Dear M:
Re this.
I’m a Trump supporter, vis a vis any of the likely democratic nominees (maybe with the exception of Tulsi? Probably not, although that’s close, for me; she’s the best of a poor lot. Great on foreign policy, horrid on econ).
So, I do disagree with my friend Andrew on this one issue.
But, I don’t apply your very stringent criterion: if you think a libertarian is wrong on one issue, you damn him to hell; you say he’s not a libertarian at all.
I revere Murray Rothbard and Ron Paul. Yet, I disagree with both on abortion. I’m an evictionist, the former is a pro choicer, the latter a pro lifer. If I adopted your policy, I’d damn both to hell, remove them from my list of libertarians.
I continue to think that Napolitano, along with Rothbard and Paul, are all magnificent libertarians, despite that fact that I don’t agree with them 100% on all important issues.
Best regards,
Walter
PS. I’m a big fan of Laurence Vance’s
From: M
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2019 12:23 PM
Subject: RE: The Judge
Hey professor – given all of the judge nappy’s recent opinions, maybe you should run another “the judge is the greatest asshole libertarian of all time” version umpteen hundred.
M
Dear Professor Block –
For context, I don’t particularly subscribe to any ideology but I do find that the most convenient political labels for my point of view are libertarian bordering on anarchist. In short, I root for the secessionists.
As an almost twenty year reader of lewrockwell.org and, on occasion, mises.org I am familiar with your work and generally sense you’re a smart academic, which is far from redundant.
Given my opinion on your intelligence, I find it hard to believe you entirely missed the point on your ongoing series: “The judge is a really swell guy”. The original letter was really about a guy voicing his disgust with the judge. His tangent on being a “real libertarian” was just his lame way of presenting the fact. But you’re smart. You know that.
You can have “Judge Andrew Napolitano is an Excellent Libertarian” Part M and it won’t change that most of us “libertarians” can’t stand him. This is the second time I’ve reached about this guy after to watching him post blog after blog of “Russiagate” bulls**it. First time was to Lew. I’m a busy guy and it ain’t my business what you guys put on your sites. In fact it’s only the second time in the twenty years of reading LRC I’ve ever bothered at all. (The first time was about the joyless Laurence Vance – life of the party I’m sure)
Whether the judge is or isn’t a libertarian or “anarcho-capitalist” or whatever big-brain terms you conjure is beside the point. The point is: he’s a d**khead. A former agent of the state who has, along with bat-sh*t crazy left wingers, corporate media, Glenn Beck, Bill Kristol, et al., signed up for the anti-Trump brigade.
It ain’t hyperbole: there’s a war on. Like it or not (and I don’t f**ing like it) you gotta pick sides. Does my side suck? On a lot of things: yes. But it beats the hell out of the alternative. Especially as the rats like Scarborough, Bill Kristol and George Will are shook out. The judge has chosen. He’ll find no quarter or rest with me, libertarian or not. There are more important things than ideology.
Now you know my opinion.
Cheers,
M
12:30 pm on November 13, 2019
