TheAgitator.com
Now That I’ve Seen His Face, He’s No Re-Deaner
Thursday, August 28th, 2003Alina sends this Justin Raimondo piece formally severing anti-war libertarian flirtation with Howard Dean. I’m not the biggest Raimondo fan, but he’s far more anti-war than I, and if he’s out of Dean’s tent, it’s a pretty safe bet I lost interest a while ago.
My interest in Dean was never serious flirtation. It was more along the lines of “sleeping with the first girl you meet at the bar to get back at the girl who just screwed you over.”
But even then, even drunk on disappointment with W., even desperate for something, anything worthwhile to cast my vote for, even as the lights come on, and I pay my tab, and the bouncer announces it’s last call — even then — Dean has proven that his policy positions are, in the end, just too damned ugly too go home with.
His opposition to the war, taken with W.’s growth of government, was all Dean had going for him. Now that he sees Iraq as just another welfare program (read the Raimondo piece), he’s given libertarians no reason to support him.
Opportunity lost.
I read the Raimondo piece, the usual head-in-the-sand “anything we do short of hiding under a rock will only make things worse” isolationist crud. He is beyond reason.
For all that I respect the Rothbardian tradition, I have long since stopped taking Raimondo seriously. He hates any dissent from the strict do-nothing foreign policy stance he favours. Look at his recent tantrum about Reason magazine daring to actually have a debate about interventionism. Fancy that!
So Justin opposed America’s entry into WW2. Riiight. So I guess a Europe ruled by Stalinist communism and the Nazis for years years is okay by him so long as the US gets to live in a libertarian paradise.
This is what isolationsim comes down to: “rest of the world, f**k you”.
Thank God most American governments, including the present one, think different.
John -
Why? Where’s all of thanks and sympathy we get for these good deeds? I certainly don’t see it anywhere. 3000 of us die by IslamoNazis and none of what we did over 50 years means a damn thing! And besides, some days I think Europe would have been happier under a Nazi/Soviet dual hegemony than having been “forced” to live under “capitalist, liberalist* oppression” these past 50+ years. And we would have been safer, as the USSR and the Reich would have likely bled each other white for two or more decades, leaving precious little energy for attacks on us. As it actually happened, we were forced to deal with a fairly healthy USSR, which aptly subverted the liberationist feelings of many people in a totalitarian direction. Only now are we beginning to see the full fruit of their efforts.
“[R]est of the world, f**k you”.
That about sums up my views. I was a big fan of Raimondo before 9-11, now seeing what France, Germany, and the Turkos did to us after 50 years of kneejerk support for them I only feel more strongly isolationist. Not saying the guy’s perfect, he does have some major flaws, but he’s usually saner than most (ie 99%) neo-cons out there.
Radley,
Does it matter not to you that though Dean would spend $$$$ on Iraq, GWB will also… and foreseeably on Syria, Iran, North Korea etc etc etc after we run them over too?
Not that I am supporting Dean, but I don’t think his views in favour of spending $$$$ on Iraq should be a deciding factor here….
Garth:
In Radley’s defense, if you parse Dean’s statements on Iraq carefully you begin to see that he not so much opposed the doctrine that led to the conflict but instead to the “timing” and the supposed “nonconsultation of allies”; in other words he offered the “weak critique.” Dean is arguably worse than Bush since unlike Bush Dean seems to support almost unlimited use of the military appartus to “fix” problems all over the Earth. (cf. Kosovo fiasco) Bush at least is forced due to his ideology to make some case along national-security lines, which is a better limit than nothing.
Radley:
Since there is really only a two party system in this country…(not a slight to you or libertarians in the slightest)….(originally from canada, there are 5 national parties in the federal parliament)….if not Dean, then who?
I would sleep alot better at night with an altruistic Dean rather than a fascist George Bush in the White House.
Toshiro, you are of course quite correct and justified to feel sore about how ungrateful Europeans and others must appear to Americans for their being liberated in WW2. I share your irritation (I am British). However, that does not, by itself, alter the essential benefit to America and Britain from removing Hitler from power. (As a Brit, I am glad Winston Churchill made it possible that I grew up as a free (ish) Briton rather than having German as my first language). The argument that the US would have been better off these past 60 years had the USSR and Nazi Germany “bled each other to death” is based on a pretty big assumption that no one side of that grisly conflict would have emerged a clear winner. I would not be so sure.
Ponder this - assume that Hitler had won. (Any reading of Operation Barbarossa shows that nearly happened). Consider the long-term impact on the US, if Germany had grabbed access to Middle East oil, forced the Brits to live under puppet-state rule, grabbed chunks of the empire, etc. Maybe the US and Latin America and bits of Africa could have continued in their way for a while but I wonder for how long a Jew-hating bigot like Hitler could have put off a standup fight with the States?
The isolationist position favoured by some - but not all - libertarians like Raimondo is the idea that the US can “go it alone” and let the rest of the world go hang. From my perspective, here in a small country -Britain - this standoffish approach to the ROTW is naive. I guess perspectives are different if you live in a big country like America.
I used to favour the isolationist position and still think it makes sense - most of the time. But I guess a reading of history means we have to make exceptions, and that is why I find Raimondo’s dogmatism so hard to stomach.