{"id":2409,"date":"2005-10-03T14:35:08","date_gmt":"2005-10-03T21:35:08","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2005-10-03T14:35:08","modified_gmt":"2005-10-03T21:35:08","slug":"imaginary-powerful-libertarians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2005\/10\/03\/imaginary-powerful-libertarians\/","title":{"rendered":"Imaginary powerful libertarians"},"content":{"rendered":"

What sort of bizarre "Guest Editorial" <\/a>is this on Informed Comment today? Billed by Cole as "Guest Editorial: Smith on Libertarians and Iraq" <\/strong>(apparently this Jan Smith<\/a>), this odd piece reads like an email from the middle of a series, as it makes statements and associations which aren’t explained at all, most of which would make any libertarian’s mind reel. Like this:<\/p>\n

For the libertarians themselves, or more precisely, the private elites
\nthey represent, has had far more influence than Israel on the
\nadministration\u2019s foreign policy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We represent private elites? Who knew? I always thought it obvious that we were the bag ladies of American politics. Or this:<\/p>\n

Justin Raimundo can tell you what it takes to satisfy the private elites.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No sh%^&@#*t?! Justin, you old dog, you’ve been holding out on us!<\/p>\n

And just to confirm that this guy has absolutely no idea what a libertarian is or what they stand for, he adds:<\/p>\n

But what about the libertarians? They are angry that the government is spending \u201ctheir money\u201d in Iraq. And they are powerful…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

POWERFUL? *Boggle*<\/em><\/p>\n

Smith:<\/p>\n

Want many Iraqs, one after another until this century\u2019s empire crumbles into dust? Become a libertarian. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What is this guy talking about? I’m one of those powerful libertarians, typing my opinion<\/a> powerfully onto the internets. In February of 2003, I, along with other libertarians, powerfully marched in a quarter-million strong protest against invading Iraq. Oddly, the Bush administration ignored our powerful demand. <\/p>\n

I’m OK with the Empire crumbling into dust, but what sort of insane logic would lead a person to blame libertarians for "many Iraqs?" Plausibly, Smith could be talking about the war-supporting “neolibertarian” Liberventionists<\/a>, but the only libertarian he names is the editorial director <\/a>of AntiWar.com<\/a>, for pete’s sake. Hello, Jan? AntiWar.com? Get it? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What sort of bizarre "Guest Editorial" is this on Informed Comment today? Billed by Cole as "Guest Editorial: Smith on Libertarians and Iraq" (apparently this Jan Smith), this odd piece reads like an email from the middle of a series, as it makes statements and associations which aren’t explained at all, most of which would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2409"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}