The Excommunicator

It's not surprising that Jonah Goldberg should disagree with what he reads on LewRockwell.com. Controversial and unconventional thought abounds on LRC, such that even those who are most ideologically in tune with its editor and contributors will surely find something with which to disagree. It's entirely reasonable that Goldberg should disagree with the site's writers about whether Friedrich Hayek was a conservative, or whether the Right is winning the culture war. Unfortunately, "reasonable" is not a word that can describe Goldberg's recent article criticizing three of LewRockwell.com's writers. Instead, Goldberg's ad hominem and ill-tempered piece reads more like an attempt to excommunicate heretics.

Let's be specific about the target of Goldberg's ire: it's not libertarians. Goldberg goes out of his way to say that the conservative movement needs libertarians. There's a difference, though, between the minimally conciliatory approach Goldberg takes toward libertarians in general and the relentless vilification he employs against LewRockwell.com. Every time Goldberg refers to an LRC contributor he attaches at least one personal (and juvenile) insult. Gene Callahan "writes out of his posterior" and is "furious" and "angry," while Dieteman and Kantor are "spitting Diet Coke out of their noses," and LewRockwell.com in general is a site for "angry libertarians" who kick cats.

I advise any neutral or open-minded reader to look at David Dieteman's article and compare it to Goldberg's. Which one is more accurately described as "angry" and "furious"? If throwing insults and ridiculing someone who disagrees with you is characteristic of anger and fury, I'd say the choice is clear.

Is there any good faith reason why one adult would deride another in the way that Goldberg does? I can't think of one. And my own experience suggests another possibility, namely that Goldberg really does want to read LewRockwell.com and its contributors out of the American Right.

Two weeks ago Goldberg spoke at CPAC, the annual confab of the mainstream conservative movement and its grassroots supporters. Because grassroots activists are present there does tend to be some ideological diversity to the gathering. There are old guard Republicans and neoconservatives, libertarians and Christian conservatives. "Paleos" of any kind might be few and far between, but that's simply because there are very few of them anywhere. Even without paleos there was plenty of potential for factional squabbling. But very little materialized. The various wings of the conservative movement put aside their differences during the three days of the conference, with the biggest ripples of dissent coming on Friday after Bush bombed Iraq, an action which prompted quiet discontent among the grassroots.

There was one major exception to the general spirit of comity and cooperation at CPAC though, and you've probably guessed who that was. Jonah Goldberg spoke at the Young America's Foundation luncheon. His audience at this event was younger, less experienced, more impressionable, and, ultimately, less conservative than that of the conference as a whole. All of which Goldberg used to his advantage. The topic of his speech? Essentially, "how the Old Right is the same as the modern far Left."

He began by attacking Count Joseph de Maistre, the leading continental opponent of the French Revolution. Goldberg denounced de Maistre for valuing particular peoples over universal humanity, for saying that specific terms such as "Russian" or "Englishman" are more meaningful than the elusive generic "man." Goldberg then proceeded to say, in a nutshell, that de Maistre and the aristocratic right believed most of the same things that the Left believes today, although Goldberg did not bother to cite any works of de Maistre or anyone else to support this assertion. Next Goldberg told us that "we" were "the real children of the Enlightenment."

I'd be surprised if more than four students out of the 200 or so in the room knew who de Maistre was. But those of us who did got the message. Pre-Enlightenment values are not welcome in Jonah Goldberg's conservative movement. Or to put it more accurately – pre-Enlightenment values are not welcome in the conservative movement at all if Jonah Goldberg gets his way.

Even for those students with no idea who Count de Maistre was and only a vague notion of what the Enlightenment might be, the message was clear: anyone who speaks favorably of de Maistre or unfavorably of the Enlightenment is not legitimately right-wing, but is in fact just like a Leftist.

In his remarks Goldberg left no room for doubt or dissent. He painted those who disagreed with him as villains, just as he used insults to paint his critics on LewRockwell.com as fools. In both cases the same effect was achieved: to place certain views, and those who hold them, beyond the pale. In other words, to establish an orthodoxy and enforce it. This makes Goldberg different from his critics. While they try to persuade him with reason, he has used vilification and ridicule to excommunicate those who disagree with him.

March 6, 2001

Daniel McCarthy is a graduate student in classics at Washington University in St. Louis.