Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Divided They Fall

"Nader and Libertarians Not Welcome: A Splintered Antiwar Movement"

There was not a single Libertarian speaker even though the Libertarians and Old Right have been far more outspoken in opposing the war than the liberal "Left." Compare the pages of The American Conservative or Antiwar.com [not to mention Chronicles--P.Z.] with the editorials of The Nation, which endorsed the pro-war Kerry candidacy in 2004. This writer tried for months to get Ron Paul, the Libertarian/Republican Congressman from Texas, now a Republican presidential candidate, invited to speak at the rally and did so also in 2005. Several of us made an appeal to get Justin Raimondo, the Libertarian editor of Antiwar.com invited to speak. We got no response from UFPJ, and still have received none. In contrast, Raimondo advertised the UFPJ demonstration in a prominent place on his web site, and he even offered to pay his own air fare to D.C. to speak. But no response was forthcoming from whatever committee decides on the speakers, a committee which is none too visible. UFPJ was just plain rude to Raimondo. In general it appears that the liberal "Left" has scant knowledge about the Libertarians and less desire to acquire it. Libertarians are just "a bunch of selfish people," according to the PC liberals. But there are more things in heaven and earth than the very PC have dreamed of.

1 comment:

Pauli said...

I hope I detect no note of surprise about this splintering and rudeness. It just demonstrates the open secret -- the so-called anti-war movement is just a masquerade for the far left agenda. Of course they don't give a hoot in hell about Libertarians! Why would they People showing up and speaking at these rallies are mostly members of some international communist party or another, arguably the exact opposite of a libertarian view.

If you are genuinely interested in protesting the war I'm sure they'll let you march, but they'll only let you speak if you're one of them. Coalition be damned -- that's how the left thinks.