{"id":2727,"date":"2006-04-12T17:06:03","date_gmt":"2006-04-13T00:06:03","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2006-04-12T17:06:03","modified_gmt":"2006-04-13T00:06:03","slug":"james-taranto-wimp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2006\/04\/12\/james-taranto-wimp\/","title":{"rendered":"James Taranto, Wimp"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From James Taranto&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=http:\/\/www.opinionjournal.com\/best\/?id=110008217>The Ugly Side of Libertarianism<\/a>&#8220;:<\/p>\n<ul>[David Bernstein] probably thinks of [libertarians] as cute little nerds who have basically sound (if somewhat extreme) ideas about economics along with various eccentric enthusiasms: private toll roads, pornography, drugs, head-freezing. This is the libertarian world of Reason magazine. (Disclosure: This columnist was an intern for Reason nearly two decades ago.)<\/p>\n<p>But libertarianism is an ideology. Ideology can lead to fanaticism, and fanaticism to hatred. Check out the Independent Institute&#8217;s Web site (please note: not to be confused with the Independence Institute) or, even worse, Antiwar.com (sorry, we&#8217;re not linking), and you&#8217;ll find far libertarianism to be pretty much indistinguishable from the far left and the far right.<\/ul>\n<p>A couple of points: First, to all of you respectable libertarians who try so hard to impress the James Tarantos of the world, this is what they think of you. You&#8217;re harmless little dorks whose &#8220;extremist&#8221; views make no difference whatsoever. Congratulations.<\/p>\n<p>Second, why no link to Antiwar.com? Are Taranto&#8217;s readers too delicate to handle <a href=http:\/\/antiwar.com\/past\/20060412.html>today&#8217;s headlines<\/a>? Let&#8217;s see: &#8220;Political Turmoil Leaves Iraq Adrift&#8221; (a story from the neo-Nazi <i>LA Times<\/i>), &#8220;Iraqi Politician Warns of &#8216;River of Blood'&#8221; (from Deutsche Presse-Agentur \u2013 <i>Germans<\/i>), &#8220;Prosecutor Links White House to CIA Leak&#8221; (by noted Islamofascists David E. Sanger and David Johnston), &#8220;US Pushed WMD Claim Despite Counter-Evidence&#8221; (a link to the Castro-owned <i>Washington Post<\/i>), etc. Yep, far-left and far-right extremism all around. And what about that viewpoint entitled &#8220;<a href=http:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/kwiatkowski\/kwiatkowski149.html>US Army Is Looking for a Few Good Rabbis<\/a>&#8220;? Must be some rabid anti-Semitism there! Oh, wait, it&#8217;s about a rabbi   who quit the US Army after being harassed by fundamentalist Christian chaplains; he&#8217;s now wanted on AWOL charges, despite the fact that his superiors told him he could leave. <\/p>\n<p>We wouldn&#8217;t want James Taranto&#8217;s readers to learn about any of that, now would we?   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From James Taranto&#8217;s &#8220;The Ugly Side of Libertarianism&#8220;: [David Bernstein] probably thinks of [libertarians] as cute little nerds who have basically sound (if somewhat extreme) ideas about economics along with various eccentric enthusiasms: private toll roads, pornography, drugs, head-freezing. This is the libertarian world of Reason magazine. (Disclosure: This columnist was an intern for Reason [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"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-2727","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\/2727","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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2727"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}