Post #4823 Rant of the Day: On Populist Libertarian Apologists For Trump

 I'm particularly referencing Tom Woods and Lew Rockwell here, who are basically populist right-libertarians, like Ron Paul, who Rockwell once served under as a staffer and had attracted Tom Woods' support at least for the 2012 campaign. I myself am in the minarchist camp, while Woods and Rockwell are AnCaps. I do resist certain populist tendencies of other right-libertarians; for example, Walter Block and I both regard migration as a central theme of individual liberty. Paul, Rockwell, H.H. Hoppe, and others see migration as a violation of property rights and/or free association, with a corrupt enticement of a social welfare state. A discussion of left-libertarianism is beyond the scope of this post; however, it includes egalitarianism principles/goals applied to property rights; we right-libertarians see interventionism for positive rights as a slippery slope to Statism.

Tom Woods interviewed Rockwell as a recent episode of Woods' daily podcast. (I included an audio player for the episode in Saturday's miscellany post.) I would use a transcript, but Woods only makes these available to his paying listeners; I'm not going to use a paid transcription service to write a free blog post.

Now it is clear that Woods and Rockwell dislike Biden intensely, and I myself penned a post over why I have never voted or would ever vote for Biden. I've gone out of my way on Twitter to bash the Lincoln Project (a Republican for Biden group) and George Conway not for rejecting Trump but for supporting Biden). But Woods and Rockwell get a little too personal in slamming Biden's "ineffectual" 47 years in Washington DC. Apparently they have a high opinion of what a single Senator or Vice-President can or should do. Trump is President; he can and should expect to take responsibility for his abysmal tenure.

If you listen to the podcast, you'll hear a much different take than my own post on the debate. You'll hear them often complain how poorly prepared Trump was to refute Biden's charges with obvious kill shot returns. Seriously, dudes? During the first campaign, Trump was stumped by an interviewer's reference to the nuclear triad--and tried to blame it on gotcha questions. In every primary debate, I ranked him at or near the bottom. His whole shtick was memorized soundbites and insulting other candidates. This is the same guy a few weeks ago who openly speculated, in front of high-ranking scientists and doctors, about injecting household products known to kill viruses on surfaces. He has called himself his best advisor. He, with no credentials in science, bashed eminent scientists with decades in the field. He has diverted allocated funding for his pet Southern border wall, he has issued innumerable unconstitutional executive orders. has assumed powers under inapplicable "emergency" conditions, he has escalated undeclared wars overseas, and has violated trade pacts with his unilateral tariffs; he hasn't really defended individual rights: he wanted to send former lawyer Cohen back to prison for not committing to holding off a tell-all book, he is pursuing prosecution of  WikiLeaks founder Assange (not even a US citizen), he aggressively sought the conviction of Bergdahl (ex-captive of the Taliban), and we're not even talking about his impeachment over where he tried to use military aid, against the law, to force Ukraine prosecution of Biden. If anything, I thought Biden had a million things to blast Trump with during the debate and missed his opportunity. How other libertarians like Woods and Rockwell could overlook Trump's cardinal sins against liberty is beyond mystifying. You would think Ron Paulists like them would be aghast against Trump's arguing for the Fed to adopt negative rates; I haven't counted them, but it seems at least a plurality of Ron Paul's podcasts are against/on the Fed. Not to mention that the national debt is now $27T. It took Obama 8 years to add $10T to the debt. Trump is most of the way there despite "the greatest economy in American history".

I doubt that Trump would be happy with Woods and Rockwell's condescending appraisal. The podcast is replete with "This is what I would have said to Joe..." But just to take one observation from the podcast, dealing with protests, riots and looting in the post-Floyd era: Woods is simply reveling in Joe's inability to cite police supporters in response to Trump's taunt that law and order folks are among his exclusive supporters. You would think ANY LEGITIMATE LIBERTARIAN would note that police powers are reserved to the states. Never mind Trump's police force which has no authority beyond protecting federal property and personnel. Not to mention Trump trying to force states and municipalities to reopen schools or suggesting using the US military to vaccinate the population against COVID-19, even against their consent.

But I want to conclude this post by emphasizing one of Woods' obsessions (like the Sandmann incident). Woods and Rockwell went after moderator Chris Wallace's raising the ambivalent "fine people on both sides" comments in the wake of the Charlottesville incident (including a counter-protestor Heather Heyer being killed by a car driven by an alt-right protestor) The context was a Unite the Right coalition protesting a recent political decision against a Confederate statue (the city council voted to take down a statue of Robert E. Lee from downtown). This protest was dominated by a notable coalition of armed/shielded alt-right groups. 

Trump was really referencing the politically correct intolerance of allegedly "racist" statues and other Southern cultural symbols. (Note that I am opposed to political correctness, including Southern symbols; I've embedded numerous videos  from, e.g., McClanahan, Abbeville Institute, etc., on this topic. But there is no way in hell I would join a coalition protest with racists like the KKK, etc.)

So Woods references (but doesn't really explain) that the infamous "fine people on both sides" soundbite includes an explicit statement rejecting any suggestion he was including Neo-Nazis and the like among his "fine people". Trump was saying that there were non-racist Southerners who resented the presentist assault on their cultural symptoms (I'm not sure where he saw those "peaceful protestors"; most of the protestors I saw came prepared to combat expected left-wing counter-protestors). And certainly those outraged by the Confederacy's embrace of slavery also had a constitutional right to assemble and express their views.

The issue had more to do with a homicidal right-wing extremist ["James A. Fields, 20, of Ohio, who was previously seen marching with Vanguard America, a fascist group."] driving into the crowd and Trump's belated response to condemn the neo-Nazis, while pointing out that some leftists had baseball bats and other weapons. Trump said that he didn't know the background of the homicidal driver (yeah, right: as if the driver mistook counter-protestors for protestors) and also went on to challenge the legality of the counter-protest, questioning whether they had a permit like the alt-right protestors had. [How can libertarians really support a POTUS who has no real commitment to First Amendment protections?]

What Woods and Rockwell seemed to completely ignore was Trump's refusal at the debate to outright denounce to condemn the Proud Boys, a known alt-right group (which incidentally was present at the Charlottesville protests (cf. LA Times link above)):

Far-right groups celebrated on social media after President Trump responded to a debate question about white supremacists by saying that the extremist Proud Boys, a male-only group known for its penchant for street violence, should “stand back and stand by.”

The Proud Boys were impressed by Trump's shoutout which they saw as supportive, and it's made it way into right-wing memes. Never mind this calls into question the sincerity of his lip service against the Neo-Nazis at that presser Woods is referring to.

Trump is not as principled as George H.W. Bush, who made it clear that former KKK grand wizard David Duke, running for 2 statewide elections in Louisiana in the early 1990's as a Republican (he left the Dems in 1988), was not welcome in the Party of Lincoln. Ironically, David Duke's name surfaced at the same presser on the Charlottesville tragedy as one of the right-wing participants. (Of course, Duke is furious at Trump's support for Israel so he announced his endorsement of Dem candidate Tulsi Gabbard, who rejected it in a split-second.) 

Trying to get Trump to renounce the support of any extremist supporters has been like trying to pull teeth. His predictable reflexive response has been to accuse his adversary of hypocrisy, of ignoring the extremist violent left-wing group Antifa. Never mind he has told police that they shouldn't be afraid of "rough rides", endangering suspects in custody, or if protestors at his rallies were assaulted, he would pay the Trumpkin's legal fees. So much for your "law-and-order" President respecting the Bill of Rights.

I do not deny both sides in Charlottesville got into fist fights. throwing objects at each other. I'm disappointed that the anti-racists didn't always embrace MLK's philosophy of nonviolence. I regret the police didn't do a good job of controlling against violent behavior, regardless of the source. But Trump's "leadership" in the aftermath of tragedy was morally ambiguous at best. The deliberate attempt to kill or maim counter-protestors by ramming a car into the crowd was a moral abomination, and the President should have simply announced a federal investigation into the incident as a possible hate crime. He should have reinforced our Bill of Rights. His moral ambiguity over "fine people on both sides" was a failure in leadership. It was part of an ongoing pattern of behavior.

Woods and Rockwell further exacerbated things by agreeing that Trump's economy has been "good for blacks". The economy grew not because of Trump's crimes against free markets and free trade, but despite them, and Trump has never achieved our long term growth rate of about 3.1%. You could argue Trump's tariffs were a regressive tax on lower-income workers. No, I'm not buying into long-time leftist arguments that Trump is "racist", but the "Hemingway of Twitter" has lost control of his messages, and he is getting shredded by justifiable blowback.