Thursday, March 31, 2011

What’s the Worst Thing the Koch Brothers Have Done?

The Regressives are out with a poll on the worst thing the Koch Brothers have done (See here).

A friend emails:
I voted other and wrote in the worst thing the Kochs did was kicking Murray [Rothbard] off the board of CATO and trying to silence Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul!

8 comments:

  1. I also went with Other: "The Koch brothers stole the shares of founding Cato board member, Murray Rothbard, and subverted the message of that organization from a principled libertarian stance to one of statist interventionism."

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  2. After seeing your post, I also went over and put in my vote, "Other: They rejected principles, scammed Rothbard out of CATO and actively worked against LvMI, LRC and Ron Paul."

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  3. People like Wenzel are the why libertaranism will never have any real world influence. All this purity shit makes libertarians look a joke to the wider public. It's pathological. You and Rockwell spend as much time attacking David Koch as you do Paul Krugman.

    "Oh nozzz! He didn't like my idol Murray Rothbard!"

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  4. @ anon 2:08

    the Kochs also play footsie with every government official/politician they can funnel money to and specialize in regulatory capture

    VERY libertarian indeed ... who needs principles when you can simply use the State to further your own ends at the expense of the great unwashed masses?

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  5. People like Anonymous at 2:08PM are the reason why libertarianism has never had any real world influence. As exponents of "libertarianism" (I have to use scare quotes to warn people of their stench) they've been compromised and corrupted to the point of being without principles.

    Re: Attacks on Koch and Krugman. If anyone is out promoting or doing stupid things, then they should be attacked, no matter what their ideological outlook.

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  6. How about the following for Other?

    "The Kochtopus began when Charles G. Koch, young multimillionaire scion of the Wichita-based Koch oil empire, was converted from a passive LeFevrian view of libertarian strategy (he had been converted as a youth to libertarianism
    by LeFevre) to an activist stance. This latter transformation was largely effected by Ed Crane on the strength of Crane's running of the MacBride presidential campaign in 1976. I [Murray Rothbard] myself had been urging Charles (C.K.) to adopt a more activist strategy, so that perhaps I might gain some of the responsibility for this second conversion."

    -Murray Rothbard, in "The State of the Movement: The Implosion" in "The Libertarian Forum", Vol. XVIII, No. 8-12, September-December 1984.

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  7. I’m so old I still have my original “reason” and “Libertarian Review” magazines from back when the Kochs still loved Murray Rothbard and Ron Paul:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/bob_roddis/3520147250/in/set-72157600951970959

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/bob_roddis/4161181369/in/set-72157600951970959/

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  8. Fighting "Health Care Reform" seems like a good thing.

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