General

Re: Rothbard on race

Scrooge McDuck — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 03:41:09 GMT

Sorry, this post was meant for a different thread.

Re: Rothbard: Racist and all around good guy?

Eric080 — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 17:23:27 GMT

I don't think phrasing it as an ideological shift is accurate. Conza is right on that score. It was just a strategy to "co-opt" movements that Rothbard had potential.

Re: Rothbard: Racist and all around good guy?

James — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 16:35:59 GMT

Slavery and racism haven not always been negative? Come on. Maybe you could make that argument for racism (although I wouldn't buy it), but slavery????

I think it's sort of true, in a way. The first step away from outright butchery and cannabalism by the state would have been chattel slavery.

Re: Rothbard on race

Stephen — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 05:12:59 GMT

I'm gonna have to read more on this.

Re: Rothbard on race

Conza88 — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 05:03:04 GMT

So much bs in this thread.

Conventional Critiques

"He wasn't consistent. Raimondo produces letters and articles from his earliest writings showing that he had mapped out most of his life's work. That goes for his attachment to Austro-free-market theory, his anarcho-capitalism, his devotion to natural rights, his love of the Old Right political paradigm, his optimistic outlook for liberty, his hatred of war, his essential Americanism, and even his reactionary cultural outlook. The ideas were all developed throughout the course of his life, but the seeds seemed to be there from the beginning. The attacks were too. Ralph Lord Roy's 1953 book Apostles of Discord blasted some early Rothbard articles as dangerously supporting "unregulated laissez-faire capitalism." Exactly. He learned, he developed, he elaborated, but he never made a fundamental shift."

He left libertarianism to become a leftist in the 1960s. Raimondo's book puts all this in perspective, at long last. The upshot: Murray never became a leftist in the way we understand that term. Again, his views never changed. His "New Left Period" had nothing to do with hippies; it was an attempt to seek soldiers for the libertarian cause within the ranks of the Left because it was here you found the anti-statism of the day: the complaints about federal police, the anti-draft protests, the anti-war sentiment, war revisionism, the praise of civil disobedience, and all the rest. Murray worked to find the best parts of the New Left and steer its leadership to a pure position. It didn't work, though it didn't entirely fail either. In any case, it was the best hope he had at the time.

He departed libertarianism during his paleo period. Again, Murray never left libertarianism. He did leave the Libertarian Party and its surrounding movement (including the DC crowd trying to ingratiate itself with the state) in 1989. I was there when Murray was hooted down during a convention when he rose to speak on behalf of his candidate for party chairman. Yes, it's true: outrageously, they booed him because his candidate was too bourgeois and too middle class, despite being politically radical. Recall that 1989 was the year the Cold War ended, and a new opening appeared to achieve Rothbard's dream of bringing about a middle-class revolution against the state. He saw that the Libertarian Party was not the vehicle for doing this. Might his judgment have changed later?

He was a great theorist but a terrible strategist. Also absurd. Raimondo demonstrates the acuity of his strategic thinking even in some of his most controversial moves to reach out to the Left and reach out to the Right. In its time, each move made sense and fit with the overall strategic plan. In fact, one of Rothbard's seminal contributions was developing libertarian strategy. Moreover, Raimondo also shows that his detractors, who were always anxious to sell out to the powers-that-be, invariably flamed out. Raimondo only takes issue with one strategic judgment Rothbard made over a particularly bitter LP nomination fight, but even here he provides the reader with enough information so that you can see it from Rothbard's point of view.

Rothbard vs Rothbard: A false Dilemma by Joseph R. Stromberg

Enemy of the State by Lew Rockwell

Re: Rothbard: Racist and all around good guy?

Stephen — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 21:19:17 GMT

Rothbard might have shifted from left to right because he had a major shift in worldview. Or, maybe it was just strategy. I really don't know. But I wouldn't call it inconsistency. It's not as though he held contradictory beliefs at the same time.

Re: Rothbard: Racist and all around good guy?

Stephen — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 21:17:07 GMT

You guys really need to stop thinking emotionally here

Aren't emotions a large part of what sets us apart from animals? If you don't think emotions are relevant, then why don't you advocate cold hard utilitarianism?

Actually, animals also have emotions. What separates humans from animals is reason. Unlike animals, our consciousness is not connected to our immediate perception. We can reflect, and we can act purposefully.

Re: Rothbard: Racist and all around good guy?

Em_ptySkin — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:55:51 GMT

Maybe, one is short and the other long distance? and that is the difference in race?

Re: Rothbard: Racist and all around good guy?

Marko — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 11:34:56 GMT

I don't get it. Are the Tusis and the Hutus of different races?

Apparently one are "taller, slimmer, more graceful and noble-looking" than the other. Albeit I think that isn't actually true, a racial difference is claimed, if not a difference in race.

Re: Rothbard: Racist and all around good guy?

Physiocrat — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 07:47:24 GMT

Here's my take from a few years back on what racism actually is. (It was from when Ron Paul was been accused of it.)

http://the-eclectic-rambler.blogspot.com/2008/01/what-actually-is-racism.html

Re: Rothbard: Racist and all around good guy?

Praetyre — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 03:39:46 GMT

It would be highly amusing to watch the multiculti crowd (as Professor Gottfried remarked vis-a-vis Cardinal Francis Arinze papability) feverishly debate (or rather, purge) each other over where different subgroups of the Victim Group "African" sit in the holy hierarchy. It seems that being non-PC (like Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Paul Gottfried, Justin Raimondo and, of course, the venerable Murray Rothbard) can "cancel out" victim status in accordance with the political usefulness one possesses to the managerial elite. Maybe we just need to poll the Rwandans on their stances on gay marriage and socialized medicine. That'll sort out the Social Justice Warriors from the Uncle Toms.

Joking aside, while I personally don't give a damn what genetic subgroup or race you belong to provided you don't define your whole identity based on it, I do find it very odd (indeed, downright suspicious) how hysterically the medical-psychological establishment denounces anybody who presents evidence suggesting the existence of measurable differences in intelligence between different racial groupings, or, in some areas particularily seized by lunacy, the existence of any identifiable races at all.

It's rather reminscient of the AGW cult, really. Just look at Dr James Watson.

Re: Rothbard: Racist and all around good guy?

DanielMuff — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 03:12:11 GMT

I don't get it. Are the Tusis and the Hutus of different races?

Re: Rothbard: Racist and all around good guy?

Em_ptySkin — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 02:58:52 GMT

Slavery some asian areas it was kind of like an honor. Sometimes you had a better more taken care of life if people could afford you as a servant (slave). It goes with honor. It was like an honorable relationship (some might call it brainwashing, but it was a culture).

Re: Rothbard: Racist and all around good guy?

ZombieRothbard — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 02:27:20 GMT

You guys really need to stop thinking emotionally here

Aren't emotions a large part of what sets us apart from animals? If you don't think emotions are relevant, then why don't you advocate cold hard utilitarianism?

Re: Rothbard: Racist and all around good guy?

ZombieRothbard — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 02:24:28 GMT

He talks about a lot of the differences of culture and racial implications for it. It is not at al racist. Slavery and racism has not always been negative. I do tend to think that people have different skills that are inherent to them. They are traits that come from both heredity and environment

Slavery and racism haven not always been negative? Come on. Maybe you could make that argument for racism (although I wouldn't buy it), but slavery????