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Comment on Lew Rockwell’s “The Reality of Red-State Fascism"

I usually do not make an extended critique of a article here, but since Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr. is the President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think-tank, who tells us for openers that “Year’s end is the time for big thoughts, so here are mine,” and several fellow L&P bloggers have recommended reading the piece, without offering any critical comments, perhaps it is worthwhile making an effort to do so.

Rockwell notes:

“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.”

He then quotes from an unpublished 1994 memo of Murray Rothbard’s ascribing all sorts of libertarian implications to the Republicans taking control of Congress, and warning that the gains of this “revolution” might be lost.

That this occurred, Rockwell blames on the fact that “the establishment somehow managed to pin” the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing “to right-wing libertarianism,” and that so much energy was expended in focusing on the effort to impeach Bill Clinton for his attempt to cover up his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

Rockwell then leaps ahead to the situation today. His great lament is that so many Republicans, especially since 9/11, have gravitated to what he calls “Red State Fascism.” Thus, the greatest danger to American liberty is no longer from the left, but from the right.

He concludes:

“There has never in my lifetime been a more urgent need for the party of liberty to completely secede from conventional thought and established institutions, especially those associated with all aspects of government, and undertake radical intellectual action on behalf of a third way that rejects the socialism of the left and the fascism of the right.

I certainly agree with that statement, and my comments below are offered in the spirit of the “urgent need” he expresses. At the same time, I do not believe that it is possible “to completely secede from conventional thought and established institutions” or “undertake radical intellectual action” without cutting free from the parameters of many of his historical assumptions, as well as the conclusions that he has drawn from them.

Let’s begin with his, and Rothbard’s, assessments of the election of 1994. I do not think it had anywhere near the libertarian component they imagined. Where is Congressman Newt Gingrich in their analyses? Yet, most at the time attributed Republican success to the traditional decline after a party had won the presidency, with Clinton’s ineptitude in handling the health issue led by Hillary, his poor handling of such issues as gays in the military, and the way in which Gingrich led the Republican criticism of these issues.

Given the libertarian emphasis of the Rothbard-Rockwell analysis, even through Gingrich is not mentioned, one would imagine Gingrich was in the forefront of some sort of libertarian resurrection. Years earlier, Bruce Bartlett, then in Jack Kemp’s office, observed that Gingrich used to come over occasionally, and the staff would attempt to teach him a bit about supply-side economics, but that hardly qualifies as hard core libertarianism.

In my course on American Studies in those years, I used to show a few segments from the video tapes of Gingrich’s course on American Civilization, specifically where he talked about the origins of his Republicanism, especially the influence of Teddy Roosevelt on a relative, an uncle as I recall, who had in turn influenced Newt.

Gingrich was quite open in speaking about his Rooseveltian worldview, and my point in showing his lecture to my students was to demonstrate what an odd kind of conservatism the Republican leader was championing. It didn’t occur to me that Rothbard then, and Rockwell now, would see this as some kind of libertarian revolution.

TR was, of course, neither a conservative nor a libertarian, but a radical Progressive, who advocated a massive statism at home, as well as colonialism and imperialism abroad. It is no wonder today that Clinton, Gingrich and George W. Bush, all have talked about themselves as inheritors of TR’s mantle.

It would take considerable space to discuss all of what I consider Rockwell’s misperceptions about 1994. He says, for example, without offering any evidence, that “the state was seen as the enemy of education.” Conceding that schooling and education are quite different things, while Americans are aware of the failings in their dominant state schooling system, the hope springs eternal that it can be reformed. At the same time, some interests have been quite adroit in pushing a state-controlled charter school system as an alternative to really promoting private schools.

So shallow was this Gingrich-led “libertarian” revolution that Clinton was again elected in 1996, helped by the monetary efforts of the Fed, and his simple “triangulation” toward the Center. And Newt? The leader of this so-called great revolt was soon essentially out of the political ball game.

While I agree with Rockwell about the developing fascism in America, and have discussed it in a number of my articles at independent.org, its origins go way back beyond any supposed shift after 1994.

I will discuss the history of these developments in some future contributions to the L&P blog, and then endeavor to explore a viable alternative to this historical tendency.