Of course we could not resist: in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of a certain famous speech, the Carlyle Club feels obligated to offer a word of advice to libertarians in this, the complement to ‘Black Magic.’

Table of Contents

(Above: Exeter Hall, the Anti-Slavery Society, and the Anti-Corn Law League.)

Truly, my philanthropic friends, Exeter Hall philanthropy is wonderful; and the social science—not a “gay science,” but a rueful—which finds the secret of this universe in “supply and demand,” and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone, is also wonderful. Not a “gay science,” I should say, like some we have heard of; no, a dreary, desolate and, indeed, quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science. These two, Exeter Hall philanthropy and the Dismal Science, led by any sacred cause of black emancipation, or the like, to fall in love and make a wedding of it—will give birth to progenies and prodigies: dark extensive moon-calves, unnameable abortions, wide-coiled monstrosities, such as the world has not seen hitherto! Thomas Carlyle

Libertarianism is a post-WWII revival of the Manchester Capitalist line of 19th century English radicalism, easily distinguished from the dominant Exeter Hall or “Orange” line by the neo-Manchesterite’s elevation of Liberty over the other great murderous insurrectionary war cries of the late 18th century. Unfortunately for him, repealing the Corn Laws was never quite as exciting as abolishing slavery, and Exeter Hall rules the world to this day—or “practices global leadership,” if you like. Our disciple of Rothbard, up to his elbows in the bones of Richard Cobden and crusty with the dirt of John Bright’s grave, looks up and sees the parade of Progress has passed him by, blaring Equality and Diversity—all men created equal in ability, by federal if not natural law; “equal opportunity” adjusted accordingly; and America’s greatest strength finally revealed as racial inhomogeneity—and sparing not one vuvuzela toot for Liberty—“free markets” and “limited government,” like “states’ rights,” exposed as just one more way of calling President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama a “dirty nigger.”

In this issue of Radish, we’ll be delving into libertarianism’s little race problem, and all the ways libertarians have tried and utterly failed to deal with it, before offering a few helpful suggestions of our own. Oh, and don’t worry: we promise not to say “nigger” again unless it’s absolutely necessary.

In a recent AlterNet piece with over 450 comments to date, progressive radio host Thom Hartmann, who evidently skipped Orwell’s Politics and the English Language, identifies libertarianism as “the velvet glove over the iron fist of racism,” a fist which maintains a “stranglehold of white rule” even as the glove which is on the fist manages to simultaneously “prop up institutional bigotry” and “neuter” the government’s “power.” (He does not tell us if the racist octopus has sung its swan song yet.)

So now comes a political philosophy—libertarianism—that says everything is fine, everything is equal, and government should get the hell out of the way. They say this when the average wealth of a white family [sic] when the median net worth of a white family is $110,729 and that of a black family is $4,955.

But Mr. Hartmann, the average IQ of a white American is 100, whereas the average IQ of a black American is 85 (Radish 1.7). Surely this has some bearing on the observed inequalities in—oh, who am I kidding, facts are racist.

I can’t be the only one who remembers this.

Libertarian Will Wilkinson, writing in The Economist (2013), helpfully locates “the core of the problem with libertarian populism,” namely that “right-wing populism in America has always amounted to white identity politics,”—unlike left-wing populism, which of course has never amounted to racial identity politics, except the good kind (non-white). Thus “the only notable libertarian-leaning politicians to generate real excitement among conservative voters have risen to prominence through alliances with racist and nativist movements.” The magazine generously allows for “[w]ell-meaning, libertarian-leaning, small-government conservatives” who, not being evil white racists, “must find this awfully frustrating.”

PolicyMic’s Raúl Quintana (2013) is not surprised by this “historical association between libertarian movements and white identity politics”: “The libertarian emphasis on limited government often echoes the state’s rights rhetoric used to justify the neo-Confederate movements long associated with the last openly racist elements of American society.” Yes, the emphasis echoes the rhetoric, which justifies the movements associated with racist elements—like the Nazis in Sophie’s Choice, starring Meryl Streep, who appeared in The River Wild with Kevin Bacon. Quintana demands that libertarianism’s “racial connections” be “brought to light and condemned,” so let me be the first to condemn Kevin Bacon for his six degrees of separation from racist libertarians.

I’m sure the reader is familiar with the intermittent scandal of the Ron Paul newsletters. The Carlyle Club would like to thank David Cohen, former Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Interior, for promptly reminding us, during the late 2011 outbreak, that “there is a word for a person who associates with bigots and is not sufficiently offended by their bigotry to expose it. That word is ‘bigot’” (The Daily Caller, 2011). Having demonstrated “a tolerance of bigotry that itself rises to the level of bigotry,” Ron Paul is said to have “already been established” as a bigot “through solid evidence.” It follows, of course, that anyone insufficiently offended by Ron Paul’s bigotry is also a bigot, as is anyone who tolerates them, and so on and so forth. We must therefore expose and condemn Kevin Bacon as yet another offensive, intolerable bigot, in order that he not infect us all through his mere three degrees of separation from bigotry’s Patient Zero.

Even this, I fear, may not be enough to save us. The plague of bigotry spreads; how are we to survive it? What is the uninfected libertarian to do?

(Above: Come on, libertarians! Attack like Devil Forrest! Defend like Stonewall Jackson! No, I regret nothing about this analogy! Art by Don Troiani.)

There are three basic libertarian defenses against a charge of racism (whether it be reckless intolerance, receiving stolen privilege, or grand theft human dignity). All of them are cowardly and counterproductive, and not one of them works, because “anti-racists” are thugs, not thinkers, who use words as weapons (see: the “critical theory” and “dialectic” of cultural Marxism, also known as “political correctness”). For what it’s worth, here they are:

Dissociation: “I swear I’m not a racist, unlike those other libertarians.” Brinkmanship: “I swear I’m not a racist, because true libertarianism is anti-racist.” Suicide: “I swear I’m not a racist, and to prove it I’m going to throw open the borders to the entire Third World” (Radish 1.5).

I like examples. Let’s look at a few.

“When it comes to American history,” sneers Michael Lind, too left-wing even for neo-conservatism, “libertarians tend retrospectively to side with the Confederacy against the Union.” Then, as the libertarian reels from the blow: “For that matter, where was the libertarian right during the great struggles for individual liberty in America in the last half-century? The libertarian movement has been conspicuously absent from the campaigns for civil rights for nonwhites, women, gays and lesbians” (Salon, 2011). And let us not forget how “tariffs to protect American companies in Tracinski’s alleged Golden Age of American libertarianism were joined by racist immigration restrictions,” nor that libertarian hero Calvin Coolidge “evidently believed racist pseudoscience” (Salon, 2013).

Libertarian Ben Domenech mistakes this for an argument, and I’m sure if Lind spat in his face Domenech would debate that too. Michael Lind writes to intimidate, not to illuminate, with the power of Exeter Hall behind him. Domenech’s attempt to reflect the charge of racism back at his accuser, in a common variation on the brinkmanship defense, is futile (Real Clear Politics, 2013): “Harding opened his presidency with a clarion call for anti-lynching bills… criticizing the rise of the Ku Klux Klan… again and again raising anti-lynching laws… appointed African Americans to senior positions… spoke on the rights of African Americans, Catholics, and Jews,” etc., whereas Wilson was “perhaps the most racist president in our history… a former Klan member who enjoyed telling racist jokes in public… supported segregation to the hilt… appointed radically racist individuals to key positions… racist activity… racist rhetoric… excusing racism… racist leaders,” etc., etc.

Now the blood is really in the water. Go get ’em, Lind: an “ethnocentric non-Hispanic White Right,” indeed a “bitter, desperate, demographically declining White Right,” intent on “reducing black and Latino electoral power” (Salon, 2013), “fueled by white racial panic” (Salon, 2013); and let us not forget the “aging non-Hispanic white conservative voters,” “aging white reactionaries,” and other “declinists of the White Right,” “sabotaging the nation-state that the eventual victors will inherit… using photo ID requirements, understaffed polling stations and other sleazy methods” (Salon, 2013). The “eventual victors” are, of course, “brown” Americans.

Of course it does not occur to Mr. Domenech that he could take on that charge of “racist pseudoscience” by appealing not only to the latest research on human biodiversity, but also to such luminaries as philosopher of science David Hume (1742, p. 551), founding father Thomas Jefferson (1784, pp. 206–213), and biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1871, pp. 20–21), to name just a few (Radish 1.7); nor that he might take up those “racist immigration restrictions” on behalf of the “ethnocentric non-Hispanic White Right,” setting them against Lind’s “eventual victors” and their “electoral power” (Radish 1.5). Lind certainly sets him up for it:

Today, non-Hispanic whites are a minority in California, Texas and other states. By the middle of the 21st century, non-Hispanic whites will be a minority in the U.S. population as a whole, according to some projections. Who knows? Maybe in the future the outnumbered non-Hispanic white group, or other minority communities, will need to be protected against unjust attempts to dilute their votes by new, post-white majorities that prove to be as ethnocentric and undemocratic as non-Hispanic whites frequently were when they enjoyed majority status.

“Who knows?” Who indeed. I have a Mr. Jared Taylor on the line (White Identity, 2011):

Hispanics show typical patterns of ethnic solidarity. … The third major national Hispanic organization, also founded in 1968, is National Council of La Raza. La raza literally means “the race” in Spanish. Hispanic activists often use this term for Hispanics as a group, just as blacks call other blacks “brothers.” Like the other groups [LULAC and MALDEF], La Raza promotes official recognition of Spanish, increased immigration, preferences for Hispanics, and amnesty for illegal immigrants. La Raza was delighted when Alberto Gonzalez was appointed the nation’s first Hispanic attorney general. At a reception for him in 2005, Janet Murguia, a former vice chancellor at the University of Kansas and at that time president of La Raza, chaired the event, announcing, “We are going to put our people first.” In 1994, La Raza gave its “Chicano of the Year” award to University of Texas professor Jose Angel Gutierrez, who has said, “We have got to eliminate the Gringo, and what I mean by that is that if the worse comes to the worst, we have got to kill him.” Professor Gutierrez has also said: “We have an aging white America. They are not making babies. They are dying. It’s a matter of time. The explosion is in our population. You must believe that you are entitled to govern… Se estan cagando cabrones de miedo! (They [whites] are shitting in their pants with fear.) I love it!” In 2004, at a Latino Civil Rights Summit, he added, “We are the future of America… We’re going to Latinize this country.” … Many Hispanics take it for granted that it is only a matter of time before they push aside the “Anglo” power structure. As Armando Navarro, a professor at the University of California at Riverside, boasted in 1995: “[T]ime is on our side, as one people as one nation within a nation as the community that we are, the Chicano/Latino community of this nation. What that means is a transfer of power. It means control.” … How do Hispanics plan to use their power? Gloria Molina, Los Angeles county supervisor, explained: “[W]e are politicizing every single one of those new [Hispanic] citizens that are becoming citizens of this country… But I gotta tell you that a lot of people are saying, ‘I’m going to go out there and vote because I want to pay them back.’” “Them,” of course, meant whites.

And so on and so forth (American Renaissance).

(Above: Not a passage Kirchick chose to quote, possibly because it’s specific enough to be easily verified.)

Former Beltway Wonk walks us through the Beltway libertarians’ dissociative response to the 2008 outbreak of the Ron Paul newsletter scandal in ‘The Orange Line: anatomy of a smear campaign.’ Timothy Sandefur collects the rest in ‘The libertarian repudiation of Pauline Paleoconservatism.’ (“Remember, I’m not interested in people defending Paul here, let alone people defending the paleo-cons.” Oh, we’ll remember.)

It began, of course, with James Kirchick in the New Republic. What horrors he found! One excerpt claimed: “if you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.” Perhaps this is what Andrew Sullivan meant by “repellent,” “ugly, vile, despicable” “excrescences” “full of truly appalling bigotry.” It’s difficult to be sure. Now, Daniel Koffler of Pajamas Media and Reason magazine has already proclaimed that, in light of such “disturbing” and “disgraceful” material, “the defense of Paul is now, itself, indefensible,” but here’s a defense no one tried:

Data: Census, UCR, NCVS

Koffler’s own “Racist Pull Quotes” include straightforward truths like: “We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, but it is hardly irrational” (see Radish 1.6), which might one of the “really stunning,” “truly odious,” and “simply jaw-dropping” remarks identified by Reason’s Nick Gillespie. And: “The criminals who terrorize our cities… are not exclusively young black males, but they largely are. As children, they are trained to hate whites, to believe that white oppression is responsible for all black ills, to ‘fight the power,’ and to steal and loot as much money from the white enemy as possible” (see Radish 3.1). This must be what The Volokh Conspiracy’s Dale Carpenter meant by “some of the most base impulses in American politics.”

The aforementioned Timothy Sandefur could not contain his disgust:

I think we must face the fact that the libertarian community does include many racists and other unsavory characters who see in our message of limited government an opportunity to act on their creepy impulses… We must make it clear that they aren’t welcome in our big tent.

David Bernstein, also of The Volokh Conspiracy, agrees:

The consensus is, basically, that libertarianism needs to more aggressively disassociate itself from right-wing fringe loonies who use libertarianism as a mask to disguise other agendas… Those of us who long ago (as I did) made a decision not to associate with the creepy-paleocons-disguising themselves-as-libertarians in the Lew Rockwell circle—Rockwell being, among other things, the primary suspect as the author of the offensive passages in Ron Paul’s newsletters, though he denied it to the New Republic’s James Kirchik [sic]—need to exert peer pressure on our libertarian friends to follow suit.

Megan McArdle dwells on the “fringes” of libertarianism:

And sufficiently steeped in it to know, as all younger libertarians in the wonkosphere kind of know, that it has some ugly moments in its history. Specifically, a lot of its funding used to come from crazy old white people hoping to turn back the clock to the days before minorities and women got all uppity. Ron Paul is a good example of the kinds of people who got in bed with these folk of the festering fringe… What matters, though, is that this isn’t an important component of “the Movement” any more. … Ron Paul’s unfortunate moment, and the outing of Lew Rockwell and Jeff Tucker as the probable authors of the bile, have given libertarians the opportunity to make decisive break with that past—and thankfully, they all seem to be taking it.

Give them all a pat on the back. I’m sure you’ve noticed the great strides these respectable libertarians have made in the five years since their “decisive break” from the white right. Why, the government’s hardly grown a bit!

We’ll give Ilya Somin (another member of The Volokh Conspiracy) the last word on race and libertarianism:

Ideally, the federal government should have the power to eliminate racial discrimination by state governments… I don’t have the time or the space to argue for this view here…

Hold on a minute, we haven’t given Congressman Paul a chance to defend himself. Take it away, Congressman:

“I’m not a racist. As a matter of fact, Rosa Parks is one of my heroes, Martin Luther King is a hero—because they practiced the libertarian principle of [communist fronts, racial violence].”

Kidding! He actually said “civil disobedience, nonviolence.” And a very good thing, too! If Congressman Paul had deviated, even by a single word, from the script provided for him by the official press of early 21st century US government,—keeper of sacred Truths, arbiter of all matters factual and ethical, guardian of the borders of “acceptable discourse,” if not the actual borders,—why, people might still be linking him with evil racist white racists. Say, in New York magazine (July 2013):

One strange thing about Ron and Rand Paul is that racists keep popping up in their inner circles for no apparent reason. Ron Paul was surrounded by neo-Confederates and published a virulently racist newsletter. Libertarians attracted to his candidacy condemned the newsletters but treated their existence as a kind of indiscretion. “Paul’s wrongdoing is rooted in political opportunism, negligence, and failure to disassociate himself with racists, not racism itself,” wrote Conor Friedersdorf. … Now, obviously, you can like Ron and Rand Paul without being the slightest bit racist. … At the same time, the logic of southern white supremacy and the logic of libertarianism run along very similar lines. They both express themselves in terms of opposition to federal power and support for states’ rights. … The deep connection between the Pauls and the neo-Confederate movement doesn’t discredit their ideas, but it’s also not just an indiscretion. It’s a reflection of the fact that white supremacy is a much more important historical constituency for anti-government ideas than libertarians like to admit.

I haven’t mentioned Senator Rand Paul yet. Recently we were treated to a rare and delightful variation on the dissociative defense, with a smooth brinkmanship finish, as the Senator’s former social media director Jack Hunter disavowed his own past self as insufficiently libertarian, hence racist (Washington Post, 2013):

“I’ve long been a conservative, and years ago, a much more politically incorrect (and campy) one,” Hunter wrote. “But there’s a significant difference between being politically incorrect and racist. I’ve also become far more libertarian over the years, a philosophy that encourages a more tolerant worldview, through the lens of which I now look back on some of my older comments with embarrassment.”

Anything to add, Senator Paul?

Paul stood by Hunter two weeks ago, saying his past comments were “absolutely stupid,” but that he didn’t think Hunter held any racist views. “If I thought he was a white supremacist, he would be fired immediately,” Paul said.

Which defense, of course, worked perfectly (Daily Beast, July 2013):

But the most important lesson to be gleaned from this episode is that Rand Paul defended Hunter to the end. Indeed, by all accounts it was Hunter who decided to quit. He was not forced out. That should hardly come as a surprise, as cavorting with extremists is a key part of the Paul family playbook. In the midst of the newsletter scandal, when many of Ron Paul’s most die-hard supporters urged him to do it, he never distanced himself from Lew Rockwell, his former chief of staff who most likely penned the screeds.

Maybe next year, Congressman and Senator Paul; maybe next year. In the meantime, console yourselves with the knowledge that Ayn Rand—who among libertarian heroes surely ranks close to Rosa Parks—had a pesky race problem of her own, with defenses to match (Forbes, 2013):

Fifty years ago, at the height of the American civil rights movement, Rand wrote this short essay condemning racism… Rand was writing in part to distance herself from so-called conservatives (not limited to Southerners) who claimed to defend capitalism and individual freedom while advocating racism at the same time.

Dissociation down, brinkmanship still to go (Ayn Rand Lexicon):

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.

Unfortunately for Ms. Rand, depending on how we define “moral, social or political significance,” racism is either true or nonexistent. I’ll start with true. Have the races not evolved distinctive traits? They have.

Do we not observe different distributions of intellectual and characterological traits between the races? We do.

Is the brain not built according to a genetic blueprint, hence subject to all the usual evolutionary forces? It is.

Does the brain not produce our intellectual and characterological traits? It does (plus or minus an immortal soul).

Must there not, therefore, be alleles associated with certain traits of “moral, social or political significance”? There must be, and there are. General intelligence is one obvious example, aggression another (Peter Frost, 2010; my emphasis):

… male aggressiveness is moderately to strongly heritable. A heritability of 40% is suggested by a meta-analysis of 51 twin and adoption studies (Rhee and Waldman, 2002). A later twin study indicates a heritability of 96%, the subjects being 9–10 year-olds from diverse ethnic backgrounds (Baker, Jacobson, Raine, Lozano, and Bezdjian, 2007). This higher figure reflects the closer ages of the subjects and the use of a panel of evaluators to rate each of them. According to the latest twin study, heritability is 40% when the twins have different evaluators and 69% when they have the same evaluator (Barker, et al., 2009).

Finally, are these alleles not distributed differently between the races? They are.

Let me know when this turns into “collectivism,” Ms. Rand. Oh, but of course this is not what she had in mind. She was actually setting up a ridiculous straw man no one has ever believed in, so that she might quickly and decisively exercise her right to secede from the neo-Confederacy:

Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind… is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control.

Having defined racism out of existence, Ms. Rand concludes that she is not a racist. Well played, Ms. Rand. As a bonus, adds Richard Hoste: “Not ascribing moral significance to a man’s genetic line would of course lead one to reject the concept of a family, which the old girl [proceeds] to do” (Occidental Quarterly). Well played indeed.

We’re not through with you yet, Ms. Rand, as you’ve also provided us with our first example of the suicide defense, better known as open borders. Just one of your many Facets (2001):

AYN RAND INSTITUTE: Can you give a specific example of when she responded angrily to a question? MARY ANN SURES: Someone asked her for her views on immigration, if she thought it was a good thing. And she got indignant immediately at the very idea that anyone might be opposed to immigration, that a country might not let immigrants in. One of the things she said in her answer was, “Where would I be today if America closed its doors to immigrants?” … And I think she was assuming that immigrants would be like she was—ready and able to make their own way, accepting help if voluntarily given by individuals but not expecting government handouts. …

Don’t do it, Ms. Rand! Don’t make the fatal assumption! Western civilization has so much to live for! Call the Carlyle Club’s National Suicide Prevention Hotline today!

(Above: Not to worry, Beltway libertarians like Bryan Caplan and A. Barton Hinkle have logically deduced that open borders libertarianism is a stellar idea without a single drawback. In the background: actual, terrifying US Chamber of Commerce logo.)

“Libertarianism is applied autism,” wrote C. Van Carter, and the open borders libertarian in particular makes a compelling case for that, if nothing else. Frankly, this is such a target-rich environment, I hardly know where to begin. What’s the literary equivalent of white phosphorus mixed with VX nerve gas? Whatever it is, pump it in.

Logically we are ethically required to open our borders and let all these people in.

Bryan Caplan is always ready to enlighten whatever poor, illogical dunces can’t understand how letting all 15 million Guatemalans, 76 million Congolese, and 1.2 billion Indians move to your country can be a wonderful blessing and a moral necessity (Econlib, 2013):

If you really want to help the world’s victims of oppression and intolerance, open borders is a cheap, humane alternative to military intervention. How many Rwandan lives would have been saved if Tutsis were free to emigrate to the United States? My opponent, Jan Ting, had a theoretically interesting response. Open borders wouldn’t just bring in the oppressed; it would also bring in the oppressors. As a result, horrific conflicts would simply relocate from the Third World to the First. Ting’s argument is extremely compelling… until you look at the facts. The United States contains immigrants from […] Hutus and Tutsis, and virtually every other tribal pairing we associate with internecine bloodshed. […] How often do we hear about members of these groups continuing their ancient conflict in their new homeland? I’m happy to entertain counter-examples, but the first-pass answer is “virtually never.” When people immigrate here, they predictably leave their conflicts behind.

Why, yes, I imagine the Hutus and Tutsis find it much easier, safer, and more enjoyable to rob, rape, and murder white people than to try and attack jungle savages like themselves. Mr. Caplan seems to like lists, so I’ve prepared one just for him: the top five reasons Hutus and Tutsis will attack white people instead of each other.

The average IQ of a Rwandan is about 70. Why rob someone who won’t have any money? White people don’t fight back. Not only are they naturally less aggressive than Africans, they’ve actually been trained to comply with attackers. They may also be afraid of starting another Trayvon Martin debacle. Africans, like everyone else, find white women far more attractive than black women. Why not rape the best? If white people catch you, they will give you a “fair trial,” which means stacking the odds as much as possible in your favor. If you get at least two black jurors, one of them will acquit you (Radish 1.8). In white people prison, you will be fed and clothed, and you can watch TV, exercise, buy drugs, and rape white prisoners until they let you out—yes, even if you got “life without parole.” If you somehow manage to get the death penalty (so uncivilized) the “social justice” brigade will turn out in force to stop the state from putting you down, so just concentrate on staying black and you should be fine.

And as long as we’re “happy to entertain counter-examples,” I will mention just one. As we observed in Radish 1.2, Minnesota (among other places) has imported tens of thousands of Somalian “refugees”—Caplan’s trembling “victims of oppression and intolerance,” no doubt, or so the paperwork says, and who could fake that. Somehow this act of cheap humanity has created an epidemic of assault, murder, more murder, further murder, gang murder, gang warfare, terrorism, more terrorism, racial violence against (who else?) white people, not to mention rape, sex slavery, and more sex slavery. I think it’s fair to say these sex-trafficking ‘refugees’ are “continuing their ancient conflict” against law, order, civilization, and basic human decency, with great enthusiasm, “in their new homeland:”

You ask how many Africans we can save from themselves by opening the borders. How many lives of worth could we save, if we kept these hominids away? Get out your calculator, Mr. Caplan, bearing in mind what you wrote in 2006: “One of the main causes—if not the main cause—of economic, cultural, and other forms of success,” and hence failure, “is genetic” (Econlib). I hear there’s “massive empirical support.”

Freedom means “to be left in peace,” so open all the borders, you racist.

A. Barton Hinkle of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Reason magazine is a true libertarian “anti-racist”: he wants the state to have just enough power to turn black into white, and not one iota more. His defense against the “racism” charge is pure suicide, transcending mere dissociation from the white right or “anti-racist” brinkmanship.

Put it this way: Hinkle cites Bryan Caplan.

Just look how clever Hinkle is, making those stupid closed-border idiots look stupid (Reason, 2013):

Speaking at a “Stop Amnesty” rally in Richmond the other day, Iowa Rep. Steve King explained why Americans should be banned from Canada. “If you bring people from a violent civilization into a less-violent civilization,” he said, “you’re going to have more violence, right? It’s like pouring hot water into cold water. Does it raise the temperature or not?” Since Canada’s violent crime rate is less than half that of the United States, the next step should be obvious: Secure the border—the northern one—to make sure Canada is not overrun by violent Americans.

Oh ho ho. How clever. Meanwhile, in reality, white Americans are about as violent as white Canadians, white Belgians, white Germans, white Swiss, and white people everywhere else in the world. Blacks and, to a lesser extent, mestizos are the reason US crime rates are high. Those are Hinkle’s “violent Americans.” But he is so “anti-racist” that he instinctively mistakes citizenship, a social construct, for a biological reality, and race, a biological reality, for a social construct. Citizenship is a piece of paper, Mr. Hinkle. (Or an executive order, I suppose.)

Hinkle also has an elegant if bizarre argument against any ethical framework that takes into account the “larger social consequences affecting the common good” (Reason, 2011): “If someone came along who could demonstrate that letting blacks and whites intermarry did indeed impose costs on society, then the collective-gooder would have to revise his position” against anti-miscegenation laws. But this “renders the position on intermarriage contingent, rather than absolute.” Therefore, we must adopt “an atomistic, individual-rights framework,” because only the “radical individualist” operating “without regard for the wider societal effect” can support miscegenation absolutely, guaranteed never to revise his position, no matter the “costs on society.”

Hinkle’s ‘Enduring Legacy of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” Speech’ (Reason, 2013) manages to cram in “stupid, cruel, unthinking bigotry,” “the dogs and fire hoses wielded by the gangsters who called themselves the government,” “all the hate of all the bigots arrayed against him,” “a primal scream of pain and rage,” and a few other ahistorical justifications for the post-civil rights epidemic of black-on-white racial violence (Radish 3.1) before reaching its gloriously oblivious conclusion:

… it was freedom—America’s most cherished value and her most glorious promise—to which King devoted his final, loftiest minutes. And that is what made the speech so powerful, too. Because freedom is such a simple concept. Freedom needs no lengthy explanation. It needs no five-year plan, or 10-point agenda, or 30-percent tax, or 200-person bureaucracy. Freedom asks for none of those things. In fact, it doesn’t ask for anything—except to be left in peace.

I agree, Mr. Hinkle, which is why I oppose the open borders and civil rights movements.

(Above: Alex Tabarrok, Matthew Yglesias, and Daniel Stringer, who isn’t important. He was just “left for dead after being chased and savagely beaten by a gang of Asians in a suspected racist attack” (Daily Mail, 2012).)

We must have more. If only an open borders libertarian were saying something insane right now. Oh, wait…

Progressive libertarian Alex Tabarrok (Marginal Revolution, Aug. 30), a professor of economic pseudoscience at George Mason University, approvingly cites a new piece by ultra-progressive Matthew Yglesias (Slate, Aug. 29). Apparently, two other economists, Mette Foget and Giovanni Peri, through elaborate statistical analysis of a most remarkable “database that includes the universe of individuals and establishments in Denmark over the period 1991–2008,” have discovered that the ongoing invasion (Radish 1.5) by Somalis (above) and Iraqis, or “sharp and sustained supply-driven increase in the inflow of non-EU immigrants,” if you will, has enhanced wage outcomes.

We then look at the response of occupational complexity, job upgrading and downgrading, wage and employment of natives in the short and long run… increased supply of non-EU low skilled immigrants… more complex occupations… reallocation… movement across firms… mobility of natives… probability of unemployment… significant shift in the native labor force towards complex service industries… mechanisms protected individual wages… enhanced their wage outcomes… wage gains already in the short-run… gains of the less educated…

“Tada!” Yglesias exclaims, appropriately enough. I think Thomas Carlyle put it best (Chartism, 1839):

Tables are like cobwebs, like the sieve of the Danaides; beautifully reticulated, orderly to look upon, but which will hold no conclusion. Tables are abstractions, and the object a most concrete one, so difficult to read the essence of. There are innumerable circumstances; and one circumstance left out may be the vital one on which all turned. Statistics is a science which ought to be honourable, the basis of many most important sciences; but it is not to be carried on by steam, this science, any more than others are; a wise head is requisite for carrying it on. Conclusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a head that already understands and knows.

But Yglesias is insistent: “A lot of people have twisted themselves into a position where this kind of result strikes them as contrarian or counterintuitive.” Take it away, Mr. Carlyle:

With what serene conclusiveness a member of some Useful-Knowledge Society stops your mouth with a figure of arithmetic! To him it seems he has there extracted the elixir of the matter, on which now nothing more can be said. It is needful that you look into his said extracted elixir; and ascertain, alas, too probably, not without a sigh, that it is wash and vapidity, good only for the gutters.

I must confess, gentle reader, that I count myself among the twisty people. However did I get in this position? Well, I may not have 17 years of Denmark in a database, but I can at least read the newspaper.

I see, for instance, that twin brothers of “foreign background” are being questioned by police after being stabbed during an argument in a Copenhagen schoolyard (Copenhagen Post, Sep. 2). How will this affect their wage outcomes? Alas, I do not know, and neither does commenter “Max,” whose experience is surely not statistically significant:

CPH West gymnasium in Ishøj is hardly a “danish” school judging by the number of student with a so called “foreign background”. Go to ishøj to witness the joy of multiculturalism in its true essence.

What else? “Few of those Danes [sic] who have travelled to Syria to fight in that country’s civil war face legal action when they return home, according to sources within the Muslim community” (Post, Sep. 1). “It is estimated that between one and ten percent of all foreign fighters later take part in terrorist attacks in their home countries, and that the terrorist acts they commit tend to be more effective than those committed by individuals who do not have combat experience.” Is this what our learned economists meant by a response of occupational complexity?

30 Danish daycares have stopped serving pork because Muslims supposedly don’t eat it (Post, July 17), but what use is traditional Danish cuisine to job upgrading and downgrading in the complex service industries?

A Muslim teacher refuses to shake hands with female students (Post, June 17). The education minister calls this “strange.” “We shake hands in Denmark,” she says. Her wage outcomes are unaffected. We lose interest.

In November of last year, 21-year-old half-Ghanaian law student Jonas Thomsen Sekyere was stabbed through the heart in a nightclub (Post). Police turned up four suspects, e.g., Omar Hassan Sheik Muse. A commenter says:

Last time i got the “racist” finger pointed was precisely in the area where this accident happened when I commented there were several groups of 4–5 of these individuals just going around. They were not in the bars or there to party, they were simply looking to stir trouble. I recognize this behavior because back home it is what gipsies do but Danes are just way too naive.

Lacking statistics on nightclub violence, we can draw no conclusions. In July, however, statistics revealed that “Iraqis, Iranians, Turks and Somalis are dramatically overrepresented among convicted rapists in Denmark” (BT.dk).

More than half of convicted rapists in 2010 have immigrant backgrounds, according to official data from Statistics Denmark. … In the last seven years, more than one out of three convicted of rape was either an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants… Immigrants and their descendants account for only ten percent of the Danish population.

In May, four Danish tourists driving through Folkets Park were surrounded by “a group of 10–12 young men,” “pulled from their car and attacked,” in a case of “mistaken identity” (Post).

A 22-year-old man was stabbed three times in the stomach, resulting in internal bleeding and a collapsed lung. He was rushed to the hospital where doctors managed to save his life. … The other victims were kicked and beaten by the group that was reportedly between the ages of 16 and 25.

The attackers belong to the Blågårdsbanden street gang, which admits few white members. Later that month, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service arrested two Somalis “on suspicion of plotting a terror attack” (CBS).

In February, statistics showed that “almost one in ten men under age 25 say they were subject to assault” in 2011 (Post). According to Anna Mee Allerslev, the city’s deputy mayor for integration and employment, “the negative development among young men, especially those with minority backgrounds, is worrying. The environment for a small group in Copenhagen has become brutal, the tone has become raw, and certain things which were never acceptable before are now perfectly legitimate.”

In January, police reported that immigrant criminals were targeting ethnic Danes to make them move away (BT.dk).

If your last name is ‘Hansen’ or ‘Nielsen,’ and you live in the Odense district of Vollsmose, your risk of becoming the victim of a burglary is significantly higher than if you had had a more foreign-sounding surname. A burglary campaign against ethnic Danes has spread in the troubled district in the recent months. … … There have been approximately 150 burglaries the last four months. What is striking is that nine out of ten burglaries are now directed against ethnic Danes, a police officer at Funen Police headquarters explains. The police officer does not want us to publish his name for fear of losing his job.

In 2007, Alex Tabarrok wrote: “I understand individual rights and I understand counting everyone equally but I see less value in counting some in and some out based on arbitrary characteristics like which side of the border the actors fall on.” You may be wondering how this is relevant to the ethnic cleansing of Danes. I wonder too.

Danish sociologist Henrik Dahl recently gave a remarkable interview to The Vancouver Sun (Aug. 28):

In Denmark, where we are now visiting family, it’s not hard to see why suspicion grows about Muslim immigrants. There are a few too many grim stories to ignore. We had a long conversation this week with one of Denmark’s top public intellectuals, sociologists and authors, Henrik Dahl. Raised in a Lutheran pastor’s household (though now non-religious) and rooted in left-wing Danish politics, Dahl is a noted trend-spotter who doesn’t toe what in Canada is the politically correct optimistic line about immigrant integration, particularly of Muslims. For the most part he doesn’t think immigration has worked in Denmark. … While some Muslim immigrants and refugees are fitting in quietly to Denmark’s generous welfare society—where everything from daycare to higher education is mostly paid for by taxpayers—Dahl argues most Danish Muslims just don’t seem to understand or respect that Western democracies come with genuinely liberal and pluralistic values. … The immigration portion of our conversation began with Dahl describing how his sister was the judge who recently sentenced a group of Nordic Muslims who had collected machine guns for a shooting spree at some newspaper offices in Copenhagen. … But, in a way, Dahl’s more low-key stories about Muslims were just as disturbing. And they are not receiving virtually any attention outside Denmark. Dahl, author of many Danish-language sociological books and an upcoming novel, is concerned that Danish Muslims “are not very good at constituting a majority.” Events in Denmark suggest, Dahl says, they are ready to trample on the rights of minorities when they have a chance. … Here’s one story: When some Muslims recently obtained a majority on the council running a government-financed daycare centre in Denmark, they proceeded to vote to ban serving pork to all children in the daycare (whether they were Muslim or not). This Muslim group, Dahl said, seemed to think that majorities are not responsible for protecting minorities’ rights. A second Dahl story is about some Danish Muslims’ fatally incomplete understanding of democracy and pluralism. Again, it involved a group of Muslims obtaining a majority, this time on the council of a government subsidized co-operative-style housing project. When the Muslims obtained their majority, they voted to ban Christmas trees from the common area of the housing project, even while the trees had been a centuries-old tradition cherished by the non-Muslim Danish residents. If you know anything about Danish culture, where Christmas Eve continues to be revered by Christians and secularists alike as a central national festival, you would know how deeply offensive this would be to them. Actually, it’s worse than offensive. I can’t imagine the vast majority of Canadian Muslims would ever consider doing such things if they gained a majority in certain arenas. But perhaps I am being naive. …

A lone ray of sunshine, if we are to believe Professor Dahl:

… Dahl notes that most Muslim families in Denmark are failing to integrate in other ways. One of the most striking examples of that is when Muslim families forbid their children from dating or marrying Danes or non-Muslims. …

Finally, for those who love statistics and economics and such things, here you go: according to a 2011 report by someone or other in the government, Denmark’s restrictions on immigration “had saved the country £6 billion over the past 10 years,” since “immigrants from non-western countries and their decedents cost the country £1.8 billion a year while those from western countries contributed to the economy” (The Telegraph, 2012).

(Above: Carleton Putnam; Governor Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door; terrible white separatism.)

My poor libertarian friends, if any of you have made it this far. We promised advice, but delivered scorn! Scorn, and horrible racism. (At least we didn’t say “nigger” again.) But we do have advice for you, in this section and the next. Here, in the form of a short book: Carleton Putnam’s Race and Reason: A Yankee View (1961).

Why should you read it? Who was he, this Putnam? A libertarian? No, alas, he predates neo-Manchesterism. I bet he never even read Atlas Shrugged. He did, however, start an airline, which he merged with Delta Air Lines, which he chaired, before he retired to write an acclaimed biography of Theodore Roosevelt. Along the way, this Putnam character developed a few ideas about liberty and equality (Race and Reason):

As I have pointed out, Jefferson’s phrase, “all men are created equal,” which he used in the Declaration of Independence, is a corruption of the original wording as it appeared in the Virginia Declaration of Rights and as it was afterwards copied in many state constitutions. The original wording read: “All men are born equally free,” and this was the true foundation of the American ideal. Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address, simply copied Jefferson’s corruption. It should be noted that Jefferson, in writing the Declaration of Independence, followed the phrase “all men are created equal” with the phrase “they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights… among [which] are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Liberty, in other words, was given the same standing in the Declaration as equality—and a moment’s thought will show that the only sense in which equality can co-exist with liberty is in the sense of equality of opportunity. In any other sense, if men are free they won’t be equal, and where men are equal they are not free. Hamilton put this point clearly when he said in the Constitutional Convention of 1787: “Inequality will exist as long as liberty exists. It unavoidably results from that very liberty itself.”

So perhaps he is worth reading after all, my libertarian friend. Here, a little sample of Race and Reason to whet your appetite: Carleton Putnam’s famous letter to President Eisenhower, October 13, 1958.

A few days ago I was reading over Justice Frankfurter’s opinion in the recent Little Rock case. Three sentences in it tempt me to write you this letter. I am a Northerner, but I have spent a large part of my life as a business executive in the South. I have a law degree, but I am now engaged in historical writing. From this observation post I risk the presumption of a comment. The sentences I wish to examine are these: “Local customs, however hardened by time, are not decreed in heaven. Habits and feelings they engender may be counteracted and moderated. Experience attests that such local habits and feelings will yield, gradually though this be, to law and education.” It is my personal conviction that the local customs in this case were “hardened by time” for a very good reason, and that while they may not, as Frankfurter says, have been decreed in heaven, they come closer to it than the current view of the Supreme Court. I was particularly puzzled by Frankfurter’s remark that “the Constitution is not the formulation of the merely personal views of the members of this court.” Five minutes before the court’s desegregation decision, the Constitution meant one thing; five minutes later, it meant something else. Only one thing intervened, namely, an expression of the personal views of the members of the court. It is not my purpose to dispute the point with which the greater part of Frankfurter’s opinion is concerned. The law must be obeyed. But I think the original desegregation decision was wrong, that it ought to be reversed, and that meanwhile every legal means should be found, not to disobey it, but to avoid it. Failing this, the situation should be corrected by constitutional amendment. I cannot agree that this is a matter involving “a few states” as Frankfurter suggests. The picture in reality is of a court, by one sudden edict, forcing upon the entire South a view, and a way of life, with which the great majority of the population are in complete disagreement. Although not from the legal, in fact from the practical, standpoint the North, which does not have the problem, is presuming to tell the South, which does have the problem, what to do. To me there is a frightening arrogance in this performance. Neither the North, nor the court, has any holy mandate inherent in the trend of the times or the progress of liberalism to reform society in the South. In the matter of schools, rights to equal education are inseparably bound up with rights to freedom of association and, in the South at least, may require that both be considered simultaneously. (In using the word “association” here, I mean the right to associate with whom you please, and the right not to associate with whom you please.) Moreover, am I not correct in my recollection that it was the social stigma of segregation and its effect upon the Negro’s “mind and heart” to which the court objected as much as to any other, and thus that the court, in forcing the black man’s right to equal education was actually determined to violate the white man’s right to freedom of association? In any case the crux of this issue would seem obvious: social status has to be earned. Or, to put it another way, equality of association has to be mutually agreed to and mutually desired. It cannot be achieved by legal fiat. Personally, I feel only affection for the Negro. But there are facts that have to be faced. Any man with two eyes in his head can observe a Negro settlement in the Congo, can study the pure-blooded African in his native habitat as he exists when left on his own resources, can compare this settlement with London or Paris, and can draw his own conclusions regarding relative levels of character and intelligence—or that combination of character and intelligence which is civilization. Finally, he can inquire as to the number of pure-blooded blacks who have made contributions to great literature or engineering or medicine or philosophy or abstract science. (I do not include singing or athletics as these are not primarily matters of character and intelligence.) Nor is there any validity to the argument that the Negro “hasn’t been given a chance.” We were all in caves or trees originally. The progress which the pure-blooded black has made when left to himself, with a minimum of white help or hindrance, genetically or otherwise, can be measured today in the Congo [Radish 2.2]. Lord Bryce, a distinguished and impartial foreign observer, presented the situation accurately in his American Commonwealth when he wrote in 1880: “History is a record of the progress towards civilization of races originally barbarous. But that progress has in all cases been slow and gradual… Utterly dissimilar is the case of the African Negro, caught up in and whirled along with the swift movement of the American democracy. In it we have a singular juxtaposition of the most primitive and the most recent, the most rudimentary and the most highly developed types of culture… A body of savages is violently carried across the ocean and set to work as slaves on the plantations of masters who are three or four thousand years in advance of them in mental capacity and moral force… Suddenly, even more suddenly than they were torn from Africa, they find themselves, not only freed, but made full citizens and active members of the most popular government the world has seen, treated as fit to bear an equal part in ruling, not only themselves, but also their recent masters.” One does not telescope three or four thousand years into the 70 years since Bryce wrote. One may change the terms of the problem by mixed breeding, but if ever there was a matter that ought to be left to local option it would seem to be the decision as to when the mixture has produced an acceptable amalgam in the schools. And I see no reason for penalizing a locality that does not choose to mix. I would emphatically support improvement of education in Negro schools, if and where it is inferior. Equality of opportunity and equality before the law, when not strained to cover other situations, are acceptable ideals because they provide the chance to earn and to progress—and consequently should be enforced by legal fiat as far as is humanly possible. But equality of association, which desegregation in Southern schools involves, pre-supposes a status which in the South the average Negro has not earned. To force it upon the Southern white will, I think, meet with as much opposition as the prohibition amendment encountered in the wet states. Throughout this controversy there has been frequent mention of the equality of man as a broad social objective. No proposition in recent years has been clouded by more loose thinking. Not many of us would care to enter a poetry contest with Keats, nor play chess with the national champion, nor set our character beside Albert Schweitzer’s. When we see the doctrine of equality contradicted everywhere around us in fact, it remains a mystery why so many of us continue to give it lip service in theory, and why we tolerate the vicious notion that status in any field need not be earned. Pin down the man who uses the word “equality,” and at once the evasions and qualifications begin. As I recall, you, yourself, in a recent statement used some phrase to the effect that men were “equal in the sight of God.” I would be interested to know where in the Bible you get your authority for this conception. There is doubtless authority in Scripture for the concept of potential equality in the sight of God—after earning that status, and with various further qualifications—but where is the authority for the sort of ipso facto equality suggested by your context? The whole idea contradicts the basic tenet of the Christian and Jewish religions that status is earned through righteousness and is not an automatic matter. What is true of religion and righteousness is just as true of achievement in other fields. And what is true among individuals is just as true of averages among races. The confusion here is not unlike the confusion created by some left-wing writers between the doctrine of equality and the doctrine of Christian love. The command to love your neighbor is not a command either to consider your neighbor your equal, or yourself his equal; perhaps the purest example of great love without equality is the love between parent and child. In fact the equality doctrine as a whole, except when surrounded by a plethora of qualifications, is so untenable that it falls to pieces at the slightest thoughtful examination. Frankfurter closes his opinion with a quotation from Abraham Lincoln, to whom the Negro owes more than to any other man. I, too, would like to quote from Lincoln. At Charleston, Illinois, in September 1858 in a debate with Douglas, Lincoln said: “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office… I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” The extent to which Lincoln would have modified these views today, or may have modified them before his death, is a moot question, but it is clear on its face that he would not have been in sympathy with the Supreme Court’s position on desegregation. Many historians have felt that when Lincoln died the South lost the best friend it had. This also may be moot, but again it seems clear that for 94 years—from the horrors of Reconstruction [Radish 1.6, 2.1] through the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision—the North has been trying to force the black man down the white Southerner’s throat, and it is a miracle that relations between the races in the South have progressed as well as they have. Perhaps the most discouraging spectacle is the spectacle of Northern newspapers dwelling with pleasure upon the predicament of the Southern parent who is forced to choose between desegregation and no school at all for his child. It does not seem to occur to these papers that this is the cruelest sort of blackmail; that the North is virtually putting a pistol at the head of the Southern parent in a gesture which every Northerner must contemplate with shame. Indeed, there now seems little doubt that the court’s recent decision has set back the cause of the Negro in the South by a generation. He may force his way into white schools, but he will not force his way into white hearts nor earn the respect he seeks. What evolution was slowly and wisely achieving, revolution has now arrested, and the trail of bitterness will lead far.

Read on, my libertarian friends; read on.

The Thomas Carlyle Club for Young Reactionaries (Students Against a Democratic Society) would be remiss if we did not include at least one substantial passage by Thomas Carlyle. Accordingly, here are two.

From his magnificent Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850):

… How decipher, with best fidelity, the eternal regulation of the Universe; and read, from amid such confused embroilments of human clamor and folly, what the real Divine Message to us is? … All the world answers me, “Count heads; ask Universal Suffrage, by the ballot-boxes, and that will tell.” Universal Suffrage, ballot-boxes, count of heads? Well,—I perceive we have got into strange spiritual latitudes indeed. Within the last half-century or so, either the Universe or else the heads of men must have altered very much. Half a century ago, and down from Father Adam’s time till then, the Universe, wherever I could hear tell of it, was wont to be of somewhat abstruse nature; by no means carrying its secret written on its face, legible to every passer-by; on the contrary, obstinately hiding its secret from all foolish, slavish, wicked, insincere persons, and partially disclosing it to the wise and noble-minded alone, whose number was not the majority in my time!—Or perhaps the chief end of man being now, in these improved epochs, to make money and spend it, his interests in the Universe have become amazingly simplified of late; capable of being voted-on with effect by almost anybody? ‘To buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest:’ truly if that is the summary of his social duties, and the final divine-message he has to follow, we may trust him extensively to vote upon that. But if it is not, and never was, or can be? If the Universe will not carry on its divine bosom any commonwealth of mortals that have no higher aim,—being still ‘a Temple and Hall of Doom,’ not a mere Weaving-shop and Cattle-pen? If the unfathomable Universe has decided to reject Human Beavers pretending to be Men; and will abolish, pretty rapidly perhaps, in hideous mud-deluges, their ‘markets’ and them, unless they think of it?—In that case it were better to think of it: and the Democracies and Universal Suffrages, I can observe, will require to modify themselves a good deal!

And from his excellent Chartism (1839):

Nay, at bottom, is it not a singular thing this of Laissez-faire, from the first origin of it? As good as an abdication on the part of governors; an admission that they are henceforth incompetent to govern, that they are not there to govern at all, but to do—one knows not what! The universal demand of Laissez-faire by a people from its governors or upper classes, is a soft-sounding demand; but it is only one step removed from the fatallest. ‘Laissez-faire,’ exclaims a sardonic German writer, ‘What is this universal cry for Laissez-faire? Does it mean that human affairs require no guidance; that wisdom and forethought cannot guide them better than folly and accident? Alas, does it not mean: “Such guidance is worse than none! Leave us alone of your guidance; eat your wages, and sleep!”’ And now if guidance have grown indispensable, and the sleep continue, what becomes of the sleep and its wages?—In those entirely surprising circumstances to which the Eighteenth Century had brought us, in the time of Adam Smith, Laissez-faire was a reasonable cry;—as indeed, in all circumstances, for a wise governor there will be meaning in the principle of it. To wise governors you will cry: “See what you will, and will not, let alone.” To unwise governors, to hungry Greeks throttling down hungry Greeks on the floor of a St. Stephen’s, you will cry: “Let all things alone; for Heaven’s sake, meddle ye with nothing!” How Laissez-faire may adjust itself in other provinces we say not: but we do venture to say, and ask whether events everywhere in world-history and parish-history, in all manner of dialects are not saying it. That in regard to the lower orders of society, and their governance and guidance, the principle of Laissez-faire has terminated, and is no longer applicable at all, in this Europe of ours, still less in this England of ours. Not misgovernment, nor yet no-government: only government will now serve. What is the meaning of the ‘five points,’ if we will understand them? What are all popular commotions and maddest bellowings, from Peterloo to the Place-de-Grève itself? Bellowings, inarticulate cries as of a dumb creature in rage and pain; to the ear of wisdom they are inarticulate prayers: “Guide me, govern me! I am mad, and miserable, and cannot guide myself!” Surely of all ‘rights of man,’ this right of the ignorant man to be guided by the wiser, to be, gently or forcibly, held in the true course by him, is the indisputablest. Nature herself ordains it from the first; Society struggles towards perfection by enforcing and accomplishing it more and more. If Freedom have any meaning, it means enjoyment of this right, wherein all other rights are enjoyed. It is a sacred right and duty, on both sides; and the summary of all social duties whatsoever between the two. Why does the one toil with his hands, if the other be not to toil, still more unweariedly, with heart and head? The brawny craftsman finds it no child’s play to mould his unpliant rugged masses; neither is guidance of men a dilettantism: what it becomes when treated as a dilettantism, we may see! The wild horse bounds homeless through the wilderness, is not led to stall and manger: but neither does he toil for you, but for himself only. Democracy, we are well aware, what is called ‘self-government’ of the multitude by the multitude, is in words the thing everywhere passionately clamoured for at present. … Democracy, take it where you will in our Europe, is found but as a regulated method of rebellion and abrogation; it abrogates the old arrangement of things; and leaves, as we say, zero and vacuity for the institution of a new arrangement. It is the consummation of No-government and Laissez-faire. It may be natural for our Europe at present; but cannot be the ultimatum of it. Not towards the impossibility, ‘self-government’ of a multitude by a multitude; but towards some possibility, government by the wisest, does bewildered Europe struggle. The blessedest possibility: not misgovernment, not Laissez-faire, but veritable government! Cannot one discern too, across all democratic turbulence, clattering of ballot-boxes and infinite sorrowful jangle, needful or not, that this at bottom is the wish and prayer of all human hearts, everywhere and at all times: “Give me a leader; a true leader, not a false sham-leader; a true leader, that he may guide me on the true way, that I may be loyal to him, that I may swear fealty to him and follow him, and feel that it is well with me!” The relation of the taught to their teacher, of the loyal subject to his guiding king, is, under one shape or another, the vital element of human Society; indispensable to it, perennial in it; without which, as a body reft of its soul, it falls down into death, and with horrid noisome dissolution passes away and disappears.

Which explains, e.g., Joseph S. Diedrich’s hideous, nigh unbearable ‘5 stages of becoming an anarchist’ (2013): “Maybe you’re a libertarian. But an anarchist? No way. Some day, however, you might be.” “One day, it just all comes together.” “Any lingering cognitive dissonance evaporates and the fog lifts.” “You reach an intellectual apex of sorts. No longer does your conception of society include the retrospectively narrow constraint of the state and its progeny—war, oppression, tyranny, injustice.” “You experience it—that awkward moment when you realize the state is superfluous.” “Inside every libertarian, there’s an anarchist waiting to be set free. You’re either a statist or you’re not. There is no in-between.”

Exactly right! Either a Statist or an Anarchist, with no “in-between”—but which will it be, my libertarian friends?

Will it be the State?

The Universe itself is a Monarchy and Hierarchy; … Eternal Justice to preside over it, Eternal Justice enforced by Almighty Power! … The Noble in the high place, the Ignoble in the low; that is, in all times and in all countries, the Almighty Maker’s Law.

Or will it be your precious Anarchy?

Anarchy; the choking, sweltering, deadly and killing rule of No-rule; the consecration of cupidity, and braying folly, and dim stupidity and baseness, in most of the affairs of men? Slop-shirts attainable three-halfpence cheaper, by the ruin of living bodies and immortal souls?

My astonishing friends:

All the Millenniums I ever heard of heretofore were to be preceded by a “chaining of the Devil for a thousand years,”—laying him up, tied neck and heels, and put beyond stirring, as the preliminary. You too have been taking preliminary steps, with more and more ardour, for a thirty years back; but they seem to be all in the opposite direction: a cutting asunder of straps and ties, wherever you might find them; pretty indiscriminate of choice in the matter: a general repeal of old regulations, fetters, and restrictions (restrictions on the Devil originally, I believe, for the most part, but now fallen slack and ineffectual), which had become unpleasant to many of you,—with loud shouting from the multitude, as strap after strap was cut, “Glory, glory, another strap is gone!” … And you, my astonishing friends, you are certainly getting into a millennium, such as never was before,—hardly even in the dreams of Bedlam. Better luck to you by the way, my poor friends;—a little less of buzzing, humming, swarming (i.e. tumbling in infinite noise and darkness), that you might try to look a little, each for himself, what kind of “way” it is!

Look to your dismal future, my libertarian friends, and most of all my American friends.

New Spiritual Pythons, plenty of them; enormous Megatherions, as ugly as were ever born of mud, loom huge and hideous out of the twilight Future on America; and she will have her own agony, and her own victory, but on other terms than she is yet quite aware of.

The choice is yours, my philanthropic friends!

You perceive, my friends, we have actually got into the “New Era” there has been such prophesying of: here we all are, arrived at last;—and it is by no means the land flowing with milk and honey we were led to expect! Very much the reverse. A terrible new country this: no neighbors in it yet, that I can see, but irrational flabby monsters (philanthropic and other) of the giant species; hyenas, laughing hyenas, predatory wolves; probably devils, blue (or perhaps blue-and-yellow) devils, as St. Guthlac found in Croyland long ago. A huge untrodden haggard country, the “chaotic battle-field of Frost and Fire”; a country of savage glaciers, granite mountains, of foul jungles, unhewed forests, quaking bogs;—which we shall have our own ados to make arable and habitable, I think! We must stick by it, however;—of all enterprises the impossiblest is that of getting out of it, and shifting into another. To work, then, one and all; hands to work!

Want to learn more about the topics covered in this issue of Radish? We recommend the following resources. (We do not, however, necessarily endorse all opinions expressed in them: some are not nearly extreme enough.)

Statism

Race and Reason and Reality

Assorted, Tangential & Miscellaneous