Anti-Statism
with a Smile:
A Note to My Readers
by
Myles Kantor
You
may notice a new photograph of yours truly has replaced the austere
visage at the end of my columns. I’ll venture the self-indulgence
of an explanation.
Generically
enough, the previous photograph was getting dated (over six months
old). I figured a new millennium called for a new picture.
The
cheerful pose before you appeared at a bookstore appropriately called
Liberties (an ironic name given its location in an anything but
libertarian city). Although I’m partial to my local Borders and
Barnes and Noble, that’s where my friends and I were spending that
Saturday night. My disposable camera on hand, I decided to immortalize
the occasion.
Some
of you might find Smiley Myles incongruous with my subject matter.
As I glance at my archive, I hardly find the stuff of hilarity.
"So whaddaya smiling for, Kantor?"
While
consistent critique of statism is incumbent upon proponents of liberty,
it’s very easy for lamentation to displace goal-oriented analysis.
The leap from "The War on Drugs has terrorized Americans"
to "We will never be free of the War on Drugs" is closer
than it seems, which is to say the line between critique and quietism
is fine.
Imagine
a libertarian group characterized by the following:
"The
country’s doomed, man!"
"Yeah,
man, we might as well move to the mountains!"
"But
the feds declared ‘em a nature preserve!"
"No!"
"Yes!"
"AAAHHH!"
It’s
enough to make you flee to a NAACP rally.
One
of Murray Rothbard’s most attractive qualities is a zeal for liberty
that suffuses his writings. The "scintillating prose style"
Ralph Raico rightly praises could never have blossomed in works
like For
a New Liberty and The
Irrepresible Rothbard if he were a doom and gloom screedsmith.
Consider these robust sentiments:
"Perhaps,
some day, their [Sherman, Grant, and Lincoln’s] statues,
like Lenin’s in Russia, will be toppled and melted down; their
insignias and battle flags will be desecrated, their war songs
tossed into the fire. And then Davis and Lee and Jackson and Forrest,
and all the heroes of the South, ‘Dixie’ and the Stars and Bars,
will once again be truly honored and remembered. The classic comment
on that meretricious TV series The Civil War was made by
that marvelous and feisty Southern writer Florence King. Asked
her views on the series, she replied: "I didn’t have time
to watch The Civil War. I’m too busy getting ready for
the next one. In that spirit, I am sure that one day, aided and
abetted by Northerners like myself in the glorious ‘copperhead’
tradition, the South shall rise again." ("America’s
Two Just Wars: 1775 and 1861," in The
Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories)
It
is no coincidence that photographs of Rothbard often show a merry
gent, short yet towering in sanguine sagacity. In Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s
description, he was "a happy warrior."
I
too believe anti-statism should be done with a smile. Of course,
some topics and circumstances preclude smiles. The overall pursuit
of liberty, however, should be guided by a grin, not a grimace.
If we scowl at our opponents, it is because their policies perturb
our bliss.
 I’ll
stick with Smiley Myles for now, if only to surprise those who expect
a brooding countenance at the end of a bristling column.
January
13, 2001
Myles
Kantor lives in Boynton Beach, Florida.
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