The Libertarians Awaken

I have never read anything by Lew Rockwell and I can't say after skimming through his site that I agree with everything he says. Howerver, since being linked over there by Maha, I actually enjoyed reading this article.

The following paragraph particularly crystalized something I had in the back of my head for some time and that is--How come all these die hard no tax, no government and leave me alone to shove the Bible up my kid's ass are all of a sudden wanting government to do everything but wipe your ass?

"The vigor and determination of the Bush administration has brought about a profound cultural change, so that the very people who once proclaimed hated of government now advocate its use against dissidents of all sorts, especially against those who would dare call for curbs in the totalitarian bureaucracy of the military, or suggest that Bush is something less than infallible in his foreign-policy decisions. The lesson here is that it is always a mistake to advocate government action, for there is no way you can fully anticipate how government will be used. Nor can you ever count on a slice of the population to be moral in its advocacy of the uses of the police power."

While I agree with Maha on the last sentence--that you can count on government as long as you have the controls in place to prevent wackos (John Ashcroft) from running amok.

Another paragraph that stood out is the following and confirms my thinking on exactly what is happening. This concept was also very compentently handled by David Neiwert over at Ornicus in a very good 7 part series.

"In short, what we have alive in the US is an updated and Americanized fascism. Why fascist? Because it is not leftist in the sense of egalitarian or redistributionist. It has no real beef with business. It doesn't sympathize with the downtrodden, labor, or the poor. It is for all the core institutions of bourgeois life in America: family, faith, and flag. But it sees the state as the central organizing principle of society, views public institutions as the most essential means by which all these institutions are protected and advanced, and adores the head of state as a godlike figure who knows better than anyone else what the country and world's needs, and has a special connection to the Creator that permits him to discern the best means to bring it about. "


Finally, I want to point at a final paragraph that is refreshing to see come from these quarters and that is a recognition that we liberals are not a "clear and present danger" to the U.S. of A. but the emerging New American Fascism that needs trimming.

"What is the most pressing and urgent threat to freedom that we face in our time? It is not from the left. If anything, the left has been solid on civil liberties and has been crucial in drawing attention to the lies and abuses of the Bush administration. No, today, the clear and present danger to freedom comes from the right side of the ideological spectrum, those people who are pleased to preserve most of free enterprise but favor top-down management of society, culture, family, and school, and seek to use a messianic and belligerent nationalism to impose their vision of politics on the world."

There is also a link in the article to another on lewrockwell.com that is also a good read and a refreshing wind from the right. This is an article by Paul Craig Roberts asking what happened to the conservatives.