At least some of the screaming zanies at antiwar.com, echoing their comrades in nuttiness at Lewrockwell.com, have now dubbed the crisis in Ukraine a coup…..by the opposition! According to the blog entry on The Ukraine Coup “the elections weren’t stolen: so says the BHHRG, one of the few NGOs in the West that isn’t a handmaiden of the Empire.” I wasn’t there, so I couldn’t conclude on the basis of personal observation that the election was stolen, but plenty of other observers were and they concluded that it was. (Ah, but they must be “handmaidens of Empire.”)
The Lew Rockwells and Justin Raimondos of the world have become so filled with sputtering rage and hatred of the USA that if the U.S. government favors something, you can count on them being against it, and if the U.S. government opposes something, you can count on them being for it. They compare Iraqi police recruits to collaborators with the Nazis (i.e., in their twisted perception of the world, the U.S.) and cheer on the authoritarian party in Ukraine that is hoping to revive the old U.S.S.R. (The antiwar.com blog mentions “some alleged resurgence of Russian imperialism,” which indicates that they don’t follow Russian politics very closely.) They have become so crazed by hatred of the US government that they openly prefer jihadist, facist, and other open enemies of freedom, if the US government opposes those groups. (In Rockwell’s case, his love for the C.S.A., the Confederate States of America, means that his hatred for the U.S.A. drives him to ever more bitter anti-American tirades.)
They have adopted the worst, and only the worst, habits and attitudes of their old master, Murray Rothbard, who had a penchant for pushing claims beyond their point of validity. Thus, Murray wrote in the first edition (mine is autographed “Feb. 1975, To Thomas Palmer, For reason and liberty — Murray Rothbard”) of For a New Liberty (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1973):
“American military and foreign policy since World War II has postulated an imminent threat of Soviet attack against which American energies were supposed to be mobilized. But in contrast, if we take a sober look at Soviet Russian foreign policy since the Bolshevik Revolution, we find a continuing passion for peace which has sometimes bordered on the suicidal. Poland attacked Soviet Russia after World War I, and gained a large chunk of White Russia and the Ukraine as a result. Before World War II, so devoted was Stalin to peace that he failed to make adequate provision against the Nazi attack. The much vaunted ‘expansion’ of the Soviet Union occurred only and solely in response to the unprovoked German attack; in defeating Germany, the Soviet Union had to roll over Germany’s military allies in Eastern Europe. Not only was there no Russian expansion whatever apart from the exigencies of defeating Germany, but the Soviet Union time and again leaned over backward to avoid any cold or hot war with the west.”(p. 293; emphasis added)
So the annexation of territory from Romania and from Poland and the installation of communist dictatorships throughout eastern and central Europe were only a part of a defense against German imperialism and then U.S. imperialism. A potentially rational case against military interventionism was turned into a completely over-the-top defense of Soviet expansionism. I recall the conversations in 1978 when Murray was persuaded to revise the text for the second edition, as it was so obviously untenable. He took out the phrase “continuing passion for peace” and changed “so devoted was Stalin to peace” to “So unprepared was Stalin” and “So unwarlike was Stalin.” He recognized that what he had written before was indefensible.
We now see the worst vices of Murray again in the likes of Raimondo and Rockwell, two men who lack his virtues. In their worldview, the enemies of the US must be our friends and the friends of the US must be our enemies. They have not only done injury to the name of Ludwig von Mises (whose name Rockwell appropriated for the institute he runs) and of the concept of being “antiwar”; they have lost their moorings to morality and to reality itelf.
Update: The bloggers at antiwar.com have now become expert dermatologists and concluded, on the basis of a nonpublished letter-to-the-editor allegedly by an associate professor of dermatology at the University of Toronto, that Yushchenko’s shocking and rapid change in appearance wasn’t a result of poisoning. It must be true, because if it were true, it would support their view of the world, which is that all bad things emanate from the United States government. Ergo, it must be true.
Further Update: The hateful mocking of Viktor Yushenko at antiwar.com continues. Have they no shame at all? The terrible illness that has ravaged Viktor Yushchenko is made into an occasion for mockery:
“The prince becomes a toad — and, no, I seriously doubt that Yushie’s physical deterioration has anything to do with a nefarious plot by Putin’s KGB against his good looks. Instead, let me suggest an alternative theory, one not contradicted by expert medical testimony — and the account of a parliamentary inquiry, — and it is this: perhaps the Faustian deal that Yushchenko made with the U.S. government has taken its toll, and, as in the dramatic climax of Oscar Wilde’s famous tale, “The Portrait of Dorian Grey,” his sins are being visited on his once-handsome visage, ravaging it — and revealing his inner soul.
Just a theory, mind you.”
What truly twisted and perverted minds.