From The Tom Woods Letter:
There’s a certain executive vice president of a certain Beltway libertarian think tank who has a habit of smearing rival libertarians.
He did a preposterous hatchet job on the heroic Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation, for no reason whatever apart from institutional rivalry. He denounced the Mises Caucus of the Libertarian Party from a position of complete ignorance, thereby alienating a huge number of smart libertarian young people for — well, again, no real reason at all.
And forget about his treatment of the Mises Institute, where he’s just another sad example of Mises Derangement Syndrome.
When that thrill a minute Bill Weld got the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential nomination in 2016, this person excitedly tweeted out an image of Weld’s blurb of his book — from 1997. This is a grown man, I remind you.
His latest target is someone you’ve probably never heard of: Eric Brakey.
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Eric was Maine state director for the Ron Paul 2012 campaign (our smearer hates Ron Paul, so this is a red flag for him), and currently a state senator in Maine. He’s running for U.S. Senate this year as a Republican.
Despite that, Brakey endorsed Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson in the latter’s own U.S. Senate race in New Mexico.
Anyway, on to today: the other day Brakey offered the wild proposition that perhaps the reason the Democratic Party is so gung-ho about immigration is that they expect the new arrivals to change the political landscape in their own favor.
Can you believe anyone would make such an outrageous accusation against the wonderful people who comprise the Democratic Party?
I’ll leave the merits of the case aside, though it’s worth noting that polling data does show that the bulk of recent immigrants favor bigger government at a much higher rate than the rest of the population, and that however conservative they may supposedly be on social issues, their voting patterns tend to be driven by economics.
Now this is obviously a debatable claim that reasonable people ought to be able to hash out, right?
And 10 years ago, it was. Heck, five years ago it was. Even three. Or two. Or one.
But today, the won’t-you-please-take-me-seriously-good-Mr.-New-York-Times-reporter-sir libertarians know what they’re supposed to do.
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Anyone who says anything the New York Times might look askance at when it comes to contentious issues like immigration, even when it’s a fairly obvious observation like the above (plenty of Democrats openly admit this is their intention, after all), is not to be engaged in rational discussion, but instead smeared as a….
…if you said RACIST, go to the back of the class.
“Racist” is so 2015!
It’s “white nationalist” now, silly!
That’s the term the left is urging us to use, so as usual a Beltway libertarian can’t get in lockstep fast enough.
Why, Brakey is a “white nationalist” — for making this simple observation!
Here’s the thread:
The correct answer was: whether or not Brakey’s claim is correct, it’s obviously absurd to smear him as a “white nationalist.” Absurd like mentally ill absurd.
But nope.
The executive vice president of the best-known libertarian think tank in America sided with the smear artist.
Whatever terminology the left wants him to use, he’ll use — and he’ll use it against other libertarians. Why, good Mr. New York Times reporter, sir, I’m one of the good ones! I’m not like those people over there who try to argue points that I know you’d rather we not discuss, sir!
I’ll bet that’s not the guy you want representing libertarianism.
But I’ll bet it’s the guy the New York Times prefers.
