Monday, February 14, 2011

Understanding the Bizarre Actions of the YAF

Immediately following Ron Paul's straw poll win at CPAC, the Young Americans for Freedom passed out a flyer:
NATION'S OLDEST CONSERVATIVE/LIBERTARIAN ACTIVIST GROUP EXPELS RON PAUL FROM ADVISORY BOARD
What gives? The YAF are war hawks. They are best viewed as part of the drones for peace/war for peace movement. Paul's libertarian/conservative isolationist view does not go down well with them.  Dave Weigel reports:
YAF's senior national director Aaron Marks was quoted saying Paul was "clearly off his meds."

Notice the style of attack on Paul. There's no intellectual assault, because they have no intellectual weaponry. There attack is nothing more than a verbal drone attack.

The remarkable Murray Rothbard sniffed out the problems with the YAF during the Cold War in 1969! In an open letter to libertarians attending that year's YAF national convention, he wrote:

I got out of the Right-wing not because I ceased believing in liberty, but because being a libertarian above all, I came to see that the Right-wing specialized in cloaking its authoritarian and neo-fascist policies in the honeyed words of libertarian rhetoric. They need you for their libertarian cover; stop providing it for them!...YAF, the fusionists, and the Right-wing generally, have led the parade, in happy tandem with their supposed enemies the liberals, in supporting the Cold War and various hot wars against Communist movements abroad. This global crusading against the heathen is a total reversal of the Old "isolationist" Right-wing of my youth, the Right-wing that scorned foreign intervention and "globaloney"...You don't belong with these deceivers on the political make. I plead with you to leave YAF now, for you should know by now that there is no hope of your ever capturing it. It is as dictatorial, as oligarchic, as close to fascism in structure as is so much of the content of YAF's program.
The entire Rothbard letter is here.

3 comments:

  1. Yes, ol' Murray was a canny one. Looks like there was no one and nothing he didn't see through, before others.

    I think it also has to do with the model of hypermasculinity - you know, any red-blooded male should always be ready and willing to shoot up the "rag-heads"....or he must be a wuss ...

    Diplomacy or constitutionality is "wussy."

    Thinking, of course, is big-time "wussy"...

    The imperial male always has an F-52 raptor under his codpiece..

    Anything less would make him a girly-man.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am in full agreement regarding Rothbard's spot-on observations regarding the right wing's abuse of libertarian rhetoric, etc. (And I'm amazed at how Wenzel is able to cite these Rothbard passages so quickly)

    However - and this is strictly a tactical comment - leaving the GOP party means there's no one like me at the precinct, county, district and state level conventions, for example, to spread OUR message to newcomers, the fed up people...and to make it painful for the clowns to be clowns...to possibly slow down - just a little bit - the onslaught of more government. I know, I know...look around...what do we have. I know things don't look too rosy. But if it weren't for Ron Paul fighting the good fight within the GOP (and me seeing him for the first time in 20007 at the presidential debates being laughed at by his fellow obnoxious infantile candidates), I wouldn't know what the hell you guys are talking about. I owe my entire transformation to Ron Paul, and of course to the myriad heros like Wenzel, Rockwell, Woods, Higgs, etc, etc who have educated me for the past three years. (Hey, no wise cracks...better late then never)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I could not resist commenting. Very well written!
    Look into my blog : hotmail account

    ReplyDelete