRESIDENT - 5/15/10 - $500 - Campbell, Tom (R)

CRANE, EDWARD H MR III FALLS CHURCH,VA 22044 CATO INSTITUTE/PRESIDENT - 8/2/10 - $1,000 Paul, Rand (R)

CRANE, EDWARD H MR III FALLS CHURCH,VA 22044 CATO INSTITUTE/FOUNDATION EXECUTIVE - 6/24/11 - $1,000 Flake, Jeff (R)

DOLAN, GREGORY PITTSBURGH,PA 15222 CATO INSTITUTE/RESEARCH ANALYST - 9/30/10 - $1,000 Eagle Forum

DOLAN, GREGORY FRANCIS WASHINGTON,DC 20004 CATO INSTITUTE/ANALYST - 9/24/10 - $500 - Family PAC

LAMPO, DAVID ALEXANDRIA,VA 22314 CATO INSTITUTE/PUBLICATIONS DIRECTO - 4/16/10 - $250 - Berry, Matthew B (R)

LAMPO, DAVID WASHINGTON,DC 20001 CATO INSTITUTE/DIRECTOR - 5/27/11 - $250 - Brown, Scott P (R)

MACEY, JONATHAN R WOODBRIDGE,CT 06525 CATO INSTITUTE/LAW PROFESSOR - 1/21/10 - $500 - Simmons, Rob (R)

MITCHELL, DANIEL J MR FAIRFAX,VA 22030 CATO INSTITUTE/SENIOR FELLOW - 11/18/09 - $250 - Lauber, Elizabeth "Liz" (R)

SHAPIRO, ILYA WASHINGTON,DC 20001 CATO INSTITUTE/LAWYER - 3/31/10 - $250 - Kelly, Jesse (R)

SHAPIRO, ILYA WASHINGTON,DC 20001 - CATO INSTITUTE/SENIOR FELLOW IN CON - 4/27/11 - $250 - Hasner, Adam (R)

SHAPIRO, ILYA MS WASHINGTON,DC 20001 CATO INSTITUTE/WRITER/ATTORNEY - 2/11/11 - $250 - Cruz, Ted (R)

WARD, GAYLLIS NEW YORK,NY 10025 CATO INSTITUTE/DIRECTOR OF PLANNED - 1/14/10 - $250 - Brown, Scott P (R)

POOLE, ROBERT W MR JR PLANTATION,FL 33317 - REASON FOUNDATION/POLICY RESEARCHER - 6/30/10 - $500 - Malpass, David (R)

YBARRA, SHIRLEY WASHINGTON,DC 20037 - REASON FOUNDATION/ANALYST - 5/12/11 - $250 - Allen, George (R)

Cato goes fishing for Soros dollars

2011-04-28T20:57:00.005-06:00

You read that right. The same Cato Institute that can't seem to bring itself to welcome Ron Paul to its stage invited George Soros to give a lengthy and horribly wrongheaded speech on F.A. Hayek earlier this week.

I can only guess what's next from the world of Cato WTF. Perhaps a speech on Adam Smith by Hillary Clinton?

A Giant Flaming Hypocrite

2010-12-24T22:21:00.006-07:00

Outside of his odd political friendship with David "pop goes the" Weigel, James Kirchick is best known in libertarian circles as the public face of the Ron Paul newsletter smear story of 2008.

You may recall that Kirchick, who is openly gay, took particular offense at Paul's 1980's era newsletters over their insensitivity towards AIDS, which he in turn interpreted virulent homophobia.

For all the verbal lashing he gave Ron Paul, poor little Jamie apparently has few qualms about his own peculiar association with the Claremont Institute, which publishes his neoconservative saber rattling along side its intellectual leader Harry Jaffa's proclamations that "Sodomites should be returned to the closet, where they were of relatively little danger to themselves or others." In fact, Claremont is well known as a hotbed of virulent anti-homosexual commentary, and aligns firmly with the Christine O'Donnell wing of the Republican Party. But they also like warmongering bluster, hence their affinity for the Giuliani-ite Kirchick.

For all the cosmotarian fruitloops out there who hid behind shallow claims of "principle" while smearing Paul over thinly alleged associations and innuendos of anti-gay bigotry, I have a simple question: Will you hold your little friend Jamie to a similar standard for his hypocritical Claremont Institute dalliances?

Back on Suffragette City

2010-04-12T17:25:00.003-06:00

The gift of David Boaz's recent PC-tarian fiasco continues to produce, including a thoughtful rejoinder from Jacob Hornberger himself. Not content to let the matter drop though, Boaz along with Cato's in-house pretend philosopher have issued their own answers. One could easily pick apart their particulars, and I will momentarily, but a general point needs to be made from the outset. The relationship between the individual and the state is the heart of the libertarian political philosophy, and it is both the history and nature of the state to intrude upon the individual's liberty. Even when exerted against a group or class of people, the state's actual intrusion occurs on the individual level against his individual rights, that individual simply happening to belong to a group. A discriminatory law is therefore not wrong because it offends a broad, abstract, and often vaguely defined collective attribute of many individual persons such as race, class, religion, skin color, or sexual preference. It is wrong because of what it inflicts upon the individual liberty of that person, the attribute of his race, class, etc. being only the occasion of its infliction.

Boaz and Wilkinson fundamentally mistake the nature of "racism," "sexism," and all the other negative isms that are commonly use to collectively define a category of infringements upon the rights of the individual, and do so by confusing the targeted characteristic for the individual himself, against whom the actual physical wrong is committed. Such mistaken orderings amount to little more than crudely formulated displays of identity collectivism, and as the simple substitution of "class" for "race" et al illustrates, they are fraught with with fundamentally Marxian premises.

It should also be duly noted that Boaz et al completely neglect another important dimension from their crude historical analyses, to wit: the embrace of classical liberalism as an intellectual movement. Even as the 19th century in practice fell far short of its libertarian ideals, those same ideals flourished in its intellectual culture. Is it simple coincidence that the century to which Hornberger refers produced such luminaries as Frederic Bastiat, Richard Cobden, Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, David Ricardo, Carl Menger, Lysander Spooner, Alexis de Tocqueville, William Lloyd Garrison, Henry George, William Graham Sumner, and dozens of other like-minded thinkers on whose work much of the modern libertarian movement of today rests? Is it also of little significance that many of these same thinkers were roundly embraced and celebrated as the leading minds of their day? Given what bilgewater passes for "intellectual thought" in the present day, perhaps the 19th century was a "golden age" of sorts after all.

On to the particulars though...

After acknowledging that Hornberger made absolutely no specific longing to pre-1865 America but rather the 19th century in general, Boaz, with Wilkinson's assistance, attempts to modify and extend his argument from blacks to women (and gays and every other Politically Correct category of shared human attributes). Thus they rant about Hornberger's supposed neglect for those who lacked "meaningful rights to political participation" and so forth. Hornberger makes no such neglect save for benign omission of a point so self-evident that it need not be harped upon, though harpies his interlocutors happen to be. It causes wonder, however, to witness the likes of Boaz and Wilkinson in their apparent reduction of the measure of a free society into something so ultimately meaningless and so notoriously fraught with statist manipulation and irrational displays of misplaced exuberance as the elective franchise. The people may elect an Obama and they may vote themselves a welfare state, but by golly they exercised a "meaningful right to political participation" and therefore must be freer than the past when such franchise was not universal! Briefly setting aside overwhelming evidence that the expansion of mass democracy in the United States only gave rise to bigoted populist windbags with a propensity for statist intrusions upon liberty, both economic and personal, there is a delicious irony to be found in its use as a measure of a free society by two individuals who frequently announce their own disgust with the ballot box, or sing praises of others who abstain from this largely frivolous act.*

*This writer has long tended to concur with Spooner's observation that "man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist" and therefore only exercises the franchise to obtain "some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own." But such thoughts may be beyond the comprehension of persons who fundamentally conflate collective identity politics with the inherent antagonism of an individual's relationship with the state, and what the latter says of his own free exercise of rights.

That much duly noted, it is similarly mistaken to respond, as Wilkinson does, that in 1880's America "well more than half the population was systematically and often brutally denied basic liberty rights" on account of the state's own discriminatory policies against persons of targeted racial, class, and gender attributes. One may duly denounce the feudal era English common law concept of coverture impeding female property rights, yet also recognize what Wilkinson does not, namely that (1) such laws were drastically diminished through the enactment of Married Women's Property Acts and Privy Examination statutes in the majority of states between 1809 and the early 1850's, (2) the 19th century in general saw a marked liberalization of laws regarding women's rights in general including the elective franchise, which preceded the federal 19th amendment on the state level by upwards of 5 decades in some cases, and (3) no necessity exists to assert that all 19th century females would find themselves little more than the status of slaves because their husbands, to whom it may be fairly assumed a large number were happily married, retained a stronger legal standing to contract in a court of law.

Jim Crow, which was again a sin of government against the individual at the most fundamental level, serves to fully illustrate the fault of government even when it is comparatively smaller than today, though again its wrong is so self-evident to the libertarian that harping upon it serves little legitimate purpose beyond an artificial attempt to quash an argument that one also happens to be losing. Of course even the most horrendous acts of overt state segregation against blacks (which actually reached their peak amidst the inflamed populism of the early 20th century's "Progressive Era," not the comparatively benign, even if far from perfect, political era that preceded it) did not completely deprive them of economic freedom. Indeed, this was the central point of Booker T. Washington's autobiography, "Up From Slavery," and the defining message of his thoroughly libertarian career as an educator and thinker: Permit us, as individuals, to better ourselves through the exercise of economic freedom...which brings us to a second bit of irony, wherein Boaz apparently missed the entire message of the same work whose title he appropriated to make his original dig at Hornberger.

What next, Boaz? Slavery Reparations?

2010-04-07T13:40:00.005-06:00

In case you may think David Boaz's recent attack on Jacob Hornberger is anything other than evidence of a recurring pattern in which he exhibits a full-fledged subscription to the intellectually slothful doctrine of Political Correctness, he has now joined the cadre of usual suspects in denouncing Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell's proclamation of "Confederate History Month" for failing to include a hollow "feel good" apology for slavery.

The actual policy effect of an addendum condemning slavery is of course meaningless, and its sole purpose is an act of shallow political pandering to a wholly un-libertarian interest group of professional race-baiters who make their livelihoods in manufacturing racial controversy and using it to manipulate the political system in a thoroughly statist direction. The Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons are not worth the time, energy, or even attention of any thinking libertarian. But Boaz knows that, and is apparently quite okay with pandering to them nonetheless. Boaz also knows that any thinking individual recognizes the inherent evil of slavery, and need not dwell upon restating it to the detraction of all further intellectual discourse on any historical subject it may have tainted. For the same reason, we need not qualify every single discussion of murder with a boiler-plate condemnation of the inherent evil of murder. Or of rape. Or of theft at gunpoint on the side of the road (except when it's the government doing that theft, and the gun-toting highwayman also carries a badge). All thinking people know these wrongs to be obvious, thus eliminating the need to incessantly restate them...unless an entirely different purpose is sought or intended from their repetition.

The next pressing question then is whether Boaz recognizes that ulterior purpose (as a reputed intellectual he likely does), and if so does he adhere to its statist tenets in advancing it?

PC-tarianism

2010-04-06T22:47:00.009-06:00

For all its internecine squabbles, the libertarian movement has thus far managed to remain relatively insulated from the leftist cultural phenomenon known as PC, or Political Correctness. The reason is not difficult to isolate. The underlying premise of Political Correctness is the belief that the essence of every individual is his or her collective association with a group - a race, a gender, a sexual preference, a religion, a medical affliction - and that membership in that group fundamentally defines his or her interaction with all other levels of society, which is to say other collectively identified groups. In such a setting moral right and wrong is taken to derive not from acts infringing upon the rights of individuals or causing them injustice and harm, but rather acts that are perceived to infringe upon group identities and group sensibilities - including group sensibilities taken to a radical extreme in which even the most obscure perceived slight is construed as "racist," "bigoted," "homophobic," and simply social taboo. And as is typical of such social paradigms, certain persons are also designated the victims of history, the perpetually oppressed, though not as individuals but rather through their membership in a certain collective group. And for every perpetually oppressed is a perpetual oppressor group, compared to which no greater evil exists.

Starting to sound uncomfortably familiar? Substitute the word "class" for "race," "proletariat" for "black/gay/hispanic/non-Christian," and the word "bourgeois" for "rich white male" and you get a better picture from whence the nonsense of Political Correctness originates, and why it exists in such self-evident contradiction with libertarianism.

Yet the PC bug is a pernicious one, and it too has started to infect our movement. Its carriers come with little surprise, though two particular PC-tarians have been unusually aggressive of late: David Boaz and Tom G. Palmer. Boaz has long toed the politically correct line, dating back almost a decade to his bizarre Jesse Jacksonite crusade against the Mississippi state flag over its Confederate imagery. And readers of this blog already know of Palmer's bizarre Confederate fixation, which rears its ugly head even when such a topic is neither appropriate to the discussion at hand, nor even relevant to the muddled point he seems to be making. Each also recoiled in feigned horror over the manufactured Ron Paul newsletter "controversy," which "offended" them far more than even the most statist elements of the tax and spend big government socializing Bush and Obama administrations. (In fairness, Boaz assures us that he does not ever vote for candidates who support the Warfare-Welfare state or trample on personal liberty...he just donates to their campaigns instead). But today's Boaz rant, promptly endorsed by Palmer, was far more insidious, in that it attacked a fellow libertarian not for anything he said that may have been construed as offensive. Instead, the Palmer-endorsed Boaz screed attacked its target for what he did not say (and what he had no reason or need to say as it was of little relevance to his point).

Boaz's point of outrage? An innocuous column by the Future of Freedom Foundation's Jacob Hornberger on the decline of individual liberty in America. Boaz's objection centered around Hornberger's demonstrably valid contention that the United States of the 19th century was generally a time of smaller government, freer markets, and less overbearing and omnipresent federal intrusion into the daily lives of its citizens. To make his point Hornberger referenced a widely revered historical figure, that most libertarian of the primary founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson. What, precisely, was the offending passage? Evidently the following:

First of all, let’s talk about the economic system that existed in the United States from the inception of the nation to the latter part of the 19th century. The principles are simple to enumerate: No income taxation (except during the Civil War), Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, economic regulations, licensure laws, drug laws, immigration controls, or coercive transfer programs, such as farm subsidies and education grants. There was no federal department of labor, agriculture, commerce, education, energy, health and human services, or homeland security.

And just what was so wrong with that passage, and with citing Jefferson? Well as any PC Nazi will tell you, by simple omission Hornberger defied the PC paradigm in which all of American history is a pattern of weaker groups exploited by strong, wealthy, greedy, white males. Since Boaz evidently subscribes to that PC paradigm, he finds a fault in Hornberger's silence on slavery. And he then uses that silence to lump Hornberger into some sort of association with all those dirty rotten "neo-confederates," whatever that may be (other than a not-so-vieled pejorative reference to the Mises Institute, which Boaz gratuitously inserts in the middle of his discussion) who join "organizations" and argue that the Union win in the Civil War was a bad thing on the net for liberty. Mockingly, Boaz queries: "Did Mr. Hornberger really forget that 4 million Americans were held in bondage when he waxed eloquent about how free America was until the late 19th century?" Though he quickly backed away from further implying Hornberger to be a closet slaveocrat, simply asking this question cannot be construed as anything but an insult. Not to mention a suggestion that Hornberger has violated PC norms - a suggestion that Boaz reaffirms several times over by qualifying any and every good thing Hornberger has to say about the smaller government of the past with the usual list of all the classes and groups and ethnicities and sexual preferences that didn't get to enjoy all that liberty.

Now Slavery is an unconscionable wrong to any thinking libertarian. It's wrong is also so self-evident that Boaz's very line of questioning exudes all the intellectual sophistication of the Keith Olbermanns and Al Sharptons who pretend to see a sheet and a burning cross behind every critic of Obamacare...or Obama for that matter for no other reason besides the fact that Obama is black. And that is what makes Boaz's attempt to tar Hornberger so noxious. Nothing in Hornberger's column actually merits the scorn Boaz heaps upon him over slavery, and yet Boaz finds a "sin" in the very absence of evidence that such a "sin" was committed.

What's worse though is Boaz is even being dishonest about Hornberger's supposed neglect of historical slavery. True, it was not the subject of the column to which Boaz responded. But Hornberger has written about historical slavery many times before, and in strongly critical terms. Here is what he said about slavery in another column only a few weeks before the one Boaz found so objectionable:

The neocon mindset about Muslims is much like the mindset of plantation owners in the Old South. As long as the slaves were obedient, respectful, and subservient, everything was fine. Oh, sure, slaves would periodically complain about their condition in life but, by and large, such complaints were considered acceptable. What was not acceptable was resistance and opposition to slavery itself, especially when it turned violent. That was when a message had to be sent. Such an uppity attitude simply could not be tolerated.

Clearly then the root of Boaz's objection is not any legitimate quibble over Hornberger "forgetting" about slavery, but rather that Hornberger did not make slavery the singular focus of his historical discussion as the PC paradigm dictates.

But even to Boaz's rather shaky point there is a flip side. For all the fault and complicity to be found in the government-sustained institution of slavery, it is also a disservice to history to allow that fault to perpetually overshadow and thus forever taint the very real beacons of liberty and limited government we may find by looking to the American past. At stake is no less than the question of whether the events of 1776, in casting off perpetually warring, colonizing, and tax-feeding leviathan, may be considered a human advancement in the classical liberal concepts of free markets and free and limited government. If we cast aside all forerunners such as Jefferson, and dismiss the generally limited government and free market liberalism of the pre-20th century America for its fault of slavery, and if we embrace a need to ostracize other libertarians not for any actual defense of slavery but for the contrived "sin" of omission found in failing to incessantly harp upon it throughout all discussions of liberty throughout American history, then with what else does that leave us?

Stated differently, if we must always and explicitly qualify every instance historical liberty with its most egregious historical violations simply for the sake of paying those violations deference whether doing so is germane to the discussion or not, we also effectively taint and negate any value that may be gained in a comparison to the freer particulars of the past. In doing so we also necessarily resign ourselves to a position that true individual liberty is unattainable, for we are qualifying every past instance of liberty's existence, and every libertarian characteristic that the early American republic actually did exhibit, by reducing them all to the moral equivalence of that same republic's least free attribute. Boaz may not admit as much, but he spends his entire screed skipping, hopping, and dancing around this very conclusion.

It is no mystery why libertarian thinkers of much greater intellectual capacity than either Boaz or Palmer could make this distinction in their own day, even when dealing with the very same subjects that Boaz and Palmer now employ in their PC meanderings. They recognized what Boaz and Palmer do not - liberty is not a sales pitch to the slothful minds of modern political discussion, consumed in fraudulent outrage and hyper-emotional displays of offense and "hurt" over matters of frivolity.
It is not a trendy affectation of self-proclaimed enlightenment, meant to cultivate a personal image of sophistication and acceptable company. Liberty is an inherent condition of the individual, and its presence or absence is measured by that individual's relation to his fellow man under the auspices of that which asserts itself to govern him.

Even the great libertarian Lysander Spooner recoiled in horror at the outcome of the Civil War and the loss of the Confederacy - not because he disagreed with that which it affected of slavery, namely his lifelong quest for its destruction, but because it came about through authoritarian means and at a much larger and distinctly un-libertarian price. The reason for his objection was found in government, the antithesis of liberty:

"Who, but such usurpers, robbers, and murderers as they, ever established slavery? Or what government, except one resting upon the sword, like the one we now have, was ever capable of maintaining slavery? And why did these men abolish slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general - not as an act of justice to the black man himself, but only "as a war measure," and because they wanted his assistance, and that of his friends, in carrying on the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both black and white...There was no difference of principle - but only of degree - between the slavery they boast they have abolished, and the slavery they were fighting to preserve."

One need not look far for clues of what Boaz might say of Spooner if their lifespans traversed, as it would probably consist of "reminding" the lifelong abolitionist that he had "forgotten" about the 4 million slaves.

Or what would Boaz say of Lord Acton, who in 1866 wrote Robert E. Lee to inform him "I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization, and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo." Judging by his snide remarks, he would probably dismiss the British philosopher as a "self-proclaimed" libertarian and perhaps a "neo-Confederate" engaged in the business of denying the "magnitude" and indeed overarching primacy of all things slavery, all things race, all things class, all things Politically Correct, and all things mired in the overtly Marxian analytical device of labor-reductionism in which an entire "social and economic system" is said to be defined and predicated upon the exploitation of a laboring class, with any and everything else about it that may commend itself to liberty being wholly subordinate and thus subject to dismissal.

But Acton and Spooner were genuine libertarians. They recognized the centrality of the individual's relationship with the state to his own liberty, and could accordingly explore the depth of that relationship beyond its worst (and best) particulars. Boaz and Palmer are PC-tarians who generally share and even occasionally advance on their common ground with liberty, but only through the accident of a mutual disdain for government...at least on paper. To PC-tarians, race and class and gender and religion are conversation stoppers, their finer details and the roles they play in human interaction an unexplorable taboo that must recieve unyielding elevation above all further (and thereby precluding all further) discussion. Hornberger's real "sin" was therefore not that he neglected slavery, but that he pushed the conversation of liberty beyond the constraining effects of the PC paradigm.

Libertarian Electoral Stupidity

2010-03-30T12:18:00.004-06:00

Chalk this one up to more self-defeating libertarian electoral stupidity. The morning brings news that Charles and David Koch, the benefactors of a dozen or so libertarian outfits in the DC region, are fund-raising for neoconservative U.S. Senate candidate Trey Grayson in Kentucky. Grayson, of course, is running behind in the polls for the Republican primary against Rand Paul, son of the Texas congressman.

Now I'm personally less inclined than the Rockwellites to doubt the Koch brothers' libertarian bona fides. Even at their weaker moments, the organizations in the Koch empire are generally very free market and for limited government. And as far as eccentric billionaires go, the Kochs are pretty damn good most of the time and deserve credit for that. They could be George Soroses after all, or any number of other statist left-leaning rich guys who use their money to fund pure evil. But the decision to back Grayson has Rockwell incensed, and legitimately so. It's in the same category as all those Reasonoids who endorsed Obama. Or the Cato scholars who donated to the likes of George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, and William Weld (hint hint, David Boaz). It's one of those moments where you simply have to say WTF.

Rand Paul is a rare thing in modern electoral politics. He has libertarian bona fides, funding, and most importantly of all the polls show he has electoral viability. Any thinking libertarian should embrace that, regardless of petty internal differences over his father. Instead we simply have another example of libertarians shooting their own. And yet we wonder why we're perpetually confined to the periphery of the American political system.

Of course the Koch revelation may have at least one more immediate implication for the Kentucky Senate campaign. It completely takes the wind out of Grayson's attack ads claiming that Paul's campaign is funded by "out of state libertarians." Or does Koch Industries get exempted from that label?

On Rockwell and Rosa Parks

2010-03-02T01:27:00.005-07:00

You can always tell when Tom Palmer's various medical afflictions are flaring up, because he invariably trots out his favorite piece of "evidence" of the secret racist bogeyman he sees constantly lurking around the Mises Institute: Rosa Parks.

To hear The Libertarian Thinker (tm) describe it, one would think that the Rockwellites must have performed some sort of virtual lynching on the well known civil rights movement icon. Here's Palmer's most recent attribution of this reported event:

Put this in context of the bilious hatred directed toward those who stood up for civil rights by, among others, his colleagues at the Mises Institute, Rockwell, DiLorenzo, and Huebert. Their remarks about...Rosa Parks, one of the most elegant advocates of American freedom in the past sixty years, give you a hint. (She wouldn’t “get off her fat lazy ass” was their interpretation of her motives for not giving up her seat to a white traveler when informed that it was required by “law.”) It’s a part of a very disturbing pattern.

Sounds pretty nasty, don't it? That's cause Palmer, as he is prone to do, intentionally and willfully misrepresented his attributed quote as an act of malicious racism. In reality, the Rockwellite "interpretation" was nothing of the sort. Rather, it was an inoccuous blog post that quoted a simple JOKE about Rosa Parks by comedian Cedric the Entertainer in the well known movie Barbershop. Palmer completely ignored this context, despite the fact that the Rockwell blog explicitly identified its author as Cedric in the part that he intentionally truncates from his oft-repeated "fat lazy ass" quotation. As may be readily seen, that context is everything. Without it the comment looks like a crude and racially charged insult (which is what Palmer intends). With that context and with its actual author identified though, it becomes a well known comedy bit. Again, hear it for yourself right here.

Palmer, of course, knows this, which makes his own repeated misrepresentations of it all the more malicious and deceitful in their own right. That is because Tom G. Palmer is a congenital liar who is so pent up with hatred against Rockwell that he can't even recognize a well known joke from a highly grossing movie. Not that Palmer would ever attack somebody else for failing to see the humor in a joke of his own telling...

What goes around...

2010-03-01T17:24:00.004-07:00

Reason's erstwhile cub report David Weigel has an interesting couple of pieces up at the Washington Independent about his facebook pal Marcus Epstein, one and the same with yesterday's Palmer contrivance.

It seems that the far left has taken to using Epstein's name in a fashion very similar to Palmer, to wit: as a tool to beat their adversaries over the head by way of a guilt-by-association "racism" smear. In this particular case the target is not Lew Rockwell, but rather James O'Keefe - the fellow behind those ACORN prostitute scandal videos and, more recently, a bizarre incident that resulted in his arrest at Sen. Mary Landrieu's office. O'Keefe, it seems, was a former co-worker of Epstein at the Leadership Institute and, while there, attended a debate that Epstein organized between National Review's John Derbyshire and some silly self-important tool from the American Renaissance outfit. This, plus Epstein's Mel Gibson moment of course, make O'Keefe a closet Klansman...at least according to the logic employed by the likes of Tom Palmer, ACORN, and the People's World Daily.

Weigel, to his credit, actually puts up a very reasonable and measured defense of O'Keefe:

I’ve known campus conservative activists for a decade, and I know the people who put together the 2006 forum quite well. Extremism — theories about race, right-wing European politics, anti-immigration rhetoric — is seen in these circles as something of a lark. It’s forbidden knowledge. It terrifies liberals. But people like Marcus Epstein and James O’Keefe feel (or felt) like they can get away with playing around in these circles before getting down to serious politics. And once they make that leap — as Epstein did with Buchanan, or as O’Keefe did with his ACORN tapes — the idea of being brought down by controversy is laughable. They’d faced down the Southern Poverty Law Center and won, so what do they have to fear?

...[C]an the tactics conservatives used to attack Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings or Green Jobs Czar Van Jones–digging into their associations, reporting that they attended scary-sounding events, finding out-of-context, radical-sounding quotes from their earlier careers–be used against conservative activists?

That last sentence is the kicker, as it highlights the absurdity of these tactics. Unfortunately they are also tactics Weigel knows quite well, though he didn't seem to make that rather obvious connection.

The fruit doesn't fall far from the loop

2010-02-28T21:18:00.008-07:00

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.

The Reason Magazine Delusion

2010-02-24T13:34:00.003-07:00

Why the Reason Foundation periodical does not represent the future of libertarianism.

First a disclaimer: Reason Magazine produces some top notch journalism. I say that as a long time reader and a fan of several of their writers. In the past I have also called for reconciliation between warring libertarian factions including the folks at Reason. The reasons for this are sensible and should be obvious for a political movement that already has enough trouble even getting a seat at the table.

More than a few folks over at Reason are not content with that though, hence a decision earlier today to publish a bizarre hatchet job on one of the exceedingly few libertarian-leaning voices in the entire U.S. government. And a softer backhanded insult to accompany it. The implication of this decision is regrettable but also unavoidable: there is something severely amiss over at Reason. And it's time to put it out in the open and name names.

One need not look very far to find them. In fact, Reason took care of that itself last election. I therefore submit the following as prime evidence of why Reason Magazine does not, and should not, represent the future of libertarianism in the United States of America, or anywhere else for that matter:

Reason Magazine, Presidential Poll 2008

Question 1. Who are you voting for in November?

"If the polls in my home state are close: Obama" - Peter Bagge, contributing editor

"Obama. The Republicans must be punished and punished hard." - Ronald Bailey, science correspondent

"I plan to vote for Obama mainly because he is not a Republican and not John McCain, who is temperamentally unfit to be president." - Bruce Bartlett, columnist

"For not a single "liberal" reason, I am voting not only for Obama, but for the GOP to be utterly spanked and sent into exile" - David Brin, columnist

"Barack Obama. All my life I've been waiting for a black president; Obama's not monumentally unqualified, and his solid-if-boring book at least had some unkind words for teachers unions. Also my kids like him." - Tim Cavanaugh, contributing editor

"Barack Obama, for two main reasons: The Republican Party, which has jettisoned its best inclinations and indulged its worst for the last eight years, richly deserves exile from the White House, and 2) because he shows an intelligence and temperament that suggest he will govern more pragmatically than ideologically—the best that can be hoped for from a Democratic president." - Steve Chapman, columnist

"Ralph Nader, because I never got the chance to vote for Gene Debs or Norman Thomas." - Bill Kauffman, columnist

"Barack Obama, since he's a genuine leader, with a good program for cleaning up Washington, and will be very good for business." - Craig Newmark, contributor

"Barack Obama, because he most exemplifies Reason and Free Minds" - Steven Pinker, contributor

"I really just want the Republicans to lose." - Damon W. Root, associate editor

"I am voting for Barack Obama, because I believe in hope and change and unicorns. Also, John McCain is dangerously mentally unfit to be president and has decided, with his choice of Sarah Palin, to complete the transformation of the GOP into a southern-centered party based on social division and cultural resentment." - Ryan Sager, columnist

"Living in the District of Columbia, I see little reason to mar my as- yet unblemished record of nonvoting. But if I lived in Virigina or Florida, I'd be ticking the box for Obama" - Julian Sanchez, contributing editor

"I'll be voting for Obama, because I think as a nation we're about to descend into a pile of hurt, and I want someone who is smart, pragmatic, and not prone to temper tantrums working to get us out of it as quickly as possible." - John Scalzi, contributor

"Barack Obama. I could give 100 reasons, but I'll just say civil liberties. He's not perfect, and yes, he sold out on warrantless wiretapping, but on the whole, he's been better in this area than any presidential candidate in my voting lifetime." - RU Sirius, nom-de-plume contributor

"I will vote for Obama on behalf of everyone watching in the world, because he’s the coolest to watch on television." - Doug Stanhope, contributor

"I’m voting for Barack Obama, the only remaining candidate whom I trust not to run the country (further) into the ground with stupid and erratic decisions, and who (miraculously for a Democrat) has run a less brain-dead, faux-populist campaign than the Republican." - David Weigel, associate editor

"I think an Obama victory would be the lesser of two evils overall, but I will probably vote for Bob Barr" - Cathy Young, contributing editor

Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, to their credit, broke with the Obamunistic trend of things over at Reason. It should be painfully obvious though just how far out of touch a large part of their editorial staff is with the libertarian movement - so far out of touch, in fact, that they embraced a closeted Marxist. It is also not difficult to speculate that the majority of the people on this same list would never consider a vote for Ron Paul. In fact, more than a few of them openly attacked him in his bid for the Republican nomination.

So to Gillespie and Welch, I offer the following in the spirit of Sarah Palin: How's that hopey-changey thing working out for ya? While you figure that out, get to work. You've got a house of your own to clean before you cast stones at Ron Paul.

Tom Palmer's Confederate Problem

2010-02-21T10:52:00.011-07:00

Tom Palmer is at war...with the Confederate States of America. You know, the short-lived country on the southern side of the Civil War that ceased to exist circa 1865. In fact, one could argue that Mr. Palmer's bizarre obsession with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and even his personal crusade to expunge it from the libertarian movement, is partially rooted in an unusual and deeply personal disdain for Dixie.

Exhibit #1: Palmer whines about the Confederacy all the time, even when it isn't even really material to his whine. Witness this post, where Palmer's hysterics were triggered by a Strangelove-esque quip about nuclear weaponry on the Lew Rockwell site. Though it had absolutely NOTHING to do with the Confederacy, Palmer migrated directly to that topic by the end of his first paragraph. Such behavior is surprisingly typical for him.

Exhibit #2: Palmer has a conniption about the Rockwellites prodding of David Boaz for his Clinton nostalgia (and a strangely hypocritical one at that). Again the topic has nothing even remotely connecting it to the Confederacy, but half way through the post Palmer's ranting about just that.

Exhibit #3: What better way to attack the Mises Crowd's take on the recent Russian invasion of Georgia than to trail off into a tangent about southern secessionism? (In fairness, perhaps Mr. Palmer simply confused the central Asian country of Georgia with its similarly-named counterpart on the Atlantic coast).

Exhibit #4: Palmer has a hissy fit after one of the Rockwellites pokes fun at the Cato Institute's activities in Russia. What counterargument could possibly be more timely than to go into a lengthy rant about the Confederacy?

Other examples abound including a decidedly un-libertarian embrace of Jesse Jackson-style political correctness, as well as a general tendency to trot out, and tred upon, the rebel flag pretty much whenever he crosses paths with the Mises folks no matter how unrelated the occasion of their encounter may be. He's even willing to embrace far-left wing freedom-hating bloggers and smear artists to satiate his anti-Confederate obsession.

Until recently I simply assumed that this was yet another quirk of the libertarian movement's crazy old uncle. But something else appeared in print this weekend to suggest another reason: Palmer appears to have a genuine (and genuinely elitist) disdain for sectors of American society that he considers "uncultured," that is to say the unwashed masses of the common man or, perhaps more colloquially stated, he despises "rednecks." And what could be more representative than the battle-flag emblazoned General Lee hopping over a a gulch in Hazard County? Hence the strange obsession. From yesterday's Washington Post:

Palmer is about as far from that stereotype as possible. He's a city dweller, gay, drives a Smart car, one of those little golf-cart-size numbers. "Can't you see it with a gun rack?" he jokes.

Wait! A vain, self-absorbed, cosmopolitan gay guy who drives one of those silly little Mr. Bean cars and makes sure to point it out to everybody he encounters while dropping snooty quips about the stereotypes he holds for people who own pickup trucks. Props to the Post for describing Palmer to a T. But let's continue...

He's careful to cultivate this professional image, which is why he sends a second text message, asking that a photographer not accompany him and a reporter to the gun range in Chantilly. "Photos are generally fine, but I'd rather not have any of me with a firearm," he writes. "I'd rather not give the wrong impression."

So, his portrait is made in his office, surrounded by his books.

Catch that? Palmer, who is currently involved in a lawsuit to protect the gun rights of D.C. dwellers (and to his rare credit), is afraid of being photographed with a gun in hand because it might convey the "wrong" image...it might make him look, well, redneck.

Not to worry though. One of our intrepid photographers recently encountered him on a super-secret Cato junket to spread the message of "liberty" in the Pacific northwest.

Making Peace

2010-01-23T11:46:00.006-07:00

I have stated from the outset of this blog that my primary, and in fact sole, purpose is to advance the libertarian movement beyond its present state of permanent relegation to the fringe of American political discourse. I believe that the biggest impediment to this very reasonable goal is the bizarre self-destructive infighting that characterizes our movement. And I also believe that this infighting does greater harm to our movement than good, while missing the larger picture, to wit: libertarianism is, at the present, a politically non-viable entity in the United States. Unfortunately the infighting is also so deeply ingrained in a small number of certain individuals that reconciliation with them is practically impossible. By and large though, I do NOT see an irreconcilable rift between the two main factions of the present war - the Mises Institute/Rockwellites and the Catoite/Reasonoid/DC Crowd. To that end, I humbly submit the following advice to each.

TO THE MISES INSTITUTE:

1. The Koch Brothers are not evil incarnate. I realize you have past grievances with them, and I also realize that some of those complaints are probably legitimate. That said, talk of a "Kochtopus" conspiracy is counterproductive to our movement. Even if you have personal differences with the way they advance libertarianism, let it go. Because in the grander scheme of things there is a lot worse out there. Sure, the Kochs give a lot of money to the Republican Party - that is unfortunately what it takes to attain some semblance of electoral influence in this country. And sure, the foundations they fund are not always "pure" on the issues - they indisputably flirted with the warmongers over Iraq and Afghanistan, and they occasionally rub elbows with the Bernankes and Bushes of the world. But as far as eccentric politically active billionaires go, the Kochs are pretty damn good and pretty consistent at funding the libertarian side of the political spectrum even if it comes with some strings attached. Would you rather them be a Richard Mellon Sciafe who funds neoconservative statists and religious right wackos? Or a George Soros who subsidizes communism? Didn't think so. Nobody is making you associate with them, and by all means better your "product" of libertarianism by competing with them in the field of ideas. But also learn to live and let live with the Kochs, because even the worst of their endeavors tend to be a lot closer to you politically than anything else that's out there (and of course, the reciprocal is true - the Kochs should also live and let live with the Mises crowd).

2. Pete Boettke, Steven Horwitz, and other non-Mises Institute Austrians are not your enemy. So what if they want to call themselves by a new name, or if they follow other paths in the Austrian tradition. They still agree with you on a hell of a lot more than they disagree. And more importantly, these guys are, like you, serious and thoughtful scholars of the Austrian school who care just as much about exposing their students to Mises, Hayek, Menger, Kirzner, Schumpeter, and Rothbard as you do. They can indeed act childish at times (as can you), but take it in stride and hope that they will return the favor. They are NOT cast of the same mold as Tom Palmer, who exhibits genuine malice towards you. Nor should you treat them as such. In the end, academia needs all the Austrians it can get.

3. Cato, Reason, Mercatus/IHS, and the Independent Institute are not your enemies. Think of them as competitors offering a similar product - "libertarianism" - on an open market of ideas, but in a healthy way. Sometimes that product is truly inferior to your own (a fact that has been documented here and elsewhere many times). When they slip up and donate to neocons or support the Iraq war, take that opportunity to compete with them and offer a better product! Critique their shortcomings but also credit them where it is due, as these organizations do produce serious and quality work (For example, Reason's stuff on civil liberties abuses and the police state is superb). You should also not mistake the severe personal failings of some people in these organizations for every single person who affiliates with them. And encourage the better ones among them when you do agree.

TO THE CATOITE/REASONOID CROWD:

1. Drop the "cosmopolitan" hipster attitude. I know you like to plead ignorance of this term whenever it is called out, but deep down you know exactly what I mean. To many libertarians elsewhere in the country, you project a Beltway-centric attitude that comes across as dismissive, elitist, and off-putting. Whether it is shunning the Ron Paul campaign and other non-urbane libertarians because of their perceived "baggage," feeding the echo chamber of Beltway self-citation and blogosphere brown-nosing, name-dropping about the Bernankes and Bushes you just had lunch with, or adopting the collectivist mantras of the far left Southern Poverty Law Center against fellow libertarians who offend "Politically Correct" sensitivities, it does a genuine disservice to the libertarian movement and generally makes you look like a bunch of snobbish self-centered jerks. It speaks volumes that you would rather associate with a statist crypto-fascist like Jamie Kirchick than someone from the Paul camp who finds the Adams-Morgan neighborhood unappealing, especially when you do so with an air of pseudo-moralistic indignation . If you care more about gay rights than gun rights, fine! If you'd rather spend your energy opposing the drug war than the Iraq war, great! Just don't look down upon other libertarians who direct their industry to the latter two issues as if they were unsophisticated hayseeds. Because politically, they are a lot closer to you on practically every other issue than your facebook pals over at the New Republic will ever be.

2. Put your money where your mouth is, and use a little discretion in your election activities. I realize that the highly faulty Republican Party is the only game in town that even pretends to give libertarianism the time of day. But you should use your energies to persuade them in a more libertarian direction, not sell out to their worst elements (Side note to the Mises crowd: instead of simply insulting them, you should respect Cato when it tries to pull imperfect members of Congress in the libertarian direction on key votes and issues). It's one thing to cut a campaign check to a libertarian-leaning Republican like Jeff Flake. It's even okay to cast a vote for George W. Bush as the lesser evil against Al Gore. But donating vast sums of money to Bush, John McCain, and Rudolph Giuliani? Or - worse - endorsing Barack Obama for president? Come on! Not only does it make you look bad and cause people to justifiably question your libertarian credentials, but it also undermines the one thing libertarians currently lack more than anything else in the United States: electoral viability. We need to recognize and support our own for public office, and you dropped the ball on Ron Paul. Even if he wasn't gonna win the nomination, he was the most visible libertarian to appear before the national electorate in several generations...and you did nothing to help them. Sometimes worse than nothing. If you can pinch your nose and vote for Bush or McCain, then you should be able to move past a 20+ year old internal controversy over the authorship of Ron Paul's newsletters. And if you fear association with Paul's "baggage" but have no qualms voting for the repulsively anti-libertarian and overtly communistic candidacy of Obama, then you probably need to have your head examined.

3. Tom Palmer is NOT a good spokesman for your cause. Philosophically, there is probably very little that I (or most other libertarians) disagree on with Palmer. But style matters, and this guy has a long track record of unbridled malice towards the Mises folks, or most anyone else who isn't part of his inner circle. In his more frenzied states this tendency displays outright derangement and paranoia. Just when there seems to be a little peace emerging between the libertarian factions, he pops up as a provocateur and intentionally fans the flames of his personal, increasingly petty feud with Rockwell. The libertarian movement - already small and lacking in mainstream political influence - cannot afford to have as its spokesman a man who devotes his energy to purging that movement of his personal enemies, thus making it even smaller and less influential. Beyond that, Palmer simply lacks the characteristics you should be looking for in a public face. Libertarianism needs a vibrant, engaging public persona who is both intellectually astute and accessible to mass audiences. Palmer is neither. His Curriculum Vitae is surprisingly light on actual scholarship, his feuds and other personal quirks are off-putting, and his "eloquence" is substantially overstated by those who fail to recognize the problem I highlighted in my first proposition for Cato. Please also note that in suggesting you search for another spokesman, I by no means wish to see Palmer driven away or "fired" from his job (as he recently and falsely accused a Mises scholar with a much better CV than his own of doing). Unlike Palmer, I am not in the business of trying to purge people I dislike from the libertarian movement. Insofar as he wishes to espouse libertarian ideals, may he find nothing but success. I simply ask that this "crazy uncle" of the libertarian movement be acknowledged for the stigma he has attached to himself through years of feuding and pent up malice.

TO ALL LIBERTARIANS:

I simply ask that you use a little common sense. Examined in the grander scheme of things, our movement cannot afford a king or a schism. Those who try to create either will only dilute our underrepresented message to the point that it ceases to influence at all. Our government contains a President with 23 cabinet level officials, 435 Congressmen, 100 Senators, over 1,200 federal judges, 50 state governors, and thousands of state officers and legislators. At any given time, the "small-l" libertarian representation in that field seldom exceeds two or three dozen, most of them in lower level offices. The number of libertarian-leaning members of Congress can be counted on a single hand, all on the peripheral fringe of the minority political party. Presently there are ZERO libertarians in the upper levels of the U.S. executive branch, ZERO libertarians on the Supreme Court, and only a small number of libertarians on the lower federal courts, most of them aging holdovers from the early Reagan years. If you think your political battle is with another libertarian faction that isn't as "pure" or "cosmopolitan" as you, that slighted you in the past by donating to your competitor, or that has more "baggage" than you perceive of yourself, you are looking in the wrong place. The real adversary isn't here. It's out there, and it currently controls our entire government.

Palmer Facebook Redux

2010-01-22T15:08:00.002-07:00

I would also be remiss if I did not note that Tom Palmer's most recent fit spilled over onto his uber-cosmopolitan Facebook account, with some very humorous results. Since it is unlikely to appear on any of Palmer's self-created Facebook Fan pages, Stephen Kinsella of the Rockwellite faction has ensured this incident will be perpetually documented.

Irony, irony...it's better than macaroni!

2010-01-22T14:17:00.005-07:00

Cato's erstwhile Vice President of Junketeering has inadvertently sprinkled his blog with an irony that remains unrealized among his circle of imagined acolytes. The incident came in a deranged tirade against Lew Rockwell for the "offense" of mocking Cato President Ed Crane's reminiscing about the time he rubbed elbows with Ben Bernanke. Rockwell's verbal jab was not entirely unprovoked, mind you, as Crane used the same anecdote to needlessly insert a backhanded insult against his "friend" Ron Paul for "hang[ing] with folks he shouldn’t," i.e. Rockwell, while feigning praise for the libertarian-leaning congressman's new book, End the Fed.

Thus began Tom's little blog dropping. Rockwell, he announced, was being "deceitful and malicious" in "smearing" Crane - a move that was "obviously deliberate" and full of unadulterated malice. Oh, and Rockwell is "racist" too. What, mind you, could induce Palmer to such a frenzied state of verbal menstruation? As with most matters in Palmertopia, a land of such extreme narcissism that its proprietor feels the need to make titular third-person references to his non-career, the occasion for taking offense was embarrassingly trivial.

Crane's comment had described Bernanke as a "Nice guy," which Rockwell transposed in an admitted paraphrase of another speaker, into "Great guy." To the sensible reader the difference is minor - and minor enough to be virtually inconsequential to the larger point being made. Not so with Palmer:

[begin lisping snarl]

Native speakers of English know that “nice guy” means pleasant and affable, but not ([fill in the blank] wise, foresighted, hard-working, libertarian, smart, whatever), whereas “Great guy” means a “great guy,” i.e., [fill in the blank] wonderful, reliable, good to work with, on target, real libertarian, whatever. “Nice guy” and “Great guy” mean very, very different things.

[end lisping snarl]

That, dear reader, was the "provocation" of his Keith Olbermann-esque outburst. And it would be deliciously absurd in its own right. But Palmer opted to give us more, hence the aforementioned irony.

Only a day prior Palmer deposited another delusional rant against Rockwellite blogger Thomas DiLorenzo, denounced as a "thick" "dullard" for finding repulsion in David Boaz's excessively jocular affinity for the Clinton Years. Since Boaz's publicly documented political history consists of little more than his campaign support for Clinton's would-be plenipotentiary in Mexico City, it might be understandable why any reasonable libertarian would take pause at his longing for the days of Bubba. But such is neither here nor there really where Palmer is concerned. Instead, he launched into his favorite back-up grievance against DiLorenzo (and one that has left him thoroughly embarrassed many times over): DiLorenzo's supposedly insensitive (and thus implicitly "racist") chiding of Boaz's Politically Correct capitulation to those who seek the removal of confederate imagery from the Mississippi state flag against the overwhelming wishes of the voters of Mississippi. The ever-deranged Palmer defended Boaz by suggesting his position had been misrepresented:

DiLorenzo accused him of “calling for the eradication of the Confederate battle flag from public places,” which was, of course, simply false. David encouraged voters to remove it from the the state flag, not from “all public places,” an equivocal term that may mean “all places open to the public.”

The problem (and I will state this v-e-r-y-s-l-o-w-l-y for the inevitable circumstance that one of Palmer's daily vanity searches leads him to this missive): DiLorenzo never used the phrase "all public places." He said simply "public places," of which the Mississippi state flag is indisputably a prime example.

As any native speaker of English knows, "public places" and "all public places" mean very, very different things.

It would seem, then, that Mr. Palmer has some shirts to irony. And probably a few sweater-vests.

The Biggest Frog in the Smallest Pond

2009-12-04T10:00:00.003-07:00

For anyone who has been following the recent Palmer/Cowen antics, I strongly recommend Mario Rizzo's recent blog on the subject of peace within the libertarian movement.

I am writing here a plea for peace. There is an opportunity cost to every decision. The main opportunity foregone in this case is improving our theories, our evidence and criticizing more effectively Keynesians and other interventionists.

Are these two guys really the public face of libertarianism?

2009-12-03T12:20:00.006-07:00

It's been a relatively atypical six months in the usually schismatic world of libertarian politics. The surest sign of this uneasy truce between the Catoites and the Rockwellians occurred this summer when Cato invited Ron Paul to address their organization about his bill to audit the Federal Reserve. But more broadly speaking, there's also been a noticable decline in blogosphere chatter related to the feud. Old grudges do not die easily, but the once-daily stream of assaults has also dwindled to a trickle. Call it a libertarian Peace at Amiens, perhaps prompted by recognition of the larger Obama-Bernanke enemy.

It is likely no small coincidence that this brief warming between factions happened not long after one Tom G. Palmer scaled back his involvement in Cato. Palmer's still around Cato to be sure as a "Senior Fellow," but he's no longer their Vice President of Junketeering...er...International Programs as of around Inauguration Day of this year, when he assumed a similar position at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.

Well, Palmer returned to Cato this week. Not to resume command, but to promote his new book "Realizing Freedom." This publication is a curious creature in its own right, and at passing glance it almost appears as if Palmer has finally achieved something that has thus far eluded his "academic" career - an original scholarly monograph on libertarianism. Such a work would be groundbreaking in the Vitae of Palmerland, where a motley assortment of Washington Post Op/Eds and guest columns for NationalReview.com appears in the place that most real academics reserve for their peer reviewed journal publications. But alas, a quick perusal of "Realizing Freedom" reveals it to consist of little more than repackaged versions of the very same Op/Eds, blog entries, and musings on old in-house newsletters of the various libertarian-minded groups he has associated with over the years. Such is also another great mystery of Palmerland - seldom has a libertarian "scholar" advanced so far on so little. But that story is for another time.

The object of more pressing concern is Palmer's little reading club presentation at Cato this week, aided by fellow traveller Tyler Cowen and sponsored by another familiar feuder, one David Boaz. Few aspects of the pseudo-intellectual speaking circuit are more irksome than self-promotion and Palmer's book fair is no exception particularly as he and his accolytes took the opportunity to reignite their feud with the Paul/Rockwell/Mises wing of the libertarian movement. Cowen fired the opening salvo, accomplishing in the process a curious merger between the mannerisms of Ned Brainard and the oratorical skills of Droopy Dog:

"I think the libertarian movement is about to split into a right wing libertarian movement that has decided to cast its lot with hard right Republicans and a movement more liberal, more secular, more historically minded, more socially tolerant, less keyed in to the political right."

It is no small claim to state that Cowen's logic is perplexed on several counts, some of which have been capably elaborated upon by the Mises Institute's Thomas Woods. Generally speaking, the Mises/Rockwell crowd is unlikely to find a home with "hard right Republicans" any time soon given their bitter divergence over the Bush Administration in general and, more specifically, the Iraq War. Nor is Ron Paul a standard bearer for the Republican right, which largely views him as an outsider as his presidential campaign illustrated. These are also intemperate words coming from the Catoite Palmer faction, which has done far more to integrate itself into the Republican Party mainstream than Rockwell, who views D.C. with open contempt...even to the point that Palmer has childishly mocked him for this contempt.

The greatest irony by far though is Cowen's intolerant indulgence in a message of "tolerance." The "tolerant" libertarian movement envisioned by Palmer and Cowen strangely has no room to for people like Paul or Rockwell. Indeed as additional eyewitness testimony from this week's PalmerFest at Cato reveals, these two have surprisingly little tolerance for core components of libertarian economic thought such as the Austrian Business Cycle theory. Cowen continued:

"I think we’re in a world right now that is growing very partisan and very rabid, and a lot of things which are called libertarian in the Libertarian Party, or what you might call the Lew Rockwell / Ron Paul camp, are to my eye not exactly where libertarianism should be, and I think Tom has been a very brave and articulate advocate of a reasonable libertarianism. And if I ask myself, “Does the book succeed in this endeavor?” I would say, “Yes.”"

The issue he raises is indeed an important one, but not with the answer he desires. As libertarians we must ask ourselves who we want for the public faces of our movement. We must decide who is to represent libertarian political ideas in the public sphere and show that they are indeed "reasonable."

While this writer sees merit in associating that task with Ron Paul, an accomplished elected official and capable speaker who appears on national media outlets on a near-daily basis, it is also prudent to ask where the other side fits into that picture. A socially awkward absent-minded professor may have much to contribute to libertarian scholarship, and indeed Cowen has. And every social movement has room for a crazy old uncle, even if he's a quirky intemperate lisping fellow like Palmer who devotes most of his energy to internecine disputes with other libertarians and whose very mannerisms tend to make saner minds around him uncomfortable. Whatever their roles may be though, it is difficult to see any meaningful advances for libertarianism from its present location on the extreme periphery of the policy sphere under the public tutelage of either of these two.

Who does Cato donate to? Not libertarians!

2009-06-19T14:02:00.005-06:00

As we've reported in the past, employees of the "libertarian" Cato Institute have a long history of making large political donations to candidates for office. Unfortunately none of their favored candidates are particularly libertarian. Most are pro-war big spending "neo-conservative" Republicans in the model of George W. Bush. The latest reports are no exception.

Before we get to those donors though, an important caveat. Tom G. Palmer believes that it is an intrusion on personal "privacy" to post public campaign finance records that display his friends in an unflattering light. Since we all know that the creepy crypto-fascist Rudolph Giuliani is such a defender of liberty and libertarian ideals, this one's for you, Tom!

DONOR/EMPLOYER/DATE/AMOUNT/RECIPIENT:

LAMPO, DAVID - CATO INSTITUTE/PUBLICATIONS SPECIAL - 8/13/08 - $250 - John McCain

LEVY, ROBERT - CATO INSTITUTE/SR. FELLOW - 7/1/08 - $5,000 - Club for Growth

REYNOLDS, ALAN - CATO INSTITUTE/ECONOMIST - 8/30/08 - $500 - John McCain

REYNOLDS, ALAN - CATO INSTITUTE/ECONOMIST -1/15/08 - $250 - Rudolph W. Giuliani

WARD, GAYLLIS - CATO INSTITUTE - 12/11/07 - $500 - Mike Huckabee

And lest we forget our friends at Reason,

POOLE, ROBERT - REASON FOUNDATION/FOUNDER - 11/24/08 - Saxby Chambliss

American Conservative on Weigel

2009-01-14T16:27:00.003-07:00

The American Conservative magazine has an interesting note on David Weigel, the self-described "reporter" at Reason Magazine who helped to drive his friend Jamie Kirchick's smear campaign against Ron Paul last February:

Weigel did his first piece on the newsletters (which were hardly news in Libertarian circles) with Julian Sanchez which dealt with potential culprits i.e Lew Rockwell and company. That caused a nice kefuffle in libertarian circles but ultimately the issue died out as Paul’s campaign petered out. However, the issue never petered out as far as Weigel was concerned as he kept coming back to it again, and again, and again

It's a true shame. Weigel took so much pride in his own pitiful contribution to the newsletter story that he repeated it ad nauseum, and at complete disregard for the movement he claims to support. In fact, his article in this month's Reason is the first in a while where he did not harp on the newsletters. Ironically, the piece is one of the few places where such self-crediting might have been appropriate. It is an article about why the Paul campaign failed to unite and embolden the libertarian movement.

Weigel, to his credit, explores multiple angles from the media's indifference to the erratic behavior of Bob Barr. He conveniently omits his own contribution to the internal divisions though - the newsletter story.

Austrian Lineage at the LVMI

2008-10-02T13:59:00.002-06:00

The Palmer blog has a long history of denigrating the Ludwig von Mises Institute's intellectual heritage. As noted here previously, Cato's most obnoxious Veep likes to present himself as a "defender" of the real Ludwig von Mises' legacy from the institute that bears his name. It's a common theme on the Palmer blog, which offers up gems such as this by routine:

I have learned a great deal from the Austrian school and have the greatest respect for the scholars in that tradition. I feel that their good names and their tradition of scholarship are sullied by being associated with such strange views as those advanced by the Rockwellites.

In the classic fashion of Palmer "scholarship" he then bombards the good folks at the Mises Institute with every ad hominem his mind sees fit to produce. They're "cultists" "embarrasing" "clownish" and "gay bashers" who share characteristics with Lyndon LaRouche. And most of all, sayeth Palmer, they pervert the "real" Ludwig von Mises, who fortunately - we're told - has a champion to defend him in the name of none other than Tom G. Palmer himself!

Of course Tom G. Palmer, the Mises "champion," never studied under Ludwig von Mises. Nor did Tom G. Palmer ever study under another prominent Austrian connected to Ludwig von Mises. As far as one can tell from the list of self-published op/eds he calls his academic curriculum vitae, Palmer has no scholarly connection to the Austrian school what so ever beyond perhaps picking up a used copy of Human Action or the Road to Serfdom at some unnamed point in his career (and it is not unreasonable to doubt he spent much time with either). It is for this reason that Palmer was so handedly humiliated the last time he tried to proclaim himself Mises' defender as well. But you can't teach a dumb dog new tricks, and so history is prone to repetition.

The core of it is this though: like them or not, the Ludwig von Mises Institute has a bona fide lineage. Even if you're annoyed by their message or style, their connection to the real Ludwig von Mises is extensive and indisputable. And that little fact drives Tom Palmer crazy...well, crazier than he normally is.

For starters, the Mises Institute was founded in 1982 by Ludwig's own wife Margit. Margit bequeathed numerous papers from her late husband to the organization and was an active member of its leadership, chairing the LVMI board for over a decade from its founding until her death in 1993. If you mention that fact to Palmer though he gets downright pissy though, and in a very nasty way. You see, Palmer thinks that Mrs. von Mises was a feeble old lady who got snookered into lending her husband's good name by the nefarious Lew Rockwell. The conspiratorial Palmer has outright claimed this in statements that resemble this recent outburst:

"The abuse of Mrs. Mises by the Institute has been a subject of discussion for some years"

Aside from its implicit affrontery to the legacy and intelligence of Mrs. von Mises (keep in mind that she was with the LVMI for over a decade), Palmer neglects to inform his readers that the location of that "discussion" is none other than his own loony, conspiratorial blog where he frequently posts claims like the one found above. Needless to say, the LVMI has a direct connection to the family and person of Ludwig von Mises himself that no amount of slander against his widow's intelligence late in her life can wash away.

If that were not enough though, the LVMI's intellectual lineage to the real von Mises and the Austrian school is bolstered in another way by its academic succession. Palmer dismisses any discussion of this topic as "apostolic" trivia, but only for his want of familiarity with the actual workings of academia. Simply stated, western thought has a long history of identifying and celebrating academic lineages and for good reason. The succession is far from simply an "apostolic" formality. Rather, it explains the dissemination and change of a particular school of thought. Plato was Plato precisely because he had a Socrates to teach him. It's actually very common. Aquinas had an Albertus Magnus; Locke had an Earl of Shaftesbury; Smith had Hutcheson; Jefferson had Wythe; and among the Austrians, Ludwig von Mises had such men as Menger an Boehm-Bawerk. One would think that a man who possesses several advanced degrees in "political philosophy" should know these things.

Academic lineage is relevant in this particular case because Mises himself had many well known and distinguished intellectual heirs in the Austrian School's so-called "fifth generation" of scholars, as did other indisputably notable Austrians such as Hayek. Many of these scholars are still alive, and much to Palmer's chagrin, they voluntarily affiliate with the LVMI. Among the noted names:

1. Murray Rothbard - Mises student and resident scholar at the LVMI until his death in 1995

2. George Reisman - Mises student at NYU, Professor Emeritus at Pepperdine, and Adjunct Scholar of the LVMI

3. Ralph Raico - Student of Mises and Hayek, dissertation at Chicago was chaired by Hayek, currently a senior faculty member at the LVMI

4. Israel Kirzner - Student of Mises at NYU, Adjunct Scholar a the LVMI and author of several publications on LVMI presses.

5. Henry Hazlitt - Distinguished Austrian economist in his own right, and colleague of Ludwig von Mises, served on the LVMI Board of Directors prior to his death in 1993.

Palmer Censorship Redux

2008-09-25T14:57:00.004-06:00

The Cato Institute's Tom Palmer loves censoring open comments on his blog, despite purporting to allow "open discussion" and an unfortunate habit of ridiculing other bloggers who he accuses of denying the same. The latest instance came earlier today when Palmer shut down an open discussion on his blog and removed several comments (or as some might say, shoved it "down the memory hole") containing documented evidence of Cato Institute hypocrisy. Shortly after this snippet appeared in its place:

This was filling up with lots of obnoxious comment spam from, well, an obsessed person with access to personal information (not about me, but about others), which he was spilling all over the site. So, unfortunately, I'm disabling comments

"Obnoxious," "spam," "obsession," spilling "personal" details all over the internet? The way Palmer tells it, it sounds as if this "person" was being downright abusive of his little blog.

Well, not really. Let us dissect.

1. "Obnoxious" - this is Palmer's term for a dialogue over the issue of the Cato Institute's relationship to Ron Paul. In response to Palmer's act of tooting Cato's own horn about the financial sector bailout fiasco, it was pointed out that Cato has generally shunned Rep. Paul despite Paul being the only voice of sanity in Congress on this issue. A frequent Palmer Peon responded in Cato's defense by asserting that Cato support for Paul would be "illegal" electioneering by a non-profit. In retort it was pointed out that (a) think tanks can and do legally lend intellectual support to idealogically aligned politicians much as the American Enterprise Institute does with the current Bush administration, and (b) think tank "scholars" can legally support politicians in their capacity as private individuals.

2. "Spam" - Palmer applied this term to several successive pieces of dialogue concerning the aforementioned means in which the Cato Institute could support Paul if it so chose. Noticeably absent from this dialogue was anything even remotely resembling the definition of internet spam, defined as a "commercial message posted on a computer network or sent as e-mail."

3. "Obsession" - this is Palmer's hypocritical term of choice for pretty much anybody who comments on the ill effects of something which he exhibits routinely on his own, viz. an obsession-driven feud with Lew Rockwell and the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

4. "Personal information" - Palmer's terminology in this case would have one believe that his blog comments section was utilized to spread something about the Cato Institute that was both private and difficult to come by through normal means. Far from it, the "personal information" in question consisted of nothing more than public campaign contribution disclosures from the Federal Elections Commission obtained through a quick public database search. This information is both widely published and publicly available as a matter of law. What displeased Palmer about this information is that it revealed many senior "scholars" at the self-described "libertarian" Cato Institute.

So what was all this embarassing public information to merit its censorship and removal under the four dishonest descriptors named above? Palmer did not want his readers to know that his "senior analyst" friends at the Cato Institute have donated hundreds or even thousands of dollars to anti-libertarian politicians including George W. Bush, William Weld, Rudy Giuliani, Evan Bayh, and Mike Huckabee, though not one of them has dropped a penny for Ron Paul.

Jamie Kirchick: by the company he keeps

2008-09-09T09:32:00.001-06:00

Jamie Kirchick of the Ron Paul newsletters story infamy may be described as many things, though libertarian is not among them. During the Republican primary he was a staunch supporter of crypto-fascist candidate Rudy Giuliani. His publicly discernable political agenda also reveals that he is little more than a shallow single-issue voter, that issue being what he describes as “gay rights” as Kirchick himself is a gay man…and a gay man with an ax to grind.

This blogger holds nothing in particular against Kirchick’s gayness, and frankly would prefer not to know about his bedroom happenings, and indeed would know nothing of them and care nothing of them if only Kirchick did not have the unfortunate habit of broadcasting them to the world as if they were some trophy of his pitiful existence. Vapid, shallow, whiny, superficial, overly obsessed with a single peripheral issue of overstated self-importance, and willing to support pure evil to obtain minor victories for that issue…all of these things describe Jamie Kirchick’s politics.

Needless to say, this political side is not one that would merit the sympathy (or even attention) of most sensible thinkers within the libertarian movement.

But Kirchick doesn’t need to be a libertarian to have the approval of the purported spokespersons of the libertarian movement in Washington. Hell, he doesn’t even have to be sympathetic to libertarianism in the slightest. To draw the approval of the Cato Institute and Reason Magazine, Kirchick need only run in their self-proclaimed trendy, hip, and cosmopolitan social circles. To the Cato and Reason regulars, it matters more that Kirchick is on the Adams-Morgan bar scene than what he thinks about Iraq, or how the Federal Reserve is mismanaging the housing crisis. And that is why the Cato/Reason crowd jumped to his defense when some very nasty facts were revealed about Kirchick and his journalistic methods back during the Ron Paul newsletter pseudo-scandal.

Cato Veep David Boaz, whose documented political history consists of little more than giving a $1,000 contribution to statist Massachusetts Gov. William Weld in 1996, immediately jumped to Kirchick’s defense and proclaimed his sketchy political past and muckraking methods off-limits . Reason Magazine’s Julian Sanchez, a Palmer-protégé with many Cato connections, paid lip service to Kirchick’s faults then flippantly dismissed them as “neither here nor there, really.” And so it was with virtually every Cato or Reason source that dealt with Kirchick’s article on Paul.

The double standard, of course, was palpable. Here were the Catoites and Reasonoids lining up to join Kirchick’s chorus of condemnation against Paul by way of his “guilty” associations to Lew Rockwell and a couple of junk mail newsletters written circa 1983…and yet to these same people the many fault-worthy present day associations of Jamie Kirchick, be they fascist Giuliani or the filthy underbelly of the white supremacist movement that he went trudging through in search of non-existent dirt on Ron Paul, were now out of bounds. It was okay to condemn Paul on the flimsiest evidence for something that happened over two decades ago, but the Kirchick’s current social circle was beyond reproach.

Why?

Because Kirchick’s current social circle is stock full of Catoites and Reasonoids, including the very same people who dishonestly insisted his own background was off limits in this sordid tale. You see, Jamie Kirchick is more than just a casual acquaintance of the Beltway Libertarian movement. He’s an inner member of their social network. He’s a guy that they call up to compare notes with when they think they’ve got a scoop, but also a lot more. He’s also the guy they join for latte after at Murky Coffee, the guy they’ll share an unpronounceable noodle dish with at Tara Thai, ~~the guy they’ll sip a whisky with at Irish Times~~…wait, scratch that, Kirchick and the Cato crowd would get beat up at Irish Times…the guy they meet for a scoop of mangosteen-goji-parfait flavored ice cream at a DuPont dive next to the Human Rights Campaign, and the guy they'll chat with over a Zima at the latest trendy flourescified bar in Adams-Morgan. To them, Jamie Kirchick is everything that they see in themselves – a connoisseur of the hip young urban cosmopolitan DC social scene. And for that reason alone, their loyalty to Kirchick outranks any loyalty to the libertarian political convictions of a homely old country doctor from Texas like Ron Paul.

And where else could one find documented evidence of Kirchick’s a priori association with the Cato/Reason crowd than that venerable institution of urban yuppiness called Facebook?

Kirchick’s friends list says it all:

Jonathan Blanks, a Cato Institute writer/researcher

David Boaz, Cato Institute Veep

Nick Gillespie, Editor in Chief of Reason Magazine

Julian Sanchez, Reason magazine reporter/smear artist

David Weigel, Reason magazine reporter/smear artist

Will Wilkinson, Cato Institute Research Fellow

And that doesn't even include about a dozen or so peons of the Palmer brigade who inhabit the infrastructure of the Cato Institute's intern program.

In case you haven’t noticed a trend yet, allow me to reiterate. Kirchick is a real-life close friend of virtually every major “libertarian” movement blogger who led the attacks against Ron Paul over the newsletter pseudo-scandal. These are the guys who drove the story from where Kirchick left off. These are the guys who beat the newsletter drum from before Kirchick's story aired till...well...they're still beating the newsletter drum as of this week.

"Open discussion" on the Palmer blog? Not a chance...

2008-09-05T15:50:00.000-06:00

Cato Veep Tom G. Palmer often states as one of his many points of "pride" that he encourages open discussion on his blog via the comments section. He also frequently chides Lew Rockwell for not having a comments feature on his website, lewrockwell.com, with the not so subtle implication that Rockwell "suppresses" dissent by denying feedback.

Of course any true libertarian would immediately point out that the decision on whether or not to permit comments on a blog is a simple matter of property rights, belonging to the owner of that blog. If the owner wants to allow open comments and claim to do so in the name of free speech, so be it. If the owner doesn't want a comments option, so be it too. That's his property right, and property ownership permits the rightful owner to include or exclude that property from the use of others. Period. End of story.Quod erat demonstrandum.

Palmer should certainly know this, considering that he purports to teach property rights to "young people" all over the world on his weekly Cato junkets. Nonetheless, he frequently proclaims the superiority of his own blog for allowing comments while attacking Rockwell for exercising his right of property to exclude them.

The problem though is that Palmer is being both a liar and a flaming hypocrite. Why? Two reasons:

1. Palmer does not in fact allow open discussion on his blog and frequently attempts to block the IPs of those who challenge his arguments there.

2. Palmer lies about the identity of his interlocutors, and does so to the point of outright mental psychosis.

The evidence is found all over his blog, but particularly in this 2AM tirade...

Now the Lew Rockwell Cult doesn’t allow anyone to comment on their blogs. Fair enough. And they also don’t link to any sources that might contradict them. Fair enough. Since I’ll be flying to Ukraine tomorrow, I’ll not have any comments here, as the Cultists are gleeful about posting many remarks under different names (but with the same IP addresses).

The same IP addresses, Tom? I think not. How do I know this? Because Palmer blocks IP addresses in retaliation whenever his "facts" get challenged in the comments section (usually only moments before throwing a hissy fit, declaring "victory," and shutting off comments completely). If you get to be too much of a gadfly over at Palmer's blog you get something like this screen:

Now it is true that Palmer also has the property right to ban or permit whoever he likes. But that is not the issue. The issue is that Palmer lies about it, and hypocritically accuses others of censoring out their opposition when he does this himself.

Let's briefly recap the logic though and expose yet another fault in his argument:

1. Palmer claims all his detractors actually post from the "same" IP, implying they are one person or only a couple people. Evidence: see excerpt above.
2. Palmer blocks the IP addresses of anyone who challenges his facts or arguments in any substantive way. Evidence: See screen capture above.
3. Palmer must have therefore banned that "same" IP he claims all his critics come from.

Now here's the conundrum: Palmer still has critics, and many of them (even with all the IP blocks he puts up but never bothers to advertise since he "prides" himself on the false claim that he allows open comments and since he attacks others for not doing so). Ergo, they cannot all be coming from the "same" IP, which he would have banned long ago if he happened to be telling the truth.

Now what about the identity of Palmer's critics? He lies about them as much as he lies about their alleged use of the "same" IP addresses. In fact, when it comes to his critics Palmer gets downright conspiratorial and psychotic. Witness the following email he sent to another of his critics from another blog on the subject of a critic who had very recently exposed multiple misstatements of basic fact by Palmer, namely his incumbent interlocutor at this very blog.

Subject: Hi, Francisco!

Thanks for the comments on the blog.

Tom G. Palmer

Of course the recipient was most assuredly not the Francisco to whom Palmer referred, nor was there any rational reason what so ever for Palmer to believe it so. It was all a product of his mind, ravaged by paranoia and delusion. When that other blogger responded to Palmer suggesting that he should face the reality that he may in fact have more than "one" critic using the "same" IP address, he was met with complete silence.

So there you have it. Lies. Deception. Hypocrisy. All of them are traits that besmirch the reputation of the Cato Institute through its most notorious Vice President. None of this is to say though that there aren't posts being made on Palmer's blog under different names from the "same" IP address. It's just that it isn't his critics who are making them.

Cato goes AWOL on Ron Paul

2008-09-02T10:51:00.000-06:00

Tens of thousands of liberty-minded citizens are meeting today for Ron Paul's "Rally for the Republic." The event is the largest explicitly libertarian political gathering in recent history, and it's earned press coverage all over the nation as well as a live stream on C-Span.

The speaking lineup features an all-star cast of libertarian-minded personalities.

Tucker Carlson
Howard Phillips
Gov. Gary Johnson
Barry Goldwater, Jr.
Gov. Jesse Ventura
Grover Norquist
And yes, even the "dreaded" Lew Rockwell is there.

But you know who's not there? The Cato Institute, which bills itself as the "leading" libertarian policy organization in the country. Just like they're never there when it comes time to make political donations to libertarian-minded candidates. Instead they write checks to George Bush.

So where is Cato today?

David Boaz is off blogging about McCain, Palin, and Obama.

So is the official webblog of the Cato Institute, where not so much as a word has been said about the Paul rally.

And Tom G. Palmer, naturally, is off junketeering in the youth hostels and dormrooms of the Ukraine.

For one brief shining moment this evening, the nation will get a glimpse of the philosophy of liberty as Paul takes the stage in Minnesota. And yet the one organization that claims to be liberty's leading advocate is AWOL.

Defending Ludwig von Mises from Palmer

2008-09-01T11:12:00.000-06:00

Some years ago, the Cato Institute's ever-petty and ever-feuding Tom G. Palmer lashed out at his arch-rival, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, over what was at the end of the day nothing more than a promotional letter for their annual fundraising dinner. The Mises Institute's instigating "offense" was to feature a speech by Karl Habsburg, son of Mises' real-life acquantance and uncrowned heir to the Austrian throne Dr. Otto von Habsburg.

Palmer's lengthy screed came in the form of a letter to Liberty magazine found here. His argument boiled down to three points, none of them coherently maintained:

1. The collective sins of Crown Prince Otto's ancestors going back seven centuries illustrate that the Habsburg dynesty is incompatible with Ludwig von Mises' own espousal of libertarian "republicanism" (a term that Palmer uses confusedly and interchangably when describing the concept of democracy).

2. Ludwig von Mises' libertarianism fundamentally contradicts the old Austria of the Habsburg era, and his own historical affiliations with that era are essentially negligible and meaningless pieces of political trivia, born out of a bizarre mixture of political convenience and survival instinct amidst the horrors of World War II.

3. Lew Rockwell is a bad man who abuses the legacy of Ludwig von Mises when he claims lineage from it.

Ralph Raico, the distinguished libertarian historian and student of Mises and Hayek, easily dispensed with Palmer's absurd first argument in a subsequent issue of Liberty:

Tom Palmer replied with outrage to Rockwell's letter, even affecting to defend Mises against the Mises Institute. There is little point in subjecting Palmer's critique to a detailed critique in turn -- noting, for instance, his confusion of republicanism with democracy; or filling in a few gaps in his ten-word interpretation of the origins of the First World War; or correcting his dismissive description of the "obsequious" Edmund Burke; or informing him why Lew Rockwell is not alone in judging the Habsburgs to have been guardians of European civilization (hint: it has something to do with the Turks). What would be gained by trying to demolish the attempted demolition of what was, when all is said and done, basically a promotional letter

(In fairness, it should be noted that Palmer attempted his own response to Raico with a shrill and rambling tome about how he had been sleighted by Mises Institute-affiliated economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe. In Palmeristic fashion, this final retort almost completely obscures his original arguments by sidestepping its many faults and instead hurls insult after venomous insult at Rockwell, Hoppe, and others).

Points 2 and 3 are notable though, because Palmer and his "surrogates" raised a nearly identical arguments on his blog last week. Adding to the earlier charges, he contends that Mises would have reacted in horror to the Mises Institute of today. Why? Because the Mises Institute's personel have said critical things about the concept of unbridled popular democracy that Palmer so frequently confuses with libertarian "republicanism," and they've neglected, in his mind, to sufficiently condemn non-democratic systems of government. It was pointed out at the time that the real Ludwig von Mises was a prominent participant in the historically praiseworthy but distinctly non-democratic Austrian governments that resisted and suppressed the growing Nazi and communist movements during the tumultuous interwar years of the 1920's and 30's. Palmer, in turn, responded as he usually does by calling this involvement "peripheral" and completely shutting off the comments on his blog to curtail any additional scrutiny of his hysterics. Except that Mises' historical involvement, which Palmer so flippantly dismissed as "peripheral" much as he dismissed von Mises' relationship with Otto von Habsburg, was anything but...

Mises and the Interwar Austrian Government

Ludwig von Mises was one of his country's leading intellectuals during the interwar period, and as such became an active and frequent economic advisor to the Austrian government, particularly during the Chancellorships of Fr. Ignaz Seipel and Dr. Englebert Dollfuss. Though relegated to obscurity today, Seipel and Dollfuss are noted to history for the bold, though unpopular, stances they took against the evils that were facing Austria during this period.

Neither Seipel nor Dollfuss are known for their devotion to popular "democracy" of the type that Palmer purports to identify with the legacy of Ludwig von Mises. Seipel (governed 1922-24 and 1926-29) was a committed philosophical monarchist. He utilized nearly unilateral power to attack Austria's inflationary crisis by abolishing the Austrian central bank and implementing monetary reforms against the wishes of his own party (a move he made incidentally on Ludwig von Mises' advice, see Mises' autobiographical Notes and Recollections, p. 79) In 1927 Seipel forcefully suppressed the Republikanischer Schutzbund, a communist paramilitary organization that aimed to overthrow the Austrian government. Dollfuss (governed 1932-1934) exercised even greater unilateral authority in 1933, when he adjourned the Austrian legislature to prevent the emerging Nazi party from seizing control of the government, banned the Nazi party and several communist organizations from Austria, and mobilized the military to forcefully suppress Nazi paramilitary forces. Dollfuss paid for this action with his life when he was assassinated by Nazi agents at Adolph Hitler's behest on July 25, 1934. Though the severity of these events was undoubtedly shaped by the emerging Nazi threat that Dollfuss and Seipel faced, neither man could be said a devotee of "libertarian" ideals that Palmer associates with the historical Ludwig von Mises. If anything, Seipel and Dollfuss were philosophically committed to the quasi-theocratic Catholic doctrine of corporatism laid out in the 1891 papal encyclical Rerum Novarum.

Mises was nonetheless active in the government of both chancellors in ways that extended far beyond the periphery. Mises became an economic advisor to Seipel shortly after the priest's election as Chancellor in 1922. Mises and fellow economist Wilhelm Rosenberg prevailed upon Seipel to curtail the Austrian government's intentional inflationary policy. Mises later wrote that Seipel "adopted fully my ideas about sound money" (Hulsmann, Mises: the Last Knight of Liberalism, p. 484). Shortly after Mises was appointed head of the Austrian Bureau of Claims and Settlements, where he immediately went to work placing students of the Austrian school in positions throughout the Austrian government's economic bureaus and ministries.

Mises would later state his admiration for Chancellor Seipel, writing:

The statesman differs from the demagogue in that he prefers right over that which brings applause. There wer not many politicians in Austria who thought that way. I have felt the highest respect for the high and honest character of this noble priest whose world view and conception of life remained alien to me. He was a great personality. (Notes and Recollections, p. 80).

In January 1935 he unequivocally endorsed a continuation of Seipel's monetary reforms in a paper on Austrian financial policy. "What Seipel began must no be continued. A design for this has been provided through the collaboration of the economic circles. In 1930 an Economic Commission met in the Federal Chancellery that was composed of the representatives of the professions represented in the Chambers of Commerce, Trade, and Industry, int he Chambers of Agriculture, and in the Chambers of Workers and Employees. In December 1930 the tripartite editorial committee of this Economic Commission, to which the later Federal Chancellor Dr. Dollfuss belonged...published its report, the financial policy content of which is still valid." (Selected Writings of Ludwig von Mises, Vol. 2., Richard Ebeling, Ed. pp. 289-290)

This report had been written by Mises himself along with Dollfuss and Labor Minister Edmund Palla. The three together were the members of the tripartite committee of the Chancellery to which Mises referred.

Palmer's dismissal of Ludwig von Mises' interwar activities as "peripheral" demonstrates only his own ignorance of the life of the man he falsely purports to be defending against the Institute that bears his name and his wife Margit's sanction. Argument #3, which incidentally involves a particularly nasty insinuation against Mrs. Mises by Palmer, will be addressed in a coming installation.

Who does the Cato Institute support? Not Ron Paul!

2008-08-29T10:44:00.000-06:00

Since today is money bomb day I thought I'd investigate which members of the libertarian movement actually put their money where their mouth is.

Here are the public records of campaign donations in the last 10 years of people who list their employer as the "libertarian" Cato Institute. Notice that some very non-libertarian candidates made the list, but not a single one of them has donated so much as a dime to Ron Paul.

This list predates the newsletter "scandal" that supposedly has all the Catoites "outragedm" and which they claim caused them to withdraw their support. The reality is that support never existed. Not a single Cato employee is on record donating to Ron Paul even though they drop thousands of dollars on other candidates. From opensecrets.org

Records: Name/ City/ State/ Zip/ Employer/ Date/ Amount/ Recipient

ABDNOR, LEANNE ALEXANDRIA,VA 22312 CATO 8/1/1996 $200 Thune, John

ABDNOR, LEANNE ALEXANDRIA,VA 22312 CATO INSTITUTE 2/10/1996 $200 Thune, John

BOAZ, DAVID D WASHINGTON,DC 20009 CATO INSTITUTE 10/16/1996 $1,000 Weld, William F

BOAZ, DAVID D ARLINGTON,VA 22201 CATO INSTITUTE/EXECUTIVE 8/15/2005 $750 Term Limits America

BOAZ, DAVID D ARLINGTON,VA 22201 CATO INSTITUTE/EXECUTIVE 8/1/2003 $500 Term Limits America

BOAZ, DAVID D ARLINGTON,VA 22201 CATO INSTITUTE/EXECUTIVE 7/30/2004 $500 Term Limits America

BOAZ, DAVID D ARLINGTON,VA 22201 CATO INSTITUTE/EXECUTIVE 6/20/2002 $500 Term Limits America

BOAZ, DAVID D ARLINGTON,VA 22201 CATO INSTITUTE/EXECUTIVE 7/27/2001 $400 Term Limits America

CRANE, EDWARD FALLS CHURCH,VA 22044 CATO INSTITUTE 5/4/2000 $250 Garrett, Scott

CRANE, EDWARD FALLS CHURCH,VA 22044 CATO INSTITUTE 3/26/1998 $250 Miller, Demaris H

CRANE, EDWARD H FALLS CHURCH,VA 22044 CATO INSTITUTE 2/13/1996 $500 Miller, James C III

CRANE, EDWARD H III FALLS CHURCH,VA 22044 CATO INSTITUTE/PRESIDENT 7/14/2001 $1,750 Term Limits America

CRANE, EDWARD H III FALLS CHURCH,VA 22314 CATO INSTITUTE/PRESIDENT 5/8/2000 $250 Keller, Ric

ELLIS, PEGGY ALEXANDRIA,VA 22305 CATO INSTITUTE 7/29/1997 $250 Value in Electing Women PAC

ELLIS, PEGGY ALEXANDRIA,VA 22305 CATO INSTITUTE 5/5/1998 $250 Value in Electing Women PAC

ELLIS, PEGGY ALEXANDRIA,VA 22305 CATO INSTITUTE 4/26/2000 $250 Value in Electing Women PAC

LAMPO, DAVID ALEXANDRIA,VA 22307 CATO INSTITUTE 11/16/2001 $250 Warner, John W

LAMPO, DAVID C WASHINGTON,DC 20001 CATO INSTITUTE 6/25/1999 $750 Republican National Cmte

LAMPO, DAVID C MR ALEXANDRIA,VA 22307 CATO INSTITUTE/PUBLICATIONS DIRECTO 4/23/2004 $250 Bush, George W

LEVY, ROBERT NAPLES,FL 34108 CATO INSTITUTE/SR. FELLOW CONSTITUT 10/4/2006 $5,000 Club for Growth

MALCOLM, MARY LEE MC LEAN,VA 22101 CATO INSTITUTE 1/31/2003 $2,000 Isakson, Johnny

MOORE, STEPHEN WASHINGTON,DC 20001 CATO 4/1/1999 $250 Political Club for Growth

MOORE, STEPHEN K FALLS CHURCH,VA 22043 CATO INSTITUTE 12/8/1999 $250 Bayh, Evan

NISKANEN, WILLIAM A JR WASHINGTON,DC 20003 CATO INSTITUTE 8/2/1994 $250 Devine, Donald J

NISKANEN, WILLIAM A MR WASHINGTON,DC 20003 CATO INSTITUTE/ECONOMIST 8/8/2000 $1,000 Bush, George W

NISKANEN, WILLIAM JR HON WASHINGTON,DC 20001 CATO INSTITUTE 8/2/1994 $250 Devine, Donald J

NISKANEN, WILLIAM JR HON WASHINGTON,DC 20001 CATO INSTITUTE 10/24/1994 $250 Devine, Donald J

NISKANEN, WILLIAM JR HON WASHINGTON,DC 20001 CATO INSTITUTE 10/24/1994 $250 Devine, Donald J

ZEMON, RAY B OAK PARK,IL 60302 CATO INSTITUTE 8/26/1994 $1,000 Devine, Donald J

ZEMON, RAY B OAK PARK,IL 60302 CATO INSTITUTE 11/4/1994 $500 Devine, Donald J

ZEMON, RAY B OAK PARK,IL 60302 CATO INSTITUTE 11/4/1994 $500 Devine, Donald J

Reason doesn't fare any better

So how about all those "libertarians" over at the Reason Foundation? They donate thousands of dollars to political candidates too. You'd think at least a few of them would give to Ron Paul, wouldn't they?

Well, nope.

POOLE ROBERT F LOS ANGELES,CA 90025 REASON FOUNDATION/FOUNDER
10/8/2002 $250 Feeney, Tom

POOLE, ROBERT SHERMAN OAKS,CA 91403 REASON FOUNDATION/EXECUTIVE
4/25/2000 $1,000 Browne, Harry

POOLE, ROBERT SHERMAN OAKS,CA 91403 REASON FOUNDATION 3/2/2000 $500 Campbell, Tom

POOLE, ROBERT SHERMAN OAKS,CA 91403 REASON FOUNDATION 11/7/2000 $500
Campbell, Tom

POOLE, ROBERT SHERMAN OAKS,CA 91403 REASON FOUNDATION 7/19/2000 $500
Howell, Carla

POOLE, ROBERT FORT LAUDERDALE,FL 33317 REASON FOUNDATION 6/30/2003 $500 Pro-Growth Action Team

POOLE, ROBERT LOS ANGELES,CA 90034 REASON FOUNDATION 4/5/1996 $500 Republican Liberty Federal Campaign Fund

POOLE, ROBERT JR LOS ANGELES,CA 9002 REASON FOUNDATION/PRESIDENT 1/31/2002 $250 Patterson, Norwood James Jr

POOLE, ROBERT JR LOS ANGELES,CA 90034 REASON FOUNDATION 9/10/1997 $250 Republican Liberty Federal Campaign Fund

POOLE, ROBERT W LOS ANGELES,CA 90034 REASON FOUNDATION 7/6/2000 $1,000 Libertarian National Cmte

POOLE, ROBERT W LOS ANGELES,CA 90034 REASON FOUNDATION/EXECUTIVE 2/4/2003 $250 Libertarian National Cmte

POOLE, ROBERT W LOS ANGELES,CA 90034 REASON FOUNDATION 4/28/2000 $249 Libertarian National Cmte

POOLE, ROBERT W JR LOS ANGELES,CA 90034 REASON FOUNDATION 7/8/1996 $1,000 Libertarian National Cmte

POOLE, ROBERT W JR SHERMAN OAKS,CA 91403 REASON FOUNDATION 11/22/1995 $500 Smith, Katherine Hatch

POOLE, ROBERT W JR SHERMAN OAKS,CA 91403 REASON FOUNDATION 7/8/1995 $500 Browne, Harry

POOLE, ROBERT W JR SHERMAN OAKS,CA 91403 REASON FOUNDATION 9/11/1998 $250 California Lincoln Clubs

POOLE, ROBERT W JR LOS ANGELES,CA 90034 REASON FOUNDATION 8/6/1998 $250 Libertarian National Cmte

POOLE, ROBERT W JR SHERMAN OAKS,CA 91403 REASON FOUNDATION 4/3/1998 $250 Gray, James

POOLE, ROBERT W JR SHERMAN OAKS,CA 91403 REASON FOUNDATION 12/3/1997 $250 Westmiller, William

SCARLETT, LYNN P CARPINTERIA,CA 93013 REASON FOUNDATION 9/28/1999 $1,000 Bush, George W

TEASLEY, HARRY E JR TAMPA,FL 33611 REASON FOUNDATION 3/22/1996 $500 Mack, Connie

Thanks for nothing, David Boaz

2008-08-29T10:37:00.001-06:00

This well-written article on the Cato Institute's attitude toward Ron Paul's presidential campaign is worth reading in its entirity. I'll excerpt the best passage here:

The Cato Institute was supposed to set everything and everyone straight. They could out-argue everyone on economics. They could fill in the nuances between Paul’s 30-second soundbites. They could bring the old guard of limited government Republicans back into the fold. They would legitimize a helluva lot. David Boaz to Ron Paul could be like Bill Kristol to George W. Bush, except accurate in his predictions and not so deserving of a proper beating by the entire United States Military. And it was sure to come…I mean…if Bill Maher could say something nice about Paul, God knows the biggest libertarian think tank would bring it home. But nothing was happening. They just acted like he didn’t exist.

Bombshell: Jamie Kirchick's source revealed

2008-08-29T10:30:00.000-06:00

Originally Posted: January 2008

One of Jamie Kirchick's sources for the New Republic hit piece has outed himself. And I'm not talking about his Reason/Cato collaborators either. This source is much more disgusting, vile, and repugnant - so repugnant that Kirchick would never dare name him publicly in any of his articles.

Kirchick's vile source is Bill White, white supremacist extraordinaire, self-appointed Fuehrer of the U.S. nazi party, and vocal Ron Paul hater.

Justin Raimondo first hinted at this possibility yesterday so I decided to investigate further.

I'll get to the evidence shortly, but first I'll comment on another ironic twist to this story. Bill White hates Ron Paul with a passion. He hates Ron Paul because - get this - he thinks Ron Paul's campaign is infiltrated by "the Jews" and he cites none other than the Ludwig von Mises Institute (named after a Jewish economist and co-founded by another Jewish economist) as "proof" of this. So much for Kirchick's "Ron Paul is an anti-semite" theme.

So how do we know that Bill White is Kirchick's informant? Because Bill White himself admitted it all over the dark little toilet of the internet he inhabits - a repulsive neo-nazi website called the "Vanguard News Network" (VNN) More importantly Bill White admitted it before Kirchick's story broke. Along with a couple of "beltway libertarians" who have already been discussed, Bill White was the only person who knew this story was coming before it hit presses. That is because the New Republic called him for background on the newsletters.

Bill White posts on the VNN site under the name "ANSWP Commander" (yes, for those who know their history that means American National Socialist Worker's Party - as in Nazi - Commander). The sites this material comes from are hate-filled sewers and are not for the faint of heart, so be warned. The URLS are there if anyone needs proof, but the links are intentionally broken or redirected to google cache where it exists so we don't give this scum any traffic. It is necessary to give the sources of them though because they reveal that Kirchick has been hanging out with some very shady company and he needs to be called out on it.

Proof #1:

Bill White's post, made one week before the New Republic hit piece:

Quote:

I spoke to the New Republic todayh, briefly. I don't think I quite gave them as much information as they wanted.

Source: (vnnforum.com/showthread.php?t=63682&page=19)

Proof #2:

Bill White's post, made two days before the New Republic hit piece:

Quote:

I am told that the New Republic has verified all my claims and is planning a huge front page story on this -- they have even asked me not to give other reporters information so they don't get "scooped".

Source: (vnnforum.com/showthread.php?p=700083#post700083)

Proof #3

Bill White's statement yesterday where he admits his earlier communications with the New Republic:

Quote:

Even I told the New Republic I didn't think he was a "white supremacist", just someone who takes money from "the movement".

Source: (http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=1&gl=us)
Hat tip: Justin Raimondo

CONCLUSION: Bill White knew about the New Republic story a week before it hit the web, and admitted this all over his putrid little neo-nazi website. He knew about it because the New Republic called him up for material in their coming hit piece against Ron Paul. Jamie Kirchick would never dare publicly credit somebody as disreputable as Bill White, but Bill White's own statements prove beyond a doubt that he was one of the unnamed "sources" the New Republic contacted. How else could he know that this story was about to come out before it broke? The only other people who knew about it were Kirchick's friends in the Cato/Reason crowd who got tipped off by Kirchick.

But now we have proof that the New Republic smear piece came from a very disreputable source: the head of a neo-nazi party. People like Kirchick have an agenda to smear Ron Paul. They will yield to no boundary and stoop to any new low to conduct that smear, even if it means going to the nastiest piece of bigoted anti-semitic racist gutter trash on the web to do it. Of course Kirchick will never publicly put that in his text, but he didn't need to because his neo-nazi source also has a big mouth.

Cato's Palmer responds to the newsletter story

2008-08-29T10:25:00.000-06:00

Originally published January 2008

From Palmer's website:

I have been very occupied with other matters and not very attentive to the scandal surrounding “those newsletters,” but I’ve gotten a fair number of emails, some from friends with links to very strange internet postings and some from, well, really disturbed people. Julian Sanchez of Reason (why, at one time, he even was a colleague of mine, and before that, he attended seminars at which I lectured! he is therefore my tool, or, since I have also written for Reason, maybe I am his) shines the light of reason on the whole ugly matter.

For the record, as I have stated elsewhere, I had never met or communicated with Mr. Kirchik prior to the publication of his article. (After the publication of his article, he introduced himself to me at a happy hour and we talked for less than five minutes.) The fact that, as it turns out, I am “openly gay” and he is “openly gay,” and we live in the same city must, you know, mean that we were, you know, “friends” is one of the favorite insinuations of the LewRockwell.com crowd and has been posted on a number of prominent websites. Sorry to disappoint. But then, it seems we may both live near metro stations (I’m between a Red line station and a Green line station), so if the sexual orientation doesn’t clinch it, that certainly does. Whatever.

While not teaching at a university (the horror), I can say that I have also not been a “ringleader” of any movement to “smear” anyone by unearthing things he wrote or published under his name. I guess that’s a lot of “nots” for one life. (I am also not a member of the Trilateral Commission and I’m not a member of the CFR. And I’m not a member of the Federal Reserve Board. Whew. I don’t know how I manage it. So many nots!)

But while not doing those other things, I do have some things to attend to that keep me pretty busy.

My observations:

1. Palmer's denial that he knew Kirchick before this rings hollow to me for many reasons. Kirchick's relationship with the Cato crowd has been documented to predate this story by at least a year. Kirchick is on the facebook friends list of Palmer's colleague David Boaz and several of the Reason guys with Cato connections. Julian Sanchez (one of the Reason authors) has admitted on his blog and on this very forum that he trades notes with Kirchick before each of the Ron Paul hit pieces break (he calls it "professional courtesy" but its effects are no different than outright collusion). These are the same social circles that Palmer runs in, and they all seem to know Kirchick very well. But Palmer says he doesn't. Excuse me if I'm a little more than skeptical

2. Palmer says he first met Kirchick at a "happy hour" last week. I think the timing of that concession is just a little bit suspect. Think about it. You claim you don't know a guy who hangs out with virtually all of your friends on a regular basis, then that guy hits it big with a story. People start asking you if you knew him as well since all your friends know him, and it would look bad if you said "yes." Furthermore, people now know what Kirchick looks like and may have seen him talking to you in public the other day. The explanation: I met him for the first time at a random bar's happy hour last week right after the story broke. The timing is a little more than convenient.

3. Palmer's hyperbolic denunciations of the "conspiracy" angle are intended to make a caricature of his critics and obscure a valid point in so doing. Nobody sane is contending that Palmer is some sort of nefarious puppet master who sends messages to his minions' decoder rings ordering them to destroy Ron Paul. That's just silly. But Palmer is at the heart of a DC-area libertarian social network, and social networks are well documented in the sociology literature to influence the way that messages shape up. Palmer doesn't head a secretive conspiracy to infiltrate the libertarian movement with mind-numb robots, but he does have many fierce loyalists who used to work for him as Cato interns and who are now placed in various other DC-region libertarian think tanks in part due to recommendation letters and the sort that they received under Palmer's watch at Cato. He doesn't send out daily coded marching orders to them, but he does routinely hang out with them at the D.C. bar and party scene. The point has always been that Palmer is well known for his hatred of the Ludwig von Mises Institute crowd, and that hatred is shared by the majority of his social network due in large part to his direct influence.

4. Palmer complains of "insinuations" about his homosexuality being involved in this story. These insinuations are certainly childish, but I submit that Palmer himself is at least in part to blame for them. Kirchick's homosexuality is also indisputably one of his motives in attacking Paul (he's on record saying so, and saying that is the reason he's backing Giuliani). Palmer is in part to blame for insinuations about his sexual orientation because Palmer himself has a well known reputation as a party boy. He hangs out at happy hours and frequents the D.C. Adams-Morgan bar scene, usually hanging out with people who are half his age (including Kirchick, who he admitted to meeting last week at a happy hour). That does NOT mean he's sexually involved with people on the bar scene, but it creates a public perception about him that makes himself vulnerable to "insinuations." It's kinda like the guy who goes for an evening tour of the red light district but insists he's just jogging. Maybe he is just jogging, but if you do that all the time you're gonna get a reputation whether you deserve it or not. And Palmer has that kind of reputation (contrast that to other well known gay libertarians like Justin Raimondo and you'll see what I mean).

5. Palmer's word choice is imprecise when he describes the bloggers at Reason and elsewhere who are driving this story as his former "colleagues" at Cato. The word "colleague" implies someone of comparable rank and function within the institute. They were not. Palmer is a Vice President of Cato and the "colleagues" he describes were almost all student interns. You'd have to bring in the janitors to find a bigger disparity in rank between them. This point is important to remember, because in social network analysis rank matters. It explains how spheres of influence operate, and how people within the network get job placements on the recommendation of others in the same network. Again, it doesn't mean that a subordinate is controlled by the senior rank. But the senior member's sphere of influence almost always extends to the subordinate rank, and the evidence of this is plain in Palmer's case: Palmer's well known grudge against Rockwell and the Mises crowd is openly shared by virtually all of his subordinate "colleagues"...and they even OPENLY CREDIT him for it with links to his old blog posts on Rockwell.

Cato/Reason Smear Machine Roundup

2008-08-29T10:20:00.000-06:00

Originally published: January 2008

They're still at it, including the ones who insist they are really trying to help Ron Paul (apparently by embarrassing him into taking their side in the Cato proxy war against Rockwell). Here's the roundup for today:

David Boaz, Cato

His article, entitled "Don't believe everything you read," is an attempted response of what he calls "attacks on the Cato Institute and several of our staff members" from the blogosphere "fringe" "all because of our attempt to separate the grand old cause of classical liberalism from racism and bigotry." Strangely, this lengthy rant doesn't refute any of the specific charges made against Cato. It doesn't explain Cato's role in the story's background, or when/where/how Cato first learned of the "bombshell" that Kirchick was about to drop. It doesn't explain Cato's stand-offish reception of the Ron Paul campaign before the New Republic. It does not dispute the now-documented fact that Boaz and Jamie Kirchick have been friends with each other since long before the story broke.

He urges his readers not to believe what has been said about Cato yet offers no proof why this should be so, and in fact he refuses to do so on the grounds that it would be like "wrestling with pigs" to respond to his accusers in any substantive, meaningful way. Boaz's entire 6 paragraph rant can actually be reduced to this: "I deny all the charges against Cato and myself, but I'm not going to offer any proof because anybody who attacks us is a closet racist and not a real libertarian."

Tom Palmer, Cato

His latest response is a simple link to Boaz stating "nuff said," implying his endorsement of the shoddy logic outlined above.

In case anyone's missed it, there's a beautiful irony in the Palmer/Boaz line of response. These guys are both demanding that the Paul campaign "out" the author of the newsletters. Like shrill harpies, their whines echo through the tunnels of the Orange Line. They constantly impugn the Paul campaign with innuendos of deceit, ineptitude, and collusion with people they deem "racists," and they constantly tell us that the Paul campaign's response is "insufficient" unless he outs and publicly flogs Lew Rockwell. Yet when evidence emerges showing that the Cato/Reason crowd colluded with Jamie Kirchick on this story, they refuse to talk. Note to Tom and David: I've seen your responses to the allegation of collusion with TNR, and it's insufficient!

Julian Sanchez, Reason

Sanchez makes the official attempt to respond to Justin Raimondo's excellent analysis of the TNR story.

Sanchez's argument is wanting on several counts.

1. First, he repeats the meme from his appearance late last week on this forum: "we're just reporters investigating a story and sharing notes with Kirchick out of professional courtesy." Let's break that one down point by point. Well, Mr. Sanchez, let's get one thing straight: you are not a "reporter" and Jamie Kirchick is not a "reporter." You are both nothing more than glorified bloggers at ideologically charged niche magazines with minuscule circulations who hold jobs there for no other reason than your own ideological concurrence with that magazine's niche. The various odds and ends you call a "job" may be enough, as Karen DeCoster has suggested, to pay the rent in a one-bedroom flat on the outskirts of DuPont Circle, but the simple fact is that neither of you will be up for a Pulitzer nomination at any point in your current careers. On the totem pole that is called professional journalism, you sit only marginally above the guy who sells major dailies from a crate at the highway overpass. You don't hold a candle to a typical beat writer in any major daily paper (which, despite being AWFUL for plenty of other reasons, are actually real full time careers with at least some semblance of journalistic professionalism and standards behind them). You aren't a newscaster (not even a bad one like Bill O'Reilly). You aren't a news commentator (not even a bad one like Hannity). Hell, you aren't even the weather girl at the Jackson, Mississippi CBS affiliate. You aren't a Michelle Malkin, painfully attempting to straddle the world between writing newspaper op-eds and blogging, because you do entirely the latter wherein a small portion of the latter is misidentified as the former by virtue of appearing in your own blog-in-print called Reason Magazine. So stop calling yourself a "reporter," stop insisting that shameless hack bloggers like Kirchick are your "professional peers," stop pushing this ridiculous line that you are simply "following the story wherever it leads," and, quite frankly, get a real job and GROW UP.

2. Sanchez does attempt to tackle Raimondo's actual article, but poorly at that. The main thrust of Raimondo's piece was a point-by-point dissection of Kirchick's shoddy journalism, abusive misquotations of the newsletters, and obvious political axe. Yet the bulk of Sanchez's response is caught up in the trivial quips of Raimondo's well-known acerbic writing style. It's easy to see how this happened because Cato and Reason were the direct targets of a sharp tongue in this case. But Sanchez spends so much time concentrating on the insults (many of which are very funny and are meant to be read that way) that he completely misses the main body of the article itself.

3. When moving to the main body of Raimondo's response, Sanchez decides to punt and admits doing so: "I, for my part, don't feel much need to talk about the bulk of Raimondo's piece." All he has to say about his friend Kirchick is this:

Quote:

I don't think it's my job to defend Kirchick's article: It was a hit piece, it did sometimes stretch to put things in their worst light, and it did make a fuss about some passages that weren't really offensive at all.

Then he drops the issue. Yes, he admits, Kirchick did a hatchet job. "But that's neither here nor there, really." So the content of Kirchick's allegations is neither here nor there, Julian? I submit that that content is the story itself, both in its claims and in its abusive misportrayal of the quotes. Keep the following in mind: the story is as bad as it is precisely BECAUSE Kirchick gave the worst possible spin to the quotes and precisely BECAUSE, until Raimondo, nobody even questioned that spin. And I can easily prove this to be the case by pointing out that Paul had easily weathered older newsletter stories before where the "offensive" content was exactly the same, but the spin was scrutinized and the response was different.

4. Sanchez's next line is a logical contortion of epic proportions. He just admitted that Kirchick did a hatchet job, but rather than ask how Kirchick's spin affected the way the story played out he dismisses it as an irrelevant attempt at "parsing out the exact percentage of some New Republic article one agrees with." The worst of the worst, he tells us, is simply beyond defending so anything questioning Kirchick's spin is useless - "preposterously strained is the attempt to minimize their awfulness." The problem with this argument is what Raimondo pointed out and others have pointed out all along: yes, there is some truly awful stuff in the newsletters but this "worst of the worst" is isolated to a few short lines The rest is all padding by Kirchick - quotes intentionally taken out of context and contorted into the worst possible light imaginable.

Yet to Sanchez none of that matters. He flippantly dismisses it all as irrelevant. Let's follow his logic: Kirchick's reporting is for the most part shoddy and deceptive, but he did get it right on a couple of really bad examples, so therefore we must unquestioningly accept Kirchick's conclusions as a whole and, in fact, it is not our place to question parts of those conclusions? Am I missing something, or does this simply not add up?

5. Divide and conquer. This is Sanchez's final argument, and it's logical flow is about on par with the earlier ones. Sanchez points out that the Paul campaign repudiated the newsletters. It follows that Raimondo's rebuttals (which we were just told don't matter anyway, no matter how truthful they are) are at odds with the Paul campaign's repudiation of them. The implication then is that Raimondo and Paul are at odds with each other, and therefore Raimondo's argument must be misguided. Think this one through though, all the while keeping in mind that only moments earlier Sanchez dismissed Raimondo's argument as irrelevant but now considers it material for its apparent contradiction of Paul.

Here's what's really going on, and it involves two divergent but equally necessary tactics from a political angle: Paul's campaign, by necessity of the way the media works, HAS to dismiss the newsletters and has to do so in a short, sweet, and simple condemnation. If they get caught up in the details at any level beyond that it becomes too difficult to explain in 15 second soundbytes on Wolf Blitzer or Tim Russert. This sad byproduct of the 24 hour news cycle leaves some people (including his supporters) wanting a more substantive response, but it is politically necessary because a more substantive response is also by necessity more complex...which means it's harder to explain in 15 seconds and only makes the story worse in the public mind.

In contrast, Raimondo is conducting an equally important analytical dissection of Kirchick's article. He is providing the answer to those of us who want more substance on Kirchick, and he is also throwing a large wrench into the gears of the Cato/Reason crowd, which up until this point has taken Kirchick's abusive spin as truth without question (possibly in part because many of them are personally friends with Kirchick himself). In other words, Raimondo His purpose is doing what we'd like the Paul campaign to do but what they cannot do because of political constraints imposed by the media spin cycle.

This is Campaign School 101 stuff, and it is mind-boggling that a self-styled political "reporter" like Sanchez could be so completely lacking in political sense that he doesn't recognize it. To react as he does is to pretend that the Paul campaign exists in a vacuum, impervious to the political realities of the news cycle and therefore making its pronouncements that are clearly tailored to that news cycle an artificial point of rebuttal to Raimondo, who is not bound by that constraint. If anyone wondered why these Cato/Reason types take the career of glorified blogger instead of real reporters or real political movers and shakers here's your answer in its full glory: they don't understand the politics of the same media circles they pretend to inhabit, and that makes them and their chosen candidates inherently unelectable.

David Weigel, Reason

Weigel's latest is an attempt to keep the newsletter story going by chaining it to today's MLK day themed money bomb. As Weigel puts it, "Anecdotally, from personal contacts and contacts across the web, I know some casual Paul fans have given up supporting the campaign since this scandal. Many will still vote for him, but they're uncomfortable posting signs or giving him cash." His "evidence" in the numbers is that after 9 hours, the money bomb produced only $400,000.

Keep in mind that these first 9 hours fell between midnight and 9 AM this morning - i.e. the time that most normal people are asleep. I guess that excludes the typical Reason/Cato cosmotarian crowd, which spends the wee hours of the day hopping around the trendy nightclubs of Adams Morgan (or blogging at 4:37 AM after spending the morning doing god knows what else...). But most normal Americans actually sleep at night. Predictably, today's moneybomb trends have accelerated rapidly after about 8 AM EST when the non-cosmotarian world began to wake up (http://www.ronpaulgraphs.com/last_48...donations.html). And as of right now we're at a solid $1 million for the day. Weigel's next point is to predict that this moneybomb will fall short of the last ones. Clearly, Weigel is setting the stage for a self-fulfilling prophecy where a "disappointing" moneybomb can be blamed on the newsletter "scandal," and ends up vindicating everything that Reason and Cato have been doing for the last two weeks.

The only problem is that a $1 million haul or more for the day is NOT a failure! Sure, it falls short of the $6 million Tea Party haul but that comparison is about like saying a 4 minute mile is a failure because it didn't break the world record. Bottom line: if today's moneybomb stays at its current pace things are looking very good for a solid and commendable 1-day haul, the Cato/Reason Smear machine not withstanding.

Cato and the New Republic newsletters: the evidence

2008-08-29T10:15:00.000-06:00

A lot has been written about this today, including a post by DiLorenzo at Lewrockwell.com suggesting that Cato was behind the Jamie Kirchick smear and a response at Volokh by David Bernstein claiming that evidence of Cato collusion is a silly conspiracy theory.

Although I don't know the inside of this story, I'd like to offer couple of observations that seem to support - at minimum - the idea that the Cato Institute is in collusion with the forces behind the TNR story.

1. Cato's hostility to Ron Paul is well documented and predates the newsletter thing. By all sensible measures, the Cato Institute should have been embracing Paul's campaign from the beginning as the only libertarian of either party in the race. But they didn't. But not only were they stand-offish. They were AWOL and even hostile at times. We heard for months and months how Cato was leery of involvement with Paul under a litany of excuses that ranged from silly to just plain bizarre. Remember what we were told by Cato sources BEFORE all this newsletter stuff came out?

By helping Paul, Cato jeopardize their tax exempt status
Paul isn't a "true" libertarian because of his immigration stance
Paul's brand of libertarianism isn't "cosmopolitan" or hip enough
Paul's trade views are actually "protectionist" since he doesn't embrace WTO corporatism
Paul is too close to the Rockwellites (remember that article in the Economist with statements from an "anonymous" Cato scholar ranting about how horrible Rockwell is?)
If Paul's campaign gets too popular, it could make the libertarian movement look like a bunch of kooks.

We've heard all of that and more from Cato-affiliated sources for months. Also notice that virtually NONE of the major Cato "scholars" were very supportive of Paul's campaign, and all have been spinning and downplaying him since the beginning. That includes Tom Palmer, David Boaz, David Bernstein, Brink "I love war" Lindsay and the rest.

2. Since the moment TNR story broke, the Cato crowd has been all over it - almost as if they were just waiting to pounce. The major figures at Cato have each blogged multiple times over about it, all linking to each other and expressing their collective "outrage." Palmer, Boaz, Bernstein...they've all been posting up to the minute screeds on each and every detail that emerges about the newsletters. They are literally foaming at the mouth over it. No other source - not the mainstream media, not the leftist losers at Daily Kos, and not even the neocon bloggers - have been so dogged in their pursuit of this story as the Cato crowd. That tells me they knew it was coming and like vultures they're happy about it.

3. There is circumstantial evidence of a Cato "conspiracy" angle to the newsletter story does exist.

A couple years ago somebody created an anonymous called RightWatch. Rightwatch did nothing but post lengthy and poorly written screeds about Murray Rothbard, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and Lew Rockwell - usually accusing them all of being "racists" and "homophobes." There has long been evidence suggesting that "Rightwatch" is a secret side project of Cato Veep Tom G. Palmer, who has a well known longstanding feud with the Rockwell crowd. Here's the evidence:

Rightwatch came online on June 18, 2005 with a screed about how some people who claim to be libertarians are really "authoritarian" homophobes.
Tom Palmer knew about Rightwatch's existence almost immediately (he claimed it was sent to him by email) and blogged its praises on June 19, 2005
What are the odds of an obscure anonymous blog popping up on the web one day and getting an immediate link from one of the best known "libertarian" bloggers in the country less than 24 hours later without that blogger being in on it?
Over the next two years Palmer linked to Rightwatch repeatedly and used its "information" as the basis for "stories" on his own blog.
Rightwatch is obsessed with Hans Herman Hoppe, a libertarian economist at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Tom Palmer shares this similar obsession with Professor Hoppe. Both accuse Hoppe of homophobia - a charge that stems from an incident several years ago when Hoppe stated publicly that Palmer was using libertarianism to promote his sexual orientation (Palmer is gay).
Rightwatch suddenly went offline on February 27, 2007 after posting an anti-Hoppe screed.
Rightwatch suddenly reactivated after almost a year of silence on January 9, 2008 with a lengthy rant about the Ron Paul newsletter story. It's published four more rants against Ron Paul in the last four days.

Coincidence? I think not. By the way, Palmer is also widely rumored to be the source of several of the anti-Ron Paul quotes that have been attributed to an "unnamed Cato executive" in dozens of pre-TNR news stories where the Catoites inexplicably distanced themselves from Ron Paul.

The Cato/Kirchick/Reason Magazine Connection

2008-08-29T10:09:00.000-06:00

Originally Published January 2008

Since the [Ron Paul] newsletter story broke there's been a very unusual friendliness between Jamie Kirchick and the guys over at Reason. Here's what we know for sure:

1. Reason's blog knew about the Kirchick story before anyone. They put up a teaser the night before, and Reason blogger Brian Doherty claimed that he planned to ask Ron Paul about it after the Jay Leno taping the day before it hit, but couldn't get close enough for a question.

2. Reason and Kirchick have been tag teaming virtually all of the follow-up stories on the newsletters. They were among the first two sources to hone in on Lew Rockwell as the alleged authors. Then today they simultaneously reported having conversations with Tom Lizardo, Paul's chief of staff, about an allegedly suppressed statement from the campaign fingering Rockwell.

QUESTION: why is a supposedly "libertarian" outfit like Reason apparently so close to a liberal statist publication like the New Republic, and particularly its writer Jamie Kirchick?

Here's what a little sleuthing around the net reveals:

It turns out that Jamie Kirchick and Reason blogger Dave Weigel (co-author of the most recent Reason hit piece) are both officers of a Facebook group called "Inside Washington Weekly." This group has its own podcast website where, not surprisingly, the newsletter story is the topic of the week.

The group's podcast history shows multiple panels where Kirchick and Weigel have appeared together.

Kirchick and Weigel also have a bit of banter back and forth on their facebook messageboards about this story, plus some predating it where they exchange notes on political stories. Examples...

Jamie Kirchick (Yale) wrote
at 1:02am yesterday
is that an issue of the "Ron Paul Survival Report" he's holding up?

Jamie Kirchick (Yale) wrote
at 7:16pm on July 2nd, 2007
RE: Miliband. That's a very bad thing. The only reason I joined that group is because I can't stand Gordon Brown. But Miliband as Foreign Secretary was not a good move.

Kirchick may also have connections with the folks at Cato, particularly Tom Palmer and David Boaz - two of the most vocal Paul bashers there. The evidence here is more circumstantial but it's worth mentioning:

1. There are rumors a all over the web that Kirchick and Palmer are friends. This is very plausible because Kirchick and Palmer are both gay political bloggers based in D.C. That's a relatively small group of people so the chances that they know each other is very high.

2. Kirchick writes for a gay newspaper called the Washington Blade. Palmer is frequently interviewed by this paper and has been featured prominently in its pages.

3. Cato's bloggers, much like Reason, have a long history of exchanging links with Kirchick.

4. Kirchick and the Cato Institute's David Boaz are friends on Facebook.

Taken collectively, these records establish that the relationship between Kirchick and Reason/Cato predates the newsletter story substantially. Furthermore, Kirchick is apparently friends with several of the primary authors of the Reason and Cato hits on Ron Paul and appears to be actively exchanging notes with them on the story as it develops.

Welcome

2008-08-29T09:53:00.000-06:00

The purpose of this blog is simple: to provide a medium of information illustrating and critiquing the excesses of feuding factions within the libertarian movement.

The author has taken up this task because he believes those factions are harming the libertarian movement and the reputation of its most visible institution, the Cato Institute, by allowing it to become a vehicle of feuding, ostracization, and character assassination against other libertarian "enemies," both real and perceived.

This blog is not intended to settle any scores, and it does not exist to take the side of one faction in the feud over another. It exists to simply document the activities of its participants and illustrate the harm that they are doing to the larger libertarian movement.

I will open the blog by here by archiving multiple older articles that illustrate this purpose by showing how certain members of the Cato Institute actively assaulted and undermined the presidential campaign of Ron Paul in order to carry on their own petty, personal feud with longtime rival and Paul ally Lewellyn Rockwell. The great tragedy of this affair is not Rockwell's continued association with Paul, as the Catoites would have you believe, but the harm that its Catoite participants brought to the single most successful libertarian bid for political office in modern history...all because they were more interested in settling personal scores.