The American Conservative

Interesting couple of posts up at the Art of the Possible blog by Kevin Carson, who takes a look at Rothbard’s ’60s/’70s alliance with the Left and the wider movement of Left-Rothbardians, including Karl Hess and Samuel Konkin.

And over at the Left Conservative blog, a few thoughts from Dylan on paleo Right/decentralist Left common ground:

it is not the moderate Democrats that are worth looking at for support, but rather the patriotic, populist, American Left. There are many of them willing to call a truce in the culture wars on states rights grounds and a shockingly large number of them have a dim view of our nations immigration laws (for a couple of prominent examples compare Ralph Nader to the average Republican, or the great eco-anarchist Edward Abbey to anyone, Tom Tancredo included). Michael Kazin’s recent piece in World Affairs did a great job tracing the non-interventionist trend on the American Left (remember that Vidal and Norman Thomas were America First till the end) and Jeff Taylor’s great book “Where Did The Party Go?” suggests that their views on trade and monetary policy can be integrated into an explicitly paleo program. They have always been good on civil liberties and have been coming around on guns and internationalism for a long time now

I’m at work on an article at the moment but will put up some thoughts on all this in the next couple of days.

I’ve spent rather more time than I ought to have done commenting on my own article at Taki and participating in some back and forth with Daniel Larison. Not that all of this isn’t fun and educational, but I have a living to earn, and I’m much less prolific than Daniel L.

Check out the links and enjoy. There’ll probably be a few more rounds to come, but I should rein myself in these next few days so I can get some work done.

Here’s the link to my piece at Taki’s Magazine on nationalism and patriotism. There’s quite a bit of back-and-forth in the comments section.

In a nutshell, I say that patriotism has been taken to excess, particularly by conservatives, and nationalism (which is not simply excessive patriotism, but a distinct idea) is actually something that the United States could use a little more of. At least one commenter thinks my goal is to rehabilitate the word “nationalist,” but that’s not the case: I don’t like the word, and as I say in the piece, I’m not a nationalist. But nationalism, of the sort I describe and of the sort advocated by Samuel Huntington and Pat Buchanan, is much to be preferred over democratic imperialism (which is what patriotic sentiment has lately been annexed to) and anti-Western multiculturalism.

Most of all, though, I’m agitated by what I think is a dishonest use of language — the idea that patriotism can never be in error and that nationalism must always be a great evil. It seems to me that some truly nice, patriotic people can be driven by their patriotism to support folly. The Iraq War was not made possible just by the deceits of a handful of neocons. It was made possible because ordinary Americans thought that America could do no wrong from noble motives.

Light updating for the past two days or so since I’ve been busily hammering out an essay on nationalism and patriotism for Taki’s Mag. Need to finish tonight, so I’ll postpone any substantial posts for a while longer yet.

Meanwhile, check out @TAC for new posts by Clark Stooksbury, Tom Piatak, Phil Giraldi, and more. And a bit of tantalizing about the interview TAC had with Bob Barr on Friday.

I have a rather discursive post up at Taki’s Magazine that draws together a few recent threads about Obamacons, Jim Webb, and the futures (such as they are) of conservatism and paleoconservatism.

Addendum: Memes relating to the subjects above have been making the rounds on several blogs. I’ll just link to three threads here: Ross Douthat, Stacy McCain, and Rod Dreher.

Not only is the official campaign’s Daily Dose still going strong, in the able hands of Matt Hawes, but now my friend and former Ron Paul 2008 colleague Patrick Semmens has set up a group blog for past and present campaign staff. RonPaulBlog.com is the URL; so far Patrick and former finance director Jonathan Bydlak have been contributing. I’ll be putting up a few posts myself before too long. Check it out.

A few words of wisdom — true then and true today — from H.L. Mencken’s favorite politician, the great Sen. James A. Reed (D-Mo.):

Truth to tell, Washington has become the universal Mecca of human freaks. To that city protagonists of vagaries gravitate by all known routes, some by election, some by appointment, and some by “divine command.” The great majority, however, merely follow noses that itch for the business of others. There they bed and breed. They haunt the corridors of the public buildings, crowd into the offices of congressmen, and insist upon displaying their fantastic and sometimes loathsome wares. Consumed by passion for experimentation, they regard the public corpus as a legitimate subject for ceaseless exploratory operations and clinical vivisection.

To this array of freaks, the Constitution is not a bulwark of liberty but a shackle upon progress which they hold in contemptuous disregard. Congress itself is full of men who do not think of the Constitution save as an obstacle to their desires. They study it only to devise some plan for its circumvention. There is no subterfuge they will not employ, no deceit to which they will not resort, if peradventure the limitations imposed by the Constitution may be cheated.

A favorite device is, by a false recital of the real objects of a bill, to bring it apparently under some specific power granted to the federal government. Witness:

The Mann Act which, pretending to be an exercise of authority to regulate commerce between the States, in fact sought to regulate commerce between the sexes.

The penalization of doctors for prescribing beer as a medicine under the pretended authority of the amendment prohibiting liquor as a beverage.

The attempted prohibition of interstate commerce in the products of child labor on the pretext that the use of such goods was injurious to the public health.

The recent effort of the Nebraska Legislature to forbid the teaching of any other than the English language on the false recital that the child’s morals would be thereby impaired.

Under another grouping, but even more monstrous, is the proposal by Congress of a constitutional amendment empowering the federal government to pass laws denying to all human beings under eighteen years of age the right to work. Happily, that barbarous and tyrannical proposition is being rapidly rejected by the States. Evidently, there is an awakening of the States, if not of Congress.

A single further instance. Very recently, a joint committee of both Houses proposed a bill to send to jail in certain cases any citizen who failed to inform against himself or his neighbor. Seemingly no member of the committee ever heard of the constitutional provision: “nor shall [any citizen] be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” Instances might be indefinitely extended. The Capitol is choked with the advocates of changes.

What shall the end be? Will that race of men who for a thousand years have asserted the “right of castle,” rejected governmental interference in domestic affairs, proclaimed the right of free man to regulate his personal habits and to rear and govern his children in accordance with the law of conscience and of love, now become subject to a self-imposed statutory tyranny which from birth to death interferes in the smallest concerns of life? Shall we endure a legal despotism, the equivalent of which would have provoked rebellion amongst the Saxons even when under the Norman heel?

I doubt not these statutory bonds will be eventually broken. The right of the free man to live his own life, limited only by the inhibition of non-infringement upon the rights of others, will again be asserted. But before that day arrives, will the splendid symmetry of our governmental structure have been destroyed?

Read the whole essay, “The Pestilence of Fanaticism,” here. It originally ran in Mencken’s American Mercury 1925. As with most Mercury material of the time, the essay bears the imprint of the editor’s heavy hand. But Reed and Mencken were close enough of mind that I suspect the HLM flourishes don’t deviate much from Reed’s own thoughts.

I think Paul Gottfried is altogether too optimistic when he says that the neocons won’t control the Right forever in his post-paleo piece up at Taki’s Magazine. I’m not one to discount “changing historical conditions,” but I wouldn’t count on any changes in the cards in the near future to rid us of the neos. They’re nothing if not adaptable, after all. Gottfried is also more exuberant about “younger (thirty-something) writers and political activists” being “a counterforce to neoconservative dominance” than I think is warranted. I see some hope for the future in the younger generation — I have a piece in the April 21 TAC talking about that — and I certainly see cause for hope in the Ron Paul movement. But all of that has to be weighed against what I said in this post. I’m not sure that a small cadre of journalists, bloggers, and political activists is much of a hook to hang a movement upon. But I don’t know who all Gottfried might have in mind when he writes of “younger (thirty-something) writers and political activists.” Maybe I’m overlooking someone in my own, more pessimistic analysis.

The New York Times warns that blogging can kill you. Tell me about it. And I’m not even very prolific.

Here’s the LA Times obit. My favorite Heston movie? Toss-up between “The Omega Man” and “Soylent Green.” I’d give the latter a slight edge.