Podhoretzes vs. Rothbardby Tom White I am less than 2 months from my 79th birthday (yikes!), and I am day by day still finding out stuff I ought to have known, say, 63 years ago. Can't be helped, though; that appears to be the way the cookie crumbles. (How do you like that for a fresh cliché?) I say that because I have just read a 1965 article by Murray N. Rothbard posted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. From this piece by Rothbard, an incredibly learned and cheerful scholar, I have learned the need to reassess my place on the political spectrum. The article, "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty," was for me a corrective, a clarification, and a freeing, all at the same time. I wrote on this site just a few days ago in "Concerning World War Four," that I was convinced Norman Podhoretz, and the so-called neo-conservatives generally, are really of the Left, and I implied that all us good Libertarian folk are of the Right. Well, slow up a bit. Rothbard makes it plain that there is much confusion in this left-right business. As they relate to monopolists, cartelists, warmongering munitions manufacturers, etc., libertarians have a natural affinity for the left that, in the name of the "worker," should and often does oppose "combinations in restraint of trade," the conspiracies against the general welfare that old Adam Smith said always grow up where business men meet to find ways to work with government and suppress competition. On the other hand, libertarians have no business making common cause with those conservatives, people of the right, who would maintain or even reconstitute oppressive, illiberal social structures, and who think it just dandy that income and other taxes are gathered in so ineluctably by government that it may spread largesse among corporate fat cats, agricultural magnates, and the like. Rothbard would have it, as of 1965 anyway, that conservatives, properly so-called, are doomed, because "conservatism is a dying remnant of the ancien regime of the preindustrial era and, as such, it has no future." Conservatives who would conserve anything but the forward thrust of liberty, innovation, and free trade as the principal means to peace are no friends of libertarians. Conservatives who wish to conserve the governmental arrangements of the Cold War (World War Three) and use them, enlarged and "improved," to implement World War Four, as Norman Podhoretz says he wishes to do, are people it's good to get far, far away from. Looking at Rothbard's interesting assessment of the "political spectrum" in 1965, I make adjustments as follows: Let me replace Left vs. Right with Bad vs. Good. Then under "Bad" I'd have, inter alia, this short list: collectivism, big central government, imperialism, perpetual war, international buttinskyism and bullying, and pseudo-free trade, that is, trade managed in all particulars by government. And under "Good" I'd have, inter alia, this short list: individualism, no (or drastically limited) government, anti-imperialism, peace, minding one's own business (which Plato said, I seem to recall, is simple justice), and free trade with no "management" by government. This is only the rough beginning of a sort-out, but if you are hanging on to such ideas as I advance here, then the "Podhoretz Program" of fostering invigorating war to build our national character and improve our usefulness to our betters, that is, to those who are determining just what wars we should wage, will not look attractive to you. Another Podhoretz, John, son of Norman – Poddy fils, or Poddy Jr. – weighed in with a resounding second of his father's program but with even sharper notes of resentment about our tacky national character which stands so in need of firming up. I give you some quotes from his March 12NY Post op ed with some asides of mine in brackets: "The problem Bush faces is that the sustained and relentless work necessary to conduct this kind of war is not characteristic of the American way." [But I expect Poddy Jr. is up to it, keyboard at the ready, and will show us how it's done.] "We have tended throughout our history to become involved in international confrontations almost against our will and to seek all the while to pull back within ourselves as soon as possible." [Why the Hell not? What in the name of God were we doing in Vietnam or Somalia, to name just two of these "international confrontations," in the first place?] "And none of these presidents was consistent. John Kennedy began our proxy war in Vietnam to counter the Soviets, but also negotiated the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. Carter talked about how we needed to get over our "inordinate fear of Communism," but then confronted the Soviets over Cuba and Afghanistan. Reagan was the cold warrior par excellence, but he ended the grain embargo against the Soviet Union for crass political reasons." [Now, I wonder if Poddy Jr. knows anything of crass political reasons, or would such low-life considerations be altogether beyond him. He wouldn't have a crass political agenda behind anything he says, would he?] "The idea that you can force a change in regimes in crisis-riddled nations and then just pull up stakes and go home is a particularly American fantasy." [Well, I'm glad that Poddy Jr. is not afflicted with that awful fantasy. He would no doubt have us never pull up stakes, never come home. Sounds a bit stern, but then we need a stern taskmaster, don't we? Someone who won't let himself encourage any unmanly yearnings for home.] "The war on terror is more than a confrontation to the death against a particularly complicated peril. It is a confrontation against a deeply ingrained American attitude toward our role in the world – a role defined for centuries by the oceans separating us from Europe and Asia." [Ah? And just what is that attitude that is so stubbornly un-Poddylike? Why it's our old friend, "Live and Let Live, which does so well in our villages that we have stupidly assumed it might work in foreign affairs. But Poddy says that it is OUT, that we must forget our ridiculous old-timey notion that other nations should be permitted to conduct their affairs as they wish, without our nagging them to death.] "We can never occupy that role again. We do not have and will not have the luxury, not with rogue nations capable of developing weaponry that can do damage on a scale that would dwarf Sept. 11." [It does rather make you wonder why so many people are angry with us that they are apparently being very roguish and developing weapons of mass destruction and all, and plowing airplanes into our buildings, and yelling at us in their streets, and generally behaving badly, especially when you think how, on the other hand, so many millions have struggled so hard over the centuries to get here (including Poddy Jr.'s forbears and mine). What have we done to turn a large segment of the world against us? Poddy doesn't bring that up, but I think he should, don’t you?] And I think it might calm Poddy Jr.'s nerves a little as he thinks of nuclear and biological weapons in the hands not only of such nations as ourselves and Israel and Pakistan and India and China, but also very soon all those "rogue" nations he talks about, if he were to realize that should this whole thing get down to a sort of foot-soldier slog across the landscape, we Americans are in pretty good shape to survive the worst of those rogue fellows: we have 83 million armed men, or thereabouts, in the world's largest private militia, all willing to set aside that tacky and lazy character that Poddy Jr. so dislikes and rise to defend our homes and families, which was the idea we had in the first place, the devil take Europe, the Middle East, and all the rest, just as Thomas Jefferson, among others of our Founders, said. To quote him so as to clear the air of cant: "There is not a crowned head in all Europe fit to be a vestryman in an American parish." Well, there aren't many kings anymore; so substitute prime ministers and pundits. March 15, 2002 Tom White [send him mail] writes from Odessa, Texas. Copyright © 2002 LewRockwell.com |