James TaRANTo of OpinionJournal’s “Best of the Web Today” openly paints libertarians as being pretty evil characters. TaRANTo writes:

Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, whose anti-Israel screed has chagrined Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, have another supporter: one Edward Peck, a former ambassador who now serves as “an Advisory Board Member for the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute.” In an op-ed for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Peck attacks critics of Walt and Mearsheimer by setting up a straw Semite:

The expected tsunami of rabid responses condemned the report, vilified its authors, and denied there is such a lobby–validating both the lobby’s existence and aggressive, pervasive presence and obliging Harvard to remove its name.

All democracies have lobbies. Shrill insistence that no groups promote Israel is ludicrous.

We don’t know of anyone who has “denied that there is such a lobby.” Anyone who pays the slightest attention to American politics knows, for example, of the existence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Critics of Walt and Mearsheimer argue that their strategic analysis is wrongheaded and their moral analysis–in which Israel is always sinning and never sinned against–is invidious.

Peck does not address any of the substantive criticisms of Walt and Mearsheimer’s work, instead listing various additional grievances against Israel and then blaming Jerusalem for prejudice against Jews: “Israeli actions also generate anti-Semitism, the very label the lobby uses to bludgeon into silence anyone in America who questions relations with Israel and its expansionist policies.” The publication of Peck’s piece is certainly not the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s finest hour.

The Peck piece prompts a curious observation from David Bernstein, a law professor who blogs for the Volokh conspiracy:

It’s more than a bit odd for a libertarian outfit like the Independent Institute to promote articles claiming that just because a certain perspective has found only a small popular audience, that the holders of that perspective, who have been subject to no state or private force, have been prevented from promoting their views. And it’s especially odd when those views are expressed all the time.

It seems to us Bernstein has an incomplete picture of libertarians. He probably thinks of them as cute little nerds who have basically sound (if somewhat extreme) ideas about economics along with various eccentric enthusiasms: private toll roads, pornography, drugs, head-freezing. This is the libertarian world of Reason magazine. (Disclosure: This columnist was an intern for Reason nearly two decades ago.)

But libertarianism is an ideology. Ideology can lead to fanaticism, and fanaticism to hatred. Check out the Independent Institute’s Web site (please note: not to be confused with the Independence Institute) or, even worse, Antiwar.com (sorry, we’re not linking), and you’ll find far libertarianism to be pretty much indistinguishable from the far left and the far right.

Yes, libertarians are those evil people who think it is wrong to bomb civilians, destroy countries, commit mass murder, and bankrupt a once-free country while doing all these other evil deeds. Of course, TaRANTo is a big supporter of President Bush; I remember when Molly Ivins was declaring Bush to be a “libertarian” (which to Ivins was evil). So, we get attacked by the right and the left, and then TaRANTo declares that we ARE the evil left and the evil right.

Me thinks that the real evil lies with people like TaRANTo.