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Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com is a good example of this. He is a free-speech absolutist with a mirthful disdain of political correctness, and a consistent foe of the Welfare-Warfare State. This generally aligns him (and most other Rothbardians) with paleoconservatives: People of the Right who don't have much use for the GOP mainstream (cf., Bill Kauffman).
However, in his 2009 annual awards, Raimondo takes aim at the Spengler-type doomsaying tendency of some paleoconservatives:
The old ways are gone, and nothing can bring them back, they keen: we’re doomed! Doomed, I tell you! And no one of this tribe is gloomier than Daniel Larison, the Eeyore of the paleo-right.Exactly. Larison's posture of radical despair amounts to nothing less than an argument for political inertia and irrelevance.
From what we might call the Larisonian perspective, the modern world -- and especially the average Republican voter -- is so hopelessly degenerate that no one who might possibly obtain political power could do anything to repair the breach. This is the politics of auto-marginalization, less of an ideology than a mood disorder.
However doomed we may actually be, persistent negativity is a self-fulfilling prophecy: "Can't never could," as my father always said. And even my neocon friends -- attention Pamela Geller -- can benefit by reading the rest of Justin Raimondo's column.
Justin Raimondo is nuts. I wouldn't use his column to line my parakeet's cage. If I had a parakeet.
ReplyDeleteRaimondo has been a 9/11 "truther" since 911; his antiwar stance is to support any despot who attacks the United States while opposing any U.S. response. He has written that in America's war with Japan, "the wrong side won." Indeed, even Michael Moore is a fan and has linked to his site, antiwar.com.
Paleocons are not just "anti GOP," they are anti reason. If you take laissez-faire government and mate it with far-left anti-Americanism and pacifism, you have what is called "a paleoconservative."
Needless to say, these folks are not raging fans of Israel, either.
Stacy:
ReplyDeleteRight to skewer Sullivan & Johnson, the rest of it is bat-**** crazy.
tell me you'er pulling a sully and have some underling writing for you today. riamondo is not cool, hes retarded
ReplyDeleteA true conservative knows humankind has a God-given nature that the brightest, best-funded, and most ruthless social engineer in the world cannot pound into something else.
ReplyDeleteThe unwieldy term "paleoconservative" (I offer a fabulous reward for anyone who can come up with a better one!) was coined to distinguish small-government, traditional conservatives from the Neocons, whose origins are in Trotskyite Marxist ideology. The Neocons are also called "Big-Government" conservatives who have no problem with gutting the Bill of Rights in the name of national security, an essential arm of their notion of "national greatness."
But here's our little secret: Confident in stubborn, tough human nature, we also know that the enemies of liberty are ultimately on the losing side. Authoritarianism, despite its self-proclaimed noble intentions, cannot keep humankind down for long. There will be a rebellion, sooner or later.
As for paleoconservatives being "pacifist," well, that's just not so. We enthusiastically support legitimate wars. The American Revolution and the War for Southern Independence are two examples.
He really is cool and not at all nuts.
ReplyDeleteWhat's nuts is "conservatives" advocating for ubercostly perpetual nation-building wars, and denying the existence of foreign policy blowback, preferring to swallow the Bushtard "they hate us for our freedoms" line (which is as ridiculous as "too big to fail" and "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.").
Keep on keeping on, "crazy glue o' love that holds the lunatic fringe together!" :::kiss:::
Besides being a certifiable wacko (he wishes Japan had won the war in the Pacific), and being a vicious anti Semite, Justina Raimondo is a psychotic lowlife.
ReplyDelete"the modern world -- and especially the average Republican voter -- is so hopelessly degenerate that no one who might possibly obtain political power could do anything to repair the breach."
ReplyDeleteSince the epochal collapse of Communism, has there been any significant reversal of social decline and left-wing advances? Especially on the domestic front?
Maybe welfare reform and Giuliani's turnaround of New York City should be listed. What else?
The GOP blusters a lot, but at best mainly succeeds in delaying action.
I prefer Larison to Raimondo, but it's notable that both saw the Ron Paul campaign as a cause for hope.
"Raimondo has been a 9/11 'truther' since 911"
ReplyDeleteNot if you define "truther" as most people do.
I've never seen him suggest, for example, that the US government was behind the attack, or that "all the Jews were warned to get out of the building," or any of the more idiotic theories.
What he does suggest -- and what he outlines the evidence for at book length -- is that it's possible that Israeli intelligence may have known something about what was coming, and not told what they knew to their US counterparts.
Personally, I don't consider that an unreasonable piece of speculation. After all, the Mossad's responsibility is to act in the interests of Israel, not the interests of the US -- and to the extent that 9/11 strengthened the "special relationship" between the two countries, forgetting to share intelligence which, acted upon, might have prevented the attacks could be plausibly construed as in Israel's interests.
Of course, Raimondo never has liked Israel very much anyway (something I've taken him to task over myself), so it's easy to conclude that his argument is one he'd find congenial whether it could be plausibly argued for or not ... but the facts are the facts regardless of how he feels about Israel. And, while the case isn't conclusive, the known facts do tend to support his theory.
oh man.
ReplyDeleteUp until now I thought of Conservatism as that colorful wacky family
at the end of the cul-de-sac.
But you guys really are a mess. The post and its responses really sheds
light on the absolute madness of the crazy family known as the Right.
More proof that Conservatism is a sham religion invented by talk radio. Is it possible for an entire ideology to togo into group therapy?
@Y4E,
ReplyDeleteMore proof that Conservatism is a sham religion invented by talk radio.
You are such a hoot. Everybody knows that Conservatism was really a failed experiment at Bell Labs shortly before the transistor, which gave birth to Progress.
Get your facts crooked, hot rod.
Sigh! Stacy, Pamela is not a "NeoCon." Just because someone is Pro-Defense and Anti-Islamo-Fascist does not make one a "NeoCon."
ReplyDeletePamela is a Pro-Defense Libertarian in a long line of Pro-Defense Libertarians, like Goldwater, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Dr. John Hospers, Clifford Thies, Dr. Jack Wheeler, Dana Rohrabacher, and myself.
Eric Dondero, Publisher
Libertarian Republican
and Libertarian Defense Caucus
And here I thought that conservatism was the paradigm of essences toward which the phenomenology of society is in continuing approximation.
ReplyDeleteDo I hear a gesundheit? Anyone?
"From what we might call the Larisonian perspective, the modern world -- and especially the average Republican voter -- is so hopelessly degenerate that no one who might possibly obtain political power could do anything to repair the breach."
ReplyDeleteNot everything has to be aimed at the pursuit of political power. Sometimes it is worthwhile saying things simply because you believe they are true.
Stacy, you're cool. Smitty's cool. Raimondo? I never saw it.
ReplyDeletePerhaps this "enemy of my enemy" calculation needs some fine-tuning? Thanks to all the commenters.
ReplyDelete"Everybody knows that Conservatism was really a failed experiment at Bell Labs shortly before the transistor, which gave birth to Progress."
ReplyDeleteFailed experiment? Yes.
Bell Labs? Not likely.Too "elitist" a group.
Ah, but there goes that pesky word and concept:progress.
Yes, the kryptonite to the Conservative attitude which seeks to conserve...what exactly?
Traditions! Traditions like obstructing "Socialist" concepts. Like,let's see--Civil Rights, Womens Rights, Gay Rights to name a few. And even a failed attempt to curtail the popularity of Rock&Roll( lest this evil musical form make our wholesome daughters crazy or some such nuttiness. Hey Smitty, you like Rock& Roll, don't you?
Suppose your Conservative ancestors burned a record or two?)
Progress!
The enemy of traditional values like denying others of what they themselves are entitled to, a staple of the Conservative idea of what makes America great. or so talk radio con artists would have you think....
And it takes, oh, several generations of Conservatives before they accept "progressive" ideas like Civil Rights or Womens Rights, turning their backs on their ancestral heritage of blind resistance to- wait for it--progress!
In fact, this preservation of " traditions" , both imaginary and real, even go so far as to the preservation of political tactics, like
the John Birch tactic of labeling any from of "progress" as a Communist conspiracy.Sound familiar? Of course it does.
Conservatives are still running with it the way a Vaudeville comedian runs with the same joke til, on his deathbed, he realizes that perhaps
he should have thought of a new joke or two.
40 years later, after the John Birch Society dreamed up the nefarious "Socialist" conspiracy that the Civil Rights movement was a Communist
plot to establish a Negro Soviet Union in the South, Conservatives are still dreaming up nefarious "Socialist" conspiracies.
I am positive many Conservatives today have no idea that this is so....
And to bring the whole comedy full circle, it is this very same John Birch Society that is sponsoring the upcoming CPAC.
You can't make this stuff up!
Oh progress!
What scary utopias do you hold in your back pockets!
But the beauty of it all is that no matter what you refuse free medication for your voluntary short-sightedness. And this in essence is akin
to you doing most of the hard work for us. Progress keeps moving despite all your failed attempts and your funny conspiracy theories and your rather outdated McCarthyism. We sleep easy knowing that in spite of yourselves you will not accept the inevitable.
I'm sure the idea that you have to change to stay the same means nothing to you guys.
And for that we thank you and wish you all a Happy Holidays!
Libertarianism and paleoconservatism are marginalized as they lack sufficient psychological resonance and therefore traction with the masses. More freedom? 'I already am free, to do almost whatever I want, when I want.' Any serious endeavour to shift the zeitgeist away from decadence? 'That would realistically come at the cost of my freedom, don't lie to me, we all know that is true. The Legion of Decency and the Daughters of the American Revolution once acted as pressure groups to limit the contend of mass media that tended the populace towards moral turpitude.'
ReplyDeleteSee what I mean? Keeping ourselves straightjacketed within the 'respectable' spectrum of thought and discourse will ensure that the West will not be saved. There are no sufficient tools for the task to be found within it. Our task is revolutionary, both in thought, and I fear, one day in action.
I really enjoy this blog...I did, until tonight..Raimondo is a real hater. The anti-Israel stuff has always been vicious and unbalanced, and puts him over the line where I would end up saying he's just another anti-Semite, clothing it in anti-Zionism.
ReplyDeleteI realize that being anti-Israel does not make one wrong on everything in life, but when someone is so completely off his rocker in one area, it certainly makes a lot of other things pretty suspect. And Ravening Loon Raimondo is just completely untrustworthy, even if occasionally he says something intelligent. The old stopped clock phenomenon...
Stacy, it doesn't need any "fine-tuning." The piece of sh*t "Raimondo is cool" instrument that you've been blowing on, needs to be thrown out with yesterday's trash.
ReplyDeleteHa! R.S. WTF?
ReplyDeleteThis loser's post you linked to has this dork presenting an award to himself.
He's like a kid playing at running a talk show in his closet.
This should have been at Effingcons so I could give you what for.
And to that Young4eyes douche...
While the John Brich brigade is laughably socially retarded, your pretending that conservatives "dream up" socialist conspiracies speaks volumes of the Daily Show cartoon BS that has informed your mind.
When the enitre street is riddled with fuckin' Soviet Flags, you idiots say it's reall about science.
When the President hires a 9/11 Truther ORGANIZER and former commie, you say Glenn beck cries on TV
When the President's media attack dog cited Chairman Mao as a hero, you act like she didn't say it.
When MSNB'c Chris Matthews declares that Saul Alinsky is one of our heroes, you nod your empty skull.
When the White House Christmas tree is adorned with Chairman Fuckin' Mao, you say it's the sprit of Christmas.
Conservatives point it out, you dream it never happened.
Maurice,
ReplyDelete"I realize that being anti-Israel does not make one wrong on everything in life,"
That is intellectually honest and courageous of you, it is a feat many who call themselves "men" cannot muster. In the inverse is a form of the argumentum ad Hitlerum, which can properly only be the province of sheep and cowards. For sheep and cowards can be of no use to us now at what is very likely the end of European Man's history.
"Raimondo is a real hater."
Raimondo is also vehemently opposed to White Nationalism, and presumably all true nationalisms, so he is consistent. I too resent that he opposes the assertion of my peoplehood. Of course he may be doing as Ayn Rand said, but certainly not as Rand did. Ayn Rand surrounded herself with her co-ethnics as the core of her intellectual movement, and in the next breath exhorted us to throw all support behind Israel as Arabs were not but "savages." That, and recommended one should abandon family loyalty, and by extension ethnic/racial loyalty, as these amounted to atavistic barbarisms. In the end she was nothing more than another incarnation of the Culture of Critique. We who are loyal to our people can never have any truck with that, and the devil take the hindmost.
"The anti-Israel stuff has always been vicious and unbalanced, and puts him over the line where I would end up saying he's just another anti-Semite, clothing it in anti-Zionism."
Here is the bottom line: If Jews wish to have the continued support of the European peoples then they must also the right of the European peoples to their peoplehood. To claim that organized Jewry has not been, and is not to this day, nearly singularly monolithic in its opposition to European peoplehood is to persist in delusion. (Anyone who would care to draw their sword in opposition to that stated truth I could swiftly knock it from their hand.) That is not acceptable.
Amplification:
ReplyDeleteThere is no one now who can honestly pretend to be a true friend to the Jewish people if he will not tell them the truth. No, I say emphatically no, can the path to persuading them be the one of flattery that amounts to lies. That will not be a sufficient corrective. And I cannot in all honesty say that I am their friend. For me, the wounds they have inflicted have gone too close to the bone, and too near the heart, for that ever to be the case again. I know why many of them do what they do, it is not only fear, but hatred and supremacism. That said, perhaps they can be of use as allies, but that not forthcoming, we will move forward without them. Our peoplehood, is not so worthless as to be only viable if filtered through the prism of philo-Semitism and Jewish ethnic interest, damn it!
Thank you for posting my comments, McCain. You're a stand up guy.
ReplyDelete