A new zine from Arthur Hlavaty

Lots of nice content can be found in "Nice Distinctions 33," the new zine (after three years) issued by Arthur Hlavaty. I'm on his email list, but you can go grab your own own digital copy easily enough. (If you get hooked, see the Hlavaty zine archive. )

Much of the zine has an kind of amusing grumpiness about it, as when he says "I  never liked golf. It's not a major problem for me, at worst taking up space on the sports page for some reason." Or when he says he stopped listening to new music 45 years ago. (Doing the math suggests he stopped in 1975. Is it too late to turn him on to 1980s Tom Petty and Elvis Costello? I knew a guy in Lawton, Oklahoma, who thought classical music went bad in about 1775.)

But the jokes also merge into thoughtful content, as when he reviews two books about the "golden age" of science fiction, or writes pithy obituaries, here are two I liked but the others are worth reading too:

Justin Raimondo quite seriously described himself as the #1 gay supporter of Pat Buchanan (he admitted there was not a lot of competition), but that was not the whole story. I have abandoned the hope of having a society without a few elements controlled by a legitimized armed gang, but I still have a lot of sympathy for libertarianism, not just sex&weed&dirty books but two other good ideas: 1) distrusting the cops. Radley Balko proudly upholds that one, now more liberals are noticing, and that may be the one element of vestigial libertarianism in Rand Paul's makeup. 2) staying out of Asian wars. Going back to Woodrow Wilson and continuing today there is the allegedly liberal doctrine that democracy is so wonderful that we must impose it everywhere no matter how many people we have to kill. Justin Raimondo and antiwar.org stood up to that idea. 

Paul Krassner was the first great corrupting influence in my life. _The Realist_ introduced me to Robert Anton Wilson and Albert Ellis, among others, and he himself commented incisively on the follies of our times. In the 70s he went through paranoia and came out the other side. I always sent him my zines, and one of the high points of my writing life was being quoted in _The Realist_.

A "bad" libertarian explains why you should read Justin Raimondo

Like many of my other favorite libertarians, Justin Raimondo understands there is a close connection between being against war and being in favor of civil liberties. "Leave me alone" cannot be separated from "leave everyone else alone, too."

This is not to say that Mr. Raimondo cannot be a little annoying, even to other libertarians. In his guise as "Pope Justin," he sometimes dispenses advice on who is and who isn't a good libertarian, guidance that isn't always welcomed by the heretics. (As Art Carden has joked, "Every movement contains two kinds of people: those who have betrayed it, and me.") Personally, I prefer the ecumenical Bryan Caplan approach. Perhaps that's because I'm a "bad" libertarian, pretty good on civil liberties and peace but a little weak on some of the other stuff. I'm fine with public libraries, for example. (Quick! Find a stake and gather some dry wood!)

Anyway, Justin Raimondo has done wonderful, yeoman work at Antiwar.com, a site that I've given money to and tried to promote any way that I can. His editorials, which one highlight of a very useful and newsy site, argue relentlessly for the need to fight for civil liberties and against war, forming alliances with any willing partner. You can learn a lot by simply following his links.

He's just written a particularly good piece, "Libertarianism in One Country." Here are two highlights from it, aimed at a particular group, American libertarians, although he also is addressing any other American willing to listen:

When we started this web site we did so not only as peace activists but also as explicitly libertarian activists, and we did it in part because we wanted to educate libertarians as well as the general public in a field where confusion reigned. This confusion has always been particularly acute among libertarians because people the world over yearn for liberty – and the US government poses as their champion. And while history is indeed full of little ironies, this is a huge one – because it is Washington, and no other actor on the world stage, that poses the main danger to the peace and freedom of the world.

Inside the imperial metropolis, of course, we are afforded the protections of the Constitution – at least on the surface – as well as enjoying the fruits of an economic system that has produced unprecedented wealth. The irony factor comes into play when we note that our foreign policy of unrelenting aggression has produced only misery and endless bloodshed for the world’s peoples. This is the great American paradox, made all the more acute when we further realize that this policy has undermined our liberty and prosperity at home – perhaps fatally. The bigger and more bloated our empire gets, the less free and poorer we become.

***

We must never forget that the political character of a state, whether it is democratic, theocratic, fascist, or communist, says nothing about the foreign policy it will pursue. A democracy can be and often is relentlessly aggressive, while a fascist dictatorship could just as readily be pacific and isolationist. Indeed, a democratic nation with a Messiah complex is far more dangerous to the world and to its own people than a relatively authoritarian state that just wants to reign over its little corner of the globe. A danger to the world because the special arrogance that infuses would-be messiahs allows them to commit the greatest crimes for the noblest of reasons. A danger to their own people because the very act of aggression and empire-building destroys the liberal character of democratic states, eating away their substance from within.

The 'Atlas Shrugged of historical revisionism'?

World War II revisionism is a fertile topic for folks of the antiwar persuasion (such as RAW) and I thought I would put in one more observation before Gore Vidal's death becomes yesterday's news.

Antiwar.com head honcho Justin Raimondo's obituary for Gore Vidal called my attention to Raimondo's earlier review of Vidal's The Golden Age, where Raimondo wrote, "Ironic, idealistic, world-weary and, in the end, optimistic, Gore Vidal has, in The Golden Age, cemented the capstone of his historical saga with what is truly a crowning achievement. A novel that works as history, that breaks fresh (if not entirely new) ground historically: here, at last, is the Atlas Shrugged of historical revisionism, a fictional but all-too-true retort to the court historians who peddle the Disney-ized mythology of the 'greatest generation' to a nation that has lost its memory, and, therefore, its conscience."

Raimondo's article also pointed out to me a book that I had not heard of before, Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States: 1939-44, by Thomas Mahl. Says Raimondo, "Mahl’s 1998 book is based on declassified documents that tell some of the story of how British intelligence agents permeated the political and social elites in Washington and New York, pushed a reluctant 'isolationist' America into war – and put us on the road to empire."