“The myth that Russia is sliding back into authoritarian — or even totalitarian — rule is not only ridiculously overstated: it is downright pernicious.”
–Justin Raimondo
Just how much vodka have they been drinking at antiwar.com to run such a bizarre whitewash of President Putin’s tendency toward authoritarianism? I’m all for trying to help the Russian government steer toward more openness and limited government (and eliminating Russia’s irrational and destructive tax system and replacing it with a flat tax was certainly a step), but why would anyone be so eager to steer them toward greater authoritarianism and socialism?
And the mooning over Putin (called “Putin, the Patriot” by Raimondo last year) is remarkably over the top. How much moonier could one get than this?
I shall not soon forget the look on the Russian leader’s face as he watched George W. Bush cavort and grin his way through the Moscow trip: it spoke of a supremely adult forbearance, of a man whose inherent dignity and focus allowed him to rise above everyday trivialities and concentrate on a single objective.
Raimondo’s columns on Vladimir Putin read like the jacket copy on a dimestore bodice ripper.
But there’s got to be more to the eagerness to support Putin than the steely eyes and the “inherent dignity.” Could it be that Raimondo and his crowd yearn for the days when the evil American empire faced the Soviet Union? It was, after all, Raimondo’s steely eyed and inherently dignified hero who stated that the breakup of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the last century.”
P.S. It’s worth remembering that this swooning over Putin comes from a man who has admitted that he deliberately lied to his readers about a phony document allegedly from the U.S. Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan that he (Raimondo) knew to be fraudulent before he presented it as authentic.
P.P.S. It’s also interesting to contrast Raimondo’s eagerness to shower praise on President Putin (including the irrational and unjust war against Chechnya) with the courage of the Russian libertarians who have spoken out about press intimidation, the abolition of local elections, the undermining of the judiciary, the theft of Yukos and the persecution of Khodorkovsky, the war in Chechnya, the gross intervention into Ukraine’s elections and the attempt to tether Ukraine to Russia by force, the terrible policies of the last two years that have set Russia “on the road to the Third World,” and more.
Well, I agree with you on this one. Putin is terrible.
On the other hand, I actually find it a little comforting when the antiwar-paleo contingent fails to agree with each other. A little internal dissent is healthy. However, this means that someone must sometimes be wrong.
Yes, Putin’s such a liberal, cosmopolitan guy. Hmmmm let’s see: sacking senior cabinet officials because they speak out against his increasing authoritarianism and economic policies, waging a brutal war against Chechnya (isn’t Raimondo for secession?), nationalizing one of Russia’s largest companies through highly dubious practices (in other words, ignoring the rule of law), using the atrocities at Beslan to centralize power through a change in election rules (the Washington Post headline, by the way, was “Putin Moves to Centralize Authority), as Tom pointed out, asserting that the death of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the last century,” claiming that the Soviet Union “liberated” eastern Europe after WWII, etc, etc, etc.
Yes, Putin is awful. But not so awful, or so it seems, that Cato wouldn’t invite him to address their conference in Moscow last year.
Mr. Brady is very upset that I and others have tried to influence Mr. Putin and the Russian government. Shame on us. (And shame on Ed Crane, Maart Laar, and others for having expressed to him in a 4 hour meeting their views that muzzling the press and waging war on Chechnya were not good for Russia. Shame.)
I’m happy to work to explain to such people what direction they should take if they want their countries to be free and prosperous. Mr. Brady wouldn’t bother himself doing that. But at least he doesn’t fall all over himself to explain away — indeed, to rhapsodize over — their worst policies.
TGP: Mr. Brady is very upset that I and others have tried to influence Mr. Putin and the Russian government.
Tom, I have never said or written anything about Cato’s meeting with Vladimir Putin. What I thought entirely mistaken was Cato’s invitation to Putin, Autocrat of all the Russias, to address a Cato conference in Moscow, and what I thought remarkable was that Cato’s announcement of that event did not even mention his career in the KGB.
Lest I risk shrinking the compass of my ambitions as narrowly as Mr. Brady’s, I’ll make just a short remark and thereafter let this issue slide.
Not mentioning on an announcement of a meeting that President Putin had been a KGB spook in East Germany (did *anyone* on the planet not know that?) seems a small matter to me. It’s evidently the stuff of great excitement for Mr. Brady. On the other hand, when an alleged libertarian actively whitewashes all of the most unlibertarian policies of President Putin (as Justin Raimondo has done), it seems not to concern Mr. Brady. The fact that I was going to speak at a Cato-co-sponsored conference in Moscow at which Putin was tentatively scheduled to speak led Mr. Brady to write a breathless column for lewrockwell.com that managed to connect Putin with the BBC (which noted on its biography that he had been a KGB spook) and me with the BBC (you see, I had criticized the BBC some months earlier for their coverage of an entirely different issue) and through that means connecting Putin with me. On the basis of Mr. Brady’s strange colum, Tom DiLorenzo wrote for the same web site that “Tom Palmer of the Cato Institute is just wild about Vladimir (Putin).” Ohhhh-kaaay. Whatever.
Mr. Brady was very upset that I did not give a speech in Moscow declaring to all the world that Putin had been a KGB man, and instead prepared and delivered this paper:
http://www.cato.org/events/russianconf2004/papers/palmer.pdf
. How crazy of me to deliver a paper on “The Role of Institutions and Law in Economic Development” when I could have informed the Russian and Eurasian audience of something of which all were no doubt ignorant: that President Putin, with whom conference participants met, had been an economic espionage specialist for the KGB in East Germany. (At that meeting they discussed and promoted the values of a free press, peace, civil liberties, private property, and an independent judiciary as centrally important to Russia’s future as a rich and important nation.)
All of that breathless prose from Mr. Brady, but not a word of criticism of an alleged (let’s say, at best, former) libertarian who actually *is* “just wild about Vladimir” and an eager supporter of the war against the Chechens and of the attempt to keep Ukraine as a Russian satellite: Justin Raimondo, whose latest gushing defense of Putin’s “inherent dignity” was the occasion for this posting. Ok, Mr. Brady. Your priorities speak volumes.
I read your blog and agree that Raimondo is an anti-libertarian “nutcase” (that’s one of his own favorite words). So because of your posting I went to see his latest column. Surprise. It contains an attack on you! (It turns out you’re a “butt boy” for the neoconservatives.) Only it only links to things you have supposedly said, but with no actual links to anything you wrote or said — just to other things that Raimondo wrote claiming that you said such and such, but no links to what you wrote. A search on Google showed that he takes everything out of context — as shown in this posting on your blog, which does have direct links to quotes: http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/018290.php — and (surprise again) that he never offers evidence for his claims.
Question: why bother taking on such crap? (Of course, because of your posts we know that Raimondo is not only an anti-libertarian apologist for dictators and an antiSemite conspiracy nut, but a deliberate liar, but still.)
No doubt Rantmondo loves this cartoon:
http://www.ucomics.com/tomtoles/2005/05/10/
TGP: Lest I risk shrinking the compass of my ambitions as narrowly as Mr. Brady’s, I’ll make just a short remark and thereafter let this issue slide.
There you go again, Tom, making unwarranted assumptions without the knowledge to back them up. Our ambitions differ, for sure, but I wouldn’t presume to compare our respective ambitions.
TGP: Not mentioning on an announcement of a meeting that President Putin had been a KGB spook in East Germany (did *anyone* on the planet not know that?) seems a small matter to me. It’s evidently the stuff of great excitement for Mr. Brady.
I thought it was significant that Cato had invited Putin to address a Cato conference but had omitted any reference to his previous career in the KGB.
TGP: On the other hand, when an alleged libertarian actively whitewashes all of the most unlibertarian policies of President Putin (as Justin Raimondo has done), it seems not to concern Mr. Brady.
The purpose of my first post to this thread was not to comment on your interpretation of Justin Raimondo.
TGP: The fact that I was going to speak at a Cato-co-sponsored conference in Moscow at which Putin was tentatively scheduled to speak led Mr. Brady to write a breathless column for lewrockwell.com that managed to connect Putin with the BBC (which noted on its biography that he had been a KGB spook) and me with the BBC (you see, I had criticized the BBC some months earlier for their coverage of an entirely different issue) and through that means connecting Putin with me. On the basis of Mr. Brady’s strange colum, Tom DiLorenzo wrote for the same web site that “Tom Palmer of the Cato Institute is just wild about Vladimir (Putin).” Ohhhh-kaaay. Whatever.
It would appear that you attach undue significance to your own actions and consequently misinterpret my column. The fact that you were going to speak at the conference had nothing whatsoever to do with my decision to write a column for Lewrockwell.com. Neither did I seek to connect Putin with you. Here is the link so that readers may read what I wrote and judge for themselves: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/brady1.html
TGP: Mr. Brady was very upset that I did not give a speech in Moscow declaring to all the world that Putin had been a KGB man, and instead prepared and delivered this paper:
http://www.cato.org/events/russianconf2004/papers/palmer.pdf. How crazy of me to deliver a paper on “The Role of Institutions and Law in Economic Development” when I could have informed the Russian and Eurasian audience of something of which all were no doubt ignorant: that President Putin, with whom conference participants met, had been an economic espionage specialist for the KGB in East Germany. (At that meeting they discussed and promoted the values of a free press, peace, civil liberties, private property, and an independent judiciary as centrally important to Russia’s future as a rich and important nation.)
No, I was not upset that you did not devote your speech to an indictment of Putin. Again you assume too much and seem to attach too much importance to your own actions.
So no one is going to take up the challenge to defend Justin “Putin the Patriot” Raimondo? The best they can do is to get snitty because Palmer’s employer didn’t mention Putin’s previous career in a press release? That’s it?
amazing what you learn here… Really, Czar Vova the Great was doing some intelligence work in East Germany? Now I understand where his perfect German comes from…Thank you Mr Brady. You did not tell us that in Moscow, Mr Palmer, indeed. Do you think G. Bush Sr also knew? (slightly asymmetric presumption though)
NV
Tom-
Please don’t be so snide. I think, even though I dislike the tone, that there is a good question: If Putin is thuggish (which I think we can agree he is) than why did Cato invite him? And I ask this seriously.
We invite lots and lots of people to conferences with whom we don’t agree but whom we’d like to influence. That’s one way you can change people’s minds, by engaging them. And when having a conference in Russia, with a special attention to legal, economic, and political reforms in Russia, it makes good sense to invite members of the government to participate, including members of the Duma and the president.
One will note, as one commentator does above, that Mr. Brady would not defend his friend Mr. Raimondo. Instead, he uses the occasion of Raimondo’s truly slavish defense of the worst policies of President Putin to ….. complain that President Putin was invited to take part in a conference in Moscow in which I also participated. What does that tell you about the man’s priorities?
There are people who complain about the world and try to change it. And there are people who just complain about the world. And then there are people who complain with special bitterness about people who try to change it.
TGP: We invite lots and lots of people to conferences with whom we don’t agree but whom we’d like to influence. That’s one way you can change people’s minds, by engaging them. And when having a conference in Russia, with a special attention to legal, economic, and political reforms in Russia, it makes good sense to invite members of the government to participate, including members of the Duma and the president.
I’m all in favor of engaging with people of every political stripe. However, inviting Putin to give the opening address to a Cato conference is not the same thing as inviting people with diverse views to participate in panel discussions.
TGP: One will note, as one commentator does above, that Mr. Brady would not defend his friend Mr. Raimondo. Instead, he uses the occasion of Raimondo’s truly slavish defense of the worst policies of President Putin to ….. complain that President Putin was invited to take part in a conference in Moscow in which I also participated. What does that tell you about the man’s priorities?
The reason I posted my original remark was that I was struck by the contrast between your criticisms of Putin and your attack on Justin Raimondo for his column on Putin and the fact that Cato decided to invite Putin to give the opening address at its conference, a decision with which it seems you concur.
For the record, I thought Raimondo made some good points about U.S. policy in eastern Europe and I was disappointed that in your rush to criticize him, you failed to discuss his substantive points. What does that tell your readers about your priorities?
As readers will doubtless have realized, I wrote the comment above.
Dude, did you notice how Rantmondo threatened you? In his last rant he links to an article about some company that charges $35,000 to go the Baghdad airport. You went to the Baghdad airport, so you must have taken that taxi ride. (He’s a logic whiz.) Then he writes, “I hope he enjoyed his taxpayer-funded $35,000 cab ride from central Baghdad to the airport — because, come the (libertarian) Revolution, we’re going to make him pay back every penny of it, with interest.” Robespierre or Raimondo? You decide. “Come the (libertarian) Revolution”????? That’s just sick.
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5936
Dude, did you notice how Rantmondo threatened you? In his last rant he links to an article about some company that charges $35,000 to go the Baghdad airport. You went to the Baghdad airport, so you must have taken that taxi ride. (He’s a logic whiz.) Then he writes, “I hope he enjoyed his taxpayer-funded $35,000 cab ride from central Baghdad to the airport — because, come the (libertarian) Revolution, we’re going to make him pay back every penny of it, with interest.” Robespierre or Raimondo? You decide. “Come the (libertarian) Revolution”????? That’s just sick.
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5936
Dude, did you notice how Rantmondo threatened you? In his last rant he links to an article about some company that charges $35,000 to go the Baghdad airport. You went to the Baghdad airport, so you must have taken that taxi ride. (He’s a logic whiz.) Then he writes, “I hope he enjoyed his taxpayer-funded $35,000 cab ride from central Baghdad to the airport — because, come the (libertarian) Revolution, we’re going to make him pay back every penny of it, with interest.” Robespierre or Raimondo? You decide. “Come the (libertarian) Revolution”????? That’s just sick.
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5936
Dude, did you notice how Rantmondo threatened you? In his last rant he links to an article about some company that charges $35,000 to go the Baghdad airport. You went to the Baghdad airport, so you must have taken that taxi ride. (He’s a logic whiz.) Then he writes, “I hope he enjoyed his taxpayer-funded $35,000 cab ride from central Baghdad to the airport — because, come the (libertarian) Revolution, we’re going to make him pay back every penny of it, with interest.” Robespierre or Raimondo? You decide. “Come the (libertarian) Revolution”????? That’s just sick.
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5936
I’d rather refrain from commenting on the remarkably petty approach of Mr. Brady, but I can’t let the above go unanswered.
No, I did not find Raimondo’s points (the ones to which Mr. Brady alludes but does not describe) all that interesting. That the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID fund organizations abroad is widely understood and I did not learn anything new or interesting from Raimondo’s breathless prose. That President Putin’s active suppression of the broadcast media is somehow equivalent to the policies of the Bush administration I find not merely implausible, but risible. The entire essay is a whitewash of all of the worst policies of President Putin: the war with Chechnya (they should have been allowed to go at the get-go and the Russian government has had several chances to let them out; each time they’ve failed, it has made a reasonable and mutually acceptable policy even less likely and now has created the potential for a region wide series of wars); the active suppression of the media; the monopolization of power and the re-transformation of Russia into a one-party state; the cult of personality that has been created by Putin (and in which Mr. Raimondo is an active participant, as his remarks about Putin sound remarkably like old Soviet era books on Lenin’s dignified personality); the swindle involved in the Yukos affair; the undermining of the rule of law; the jailing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky on trumped up charges; and on and on.
President Putin had an opportunity to set Russia on the path toward a freer, more just, more law governed, and more prosperous society. Under his leadership Russia has been taking the other path lately, the one that leads to third world dictatorship. (The only thing keeping their economy from shrinking is the change in the terms of trade governing oil; take that out and the policies have been disastrous.) It’s truly disturbing to read that a self-described “libertarian” would applaud each of those moves. What friends of liberty do in such cases is to encourage the libertarian inclinations of politicians, not, as Mr. Raimondo does, the anti-libertarian ones. Raimondo is joined by another of the pro-dictatorship crowd, a fellow named Daniel McAdams, who is associated with the utterly phony “British Helsinki Human Rights Group” (see the posting at http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/016326.php ) and who is quite eager to whitewash the creepiest state in Europe, the authoritarian regime of Aleksander Lukashenko (whom McAdams refers to as the “democratically-elected Aleksander Lukashenko”). See his essay at:
http://blog.lewrockwell.com/lewrw/archives/008051.html#more
In it he endorses “the slow approach to liberalization” (so slow as to be non-existent, in any case), asserts that Belarus has enjoyed “robust economic growth” (not true that there’s been “robust economic growth,” as opposed to subsidies from Mother Russia, which helps to keep Belarus from taking the political path of Ukraine, which has been seeing its oil and gas shipments from Russia diminished, as the majority has made it clear that they don’t want to be a part of a reconstituted USSR or Greater Russia).
And, of course, on the lewrockwell.com site, set up by the charlatan who has appropriated the name of Ludwig von Mises for his institute, the following is cited as evidence of how wonderful Belarus is today:
“The state spends millions on grandiose projects for the people, like Minsk central station. It’s possibly the nicest station I’ve ever visited. A four-storey glass structure, it has two cafÃ?Â??Ã?Â?Ã?©s, a cinema, a pool club, an internet cafÃ?Â??Ã?Â?Ã?©, a play area for children. Unlike every other station in Europe, it is free from drug dealers and prostitutes.”
There you have it. State subsidies for grandiose projects and no prostitutes! Mr. Raimondo and Mr. McAdams are welcome to enjoy dictatorship if they wish, but people who love freedom — we call them libertarians — will choose otherwise. Mr. Raimondo and Mr. McAdams have taken their cue entirely from the U.S. government; if the U.S. government favors X, then they’re against it. So if Mr. Bush or Ms. Rice speak out against repression in Belarus, then Mr. Raimondo and Mr. McAdams will be for it. (I hope that at least they will have the decency to speak out against repression in Uzbekistan, since they perceive the U.S. government as favoring it. But if they do speak out against the police state in Uzbekistan, it won’t be because of any concern for the freedom of the people there; it will only be because they oppose whatever Bush supports. It’s a principle, I guess. But not one I find very honorable.)
I’m torn. I have a lot of respect for Tom and for Mark. I certainly would hope that Justin is not Mark’s “friend” as Tom implies. I always thought Mark had much better taste than that. Though I will say I’m disappointed he wrote for the Rockwell site and sure hope he at least got paid for it. Old fashioned greed would be a mitigating factor in his defense.
I share Mark’s views on war and the like. We differ hardly at all. But I know Justin is, shall we say rather inventive, when it comes to facts. He is always disagreeable even under the best of circumstances. And if he told me it Christmas, and the tree was out and kids were open up presents and Bing Crosby was on the TV I’d still grab a calendar to make sure!
Now if it were me I might have had Putin at the conference — then. Not now! I agree that you have to talk to people to influence them. Justin thinks you have to insult them, lie about the, degrade them, etc. He almost acts like one of those loony Objectivists from SOLO. Same personality, same temperment, same insults just on opposite sides. We can be reasonable when we disagree.
I don’t fault Tom for being unreasonable with Justin. Some cases are hopeless. Mark is not such a case. So I hope you guys are nicer to each other. You’re both good guys.
Here’s a fact: in the late 80s, Tom Palmer traveled throughout eastern Europe, spreading the ideas of liberty: giving out books by Hayek, Mises, and other great liberal thinkers here and there, meeting with professors and intellectuals in the then East Bloc who were sympathetic to liberty. I don’t know the details. But I have the suspicion that with a bit of seed money from a couple of key groups, Mr. Palmer set the course right. It hasn’t all be sweetness and sunshine since, but I’ve spoken with people who know – who were front and center, for instance, at the fall of the Romanian regime – who think that Mr. Palmer’s work had a great deal to do with advancing the cause of liberty there. I don’t want to overstate the matter.
And what did Mr. Brady do? Or Mr. Raimondo? In Raimondo’s case, the mind reels. Mr. Brady? He was merely finishing up a graduate degree he never completed from NYU. A nobler, if ultimately unsatisfying endeavor.
I had the chance to get to know all three over thye years, too, and I agree that Raimondo is the kind of person who would destroy libertarianism and all hopes for freedom just to get more attention for himself. He’s a Class-A a**hole. Brady is not so bad, but I don’t think he ever finished his Ph.D. He was planning forever to write on Mises on intellectual property but I don’t think he ever wrote anything. Palmer took his time, but he did finish his doctoral dissertation. (Palmer — when are you going to let us read it?)
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