I’ve been reading a blog by a fine writer of English (an American) in Ukraine that’s full of interesting bits of information on goings on there. Le Sabot Post-Moderne is well worth a look.
I was led from that to a rather deft take down of Jonathan Steele of The Guardian and The Nation, who got a lot of attention recently for referring to Ukraine’s Orange Revolution as a “postmodern coup d’etat,” based on trips financed by the Kremlin and Yanukovich supporters. (It also shows how the crackpots at antiwar.com and lewrockwell.com have helped to blacken the good name of libertarianism by associating it with the defense of tyrants and gangsters in Eastern Europe. They should be ashamed and decent people who associate with them should know what kind of people they’re dealing with.)
You write
“It also shows how the crackpots at antiwar.com and lewrockwell.com have helped to blacken the good name of libertarianism by associating it with the defense of tyrants and gangsters in Eastern Europe.”
Where did we “defend tyrants and gangsters”? By being critical of the opponent to a presidential candidate you deemed evil? Antiwar.com nowhere supported a presidential candidate in the Ukraine because it is not a libertarian’s role to decide such things for others. As I said, we were merely critical of the American gov’t’s poster child. You sound like a Freeper saying:
“Any opposition to the war on Iraq is support for Saddam and terrorists.”
Mr. Ewens,
I refer you to this posting (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/016326.php ) on the relationship between antiwar.com, lewrockwell.com, and the “British Helskinki Human Rights Group,” which is a full-time support group for eastern European strongmen such as Alexander Lukashenko, Leonid Kuchma, and Slobodan Milosevic.
I should also point out that the people in question (Tom DiLorenzo, Lew Rockwell, Justin Raimondo, and others) were not “merely critical of the American gov’t’s poster child”; they denounced Viktor Yushchenko as a “neocon/CIA stooge,” made slanderous insinuations of personal corruption (without any evidence — see my response to Adam here http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/016697.php#comments ) against him, frantically attempted to deny against mounting evidence that he had been poisoned (repeatedly claiming that it was “bad sushi” after all) and mocked him for his disfiguring illness. That goes far beyond being “merely critical of the American gov’t’s poster child.”
The people in question have been tipped off the edge of reasonable political discussion by their burning hatred of the United States government. If they perceive the U.S. government to favor something, then they are against it. And if the U.S. government is against it, then they are for it.
That is what happened to much of the antiwar left during the Vietnam War, when William Kunstler, Jane Fonda, and so many others became pro-communist because they were anti-American. (They went so far as to oppose rescuing the “Boat People” who were escaping the Vietnamese communist victory, which opposition led Joan Baez, who both opposed the war and championed the cause of the Boat People, to remark that “We always knew in the antiwar movement that there were some people who were against the war and other people who just wanted the other side to win.” [The quotation is a paraphrase based on my vivid memories of an interview on 60 Minutes with Baez in which she critized Fonda.])
Now the people who mocked Viktor Yushchenko for being disfigured, who celebrated the killing of American troops in Iraq (see this discussion and the further postings cited in it: http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/016562.php ), and who denounced Iraqi soldiers and police as “quislings” and “traitors” have taken the same turn. They have embraced evil for no other reason than that they believe that it is opposed by the U.S. government.