Libertarian.ie

Militarism and authoritarianism

• http://www.fff.org/comment/com0501d.asp
  Augusto Pinochet and the Conservative Threat to America
  by Jacob G. Hornberger, January 12, 2005
  The Future of Freedom Foundation.
  A good example of the conservative mindset Ñ and the threat that it currently poses to the American people Ñ lies with the brutal military regime of Chilean strongman Gen. Augusto Pinochet, an army general who, with the support of the U.S. CIA, ousted the democratically elected president of Chile and took power in a coup dÕetat in 1973. While the Bush administration often suggests that the U.S. Òwar on terrorismÓ is something new, the fact is that the Òwar on terrorismÓ was the central element of General PinochetÕs 17 years of brutal military rule in Chile.
• http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/red-state-fascism.html
  The Reality of Red-State Fascism
  by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
  The most significant socio-political shift in our time has gone almost completely unremarked, and even unnoticed. It is the dramatic shift of the red-state bourgeoisie from leave-us-alone libertarianism, manifested in the Congressional elections of 1994, to almost totalitarian statist nationalism. Whereas the conservative middle class once cheered the circumscribing of the federal government, it now celebrates power and adores the central state, particularly its military wing.
• http://www.strike-the-root.com/columns/mccracken/mccracken8.html
  Remaking the World in Our Image: Interventionist Globalism vs. Libertarian Localism
  by Lee McCracken
  ÔRights may be universal, but their enforcement must be localÕ or, to adopt the motto of the Irish rebels: Sinn Fein, Ôourselves alone.Õ A group of people may have rights, but it is their responsibility, and theirs alone, to defend or safeguard such rights.Ó The enforcement of rights will depend on local customs, traditions and culture and will differ from place to place. This is not something to be regretted or opposed in the name of some abstract theory of how societies should be organized. Contrary to what Rousseau thought, you canÕt force someone to be free.
• http://www.mises.org/journals/lar/pdfs/2_2/2_2_1.pdf
  Left and Right
  EDITORIAL
  Ernesto Che Guevera, RIP
  Che is dead, and we all mourn him. Why? How is it that so many libertarians mourn this man; how is it that we just received a letter from a briIIiant young libertarian, a former objectivist and Birchite, which said, in part: 'if they did finally get Che . . . I am sure that his memory will live to haunt both Latin America and the U. S. for decades to come. Long live Che!'. How come? Surely not because Che was a Communist. Precious few people in this country or anywhere else will mourn the passing, for example, of Brezhnev, Kosygin, or Ulbricht, Communist leaders all. No, it is certainly not Che's Communist goals which made his name a byword and a legend throughout the world, and throughout the New Left in this country. What made Che such an heroic figure for our time is that he, more than any man of our epoch or even of our century, was the living embodiment of the principle of Revolution. More than any man since the lovable but entirely ineffectual nineteenth-century Russian anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin, Che earned the title of 'professional revolutionary.' And furthermore, to paraphrase Christopher Jencks in a recent perceptive, if wrongheaded, article in the New Republic, we all knew that his enemy was our enemy -- that great Colossus that oppresses and threatens all the peoples of the world, U. S. imperialism.
• http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard54.html
  Ronald Reagan, Warmonger
  by Murray N. Rothbard
  This article first appeared in the Libertarian Forum, Vol. XVII, Nos. 7Ŵ8, JulyŴAugust, 1983. The quintessence of Ronald Reagan is that he is a master in supplying the conservative movement with the rhetoric they want to hear. In all politicians there is a gulf between rhetoric and reality, but in Ronald Reagan that gulf has become a veritable and mighty ocean.