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Reading many of the Republican comments on the Rove/Plame issue reminds me of the reaction of American Communists after learning of the pact Stalin signed with Hitler. The Communists went from lock step denunciations of the Nazis to lock step praise of them as peace loving. (They changed again when Hitler doublecrossed Stalin.)
We see the same kind of dishonest behavior from people having the temerity to call themselves 'conservatives" though all they seem to want to conserve is their own power. They went from universal condemnation of the leaker to universal condemnation of those the leaker attacked, and the ONLY change in the known facts of the matter was who the leaker likely was. The similarities between the two are amazing. Nothing more completely exposes the vacuousness of their babble about patriotism and values.
Today's Republican operatives and allies offer a good study of the totalitarian mentality trying to take over a democracy. If dead communists reincarnated, they must have done so as members of the GOP.
OK - I over stated my argument. But as I started my rebuttal to William Stepp with some time ago - unless you are an anarchocapitalist (I used to be and it turns out he is), you need a government of some sort. In today's world you need one with an agency that does secret stuff like WMD investigations. Hopefully it does it well, but well or ill, you need it.
The person outed was doing precisely such research. The person doing the outing - or assisting in the outing - was a key policy maker in an administration that has waged aggressive war based on lies among many other things. Simple disagreement with these crooks leads to being charged with treason and other garbage by forces many libertarians thought themslves semi-allied with not long ago - and some still do.
In my reading, Stepp's post was NOT an attempt to have a rational discussion, but a kind of anarcho-capitalist trolling. Yet the point I was trying to make - that the modern Republican Party evidences a totalitarian mentality, is a pretty important one, if true. I have long since lost any sense of humor or intellectual tolerance towards the plague on both your houses point of view. It is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
It is easy to be "radical" when you can say that everyone is wrong, and not have to make distinctions as to who may be more wrong at some particular point in time. Real easy.
Charles Johnson -
7/19/2005
Gus: "So -- praise the most ruthless power in the White House for breaking the law to eliminate political oppoosition in order to help consolidate his hold on state power by punishing the wife of a man who told the truth about the government's abuse of power, an abuse that has killed tens of thousands. Yeah, Karl Rove, defender of rights."
According to the book of Revelation, in the coming ordeal, a servant of Satan or perhaps Satan himself will come into the world and destroy earthly tyrants as part of his rise to absolute power before the Second Coming. I mention this because I hear that Satan is a pretty bad guy, and his motives in destroying earthly tyrants will certainly be bad. But while these are good reasons to think poorly of Satan, they aren't good reasons to cry about the trampled prerogatives of the fallen tyrants.
I mention this parable because, in the comment you are replying to, Stepp makes it quite explicit that his point is that if Rove outed a CIA agent, then he may be a real sleaze, but in this particular case what he did is, at worst, disregarding an expectation (confidentiality and support for members of a criminal conspiracy) that nobody has the right to demand be respected.
Stepp's earlier claim that whoever did it deserves a "Libertarian Medal" is of course silly bluster. But so is your own reply, which simply substitutes a philippic against Bush and Rove in order to distract from the point being made about what CIA operatives do or do not have the right to expect -- as if the sheer weight of their depravity could somehow make Plame's complaint legitimate. You then follow up this red herring with a broadside against the intellectual "sophistication" of "anarchists, right or left".
Come on, Gus. You're smarter than that.
Gus diZerega -
7/18/2005
Point taken, Steve.
I wasn't thinking of them when I said honorable. I was thinking of Pete Boettke. Maybe Stepp is not representative of many and I exaggerated.
I do not read their stuff much - largely because I prefer a Hayekian approach over Mises' praxeology. (Back in my anarcho-capitalist days I tended to like praxeology - an interesting issue is whether there is a connection between the two even though Mises was no anarcho-capitalist. I think the connection is that both approaches seem to like absolute answers with no shades of uncertainty.)
I know they and Tom Palmer are, or were, continually getting into it, but after following the controversy for a few weeks I decided to turn my curiosity in other directions, it seemed so mutually vituperative. (The debates made my comments about Stepp's posts look absolutely gentle.)
But the Mises Institute seems to me to fall under the general critique I just sent to this blog.
Steven Horwitz -
7/18/2005
Well Gus, if you can stomach it, you should head on over to the Mises Institute website, which remains, despite my many profound disagreements with their views on many issues and who they associate with, reliably anti-war, anti-Neocon, and anti-Bush. Many of the folks there also claim to be libertarian anarchists. It's some strong evidence against your claim, though how "honorable" they are is another story.
Gus diZerega -
7/18/2005
And according to Novack's original column, two senior administration people told HIM. That is just one point of many I could bring up- but check the better liberal blogs if you want more on the other issues you raised - virtually all of them false, distortions, irrelevant to my points, or some mix of the three.
If you want, try atrios.blogspot.com or Americablog.org or dailykos.com
But then, they aren't libertarian anarchists, so Karl Rove is the more reliable source. After all, he sometimes wears an Adam Smith tie- like other beloved allies to libertarian anarchists, such as Ed Meese.
Your touching faith in Karl Rove's honesty and the Republican Party's integrity and consistent support for those building a one party state over their opponents again exhibits the kind of fatuous twaddle I have come to expect from many (not all - there are very honorable exceptions) of those calling themselves libertarian anarchists.
William J. Stepp -
7/18/2005
Under the 1982 law Rove is alleged to have violated, agents must have worked outside the U.S. within the last five years. Plame hadn't acted as a covert agent for nine years before the Rove-Cooper interview. Also to have perpetrated a crime, Rove would have to have specific knowledge that he was revealing a covert agent. According to his grand jury tesdtimony, he was told this by Novak, not vice versa. In his interview with Cooper, he merely repeated what he heard from Novak.
Gus diZerega -
7/18/2005
So - praise the most ruthless power in the White House for breaking the law to eliminate political oppoosition in order to help consolidate his hold on state power by punishing the wife of a man who told the truth about the government's abuse of power, an abuse that has killed tens of thousands. Yeah, Karl Rove, defender of rights.
That's the level of sophistication I have finally come to expect from anarchists, right or left.
Beam me up, Scotty. This isn't my planet..
William J. Stepp -
7/17/2005
Btw, I forgot to mention that I am all in favor or defending rights--which is why I oppose the CIA.
William J. Stepp -
7/17/2005
I liken the Rove-Plame contretemps to one criminal ratting on another. The fact that the one doing the ratting is worse doesn't overturn the fact that the other is a criminal.
As an anarchist, I agree that government has one legitimate thing to do:
quit.
Gus diZerega -
7/17/2005
If I thought you could follow the argument I'd try and offer a rebuttal. But I don't.
So I do not sound utterly dismissive of even the most fatuous nonesnse, I will make one point. She was working on WMD issues during a time when those issues were and continue to be of serious concern. Those exposed by Rove and company went far beyond her to include all who worked undercover for her anywhere at any time.
All but the most cretinous agree government has a legitimate role in defending us.
Apparently you don't.
Connect those two observations, bucko.
William J. Stepp -
7/16/2005
As a CIA operative, she was a net tax-consuming New Class parasite, and therefore a criminal. And you've got a problem with Karl Rove's, or whoever it actually was, outing her?
According to the news, there's a new theory of who it actually was. Whoever it was deserves a Libertarian Medal.
Very very superficially, yes, you are right , in the sense that those who accuse Rove of treason are not using the term accurately. He did not commit treason because he did not, so far as we can reasonably know, want to help Islamic terrorists.
But this incorrect use of the term is UTTERLY unlike Coulter and other fascists' use of the same term. Coulter and her ilk employ the word to describe simple disagreement with those who would rule us. Liberals misusing the treason word are at least using it to attack behavior that COULD be treasonous under American and Constitutional law. BIG difference.
But what bothers me much more about your argument is that this sounds like a "plague on both your houses" kind of argument - which will be the last resort of the Republicans should these charges stick. It is effectively an apology for the right since they are in power right now. Everybody does it.
Everybody isn't doing it.
We are looking at a totalitarian movement fella - and the sooner libertarians wake up to the fact that liberal democrats are NOT like so-called conservative Republicans, and that the former are far far closer to us than the latter, the better.
To my delight today's Paul Krugman column in the NYT makes essentially the same point.
Gary McGath -
7/15/2005
On the flip side, I've noticed in blog comments that some liberals now want to interpret the definition of treason at least as broadly as Ann Coulter does (or to put it another way, as broadly as they interpret the commerce clause) in order to bring charges of treason against Rove. It's the same phenomenon either way.
Gus diZerega -
7/15/2005
yep!
But even so the current show is fascinating in an appalling sort of way. Men and women who for years paid lip service to rule of law, constitutional and limited government, patriotism, and all that, have utterly sold their souls. All to be a small part of nothing but power, for the regime certainly does nothing at all to advance any of their so-called values.
Nothing better demonstrates the utter intellectual, moral, and political bankruptcy of what today calls itself American conservatism.
Sheldon Richman -
7/15/2005
Oops. Why do...! And I call myself an editor!
Sheldon Richman -
7/15/2005
And why does Fox and Sean Hannity love Geraldo Rivera? Didn't he give away military plans during the Iraq war, even drawing a map in the sand? Imagine if CNN had done that.
David Timothy Beito -
7/15/2005
It is hard to believe that not so long ago the Rove defenders were calling for Clinton's head for much, much, less.
William Marina -
7/15/2005
More folks than just intellectuals like to use ideological and political positions to hide their real motives which have to do more with rationalizing power than with ethical consistency.
