Tyler Cowen has taken time out from making excuses for the “global warming” frauds (he says the fraud might be excusable if it turns out that global warming is worse than we think) and defending central bank bailouts of corporate welfare-seeking plutocrats to make some stupid comments about “Ron Paul/LewRockwell libertarianism,” as Tom Woods discusses today. Perhaps the most preposterous comment by Cowen is his ridiculous assertion that we Ron Paul/Lew Rockwell libertarians are somehow associated with the Republican Party of Dick Cheney, Dub-Yuh, Paul Wolfowitz, etc. You know, the same people who smeared us as “Unpatriotic Conservatives” at the outset of the Iraq War in their flagship magazine, National Neocon Review, which has nothing but utter contempt for all of us.
In reality it is the Cato Institute, where Cowen made his remarks, that has always been linked to the Republican Party. The founding funder of Cato is Charles Koch, who also happens to be the largest single contributor to the Republican Party. Gee, I wonder if this has anything to do with the reasons why people associated with Cato, like Cowen, are constantly smearing those of us who call for such things as ending the Fed, and spend their time defending the Fed and the regime that it finances instead?
Cowen also claims that Ron Paul/Lew Rockwell libertarians are socially intolerant. Nonsense. It is the libertine, Koch-funded “libertarians” like those at Cato and Reason magazine who are the intolerant ones. As Steven Greenhut explains, it is the Ron Paul/Lew Rockwell libertarians who believe in a live-and-let live philosophy; it is the Cato/Reason “libertarians” who are intolerant of this traditional libertarian position.
The Cato/Reason crowd launch their petty insults at us, like Cowen’s puerile remarks, precisely because they are intolerant of this traditional libertarian viewpoint. To them, one must not merely be tolerant of (or simply don’t care about) all possible “alternative” lifestyles; one must be a champion of all such lifestyles. That’s why Reason included among its “heroes of freedom” such people as Larry Flynt, Dennis Rodman, Madonna, and a number of other very bizzare and freakish characters. To them, it is not sufficient for a libertarian to say: “So, you want to have sex with chickens. Well, good luck with that.” No, one must champion the cause and become and advocate of (or community organizer for) poultry fornication to be a genuine, “socially tolerant,” Cowen/Palmer /Cato/Reason libertarian.
10:24 am on December 3, 2009
