Thanks to the Creeper crowd, ummm, oops, I mean Freeper crowd at FreeRepublic.com, I have enjoyed one of the greatest laughs in the history of the world while reading all of their threads yesterday, responding to my Dance of the War Mongers piece posted on LewRockwell.com. Typically, I would not waste my time replying to all the ad hominen attacks, but this one, you see, was too good to pass up. And I shall write in a manner appropriate to y’all, even though it is well out of character for me. However, attacks and name-calling seems to be the only language that some of you understand, so I shall proceed.
First, I can’t lay claim to having invented the hilarious name of FreeEmpire.com as I termed it in my article, but rather, the name is spreading through academic circles, etc., like wildfire in a drought.
What many of you attackers suffer from is what felled classical liberalism in the 19th century — war fever — and it’s our most serious enemy today. Everything, everything you posted in your own little war against me is an emotional tirade that rejects reason and, indeed, disciplined thought.
None of you people can provide rational argumentation, but instead, only ten-second sound bites that are facts because YOU say they are facts. Why is not one person sitting down, going to work, and providing an intellectual argument for an interventionist policy as vs. an Old Right isolationist policy? Clearly, some hold one view, while others hold the opposite. Many interventist-types have managed to write me letters of disagreement on this subject without threatening to beat up my mother and poison my dogs.
Let’s look at one guy who accused LewRockwell.com of glorifying Ayn Rand and her writing, when we paleolibertarians typically do battle with the Objectivists. The Freepers called me — and others at LewRockwell.com — Randians, a lover of Rand’s writings, etc., and this always amazes me how people can be so comfortable putting words into the mouths of people they don’t even know!
People claimed, "Whatt’ya expect from the Randians?", but anyone who isn’t an idiot knows that Rand was NOT a non-interventionist, and I saw only one person mention that on the thread. In fact, many of the Randian-types — but not all — are part of the war-mongering problem.
One guy paints Lew Rockwell of the Mises Institute as un-Misesian, meaning Mises promoted empire and "entangling alliances" (since Lew doesn’t). It becomes obvious that not only has this guy never cracked open Mises’s 900-page treatise, but, he certainly does not have even the slightest grasp of Misesian thought on a classical-liberal foreign policy.
One looneytune adds that my ideas of paradise are "Red China, Democratic Republic of Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam"! Then one says I’m "bleating ChiCom party lines." All this because I don’t support US aggression against China! Does this guy know what a Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist is? Does he understand that I am one? Does he care?
No, of course he doesn’t care. You see, when one uses a username on a forum, it becomes easy to make an ass of oneself because no one knows who you are outside of your silly posting name, and you are not subject to supporting your attacks and arguments as we writers who use our real names are. These types of people are cowards.
They spouted on and on with their Buchananite blasphemy on trade deficits while not even knowing that they spout meaningless nonsense because trade deficits are meaningless! A quick economic lesson: when our imports exceed our exports, then foreigners, and foreign governments and companies are accumulating more US assets than the US governments, firms, and individuals are accumulating. That is, our trade deficit is paid for by selling US assets. As Mises points out, foreign capital investment plays a considerable part in the development of modern industries. Trade deficit talk is smoke and mirrors for protectionism and tariffs.
One gal said that "no we can’t trust our government on Waco or Ruby Ridge because they weren’t telling the truth. But we can trust them on this because they ARE telling the truth." Real deep, honey. Now why don’t you tell us how you really know that; because your War Department told you so? Have you ever heard the saying, "I have some swampland in the Phoenix area for sale? Trust me, I do."
That reminds me of the time a few years ago when little children were propagandized by the US government — via their schools — into holding "bake sales" to pay off the national debt. Why don’t all the belligerent Freepers hold some bake sales so you can afford to get your candidate more than .4% of the vote?
Let’s look at some more name-calling directed at me: ignorant, bimbo, socialist (is that all they know?), etc. Those are pretty tough words, but socialist? These are the same numbnuts that permeate Buchanan’s national socialist movement, or that toe the Republicrat party line.
Then everybody pretends to know history, as they plant a few bogus sentences masquerading as "historical fact," and say "know your history!," and if one does not take that hogwash at face value, you are excoriated by this bunch.
Some other guy apparently not only isn’t "unblinking" as per his posting name, but blinks his eye often enough that he misses the point in understanding anything in terms of the China-US debacle. Unblink, sir, unblink, I say!
Somebody else is jealous that I am a well-paid CPA with a graduate degree. As if these hairballs didn’t have enough to attack, and have so much of a void in their lives that they feel they have to look for more, they chose to run an insulting thread on my professional and academic credentials that LewRockwell.com posts at the bottom of my articles. If I already knew these people needed to get a life outside of ranting on FreeRepublic (which I did), I know that 10-times-plus, now. Keep solidifying my point, people.
I’m working two professions and succeeding at both, and this attack convinces me that they do nothing all day but sit around and post, post, post, and post again, all in a relentless stream of mumbled yelling and personal put-downs. Heck, do any of these people know me? I have the impression — by looking at the repetitive posting that goes on all day by some people — that some of these guys don’t work, or they are house-husbands, are on welfare, unemployed, or just plain goofing off at work all day. So we here at LR.com think y’all may be retired military.
One guy even calls on me to kiss his private parts. Yet more had me voting for Clinton/Gore. Apparently, they don’t read my columns, or they don’t have the foggiest notion of what Old Right means. That’s like accusing the Palestinians of praising Israeli bombing tactics. Do the inhabitants of ever this thread ever think before they speak?
The Freepers have proven their stupidity. All they can come up with is emotional rants, personal put-downs, name-calling, and comparisons with Hitler. Hitler I say! Isn’t there just one other metaphor they can come up besides Hitler? Did anything else ever happen in history, guys?
I was called a "Big L" Libertarian, too, which is not only laughable, but, I even stated from the start that I stand apart from the Big Ls for numerous reasons. As various Libertarians and libertarians have challenged me on that over time, I have always had nothing but rational discussion with them concerning that issue. Freepers offered no worthy points of discussion on that issue.
Then I was a "wacko libertarian ideologue" after separating myself from those other libertarian types that I talked about. By the way, at least the interventionist libertarian writers I took to task are taking a stand, writing their articles, and making intelligent, even if non-libertarian (in my eyes) arguments.
Another classic post had me joining the chorus calling Winston Churchill a "warmonger" for having the audacity to call for military preparations against Hitler’s Germany. They always neglect to point out that England declared war on Germany, for one thing, and for another, Churchill WAS a war-mongering imperialist! See the brilliant Ralph Raico’s great stuff on this topic. Knowing that they are pro-Winston Churchill — with all the evidence that there is on this socialist — is all I need to know.
Considering the modus operandi of the Freepers, I decided that it was about time that someone answer them back in their own attacking style, with a little dash of coherence. But one must understand that whatever arguments you come up with, economic, political, historical, or moral, it will make absolutely no difference to these people.
Keep in mind that I don’t attack FreeRepublic.com as a whole, or all Freepers in general, but those who are being attacked here KNOW who they are. I liken these FreeEmpire threads beneath my column to a drunken American Legion hall full of idiots. End of attack.
Karen De Coster is a politically incorrect CPA, and an MA student in economics at Walsh College in Michigan.
