Ezra Klein: Libertarians and racism.

[marmar]

from The American Prospect's TAPPED blog:



THE FRINGES.

Megan's musings on the intersection between the libertarian movement and racism are interesting. " sufficiently steeped in (Libertarianism) to know," she writes, "as all younger libertarians in the wonkosphere kind of know, that it has some ugly moments in its history. Specifically, a lot of its funding used to come from crazy old white people hoping to turn back the clock to the days before minorities and women got all uppity."

It's this sect of racial purists hiding beneath the furthermost edge of the Libertarian tent that I was thinking of when I talked about the breakaway sects dangerously totalitarian individualists yesterday (though separatists might have been a better word than individualist). Because the state poses the immediate threat, acting as the primary engine of social progress, the language of individual rights and anarchic devolution is useful to these folks. But what they seek to build is not a freer society, but a purer one. One in which a certain group of the genetically (or, at times, religiously) chosen are free to rebuild the world in their image, and impose what rules, laws, regulations, and standards are necessary to keep that picture gleaming. You see a bit of this in Ron Paul's older newsletters, where folks who wanted to associate themselves with Paul's efforts on behalf of "liberty" and "freedom" were really out to deprive other races of what autonomy they'd been able to wrest.

Posted by Ezra Klein on January 11, 2008 8:46 AM

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=01&year=2008&base_name=the_fringes#103707

[I work for workers]

1. Not true! Libertarians can't be racists, because they base their decisions on rational beliefs.

However we are all racist, because of our collectivist mentality.

[zanne]

2. Perhaps.

But we fight to become tolerant.

[Taverner]

3. I'm no Paul supporter but...

All the parties around today have some murky roots. The Democrats were the pro-slavery party in the Civil War. The Republicans were founded on two principles: anti-slavery (good) and anti-Mormon (bad - they argued executing them all.)