By Kevin MacDonald | 35 Comments
Libertarianism and White Racial Nationalism
Greg Johnson, the previous editor of TOQ, had the wonderful idea for an issue on how Libertarianism intersects with issues of White racial nationalism. The topic is an important one. Unlike explicit assertions of White identity and interests, libertarianism is considered part of the conservative mainstream. It doesn’t ruffle the feathers of the multicultural powers that be. Indeed, as discussed in several of the articles here—particularly the article by Simon Krejsa, libertarianism is an ideology of national dissolution that would greatly exacerbate problems resulting from immigration.
IGNORING THE REAL WORLD: LIBERTARIANISM AS UTOPIAN METAPHYSICS
Several prominent libertarians have advocated open borders except for immigrants clearly intent on violating personal or property rights. As Krejsa notes, libertarians ignore the reality that the peoples crowding our shores often have powerful ethnic ties and that they are typically organized in well-funded, aggressive ethnic organizations. These ethnic organizations have a vital interest in a strong central government able to further their interests in a wide range of areas, from welfare benefits to foreign policy. In other words, they act far more as a corporate entity than as a set of isolated individuals. Further, the immigration policy advocated by Libertarians ignores the reality of racial and ethnic differences in a broad spectrum of traits critical to success in contemporary societies, particularly IQ, criminality, and impulsivity. Social utility forms no part of the thinking of Libertarianism.
In reading these articles, one is struck by the fact that libertarianism is in the end a metaphysics. That is, it simply posits a minimal set of rights (to ownership of one’s own body, ownership of private property, and the freedom to engage in contracts) and unflinchingly follows this proposition to its logical conclusion. The only purpose of government is to prohibit the “physical invasion” of another’s person or property. It is a utopian philosophy based on what ought to be rather than on a sober understanding of the way humans actually behave. Not surprisingly, as Simon Lote and Farnham O’Reilly point out, there have never been any pure libertarian societies. There are powerful reasons for that.
Indeed, libertarianism philosophy reminds me of Kant’s categorical imperative which states that one must “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” The imperative defines a conception of moral obligation, but it certainly does not follow that others will behave in a moral way. One would be naive indeed to suppose that a philosophy of moral obligations would make people nicer. Kant would never have said that we should arrange society on the supposition that people will behave in the ways that they are morally obligated.
Similarly, the libertarian idea that we should alter government as if the governed are an atomistic universe of individuals is oblivious to the fact that a great many people will continue to behave on the basis of their group identity, whether based on ethnicity or on a voluntary association like a corporation. They will continue to engage in networking (often with co-ethnics) and they will pursue policies aimed at advancing their self-interest as conditioned by group membership. If they have access to the media, they will craft media messages aimed at converting others to agree with their point of view—messages that need not accurately portray the likely outcomes of policy choices. Media-powerful groups may also craft messages that take advantage of people’s natural proclivities for their own profit without regard to the weaknesses of others—a form of the unleashing of Darwinian competition discussed in the following.
This minimal list of human interests is grounded in neither theology nor natural science. A focus of Trudie Pert’s essay is the conflict between libertarian philosophy and traditional Catholic collectivism with its group-protecting function based on the concept of natural law. From the standpoint of evolutionary biology, a society engineered according to libertarian ideology would unleash a Darwinian struggle of competition between individuals and groups. Since, as Vitman Tanka notes, there is nothing in libertarian ideology to prevent voluntary associations, people in a libertarian society would naturally band together to advance their interests. Such groups would see their own interests as best satisfied by a strong government that is on their side.
The libertarian utopia would thus be chronically unstable. Indeed, Krejsa quotes Peter Brimelow who notes that a libertarian society with completely open borders would result in enormous pressures for powerful state control — immigration as the “Viagra of the state”: “Immigrants, above all immigrants who are racially and culturally distinct from the host population, are walking advertisements for social workers and government programs and the regulation of political speech — that is to say, the repression of the entirely natural objections of the host population.”
A libertarian utopia would also unleash exploitation of the weak and disorganized by the strong and well-organized. Both Pert and Krejsa point out that a libertarian society would result in violations of normative moral intuitions. For example, parents could sell their children into slavery. Such behavior would indeed be evolutionarily maladaptive, because as slaves their reproductive opportunities would be at the whim of their master. But such an option might appeal to some parents who value other things more than their children as the result of genetically or environmentally induced psychiatric impairment, manipulative media influence, or drug-induced stupor in a society lacking social controls on drugs.
Moreover, in the libertarian Eden, regulations on marriage and sexual behavior would disappear so that wealthy men would be able to have dozens of wives and concubines while many men would not have access to marriage. Sexual competition among males would therefore skyrocket.
In fact, the social imposition of monogamy in the West has had hugely beneficial consequences on the society as a whole, including greater investment in children and facilitating a low pressure demographic profile that resulted in cumulative investment and rising real wages over historical time.[1] In other words, progress.
Admittedly, benefits to the society as a whole are of no concern to libertarians. But, from an evolutionary perspective, they ought to be. An evolutionary approach has the virtue of being solidly grounded in a science of human interests, both explicit and implicit, whereas Libertarianism relies on metaphysical assertions. The fact is that dysfunctional societies are ultimately non-viable and likely to be pushed aside by more functional groups. Without the economic expansion brought about by the social controls on sexual behavior, the West may well have not embarked on the expansion and colonization beginning in the 15th century. Ultimately, social controls on sexual behavior benefited the vast majority of Whites.
The same can be said of social controls on sexual behavior. Social support for high-investment parenting has always been a critical feature of Western social structure until the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Since then, all of the markers of family stability have headed south — including divorce rates and births out of wedlock for all races and ethnic groups. (Nevertheless, there are very large differences between races and ethnic groups in conformity with J. Philippe Rushton’s life history theory of race differences.[2])
But this relative lack of social support for marriage has had very different effects depending on traits like IQ. For example, a well-known study in behavior genetics shows that the heritability of age of first sexual intercourse increased dramatically after the sexual revolution of the 1960's.[3] In other words, after the social supports for traditional sexuality disappeared, genetic influences became more important. Before the sexual revolution, traditional sexual mores applied to everyone. After the revolution, genes mattered more. People with higher IQ were able to produce stable families and marriages, but lower-IQ people were less prone to doing so. These trends have been exacerbated by the current economic climate.
The triumph of the culture of critique therefore resulted in a more libertarian climate for sexual behavior that tended to produce family pathology among people at the lower end of the bell curve for IQ, particularly an increase in low-investment parenting. This in turn is likely to have decreased the viability of the society as a whole.[4]
COULD WHITE ADVOCACY BE THE OUTCOME OF VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS?
It is interesting to consider whether a vibrant White advocacy movement could be the outcome of voluntary association in a society constructed along libertarian lines, as proposed by Tänka, who uses the Amish as an example. That is, Whites could come to realize that they have a natural interest in forming a voluntary association to advance their interests as Whites, much as Jews have done since the Enlightenment. (In traditional societies, Jewish groups were tightly controlled to prevent defection and “cheating,” i.e., engaging in acts such as undermining Jewish monopolies or informing on other Jews that were deemed harmful by the Jewish community as a whole. Traditional Jewish society was the antithesis of libertarianism.)
Such an outcome is theoretically possible but (like the rest of the libertarian wish list) would be unlikely to occur in the real world. In the real world, media-powerful groups and groups able to dominate prestigious academic institutions would indoctrinate people against identifying as Whites bent on pursuing White interests, as they do now. In the real world, there would be financial inducements to avoid White advocacy, including well-paid careers opposing White advocacy and economic consequences meted out by powerful voluntary associations, especially associations dominated by non-Whites hostile to White identity and interests — also the case now. A White advocacy movement would therefore have a great deal of inertia to overcome.
And yet, voluntary association is the only way that a powerful White advocacy movement could develop. We are seeing the beginnings of such movements, especially in Europe with the rise of explicitly anti-Muslim and anti-immigration parties.
However, if a White-advocacy movement gains power, it would be foolish indeed to retain a libertarian political structure of minimal government. As noted by Farnham O’Reilly, the rights of the individual must remain subservient to the welfare of the group. If indeed White interests are worth defending, then furthering those interests must be the first priority. That would mean acting against media-powerful interests that produce messages countering White identity and acting against voluntary associations (such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League) that mete out economic penalties against Whites who identify as White and wish to pursue their interests as Whites. (It is noteworthy at of the nine authors of this issue of TOQ, seven use pseudonyms. The exceptions, Robert Griffin and I, both have tenure and thus have protected positions.)
Indeed, one might note that the greatest obstacle to the triumph of a White advocacy movement now is that current Western societies are organized along (imperfectly) libertarian lines. That is, the Western commitment to economic individualism (which allows vast concentrations of wealth by individuals) combined with the legitimacy of using that wealth to influence government policy, control media messages, and penalize White advocates, has allowed the creation of a semi-Darwinian world where very powerful interests have aligned themselves against White advocacy. This in turn is leading to natural selection against White people as they become overwhelmed demographically by non-Whites. In such a world, Whites, especially non-elite Whites, will eventually be at the mercy of hostile non-White groups with historical grudges against them — a category that at the very least includes Jews, Blacks, and Mexicans. Again, there is no reason whatever to suppose that a society engineered along libertarianism lines would prevent associations based on ethnic/racial ties. The racialization of American politics in the semi-libertarian present is well advanced, with over 90% of Republican votes coming from Whites, and increasing percentages of Whites voting Republican.
LIBERTARIANISM FITS WITH THE EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY OF WHITES
Nevertheless, having pointed to the pitfalls of libertarianism, it must be said that the individual freedom and liberty that are the hallmarks of libertarianism “feel good” to us Europeans, as emphasized by Simon Lote and Robert Griffin. All things equal, we would rather live in a society with minimal restraint on individual behavior.
(However, all things may not be equal, as Simon Krejsa points out, since the vast majority of Whites would prefer to live in a non-libertarian society that was predominantly White rather than a libertarian society that was predominantly Black. Race matters.)
In my view, individualism is an ethnic trait of Europeans — the only group to have invented individualistic societies. (Ironically, for the reasons set out above, the semi-libertarian structure of contemporary Western societies may ultimately be the demise of the West.) This judgment is based on a variety of data.[5] For example, European family patterns indicate that Europeans, far more than other groups, have been able to free themselves from clan-based social structure (a form of collectivism) and develop societies with a high level of public trust needed to create modern economies.
That’s perhaps why reading Ayn Rand has been so exciting for so many of us, as emphasized by Gregory Hood in his prize-winning essay. We thrill to the idea of talented, productive, competent people who are able to create their own worlds and are not bound by the petty conventions of society — who seem larger than life. It is, as Hood points out, a White World, peopled by heroic Nordics, with “an Aryan code of achievement, appreciation of hierarchy, and a robustly defended philosophy of greatness“; it is “a world where uniquely Western values such as individualism, the rule of law, and limited government are taken for granted.”
I confess that when I first read Atlas Shrugged in high school, I was very much taken with it. Readers of her work naturally cast themselves in the role of John Galt or similar Randian super-person. Her characters appeal to our vanity and our natural desire to live free of burdensome constraints and to be completely in charge of our own destiny. I recall when driving across the country shortly after reading it that I took special notice of all the signs of eponymous businesses— Johnson’s Lumber Co., Hansen’s Furniture, Mario’s Pizza, Ford auto- mobiles. All were the creations of individuals with drive and ambition — people creating their own worlds.
It’s an attractive image, but as an evolutionist I understand that humans must think in terms of the larger picture — what Frank Salter terms “ethnic genetic interests.”[6] And to effectively further our ethnic genetic interests, we must take account of the real world and accept the need for restraints on people’s behavior, as argued above. The good news is that, as Hood notes (see also Tänka’s essay), the road to a sense of White advocacy and a sense that Whites have interests often begins with Ayn Rand and libertarianism.
The European tendency toward individualism is also associated with moral universalism (as opposed to moral particularlism, famously, “Is it good for the Jews?”) and science (i.e, inquiry free from in- group/outgroup biases, with each scientist an independent agent unattached to any ingroup). The tendency toward moral particularism is especially important when thinking about Libertarianism. The European tendency toward moral universalism implies a relatively strong commitment to principled morality — that is, moral principles that are adhered to independent of cost to self or family.[7] This contrasts with non-European societies where there is a much greater tendency for family and kinship ties to color moral judgments.[8]
This devotion to principled morality is most apparent in the Puritan tradition of American culture — likely the result of prolonged evolution in small, exogamous, egalitarian groups in northern Europe.[9] An egregious example is Justice John Paul Stevens who recently vacated the court, allowing President Obama to replace him with Elena Kagan, an undistinguished law school graduate who benefited greatly from Jewish ethnic networking and who is likely to reflect to values of the mainstream left-liberal Jewish community.
Stevens therefore is the ultimate non-ethnic actor, allowing himself to be replaced during a Democratic administration that would be very unlikely to appoint someone like himself. This lack of an ethnic sense is reflected in his writing:
“The ideas of liberty and equality have been an irresistible force in motivating leaders like Patrick Henry, Susan B. Anthony, and Abraham Lincoln, schoolteachers like Nathan Hale and Booker T. Washington, the Philippine Scouts who fought at Bataan, and the soldiers who scaled the bluff at Omaha Beach,” he wrote in an unusually lyrical dissent [in a 1989 flag burning case]. “If those ideas are worth fighting for—and our history demonstrates that they are—it cannot be true that the flag that uniquely symbolizes their power is not itself worthy of protection.[10]
Ideas are worth fighting for, but Stevens has no interest in advancing the cause of WASPs as an ethnic group. Here he idealizes non-White Filipinos fighting alongside Whites to secure a set of principles. He has no concern that there will be no more WASPs on the court for the foreseeable future, presumably because he thinks that what’s important is that certain ideas will continue to guide the country.
The multicultural left should build statues to Stevens and David Souter also appointed by a Republican president and replaced by a non-White [Sonia Sotomayor] in a Democrat administration) as heroes of the hopeful non-White future. Their principled sense that ideas matter and that race and ethnicity are not at all important is exactly how the multicultural left wants all Whites to behave — WASPs as the proposition ethnic group heralding America as the proposition nation.
This devotion to universalist ideas is a strong tendency in the liberal WASP subculture that has been such an important strand of American intellectual history.[11] (The exception was during the 1920s when the Protestant elite sided with the rest of America when they led the battle to enact the immigration restriction law of 1924 which drastically restricted immigration and explicitly attempted to achieve an ethnic status quo as of 1890. Even then, there were substantial numbers of WASPs who opposed immigration restriction.)
In the 19th century, this liberal WASP tradition could be seen in their attraction to utopian communities and their strong moral revulsion to slavery that animated the cause of abolition.[12] Ideas matter and are worth fighting for, even if more than 600,000 White people died in the battle — ”Let us die to make men free” as the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” urged. They had the idea that people are able to fashion moral ideals and then bring them into being as a result of political activism, a view that is certainly borne out by contemporary psychology.[13] They were individualists who saw the world not in terms of in-groups and outgroups, but as composed of unique individuals. Their relatively tepid ethnocentrism and their ethnic proneness to moral universalism made them willing allies of the rising class of Jewish intellectuals who came to dominate intellectual discourse beginning at least by the 1930s. Even by the 1920s, the triumph of Boasian anthropology meant that appeals to WASP ethnicity would fall on deaf ears in the academic world.
Libertarianism thus fits well with this tradition. Indeed, Eric Kaufmann labels one of the 19th-century liberal American traditions “libertarian anarchism,” typified by Benjamin Tucker, publisher Liberty, a journal devoted to unfettered individualism and opposed to prohibitions on non-invasive behavior (“free love,” etc.). Moreover, as noted above, libertarianism is nothing if not strongly principled. Indeed, libertarianism is addicted to its fundamental principles of individual freedom no matter what practical costs may result to self, to others or to the society as a whole. The sign of principled behavior is that other interests, prototypically self-interest (paradoxically enough in the case of libertarianism), are irrelevant, and that is certainly the case with libertarianism.
IS LIBERTARIANISM A JEWISH INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT?
Finally, we must ask, “Is it good for the Jews?” Simon Lote notes that libertarians tend to be “cosmopolitan White males [who] are led by a smaller but more eminent group of Jews who are attracted to the political philosophy for entirely different reasons.” Jews are attracted to libertarianism because
[the] cosmopolitan universalism at [the core of libertarianism] is a mighty ideological weapon to weaken White identity and loyalty and so ensures that Jewish interests are better preserved and advanced. After all, if one regards property rights as sacred, the idea of breaking the Jewish stranglehold over the media by government anti-trust legislation would be considered abhorrent. Libertarians also tend to be in favor of massive non-White immigration which is also favored by Jews as an ethnic strategy aimed at lessening the political and cultural influence of Whites.[14]
Indeed, Trudie Pert begins her essay with the following quote from The Culture of Critique:
Jews benefit from open, individualistic societies in which barriers to upward mobility are removed, in which people are viewed as individuals rather than as members of groups, and in which intellectual discourse is not prescribed by institutions like the Catholic Church that are not dominated by Jews.[15]
Libertarianism was not reviewed as a Jewish intellectual movement of The Culture of Critique, although the discussion of the Frankfurt School as a Jewish movement in Chapter 5 emphasizes that it pathologized the group commitments of non-Jews while nevertheless failing to provide a similar critique of Jewish group commitment. It noted that
a common component of anti-Semitism among academics during the Weimar period [in Germany] was a perception that Jews attempted to undermine patriotic commitment and social cohesion of society. Indeed, the perception that Jewish critical analysis of non-Jewish society was aimed at dissolving the bonds of cohesiveness within the society was common among educated non-Jewish Germans, including university professors …. One academic referred to the Jews as “the classic party of national decomposition.”
In the event, National Socialism developed as a cohesive non-Jewish group strategy in opposition to Judaism, a strategy that completely rejected the Enlightenment ideal of an atomized society based on individual rights in opposition to the state. As I have argued in [Separation and Its Discontents] (Ch. 5), in this regard National Socialism was very much like Judaism, which has been throughout its history fundamentally a group phenomenon in which the rights of the individual have been submerged in the interests of the group.
Further:
The prescription that … society adopt a social organization based on radical individualism would indeed be an excellent strategy for the continuation of Judaism as a cohesive, collectivist group strategy. Research … on cross-cultural differences in individualism and collectivism indicates that anti-Semitism would be lowest in individualist societies rather than societies that are collectivist and homogeneous apart from Jews. A theme of [A People That Shall Dwell Alone] (Ch. 8) is that European societies (with the notable exceptions of the National Socialist era in Germany and the medieval period of Christian religious hegemony—both periods of intense anti-Semitism) have been unique among the economically advanced traditional and modern cultures of the world in their commitment to individualism. … The presence of Judaism as a highly successful and salient group strategy provokes anti-individualist responses from [non-Jews]. Collectivist cultures [like Judaism]… place a much greater emphasis on the goals and needs of the ingroup rather than on individual rights and interests. Collectivist cultures develop an “unquestioned attachment” to the ingroup, including “the perception that ingroup norms are universally valid (a form of ethnocentrism), automatic obedience to ingroup authorities, and willingness to fight and die for the ingroup.[16] These characteristics are usually associated with distrust of and unwillingness to cooperate with outgroups.” In collectivist cultures morality is conceptualized as that which benefits the group, and aggression and exploitation of outgroups are acceptable.[17]
People in individualist cultures, in contrast, show little emotional attachment to ingroups. Personal goals are paramount, and socialization emphasizes the importance of self-reliance, independence, individual responsibility, and “finding yourself.”[18] Individualists have more positive attitudes toward strangers and outgroup members and are more likely to behave in a prosocial, altruistic manner to strangers. Because they are less aware of in-group-outgroup boundaries, people in individualist cultures are less likely to have negative attitudes toward outgroup members.[19] They often disagree with ingroup policy, show little emotional commitment or loyalty to ingroups, and do not have a sense of common fate with other ingroup members. Opposition to outgroups occurs in individualist societies, but the opposition is more “rational” in the sense that there is less of a tendency to suppose that all of the outgroup members are culpable for the misdeeds of a few. Individualists form mild attachments to many groups, whereas collectivists have an intense attachment and identification to a few ingroups.[20]
The expectation is that individualists will tend to be less predisposed to anti-Semitism and more likely to blame any offensive Jewish behavior as resulting from transgressions by individual Jews rather than stereotypically true of all Jews. However Jews, as members of a collectivist subculture living in an individualistic society, are themselves more likely to view the Jewish–non- Jewish distinction as extremely salient and to develop stereotypically negative views about non-Jews.
Pert’s article suggests that libertarianism functioned as a Jewish intellectual movement for at least some of its main Jewish proponents. (No one is saying that libertarianism is a Jewish movement to the extent that, say, psychoanalysis was in its early years, when virtually all its practitioners were Jews. For the reasons indicated above, libertarianism is very attractive to Europeans.) In order for a movement to qualify as a Jewish movement, participants must have a Jewish identity and see their work as furthering Jewish interests. Particularly interesting is the animosity shown by Ludwig von Mises toward Christianity and particularly toward the Catholic Church as enemies of freedom. (One might also note Ayn Rand’s one-sided and impassioned defense of Israel and her denunciations of Arabs as racist murderers of innocent Jews indicate a strong Jewish identity and an unwillingness to condemn Jewish collectivism, either in Israel or in traditional and to a considerable extent in contemporary Diaspora societies. She also remonstrates against the “racism” of U.S. foreign policy prior to FDR, again suggesting views that are highly characteristic of the Jewish mainstream.[21])
For the reasons indicated above, there is little doubt that Judaism would benefit from a libertarian social order. In addition to lowering anti- Jewish attitudes, Pert notes that Jews as an well-organized, highly networked elite would be likely to be able to exploit non-Jews economically because non-Jews would not be protected by the state and because non-Jews would not likely be able to form cohesive protective groups in the absence of state involvement. (I have proposed that in the 4th century, voluntary associations centered around the Catholic Church served a protective function against Jewish economic domination, particularly the enslavement of non-Jews by Jews.[22] As expected, this protective society then attempted (and succeeded) in obtaining political power by seizing control of the state.
In other words, these Catholics actively fought against a social order in which there were no safeguards against the exploitation of non-Jews by Jews. (To the extent that it permitted slavery of non-Jews by Jews, the previous social order was libertarian.) The libertarian rationalization of voluntary servitude is particularly noteworthy given the reality of Jewish economic domination in several historical eras.
1 Kevin MacDonald, “What Makes Western Culture Unique?” The Occidental Quarterly 2(2), 9–38, 2002.
http://www.toqonline.com/archives/v2n2/TOQv2n2MacDonald.pdf;
Kevin MacDonald, “The Establishment and Maintenance of Socially Imposed Monogamy in Western Europe.” Politics and the Life Sciences 14, 3-23, 1995.
http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/Monogamy1995.pdf
2 J. Philippe Rushton, Race, Evolution, and Behavior (New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction, 1994).
3 M. P. Dunne, N. G. Martin, D. J. Statham, W. S. Slutske, S. H. Dinwiddie, K. K. Bucholz, P. A. F. Madden, and A. C. Heath, “Genetic and environmental contributions to variance in age at first sexual intercourse.” Psychological Science 8 (211–216, 1997).
4 Kevin MacDonald, “The Dissolution of the Family among Non-Elite Whites.” The Occidental Observer (April 9, 2010).
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2010/04/kevin-macdonald-the- dissolution-of-the-family-among-non-elite-whites/
5 MacDonald, “What Makes Western Culture Unique?”;
Kevin Mac Donald, “Eric P. Kaufmann’s The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America.” The Occidental Observer (July 29, 2009).
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/articles/MacDonald-Kaufmann.html
6 Frank K. Salter, On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethny and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2006; originally published by Peter Lang [Frankfurt Am Main, 2003]).
7 Kevin MacDonald, “Evolution and a Dual Processing Theory of Culture: Applications to Moral Idealism and Political Philosophy.” Politics and Culture (2010[Issue 1], April).
http://www.politicsandculture.org/2010/04/29/evolution-and-a-dual-processing-theory-of-culture-applications-to-moral-idealism-and-political-philosophy/
8 Kevin MacDonald, “Psychology and White Ethnocentrism.” The Occidental Quarterly 6(4) (Winter, 2006–07, 7–46).
(kevinmacdonald.net/WhiteEthnocentrism.pdf)
J. G. Miller and D. M. Bersoff, “Culture and Moral Judgment: How Are Conflicts Between Justice and Interpersonal Responsibilities Resolved?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 62 (541–554, 1992).
9 MacDonald, “What Makes Western Culture Unique?”
10 Jeffrey Toobin, “After Stevens: What Will the Supreme Court Be Like without Its Liberal Leader?” The New Yorker (March 23, 2010).
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/03/22/100322fa_fact_toobin?curr entPage=all#ixzz0tJXKtDE6
11 Mac Donald, “Eric P. Kaufmann’s The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America.”
12 Kevin MacDonald, “American Transcendentalism: An Indigenous Culture of Critique.” The Occidental Quarterly 8(2) (Summer 2008, 91–106).
(kevinmacdonald.net/Gura-Transcendentalism.pdf)
13 Kevin MacDonald, “Evolution and a Dual Processing Theory of Culture.”
14 Kevin MacDonald, The Culture of Critique (Blooomington, IN: Authorhouse, 2002; originally published by Praeger [Westport, CT, 1998]), Chapter 7.
16 Harry C. Triandis, “Cross-cultural studies of individualism and collectivism.” Nebraska Symposium on Motivation 1989: Cross Cultural Perspectives (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 55.
18 Harry C. Triandis. “Cross-cultural differences in assertiveness/competition vs. group loyalty/cohesiveness.” In Cooperation and Prosocial Behavior (ed. R. A. Hinde & J. Groebel; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 82.
20 Triandis, “Cross-cultural studies of individualism and collectivism,” 61.
21 “Ayn Rand on Israel and the Middle East.” You Tube video of a public inter- view from 1979.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uHSv1asFvU
22 Kevin MacDonald, Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism. (Bloomington, IN: 1stbooks Library, 2004; first published by Praeger [Westport, CT, 1998]), Chapter 3.



I came to ethno-centric politics by way of libertarianism, for the reasons described by MacDonald. TOQ has earned a new subscriber with the above post.
Another well thought out and well researched article from Dr MacDonald.
And right on the money.
Ayn Rand of course was named Alyssa Rosenbaum, a Russian emigre Jewess, and her literary executor Leonard Peikoff is a Jew, and as her former paramour Jew Nathaniel Branden remarked, her entire circle was essentially Jewish, including such other famous like Jewish central banker Alan Greenspan.
I dont think Jewish central banker Ben Shalom Bernanke nor Jewish central banker and rapist Dominique Strauss Kahn are considerable as liberterians but isnt it interesting that Jewish leadership has such a lock on banking as well as intellectual movements from Marxism to liberterianism. One might think the entire modern era of the socalled “West” was fundamentally Jewish.
A digression: I appreciated the observations in this article about Catholicism. There is much to be learned there. The ENR thinkers like DeBenoist rightly perceive that there is an antagonism between Catholicism and Judaism. One that defined the late Roman Empire and all of the middle ages. And yet I find it hard to understand ENR thinking that Catholicism is somehow Jewish when the thousand years of Catholic-Jewish cutlure war episode in which Gentiles were ascendant, from say St John Chrysostom’s Adversus Iudaios to the Reformation, was the era of Catholic dominance. Whereas, the era of Catholic eclipse and the rise of Jewish power, coincides almost exactly with the breaking up of both the Holy Roman (Germanic) Reich and the Reformation and the whole mess of history since then. How is that that the supposedly alien Christianity represented by Catholicism did so well at containing Jewish and plutocratic power, but the decay of that system which has unleashed Jewish dominance is somehow a good thing for European-kind?
Oh I forgot; is it any coincidence that Ayn Rand and her synagogue of “Big O’s” are all ardent atheists, like Marx, their Jewishness notwithstanding. Big coincidence.
The modern era of the European world is very Jewish in that is has been shaped to large extents by Jewish financial and intellectual influence, yes. Egalitarianism has largely been promoted first and foremost by Jews. There is a not too irrational reason why anti-modernist, pro-agrarian and traditionalist movements in the Western world as a rule were “anti-semitic” (anti-jewish would be the logical term). The power of gold, and the power of bending others’ thinking has dominated the West since the Enlightenment kicked in.
Dr. Griffin’s essay, LIBERTARIANISM AND RACIAL NATIONALISM — OR BETTER, WHITE RACIALISM, is available at his website (included in Spring 2011 TOQ, of which I just subscribed, and you should too)
http://www.robertsgriffin.com/LibShort.pdf
Libertarianism is often discredited by the wn, but usually only in regards to a) immigration (wn opposing open borders, although many calling themselves liberatarians actually oppose open borders as well. and Ron Paul did publicly until recently), and b) non-interventionsim (many wn are Catholic and see welfare-statism-militarism and reliving Rome as something the U.S. constitution “left out,” b/c protestant who wrote it are stupid when it comes to evil, (that’s really what the things they often say boil down to). Meantime, it is truly significant that people of another sub-ethnicity actually wrote the constitution (and for pretty smart reasons). So— Why not look at the commonalities with the constitution and the ethnic life it represented before throwing the baby out with the bathwater (again). Protestants in America have been so silenced (as such) so long, that they just “feel” things are all wrong and really have to struggle to articulate why their position— original and now— in their own country (it really was theirs) had reason, integrity, possibility, and more.
The number of crucial elections that were won by VERY BAD Demonrats were caused by Whites throwing their votes away on Libertarian candidates. The effects on 2nd Amendment rights and PRO-IMMIGRATION leftists were incalculable.
In an ALL WHITE AMERICA we might be able to entertain the ideals of the jewess from Soviet Union Rosenbaum aka Ayn Rand, but not in real life. TOO DANGEROUS.
The results of this LOOKING OUT FOR #1 is all around you.
The Hive chuckles while the Whites are dispossessed.
A life centered around money is a hollow one–and a nation centered around money isn’t really a nation.
-Randall Burns 23 December 2008
The answer is simple.
Liberty, freedom and individualism (the libertarian core) are in-group (White) values, the responsible exercise of which presupposes a common culture and a common set of Christian values and behaviors to shepherd the common good.
Thus, liberty, freedom and individualism have no applicability outside the group and thus cannot survive multiculturalism.
That is my essay entry on “Libertarianism and White Racial Nationalism.”
One curious aspect of libertarianism is the paucity of principled thinking and behavior.
I know of no major libertarian works analyzing the illiberal effects of the Civil Rights laws, for example, or existing gross violations of freedom of association, the right to sell one’s property to whoever one chooses, to hire who one pleases, and so forth. What about government mooching by immigrants?
Few libertarians speak out against foreign aid—including aid to Israel.
“Hate speech” and “political correctness” are likewise blatant violations of ostensible libertarian principles. Yet libertarians remain mute in the face of these benighted policies.
In “Liberalism” (1973), Friedrich Hayek, a famous classical liberal, wrote that in the heyday of liberalism, “freedom had a fairly definite meaning: it meant primarily that the free person was not subject to arbitrary coercion. But for man living in society protection against such coercion required a restraint on all men, depriving them of the possibility of coercing others. Freedom for all could be achieved only if, in the celebrated formula of Immanuel Kant, the freedom of each did not extend further than was compatible with an equal freedom for others. The liberal conception of freedom was therefore necessarily one of freedom under a law which limited the freedom of each so as to secure the same freedom for all. It meant not what was sometimes described as the ‘natural freedom’ of an isolated individual, but the freedom possible in society and restricted by such rules as were necessary to protect the freedom of others. It recognizes that if all are to be as free as possible, coercion cannot be entirely eliminated, but only reduced to that minimum which is necessary to prevent individuals OR GROUPS from arbitrarily coercing others.” (Emphasis added.)
Putting aside the practical difficulties of achieving such a balance, true liberalism puts the ADL, AIPAC, and many other organizations out of business. No more national censorship through Terms of Service contracts or software that automatically blocks sites all over the Internet, no more street thugs shutting down meetings, etc.
It seems clear that libertarians do not really believe in their own ideology. These are not minor blemishes, but gaping holes.
“It seems clear that libertarians do not really believe in their own ideology. These are not minor blemishes, but gaping holes.”
Important insight!
But in my view it is not so much that they do not believe it, but rather that the ultimate objective or good that this ideology is expected to achieve – exactly what it will accomplish – seems to have gone missing.
How exactly does more freedom and more individualism produce a more moral society? A more prosperous society? All of this supposed constructive activity that is to take place following the establishment of a skeletal libertarian government is assumed and entirely unspoken.
One gets the impression that libertarians hope once freed of the influence of intrusive big government that the natural goodness of mankind will flower.
It is all well and good for those being oppressed by the state to latch on to an ideology that calls for a reduction in the power and reach of an abusive government. To that degree, libertarianism makes sense. But it is an attempt to avoid a direct political confrontation with those whose interests benefit from the abuses of the powerful state.
It is a whimsical wish that those powerful enough to buy the favor of the intrusive and oppressive state are somehow stupid enough to be fooled into abandoning their interests and halting their purchase of legislative favors by an ideological abstraction.
Direct confrontation with the looting class is a far more potent political force. It is much easier to stir up the voters against an identifiable evil “them” than it is to marry them emotionally to a theoretical abstraction.
But to win against an abusive state, it is necessary to point out exactly what the abuse is and exactly how a smaller and weaker state will rid itself of its abusive tendencies.
Absent specific policy goals, the libertarian ideology seems intended primarily to produce a society in which libertines can indulge in vice without interference. Is it all about creating a paradise for child molesters and drug users?
If one is going to cut government down to size, one must specify exactly how the reduced but nevertheless still remaining state monopoly on violence will be used. How are these guardians of freedom employed by a minimalist government expected to over power those who, either alone or in combination, might acquire wealth and political influence sufficient to subvert the state?
The smaller the “peacekeeping’ force, the less deliberative and the more violent they will have to be in order to maintain libertarian order. Shrink the state enough and it will be overpowered by warlords.
At bottom, the libertarian ideology seems to ignore human nature. It is the absence of practical details – its ethereal abstraction and total lack of outcome determinative policy and structure that make it so disturbing, especially in a multicultural society riven with group conflict and competition.
Well, I came indirectly to racialism via libertarianism. So it left an impression on me in my formative years. Of course, I was never dogmatic. And I considered myself a classical liberal rather than a libertarian. I still am one, more or less.
It’s necessary to remain empirically grounded—facts have to matter. Ideologies, including libertarianism, tend to militate against this. Instead of adjusting ideological beliefs to fit facts, most people allow ideology to dictate “facts” to them. E.g., “Whites are evil, Jews and non-whites godly.”
I’m not enamored of totalitarianism, “might is right,” survival of the fittest, etc., as many of our comrades are. I don’t like living in a dictatorship. No human beings should have absolute power.
I greatly admire what the American founders attempted and achieved. Obviously, they were human beings engaged in a human enterprise, so they, and their creation, were not perfect. But one does not look for perfection in an imperfect world.
The remark, “You have a Republic, if you can keep it,” reflects their sober realism. (Or John Quincy Adams: “Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.”) They weren’t trying to create heaven on earth (utopia); any well-balanced man will avoid utopianism like the plague. Nor did the framers fix things for all time, or attempt to. Constant adjustments were left for each succeeding generation.
You put your finger on a central failure of libertarianism: “Liberty, freedom and individualism (the libertarian core) are in-group (White) values, the responsible exercise of which presupposes a common culture.” I certainly would not rule out freedom for non-whites in their own lands, but my attitude is akin to that of J. Q. Adams (again) (just substitute the “white race” for “America”):
“Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” (July 4, 1821)
It seems pretty clear that free, individualist white societies do create more prosperity and intellectual advancement. It’s hard to ignore the incredible leap forward civilization took during the liberal era.
Dogmatic libertarianism loses sight of the old idea of a “society of ordered liberty.” Order was as important as liberty, morality as freedom. Historically, the free society was embedded within a concrete racial-cultural context.
Personally, I can’t imagine how we can vote our way out of our present predicament, so I never think in terms of electoral politics. The existing rulers do not believe in democracy. “If voting could change anything, they’d make it illegal”— like free speech and association.
You’re quite right that libertinism and libertarianism are pretty much coextensive. A Jewish libertarian, Walter Block, promotes every kind of abomination in the name of “freedom,” including slavery.
Your last three paragraphs concern “the practical difficulties of achieving” the restraint-freedom balance that Hayek advocated in the paragraph I quoted. Obviously, the balance has been lost, and a mafia now dominates the state, while favored subsidiary gangs pillage and plunder.
Nevertheless, estimable men believed the balance could be struck, and for a time it was.
The alternative approach, concentrating power in the state, has also been tried and has also failed. Millions and millions of people died or were sent to prisons and camps, whites and Asians alike.
“presumably because he thinks that what’s important is that certain ideas will continue to guide the country”
The way to reach people like him is through convincing them those ideas are a product of particular evolution and specific genetic differences.
Libertarianism also, at least the good bits, requires homogenous white countries for the same reason.
“For the reasons indicated above, there is little doubt that Judaism would benefit from a libertarian social order.”
Communism when they’re on the bottom, left-liberalism when they’re in the middle, libertarianism when they’re at the top.
However Jewish movements are never wholly Jewish or they wouldn’t work. They have to exploit something that’s already there and in this case the desire for freedom is already there. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the libertarian urge but like everything else it needs to be constrained within the bounds of biology.
@Hamilton
“One curious aspect of libertarianism is the paucity of principled thinking and behavior.
I know of no major libertarian works analyzing the illiberal effects of the Civil Rights laws, for example, or existing gross violations of freedom of association, the right to sell one’s property to whoever one chooses, to hire who one pleases, and so forth. What about government mooching by immigrants?
Few libertarians speak out against foreign aid—including aid to Israel.
“Hate speech” and “political correctness” are likewise blatant violations of ostensible libertarian principles. Yet libertarians remain mute in the face of these benighted policies.”
This is so patently false, I hardly know where to start.
Every serious libertarian I personally know, and every prominent libertarian advocate I know of, adamantly opposes civil rights legislation, affirmative action, and all social welfare programs, for many reasons, but primarily because such government intrusions violate property rights and the principle of freedom of association.
So too for foreign aid, not only to Israel, but to its neighboring antagonists and to all foreign nation-states, because such largess requires theft of property and involuntary servitude in the form of taxes backed by armed agents of the state and because it is inimical to our own interests.
I have never heard a libertarian voice any support whatsoever for any kind of tax-funded welfare programs or special treatment for any favored groups, including minorities, women, and immigrants illegal or otherwise. These state-backed aberrations of justice and freedom are obvious to any libertarian.
It is true that sharp disagreements exist within libertarian circles on the question of immigration. Nonetheless, there is absolutely no dispute regarding the inalienable right of ranchers and farmers along the border to defend their families and property, using force lethal if necessary.
Do you not see the state with its monopoly on physical force as an elemental cause of the crisis we now face? Does it not occur to you that it is the apparata of the modern nation-state which has enabled our adversary to fracture the nuclear family of White middle class and through which it continues to erode the financial and cultural influence of White men.
If we did nothing more than repeal legal tender laws, for example, thereby restoring the freedom of people to use whatever medium of exchange and store of value they and their counterparties in any transaction agree upon, in one stroke we would undermine the ability of the central bankers to collect their usury and to engineer the inflations and contractions of their fraudulent fiat for the nefarious benefit of themselves and to the detriment of ourselves and our progeny?
For the record, furthermore, let’s correct the erroneous notion that libertarianism is the same as Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand who was a statist and whose followers have no reservation about waging endless wars on foreign lands where we have no business. Nor are libertarians a subset of conservatives. Nor does libertarianism hold itself forth as a spiritual or metaphysical philosophy. Nor is it pacifist. Or libertine. Nor does it claim to guarantee some form of utopia.
It seeks only to offer a coherent set of political and economic principles arising from the non-aggression principle and the natural right of men to live their lives as they want, use their own property as they want, associate or not associate with whom they want, and defend with force if necessary these rights, so long as they respect the right of others to do likewise.
Although libertarians can be too soft-headed about multi-racial tolerance, I recall that some years ago in a mid-sized Texas town the local libertarians were the first to step forward into the public limelight to defend of the right of White Separatists – who said some rude things about certain favored races, who were being falsely vilified by the press, and who were unjustly prosecuted in the courts – to express their ideas, no matter how offensive, and to associate or disassociate with whomever they wanted, regardless of their reasons, so long as they did not harm, or did not threaten to harm, others.
For someone to cite a “paucity of principled thinking and behavior” among libertarians or to equate libertarians with libertines tells me that he knows nothing about them.
Libertarians maintain a constant presence at major gay rights events. Somehow they deem the homosexual group to be exempt from their principle of individual liberty.
Lonejack,
I posted a longish post the other day elaborating on my views, but it disappeared. I’ll try attaching it to this response. You won’t like it, but at least you’ll have a better idea where I’m coming from.
What libertarian philosophe has taken on the ADL or hate speech laws? I’d like the title of his magnum opus.
Libertarians shy away from controversial issues that nevertheless are central to freedom. Back in the 1960s and ’70s, for example, they mostly talked about legalizing drugs and opposing the Vietnam War, omitting the rest. Obviously, there are exceptions, but I’m more interested in the glaring norm. And if they don’t believe in their own principles on the tough issues, why should anyone else?
Anyway, here are my extended comments from the other day. They were in response to Yggdrasil’s remarks.
FURTHER COMMENT
Well, I came indirectly to racialism via libertarianism. So it left an impression on me in my formative years. Of course, I was never dogmatic. And I considered myself a classical liberal rather than a libertarian. I still am one, more or less.
It’s necessary to remain empirically grounded—facts have to matter. Ideologies, including libertarianism, tend to militate against this. Instead of adjusting ideological beliefs to fit facts, most people allow ideology to dictate “facts” to them. E.g., “Whites are evil, Jews and non-whites godly.”
I’m not enamored of totalitarianism, “might is right,” survival of the fittest, etc. I don’t like living in a dictatorship. No human beings should have absolute power.
I greatly admire what the American founders attempted and achieved. Obviously, they were human beings engaged in a human enterprise, so they, and their creation, were not perfect. But one does not look for perfection in an imperfect world.
The remark, “You have a Republic, if you can keep it,” reflects their sober realism. (Or John Quincy Adams: “Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.”) They weren’t trying to create heaven on earth (utopia); any well-balanced man will avoid utopianism like the plague. Nor did the framers fix things for all time, or attempt to. Constant adjustments were left for each succeeding generation.
You put your finger on a central failure of libertarianism: “Liberty, freedom and individualism (the libertarian core) are in-group (White) values, the responsible exercise of which presupposes a common culture.” I certainly would not rule out freedom for non-whites in their own lands, but my attitude is akin to that of J. Q. Adams (again) (just substitute the “white race” for “America”):
“Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” (July 4, 1821)
It seems pretty clear that free, individualist white societies do create more prosperity and intellectual advancement. It’s hard to ignore the incredible leap forward civilization took during the liberal era.
Dogmatic libertarianism loses sight of the old idea of a “society of ordered liberty.” Order was as important as liberty, morality as freedom. Historically, the free society was embedded within a concrete racial-cultural context.
Personally, I can’t imagine how we can vote our way out of our present predicament, so I never think in terms of electoral politics. The existing rulers do not believe in democracy. “If voting could change anything, they’d make it illegal”— like free speech and association.
You’re quite right that libertinism and libertarianism are pretty much coextensive. A Jewish libertarian, Walter Block, promotes every kind of abomination in the name of “freedom,” including slavery.
Your last three paragraphs concern “the practical difficulties of achieving” the restraint-freedom balance that Hayek advocated in the paragraph I quoted. Obviously, the balance has been lost, and a mafia now dominates the state, while favored subsidiary gangs pillage and plunder.
Nevertheless, estimable men believed the balance could be struck, and for a time it was.
The alternative approach, concentrating power in the state, has also been tried and has also failed. Millions and millions of people died or were sent to prisons and camps, whites and Asians alike.
>>>The original United States Naturalization Law of March 26, 1790 (1 Stat. 103) provided the first rules to be followed by the United States in the granting of national citizenship. This law limited naturalization to immigrants who were “free white persons” of “good moral character”<<< (Wiki)
This country, conceived in Liberty, was also Conceived in Whiteness. . .not Universalism. . .As we have moved away from one, we have also moved away from the other. . .how did they reconcile radical freedom with racial exclusiveness? . . . Some of these Enlightenment eggheads had both feet securely on the ground. . .
Yes, we need restrictions. A gated community can have them, by contract, without the initiation of force. . .
It is quite interesting to watch the racial agonies of the United States’ European population result in a surge for Libertarianism and establishment-critic Tea Parties. The Tea Party movement in particular is of interest, since it represents the embryo of a White ethnic movement. Corresponding currents in Europe are of a different character, but neverhteless all these upstart parties and media-scolded popular movements are a clear sign that our tribe thinking and group coherence is returning.
Whilst I’m quite sure that we’ll have good chances to restore our control over our future, this cannot be an unavoidable 100 % certain possibility, of course. Whatever the future holds in stock for us, we will not go down without a clawing fight.
Remember, you yankees over the pond, that to form families and amass children must be our prime duty.
Handskakning
I would also like to forward a big “thank you” to professor MacDonald, whose work have been of immense importance in awakening people through the media of the Internets. Three years ago, I was unaware of any wider Jewish influence working in the Western world apart from the obvious Israeli and diaspora-religious issues. Then, I found my way to a certain, large Swedish debate forum, and reality caught up.
Whilst I cannot myself afford to visit Forum Europa in Stockholm, I wish you the best of luck.
Thank you.
Handskakning
Many libertarians advocate open borders. Others view open borders as an affront to the principle of property rights.
One libertarian vocally noted that the Libertarian Party doesn’t practice “open borders” at their conventions. That is, not just anyone can walk through the door. Rather, the party requires registration and documentation to attend.
What applies to a convention should apply to a nation.
Some libertarians vehemently oppose civil rights agendas as affronts to personal liberty and property rights. Their views are not racial, though they are routinely accused of racism.
I would like to remind Occidental that quoting and referencing their own articles is not evidence.
There is so much wrong with Dr. MacDonald’s thesis that it is hard to know where to start responding or more importantly if it is even worth the effort.
Barbara Branden, a former hagiographer and later hatchet jober on Rand, did correctly state in her otherwise fictional book, The Passion Of Ayn Rand, that nothing mattered less in the whole world to Ayn than being Jewish.
Rand’s sole support of Israel was based on anti-Arab racism as recently revealed again in Ayn Rand Q&A book. She thought the Arabs were primitive Third World untermenschen. It was a Cowboys versus Indians thing with her and she had similar views on the Indians.
95% of all Jews loathe Rand and Objectivism and the unrelated philosophy of libertarianism. I know this very well from my Jewish wife of 24 years, we can no
more civilly discuss Rand than we can holocaust revisionism, we just have to avoid
the topic. I’ve read Atlas Shrugged 23 times in 50 years plus Rand’s other works
and have taken the extensive History Of Western Philosophy by her intellectual & physical heir , Leonard Peikoff. Plus I had dinner with Ayn and Frank in NYC in the 60s.
Attended all the Nathaniel Branden Institute lectures except Greenspan’s but read Von Mises and Rothbard instead on Austrian Economics.
Libertarianism is a slapdash concoction invented by juvenile anarchists now of early old age to put over a package deal of anarchism, religion, altruism and pop art culture which Rand totally opposed in all aspects. Libertarians subscribe to a Soviet Chomsky view of the so-called Cold War and many are potheads. Rand opposed all narcotics drugs but advocated decriminalization. Rand opposed the public accomodations
and EEOC (then called FEPC) sections of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as well as fair housing laws and school busing. Hardly mainstream Jewish thought.
Rand created a fully comprehensive philosophy called Objectivism which encompasses much more than politics.
Immigration would stop if the social safety net was abolished and if the US closed its world empire and came home. It was specific Great Society legislation that opened the Third World floodgates inspired by the immoral altruist stupid brother’s keeper morality.
Hume and Kant destroyed reason by severing it from reality. It’s way too long to go into here but Peikoff’s book on Objectivism and his extended audio lecture deal with this in copious detail. Much more comprehensive than The Teaching Company or a standard college philosophy course.
The usual atomism charge against Rand is wrong since she advocated a free society where benevolent social relations are possible.
In the end all groups are solely composed of individuals and as long as they don’t have the power to legislate others’ lives they are not a legal threat.
There’s much more to say but this will suffice for now.
Immigration would not stop if the United States withdrew its pretendant-empire (proper empires have conquered territories and colonies, not just a soup of fragile, CIA-upheld dictator marionettes that are benevolent to American big business and Israel) and killed its social welfare: There are millions of people in the so-called Third World that would give an arm to reach the rich countries and lead a life as a beggar or criminal here rather than in their home country.
In the end humans are pack animals and nearly all individuals (atoms) belong to ethnic, but also religious, groups (molecules). Even if Jewish interests would have no power to enforce “freedom-hostile” legislation (a.k.a. hate crimes), private Jewish financial and intellectual interests would still have the power to shape goyim’s thoughts through the media.
Anyhow, we’re returning to tribe thinking and group cohesion. The Enlightenment is burning itself dead.
And you believed her?
Most right-wing jews do.
“Is Libertarianism a Jewish Intellectual Movement?”
Carlos W. Porter, 2001:
By contrast, I never met one single Objectivist who had any children. To my knowledge, neither Rand nor her associates ever had children. None of the characters in any of Rand’s novels have children; there is no mention of children. In the “rational” world of the Objectivists, children simply do not exist; presumably they are to be “decanted”, as in BRAVE NEW WORLD.
Reproduction, of course, does not matter, because there will be unlimited foreign immigration, encouraged by the abolition of immigration controls and minimum-wage laws. Foreign immigrants, of course, will adopt “American values” as soon as we convert them to the philosophy of Ayn Rand!
Racial equality — the absolute interchangeability of human beings, like standardized, mass-manufactured, industrial spare parts — is simply taken for granted, and asserted as self-evident (for example, in THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS). There are no foreign-born characters in any of Rand’s novels. ATLAS SHRUGGED is a novel about the future of America; much of the action takes place in New York City. There are no Puerto Ricans, no blacks, no Mexicans, Chinese or Jews. There are no race problems. Race problems are “irrational”, so they simply do not exist!
So much for the “rational” Objectivists and their ability to “perceive reality”! Yet Rand was an enthusiastic supporter of Israel. We have seen Rand’s own racial group at work in Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, and elsewhere: the most fanatical “racists” in the history of the world. Is the whole “philosophy” a put-on? A con? A schnor? A bubba mayseh devised by a meschuggemensch, to be peddled to the goyische schmoon?
To sum up: it is a philosophy typically, totally Jewish in conception and style.
With one glaring exception — Arabs. Arabs are “primitive Third World untermenschen.” But Rand’s virulent hatred of Arabs — strictly-speaking, her anti-Semitism — had absolutely nothing to do with her being jewish; we know this because a biographer wrote, in a book that was otherwise filled with questionable assertions, that “nothing mattered less in the whole world to Ayn than being Jewish.”
Would you like to buy the Brooklyn Bridge? I’ll sell it to you for a dollar.
Ayn Sof (sometimes transliterated as Ein Sof in English) refers to the Divine (or G_d). In Hebrew it means “Boundlessness”, but is usually translated as “Without End.” It is often referred to as the “Infinite No-Thingness.” It should be clearly understood that this does NOT mean that It is “nothing” for It is NOT a THING, but is a “somethingness” that cannot be defined or fully understood by the human mind. Ayn Sof, in the Jewish Kabbalistic tradition, is the ultimate source of all existence!
As a matter of additional insight, Daniel Matt writes that Ayn Sof is the “oneness of it all that we call G_d.” In Genesis, the opening line of the 1st verse is usually translated “In the Beginning, G_d created the heavens and the earth” (KJV). In regards to this verse, the Zohar (the great Mystical text of Jewish Kabbalah) interpreted the meaning of the original Hebrew a little differently. With that mystical understanding, a better translation of this verse would be “With a beginning, (It) created G_d, heavens and earth”. The “It” is that Oneness, the Infinite No-Thingness…of course then that begs us to ask the question: To what is the G_d that is referred to that “It” created? That’s a topic that I’m sure I’ll address in a future article.
http://www.aynsof.info/
“Indeed, libertarianism philosophy reminds me of Kant’s categorical imperative which states that one must “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.””
Thank you! I have seen this as a huge issue that I feel that many people miss. This is the first time I have seen someone else bring up Kant in a while!
I am a tribalist, and therefore a Libertarian in some ways. I also am a Nationalist. I believe nations, ethnicities, cultures, should have the right and even encouragement to come together in communities. I believe the purpose of the state (and it needs to be a strong state) (hence my contradiction to libertarianism) is to protect the soveriegnty of each community. One tribe does not have the right to interfere with another tribe. The state would kind of be a United Nations with Muscle to protect local communities and their freedom. I community could practice Sharia law, but not in my town.
I don’t know if such a vision would come to pass until after some apocalyptic calamity. But I do think it is the only way to live in a diverse world. To live with one’s kind. But to respect the Other without treding on their toes.
Q.
Your reasoning foresees and encourages the disintegration of our society into tribes formed by different ethnic ,racial groups practicing their own laws and culture. Why would we want that? Non-Whites do not belong with Whites. It’s just a bit of natural law and history. The entire third-world hate us and I’m totally against your vision of integrated-multiculturalism.
As for the Muslims practicing ” Sharia Law” and all the others practicing their own laws and cultures, let them practice all what they want , but in their own Countries. Not in the United States, not in any of the White Countries.
Let’s replace all of the members of Congress, except a few, and get rid of all non-Whites before they will get rid of us.
A fantastic essay by Dr MacD and precisely correct. Long time coming. Many of us Wn were liberterians at one time and is mostly just useful thinking to break oneself away from the mass mind and cultivate independent thinking.
Then one’s thinking should be reformed around ideas of organic social benefit rather than arbitrary, state-capitalist or Jewish imposed social constructs like this socalled “creedal nation.”
Liberterianism is just another such “creedal nation” contrivance invented by right wing jews like Rand who disliked their fellow travelling Jewish communist types and wanted to peddle their own brand of Schtick.
I would also add that much of the NS “volksgemeinschaft” social welfare policy had its roots in the obvious thousand years of Holy Roman Empire local-Germanic-ethnic/ Roman-Catholic religious morality that placed the people above the individual in social ethics. Jews are just as much against Roman Catholic social justice concepts as they are against NS organic welfare concepts. Six of one, half dozen the other to a Jew.
But capitalist individualism reverses that and much of Ayn Rand’s work is a two-note boring repetition of propaganda against “priests and kings.” A similiar project espoused by jews in earlier generations under the guise of freemasonry.
How does one deal with the polar opposites? On the one hand are the innovators, thinkers, producers and consumers (those that trade value for value) and on the other hand the shuffling herd; hide-bound, church-going (not so much, anymore, but they actually believe in some kind of god) drudges that provide stability, labor and a ready market for the mass-marketed junk produced by their betters (in name only). Only wealth releases one from the imperative that requires one to discriminate between the brown or white savage who brings nothing more than sweat and the figurative shovel to the bargain, and the cultivated and discriminating host of thought and action. Because it is wealth that provides the separation and distance between the swarm and the individual, the jewish question and the white culture question are largely irrelevant to the self-contained, atomistic individual. Mr. McDonald is writing, of course, for his particular congregation. His message is, naturally, anathema to the concept of the individual, which is why wealth is necessary to protect oneself. The moral? Accumulate and insulate.
Well written, McDonald. Some comments:
–As you say, there are powerful reasons for why there have been no pure libertarian societies. When all societies across the world back in history behaved in similar ways – such as inventing marriage, government, non-communism and non-libertarianism – there are reasons for it.
–Libertarian ideology on paper is bad. But “libertarians” in real life often have many conservatives among them – who simply want to distance themselves from the GOP by adopting some other label than “conservative.” So they’re a varied bunch.
–Libertarian websites like LRC are best when exposing the government’s actions, and at their worst when presenting an alternative. This means you can pick up a lot of good facts from LRC, but you must get the “politically incorrect” facts that explain it all elsewhere.
–There is a great deal of hypocrisy among libertarians, I have noticed. At LRC, there are MANY smart-ass essays and blog comments about how you shouldn’t vote. It goes like this: “Your vote only matters if the election is decided by a single vote. Even if your vote affects policy in a tiny way, you profit very little from that. You profit more from spending those hours on election day working, instead of going to the voting booth.” HOWEVER, when it comes to Ron Paul it all goes out the window. Suddenly voting is fine. And what about LRC’s own writers? Why don’t they tell themselves: “My essay does no good. It would only matter if policy is decided by one single essay. I profit more from working than from writing for people who I don’t even know.” But no, they don’t say that. So they’re hypocrites.
–When “anarchist” libertarians support Ron Paul, things become real absurd. They play their holier-than-thou game 364 days a year, because it is easier to reject all government than explain why having a little government is okay but not more than that. They claim to be uncompromising. But then they support Ron Paul – who is NOT an anarchist. Showing they are not true anarchists, they are just too cowardly to stand up for minimal government, which is harder than being anarcho-extreme.
–They are also absurd in advocating drug use. The rule is: “Anything the government is against, we must be for.” (Likewise, they supported the Libyan rebels only until U.S. forces started supporting them. Then suddenly they started mocking the rebels for not being “a real army.”) Lew Rockwell writes that driving while jacked up on heroin is a “non-crime.” Even though it is bound to kill people. What sane person would support that kind of libertarian society?
–Hypocrisy then comes back when LRC doesn’t write any tons of essays supporting homosexuality. Because that goes against their Catholic sensitivities. (As well it should.) Supporting people killing themselves through drugs, but not burying themselves in the gay swamp? That shows they are selective and not at all as principled as they pretend to be.
……At the end of the day, libertarianism is simply a beaten Right. The Right’s values were declared Fascist, racist, sexist by the Left, and some caved in. They escaped to the only moral high ground the Right possessed, which was Liberty. They took that single thing and ran with it. “It doesn’t matter that we don’t dare stand up for anything else. Liberty is enough. If the Left’s government programs are deprived of money and oppressive legislation in the name of Liberty, then conservative values still win.” The problem with that: when not explaining conservative and racial values, newcomers to politics fall for the Left’s explanation. And NO ONE except a handful of people is motived by “freedom”, they are motivated by values, that sometimes need to be imposed. So libertarianism helps cede ground to the Left: “My libertarian friend, you say racism is bad? Just like the Left says? I believe you. Then I’m with the Left when they say it must be stopped through legislation and mass immigration. I don’t care about freedom, when we have just identified a terrible evil that must be stopped.”
To all racists and intellectual racists, it is too late, multiculturalism is here to stay–the U.S. is bound to become a BRAZIL–multiracial, multiethnic society, plus as long as capitalism and the free market exists—consumerism is winning the war against racists- CONSUMERISM is breaking down, not only borders, but also racial barriers, ethinic lines etc. I know many white women and white men married to non-whites and living happily, eating ethnic foods etc. You cannot stop it.
This would not have happened to whites had they not brought slaves to america-
The seeds for multiculturalism in america were sown at its creation with slavery.
Anti-Semitism is here to stay. There’s a billion Muslims in the world that hate Jews and the Jews in the West are happy to blame “evil, right-wing, Evangelical, Christians”, Israel’s only allies. Jews are going to be wiped off the face of the earth once Multiculturalism turns the world into a Muslim shithole.
And there’s nothing you can do to stop it because you Jews have destroyed the only people who gave a shit about you.
The reason I believe Ron Paul is so attractive has more to do with the expanse of the federal govt in our lives. The patriot act is destroying our civil liberties and crony capitalism as well as the military industrial complex feed off big Government. Pure libertarianism is a fantasy that would never happen even if Ron Paul was elected. We are electing a 3rd of the government not a king. If the government could be reduced by half it would be considered a great victory. The best way to stop illegal immigration is to stop the incentive, no welfare or benefits. This is Ron’s position. Jews are not in favor of Ron Paul as witness the MSM treatment of him, Cutting all foreign aid including Israel, stopping the wars is a direct assault on the Neo Cons and those in power.