Posted April 11, 2002

Swedish Word

Having just read [Justin Raimondo's] ... article, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Postrel?" I couldn't help noticing Mr. Carpenter's middle name, Galen. Since I've lived in Sweden for the last 10 years, I know the language pretty good, and the Swedish word "galen" means "crazy." There couldn't be any connection, could there?

Otherwise, keep those ideas flowing. I read all of your "Behind the Headlines" columns. To me, they're a fresh look at the world around us, a look that unfortunately most Americans never take.

~ Jeff S.

Too Short

[Justin Raimondo has] ... written a masterpiece of invective, and I can only compare it to Cicero's Second Philippic Against Antony.

Only criticism: it's too damned short!

~ Joe P.

Dilution

Thanks for Justin's ["Who's Afraid of Virginia Postrel?"].... No apologies needed for its length. I have been frustrated for years with the way libertarians, or those who call themselves libertarians, have been diluting their view to the point where it has become indistinguishable from mainstream jingoism.

One observation. I think the dilution began when libertarians began to see the Republican Party as a possible venue for spreading their message. I never understood this strategy. For one thing, Republicans have never, not even once, actually limited government. In contrast, Democrats do have a record of limiting government in specific areas, such as free speech, sexual expression, and artistic expression. So if one is going to go by the actual record of these two parties, the Democratic party would seem to be closer to libertarian ideals than the Republicans. (Please note: I am not advocating that libertarians now join the Democratic Party. That's not my point.)

What I observed among my libertarian friends who joined the Republicans is that they never actually had a chance to put forward a genuinely libertarian agenda. Such an agenda had to wait for a good time, the proper moment, which never appeared. In the meantime, they worked to strengthen the Republican Party, and little by little became indistinguishable from the rank and file of that party, which has absolutely no concern with limiting government, either in the economic or the social sphere. By now it is clear: The libertarians who made such an alliance have been co-opted, completely.

~ Jim Wilson

'Libertarian-Populist' Activism in Kansas

I really liked Justin's piece on Postrel and the Neo-conservatives.

Here in Kansas, the press has long been documenting our state's three party system. The Neo-conservative lifer politicians who have no international issues in their ministerial briefs can be seen plainly as the Marxist-Leninist Statists they truly are. A few token Democrats are occasionally quoted to give dimension and insight in articles on the central planning and big spending constantly being advanced by Neo-Cons who are the truly the people Rush Limbaugh lampoons as mindless, conviction-less "moderates." The vast majority of citizens who have classical economic ideas and republican notions about the limits of state power are denounced as "libertarian-populists" when the word "conservative" lost some of its Clinton era nastiness.

More and more Kansas commoners are beginning to question our new Orwellian war. Our very literate populace watched the anthrax scare play out just like the government studies on millennial "domestic" terrorism foreshadowed. When it appeared last month that Kansas (after more federal playing up of the home front vulnerability of America's agriculture food supply to foreign terrorists) was going to be the scene of a phony Hoof and Mouth plague ala Britain's escaped Army virus and their subsequent farming tragedy, some of us got seriously proactive against being the latest "Why We Fight Episode." It did not help the big planners that their trial balloon went off in a feed lot that is a hot bed of "libertarian-populist" activism against the big beef processor Neo-Conservatives who want us laboring only on their plantations. We know their game and we will hunt them down by their commodities speculation trail if nothing else.

We can learn a lot from Gore Vidal and the old left. He did come to Kansas and follow up on the unprosecuted Oklahoma City Bomb makers for his September 2001 Vanity Fair article. Ted Galen Carpenter should forget Pakistan and demand Colorado quit harboring the people that helped McVeigh and Nichols make the bomb and load it in the Ryder truck.

Of course, there is no military industrial complex benefit to that.

~ Bret L.

Initiation of Force

Over a decade ago I joined the Libertarian Party in North Carolina. At that time I signed a pledge that (this is from memory) I would "oppose the initiation of force or fraud to achieve social or political goals."

I wonder how those at Cato, Postrell and others, can support American aggression against other individuals and states and still consider themselves "Libertarian."

~ Mark T. Seiler

Always Something

When I first started reading [Antiwar.com] ... as a result of the bombing of Serbia, I wondered how you would be able to continue on after the Serbian war was over. What else would you have to report on?

Strange and frightening that after two years there is always something to report on. I'm amazed! Without Antiwar.com I would not be aware that there is so much conflict in our world.

~ Nick S.

Continue

Thank you so much for your site, the news and the points of views it provides. It is very important that some people should overtly say things in this time of massive information, but of no historical knowledge.

I hope you are going to continue.

~ Patrick H., Switzerland