Libertarians and
Nationalists
A New Generation Arises
the latter always prevails." Mises, Liberalism
The Western World is in turmoil, with tens of millions of refugees from across the world coming toward North America and Europe UNHCR. Demographics are being changed as millions risk everything to escape intolerable conditions. Wars continue to grind out refugees and grind down civilized values, with the wars in Ukraine and the “Holy Land” poised to become regional conflicts risking World War III.
Reacting, people of European heritage, on both sides of
the Atlantic, and in places like Australia and New Zealand, are organizing to
defend what they see as threats to their freedoms and cultures.
The old political consensus in Western countries favoring
personal liberty and a market economy is at risk from statists of the Left as
well as from some "command economy" supporters on the Right.
Lysander Spooner, great 19th Century American Libertarian
lawyer, pointed out that the Old World's aristocratic tyrannies were grounded
in what he called the 'four monopolies': state churches, chattel slavery, the
'legal infirmities' of women and government economic monopolies. He saw
all these old institutions collapsing.
History proved him correct, but other tyrannies
developed. These include public tyrannies such as state schools, state
‘healthcare’ and central planning through central banks with state-monopolies
over fiat ‘money.’ They also include ‘private’ institutions such as
globalist-dominated NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) and publicly traded,
but ostensibly private entities such as YouTube, Facebook and Google.
The disempowered young on the extremes of the political divide,
many of whom might have been in military formations in centuries past, have
been taking to the streets, no matter which end of the spectrum, in increasing
numbers.
This includes the World-Wide Rallies and Trucker Convoys of 2021/22 , the mass MAGA rallies of
‘23 and ’24, and the rapidly growing revolt of the UK and EU
Right, all
of which involve millions across the globe, opposing further censorship, lockdowns
and mandates.
American and European youth are forming 'fight clubs' and
other groups (examples: 'Active Clubs', the Patriot Front and the Proud Boys),
encompassing every nuance from an individualist libertarian ethos through the
'hard right' of American Nationalists.
Example: the dozen Tenets of the Proud Boys include several strictly libertarian
(maximum freedom, minimal govt.) as well as 'hard right' (closed border) and
traditionalist values ('venerate the housewife').
That's a wide spectrum. Can there be any
intersectional correspondence between libertarian individualists and
corporatist nationalists?
This is not an academic question since there are now a
number of credible crises that may play out, putting us all on the battlefield
of a third world war -- or we may be facing our own "1346 Event" (the
year of the Black Death that killed half of Eurasia) mediated, this
time, by global immune system collapse, triggered by mass adverse reactions
to the novel gene-altering COVID and more recent similar 'jabs').
Meanwhile on the battlefield in Ukraine... quite
literally thousands of nationalist and other militants from all over Europe
have gathered, forming Freikorps to fight for Russia or Ukraine. 'Nazi'
regiments and 'Anarchist' cooperatives are fighting together ‘for Ukraine’.
Alliances on the Right are controversial; for a hundred
years both libertarians and nationalists glared at each other, recently across
the social media, (watching each other’s edgy videos of sparing, banner drops, hiking and
protests) while at the same time standing against the Left, such as Antifa.
It is said that FDR and his first cabinet were fans of
fascism. One commentator opined,
"Roosevelt himself once called Mussolini
'admirable,' adding that he was 'deeply impressed by what he has accomplished.'
Mussolini returned the compliment with adulatory praise...” Daily
Caller.
This suggests a 'forgotten history' that may illuminate
our question regarding the alliances on the Right and Left. Also consider the
prior century (the 19th of the Common Era) when the theory of the omniscient
State was developed by statists and opposed by proto-libertarians (such as Max
Weber and Lysander Spooner).
The theory they opposed, that the State was a special
type of organization, has ancient roots, growing from the 'divine right of
kings'. Centuries later Marxists called for a 'dictatorship of the
proletariat' justified by the 'force' of history. It was in the early 20th Century that the political theory was
given a name, the State of Exception.
That ‘State’ is the legal theory justifying tyranny
asserted originally by the German Jurist (and later Nazi) Carl
Schmitt
and strongly criticized by libertarian philosopher Murray Rothbard.
Schmitt saw the unlimited powers of the totalitarian
state as arising from a permanent state of emergency, a "State of
Exception" which allowed ruling elites to act arbitrarily, capriciously
and without adherence to the rule of law. Libertarians hold there can be no
'emergency' exception to inalienable rights.
Centrally planned economies fail, whether of the
"Right" or the Left. World War Two discredited fascist theory
just as the collapse of the USSR a few decades later discredited
Marxism-Leninism. How did the two political movements 'on the Right' (libertarian
and nationalist) react to each other over the century in which the theories of
both movements developed?
Ludwig von Mises, the 20th Century's great philosopher of
liberty, left his native land, Austria, in 1934, the year the Austrofascists took over. After a time in
Switzerland he spent the war and post-war years in the United States where he
mentored what has become a world-wide libertarian economic and political
movement.
We have recently seen an avowed libertarian become
President of Argentina and the Republican Candidate for US President appear
before the Libertarian Party Convention engaging in direct, public ‘negotiations’
with the Party for libertarian support. He offered to include libertarians in
his administration, including in a commission designed to quickly pardon
January 6th and other political prisoners.
Mises pointed the way toward a libertarian nationalist approach
with his understanding of classical liberalism’s cosmopolitanism –
“...nationalism does not
clash with cosmopolitanism, for the unified nation does not want discord with
neighboring peoples, but peace and friendship.” L. von Mises, Nation, State, and Economy, 1919
Or, as Jefferson put it, “Peace, commerce, and honest
friendship with all nations... entangling alliances with none.”
Both seek a wholesale planetary divesting of
authority from globalist political systems used to micro-manage Human Action.
Every regulation abolished,
every tax reduced, is a victory for humanity. The strategy must be, ‘Abolish
multiple old regulations for any new one proposed" -- and the same as to
taxes and bureaus.’
Nonetheless, Mises was accused of being 'soft' on fascism
by various Marxist scholars, as he thought Italian Fascism was to be
acknowledged for stopping a Communist takeover there. His condemnation of
fascist policies is clear:
"That its foreign policy, based as it is
on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to
give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern
civilization requires no further discussion. To maintain and further raise our
present level of economic development, peace among nations must be assured. But
they cannot live together in peace if the basic tenet of the ideology by which
they are governed is the belief that one's own nation can secure its place in
the community of nations by force alone." Mises, Liberalism
Both collectivist political movements, Communists and
Fascists, espoused the same morality of 'might makes right' and supported
central planning and government domination over all of social life. Left or
Right, statism supports dictatorship, central planning and economic
exploitation of the Market by the Government.
This is a critical point at which both Left and Right
statism can fail: they do not understand market economics and the inescapable
laws of the market.
Both tendencies on the Right (nationalism and
libertarianism) see, in common, cultivating manliness among the youth as a
significant value, in direct opposition to the Left's championing of Critical
Race Theory's offspring, Critical Sex Theory, with its emphasis on
'metrosexual' feminized males and non-binary or trans persons.
Both see themselves as the 'True Right', as Rothbard
might have called it. Both seek to build lasting communities of like-minded,
self-actuated, and politically active, men and women who value individual
effort, physical prowess, and intellectual achievement.
In this way the new Western Chauvinists stand not just
against the Left, but more importantly, stand against the globalist elite that
seeks to manipulate both Right and Left, exercising especially strong control
over popular Leftist causes such as 'climate change' and 'systemic racism'.
Ultimately, it is dissatisfied individuals, engaging in
Human Action, guided by Informed Consent, who will set the underlying economic
and social conditions which will determine how Western Civilization will
develop in the coming decades and centuries.
It was Mises who defined the first principle of Human
Action (praxeology) as "Humans act purposefully". Arising from that
understanding, all Human Action is predicated on dissatisfaction.
The youth of the world are profoundly dissatisfied, none
more so than Westerners of European heritage.
Beware, as a new generation arises.
There is one step we can all take right now: #ExitUN
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