NOMINALLY?:

The Right’s Left Turn (Jacob Laksin, October 5, 2005, FrontPageMagazine.com)

In late September, as throngs of placard-wielding protestors were descending on the nation’s capital, Lew Rockwell, the nominally libertarian proprietor of the website LewRockwell.com, was holding forth at an anti-war rally convened by the far-left Alabama Peace and Justice Coalition (APJC). [...]

With its foam-flecked denunciations of the United States for “the evil of imperialism, the immorality of enslaving a foreign people, the malice of colonialism, and the intolerable brutality of authoritarianism,” its paranoiac allusions to a dissent-crushing “state,” and its unelaborated call for “resistance,” Rockwell’s speech could have been given by any of the more literate ringleaders of the anti-war left.

It might be supposed that Rockwell’s base of operations, LewRockwell.com, a gathering ground for a querulous cult of libertarian-anarchist true-believers, would be less amenable to the APJC’s members. On the contrary, a left-wing extremist would find much to admire among the site’s standard fare. Rockwell describes it as “unapologetically idiosyncratic.” That is putting it mildly. Although occasionally plumping for some eccentric ventures—LewRockwell.com is an enthusiastic supporter of the cause of the Confederate South—the default mode of the site is unsubtle ant-Americanism clothed in the garb of “anti-state” libertarianism.

Certainly that’s Rockwell’s stock-in-trade. In the disturbed worldview of Rockwell and his ideology-blinkered acolytes, the U.S. government, far from representing the democratic consensus of the American people, is the world’s most oppressive regime. “We are talking about the greatest centralized power on the globe, the world's largest, most well-armed, and most dangerous government, the only government to have ever used nuclear weapons against civilians and the government that has invaded more countries than any other in modern times,” complained Rockwell in June of 2004. Rockwell was still stuck on that theme one year later, even going so far as to endorse the caricature of America as the avatar of the Evil Empire. “Americans need to face the reality that most of the world sees our nation as the new evil empire, and many people in the Gulf region are dedicated to making sure that the Iraq War is the last hurrah for American militarism,” he wrote in June of 2005. “How tragic to admit that the analogy is not entirely implausible.” [...]

In common with the more unhinged elements of the far left, LewRockwell.com is committed to propagating the notion that the U.S. is in the grip of a fascist government. Again, Rockwell himself is among the more ardent spokesmen for that view. His political opponents, he insists, are “fascisti,” while anyone with the temerity to voice support for American policies is dismissed as one of the “storm troopers of the regime.” As for the 62 million Americans who voted to reelect George W. Bush, they are—you guessed it—the proponents of “red-state fascism.”

Liobertarian fear of Red Staters is likewise reflected in their reaction to the Miers nomination.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 5, 2005 12:41 PM