Beltway Totalitarians

Justin Raimondo’s quote of Cato’s Brink Lindsay’s definition of a “libertarian utopia” reveals to me a big reason why so many of the Beltway crowd seems to hate and despise Ron Paul and anyone assocated with him, especially those of us who work with the Mises Institute and write for LewRockwell.com.

Raimondo quotes Lindsay in one of his (Lindsay’s) books as describing his own version of libertarian utopia as “the sexual revolution, environmentalism and feminsm, the fitness and health care boom, and the opening of the gay closet . . .” It is well known that the position of Lew Rockwell, myself, and everyone else formally assocated with the Mises Institute and LewRockwell.com on all of this is freedom and tolerance; live and let live. Ron Paul himself put it best in a recent interview on Faux News with Brian Kilmeade when he said: “Im for freedom but I don’t care how people use their freedom.”

But the “Beltway liberventionists” tend to be totalitarian-minded and childishly intolerant of this live-and-let-live philosophy. They display a venomous hatred toward those of us who choose to largely ignore these issues but would never stand in the way of anyone who wanted to pursue them. They insist that all libertarians be champions of feminism, gay rights, and, appaprently, even health club membership. They remind me of the campus leftists who keep informing me that I must not only tolerate all possible varieties of sexual diversity but “celebrate” it. (“Celebrate Diversity” has been the multiculturalist credo of higher education for about 15 years now).

Well, I’d rather celebrate freedom, which is the surest way to allow everyone to live as diverse a lifestyle as they want — as long as they don’t commit aggressive acts against others with their freedom.

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9:17 am on December 8, 2007