Friday, November 06, 2009

Wenn schon durchgeknallt, dann wenigstens konsequent!

"Robin Alexander in der „Welt“ und Volker Zastrow in der „FAZ“ haben sich mit ihren deutlichen, überraschenden Worten im vielleicht letzten Moment um die Meinungsfreiheit verdient gemacht wie einst Helmut Schmidt und Helmut Kohl gegen alle Widerstände um die Nachrüstung und damit um die Sicherheit des Westens."

- André F. Lichtschlag, Der Fall Sarrazin

7 comments:

Dominik Hennig said...

Und dann lese ich gerade dieses Blatt quer. Ein Psychogramm "libertär"-konservativen Fusionismus:

Lob für die Nachrüstung von Schmidt und Kohl, ansonsten geht es gegen "homosexuelle Kapitulationsgemeinschaften", Frauen in Führungspositionen, "intelligentes junges Yuppietum", "zen-erleuchtete Deppen", Leute die Kevin heißen oder Tattoos als "Kainsmal" ihrer Zugehörigkeit zum "Plebs" tragen und ...gegen lesbische Tennisspielerinnen. Würde Rothbard so ein Blatt lesen?

Dominik Hennig said...

"What of the old libertarian segment of the Right? Largely they have been submerged in the transformation of the right wing, generally because they have not had articulate spokesmen explaining to them the nature and magnitude of what has taken place. They have largely been bemused by the pervasive idea that there is, in some strong sense, a joint "conservative-libertarian movement," and that no matter how much conservatives may diverge from liberty, they are the libertarian's natural allies — at the same end of the spectrum, and at the polar opposite from socialism. But this idea suffers from the "cultural lag" that we have observed. The Old Right may have been the natural ally of the laissez-faire libertarian, but this is not at all true of the new.

The libertarian needs, perhaps most of all, to be informed by history, and to realize that conservatism was always the polar opposite of classical liberalism. Socialism, in contrast, was not the polar opposite of either, but rather, in my view, a muddled and irrationally contradictory mixture of both liberalism and conservatism. For socialism was essentially a movement to come to terms with the industrial revolution, to try to achieve liberal ends by the use of collectivistic, conservative means.

It tried to achieve the ideals of peace, freedom, and a progressing standard of living by using the collectivist, organicist, hierarchical means of conservatism as adapted to industrial society. As a middle-of-the-road doctrine, it is easy for socialism, once it abandoned the liberal ideals of peace and freedom, to shift completely to the conservative pole in the many varying forms of "national socialism."

Mr. Frank S. Meyer, the leading proponent of a fused "conservative-libertarian movement," has called upon us to ignore the 19th century, "heir to the disruption of the French Revolution," and to go back beyond "the parochial disputes of the 19th century." Such a course would indeed be convenient for Meyer's thesis, as it would sweep away the whole meaning of the liberal and conservative movements. For the point is that both liberalism and conservatism (and socialism as well) found their form and their doctrine precisely in the 19th century, as a result of the struggles between the old order and the new. It is precisely by focusing on the history of the 19th century that we learn of the true origins of the various "isms" of our day, as well as the illogical and mythical nature of the attempted "conservative-libertarian" fusion." - Murray Rothbard

Dominik Hennig said...


"today's right wing is directed, with passion, dedication, and even fanaticism to one overriding goal, to which all other possible goals are totally subordinate. And that goal is the nuclear annihilation of the Soviet Union."


- Murray Rothbard

Dominik Hennig said...

"For the blight that destroyed the libertarianism of the right wing and effected its transformation was nothing less than hysterical anticommunism. It began with this kind of reasoning: there are two "threats" to liberty: the "internal" threat of domestic socialism, and the "external" threat of Soviet Russia. The external threat is the most important. Therefore, all energies must now be directed to battling and destroying that "threat."

In the course of this shift of focus from statism to communism as the "enemy," the right wing somehow failed to see that the real "external" threat was not Soviet Russia, but a warlike foreign policy of global intervention, and especially the nuclear weapons of mass destruction used to back up such a policy. And they failed to see that the main architect in organizing a foreign policy of global nuclear intervention was the United States. In short, they failed to see that both the "external" and "internal" threats of statism to liberty were essentially domestic.

Under pressure of anticommunist hysteria, the right wing, despite its fondness for quasi-theological or moral cant, has imitated the communists themselves in virtually abandoning all moral principles except one: in this case, the destruction of all opposition, foreign and domestic.

For the immorality of communism is not uniquely diabolic; it stems from the fact that for communists, all other moral principles are expendable before the overriding end of the maintenance and advance of the communist system. But, the right wing has similarly erected as its sole, overriding end the destruction of communists and communist countries, and all other considerations are scrapped to attain that end.

There seems now to be one crucial difference, however; the communists are more convinced than ever that nuclear weapons of annihilation make imperative peaceful coexistence between states, and that social change must come about through internal changes within each state, where conflict would be relatively small-scale and confined. But the right wing has not only failed to learn this lesson; on the contrary, the more terrible modern weaponry has become, the more fanatically determined upon total war the right wing has grown. This seems to be a lunatic position, and undoubtedly it is, but it is important that non-Rightists realize that this is precisely the position of the present-day Right.

Now, of course, no one has ever wanted war per se; Hitler would not have attacked Soviet Russia, for example, if Russia had agreed to surrender unconditionally without war. And neither would the right wing launch an H-bomb attack on Russia if Khrushchev and his government were to resign and turn over the Soviet Union to, let us say, an American army of occupation." - Murray Rothbard

Dominik Hennig said...

"But that is the point: that nothing short of unconditional surrender would satisfy the right wing, or would deflect it from nuclear attack. How does the right wing justify a position that is prima facie monstrous and even crazed? The essential justification is, curiously enough, theological and Christian. It is even Catholic, for while the mass base of the right wing, apart from the Eastern cities, is fundamentalist Protestant, the intellectual leaders are almost all either Catholic or "proto-Catholic." The justification is a willingness to destroy the world, and the human race along with it, for matters of high principle.

The highest principle, as we have seen above, is the destruction of communists, who are, at least implicitly and sometimes explicitly, identified with the devil and his agents upon earth. And, after all, what does the destruction of the world matter when men's immortal souls will continue in eternal life? As the leading publicist of the New Right has said: "If I had to 'push the button,' I would push it unswervingly, in the firm knowledge that I am in the right."
[...]

Another curious justification is the famous "red or dead" dichotomy. But in fact the stark choice of "red or dead" is just as unrealistic an alternative for America as the old "communist or fascist" choice posed by many of the Left in the 1930s. There is at least one other choice: peaceful coexistence and joint nuclear disarmament. Moreover, choosing death over redness is suicide, and one would have thought that suicide was a grave sin for Christians.

And finally this dichotomy allows no reference to the fact that approximately one billion people, now living in communist countries throughout the world, are choosing redness every day, by not committing suicide. Is there no lesson here? Does it make any sense, furthermore, to destroy these people, and untold Americans along with them, thus to "liberate" those who have made their own personal choice for redness over death?

Is it moral, or Christian, to change their choice from life to death by force? In short, is it moral, or Christian, for American conservatives to annihilate millions of Russians, Poles, etc., to "liberate" through murder those who have already made their choice for life?

Also implicit in the right-wing thesis is the view that the devil is omnipotent; that once communism "takes over," a country, it is doomed, and its population might as well be written off to the eternal abyss. That this is a starkly pessimistic view of mankind is obvious; and this is all the more curious in the light of the demonstrations by libertarian economists that socialism cannot provide a viable economic system for an industrial society.

It also studiously ignores the enormous changes that have taken place within communist countries since World War II, the considerable liberalization and even increased emphasis on private enterprise in Russia and many of the countries of eastern Europe.

Communist China's recent expression of concern as to whether Yugoslavia is a socialist country is evidence enough of the alarm felt by communist fundamentalists at the unwilling but headlong retreat from socialism in that communist land. It is also significant that not one right-wing economist or strategist has taken the trouble to consider the surely important question of how one would decommunize Russia if it should surrender to the American army — now or at any other time.

I believe that decommunization could be achieved, and in a way similar to, though much more thoroughgoing than, the path of Yugoslavia; but the point is that the indifference to this problem on the Right is another indication of its central concern: nuclear war. Decommunization is to come about, not through a change in the ideas and actions of the Russian and other peoples, but, according to the Right, through their liquidation." - Murray Rothbard

Dominik Hennig said...

"Evidence of the right-wing subordination of all its other goals and principles to nuclear war against communists is overwhelming, and at every hand. It lies at the root of the obscene eagerness with which the Right hurries to embrace every dictator, no matter how fascistic or bloodstained, who affirms his "anticommunism."

[...]

It is tragically ironic and almost incredible that a movement which began, not too many years ago, in a passionate commitment to human liberty, should end as the cheering squad for a Mme. Nhu. Is it really too impolite to wonder how the right wing would now regard the man who was, in his day, the "hardest" and the "toughest" anticommunist of them all: Adolf Hitler?

In domestic affairs, the free-market rhetoric has become simply that: after-dinner talk carrying no enthusiasm or true conviction. Indeed, the promise of laissez-faire now performs the same function for the new American Right as the promise of unlimited abundance under communism did for Stalin. While enslaving and exploiting the Soviet people, Stalin held out a splendid future of utopian abundance that would make current sacrifices worthwhile.

The present-day Right holds out the eventual promise of freedom and the free market after communists shall have been exterminated. If there are any survivors emerging from their civil-defense shelters after the holocaust, they will presumably be allowed to engage in free-market activities, provided, of course, that some other "enemy" shall not have raised its head in the meanwhile." - Murray Rothbard

Anonymous said...

Der Herr regt sich ja bloß so auf, weil sein politischer Ziehvater, der Linksnationalist Alfred Mechtersheimer (Parole: "Friedensmacht Deutschland"), ein prominenter Gegner des NATO-Doppelbeschlusses war. Ist es nicht so?