Thomas E. Woods Jr. - Real Dissent: A Libertarian Sets Fire to the Index Card of Allowable Opinion

REAL DISSENT

A L IBERTARIAN S ETS F IRE

TO the Index Card of Allowable Opinion

Thomas E. Woods, Jr., 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law .

Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

To my listeners at TomWoodsRadio.com

F OREWORD BY R ON P AUL

Ive been delighted to endorse the work of Tom Woods over the years, beginning with The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History in 2004, and continuing with Toms books Rollback , 33 Questions About American History Youre Not Supposed to Ask , and Meltdown . I actually wrote the foreword to Meltdown , Toms book on the financial crisis. If you had told me even ten years ago that a book written from the point of view of the Austrian School of economics, and which showed that economic downturns are caused not by the free market but by the Federal Reserves interventions into the free market, would spend ten weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, I wouldnt have believed it.

During my presidential campaigns, Tom wrote some of the most effective replies to some of my unkindest critics. Whenever a popular Internet site would run an article with a title like Ron Pauls 15 Most Extreme Positions, I knew Tom was on the case. His responses, both on his YouTube channel and in writing, were always informed, funny, and devastating.

Tom and I have worked together closely over the years. I asked him to write the Mission Statement and Statement of Principles for Campaign for Liberty, the organization I founded after the 2008 campaign. I invited him to testify before Congress about auditing the Federal Reserve. Ive invited him to be the opening speaker for me on many occasions, and he spoke at our great Rally for the Republic in 2008. Today, Tom is doing some of his most important work of all, because of the lasting impact it will surely have: hes designing courses for the Ron Paul Curriculum, my K-12 homeschool program.

The book you hold in your hands is great fun to read, but its also filled with useful debating points that will come in handy as you make the case for the free society with friends and family. In endorsing one of Toms previous books I called him one of the libertarian movements brightest and most prolific scholars, and I am delighted to commend his new book to you. You will enjoy it, and profit from it.

P REFACE

Not long ago I was having lunch with my mother and was apparently itching to get back to the office so I could compose the definitive smash to a particularly obnoxious attack on libertarian ideas. She suggested I put together a book of the various replies to critics Id written over the years. When she happened to hear in a recent interview that I was thinking of doing just that, she emailed: Youre welcome.

Not all of the chapters that follow are replies to critics, but a great many of them are. Among people who follow my work, this is generally their favorite genre: the full-throttle reply to a widely read attack on libertarianism. As people brought these attacks to my attention, I began to specialize in replies. I dont like to see an ill-informed critic go unanswered, not only because I dont want bystanders thinking weve been defeated, but also because its a good opportunity to provide libertarians the intellectual ammunition they need to reply to similar critics when they encounter them.

This is the first book Ive written in three and a half years. Ive spent most of that time on three major projects see the afterword for details but Ive managed to keep up my writing in what I laughingly call my spare time. Most of the material in this book has appeared in some print publication or online (LewRockwell.com being the most frequent outlet), but its not always easy to find. This book brings it all together. Im really pleased with the articles that appear here; Im convinced that some of my best and punchiest writing can be found in these pages.

Im grateful to Jacob Hornberger for allowing me to use material previously published in the Future of Freedom Foundations Freedom Daily as chapters 1, 12, 44, and 47 of this book. Thanks are due also to Naji Filali and the Harvard Political Review for granting permission to reproduce the material in chapter 54, to The American Conservative for chapter 2, and to the Ludwig von Mises Institute for the material in chapters 6, 9, 11, 31, and 53. Finally, my thanks to Takis Magazine (takimag.com) for permitting the use of material that became chapter 45.

As always, I want to express my deep appreciation for my wife, Heather, who is my biggest fan and supporter. She has helped make me the man I am today. (The good parts, anyway.) And of course much love to my five daughters: Regina, Veronica, Amy, Elizabeth, and Sarah. How impoverished my life would be without you.

And a special thanks to all those who helped make the Tom Woods Show, launched in 2013, a much greater success than I ever expected. This book is for you guys.

Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

August 2014

Topeka, Kansas

CONTENTS

I NTRODUCTION

The common link binding together the chapters of this book is more than just the libertarian perspective they share. Most of them also do something else: they challenge the narrow band of opinion that Americans are permitted to occupy. Should they stray from the spectrum running from Hillary Clinton to Mitt Romney surely, citizen, any position you may want to take may be found within that compendious range! they will be condemned, smeared, or ignored by the gatekeepers of permissible discussion.

Who are these gatekeepers? On the left, sites like ThinkProgress and Media Matters specialize in tendentious portrayals of those uppity peons who stray from the plantation, wisely overseen by the Washington Post and the New York Times . On the right its neoconservative sites like the Free Beacon, who have built a nice little cabin on that plantation, and who rat out anyone who tries to run away. Why, we dont hold any of the dangerous views of those libertarians, good Mr. New York Times reporter, sir! And you know what? Well go one better: we wont even talk about issues that Bill Buckleys National Review freely debated even a couple generations ago. We are nice and respectable, Mr. New York Times reporter, sir, and well be sure to keep a close eye on those awful subversives who, probably because of some mental defect, are unsatisfied with the Romney-to-Clinton spectrum.

The respectables of left and right do not deign to show where were wrong, of course. The very fact that weve strayed from the approved spectrum is refutation enough. Thats why Ive called these people the thought controllers, the commissars, or the enforcers of approved opinion. It is against them and their attacks that most of this book is aimed.

Part I covers foreign policy and war. The regime has fostered more confusion among the public over these issues than any other. Conservatives, of all people, wind up supporting courses of action that (1) expand the power of the state over civil society; (2) are justified on the basis of propaganda theyd laugh at if it came from the mouths of Saddam Hussein or Nikita Khrushchev; and (3) violate the absolute standards of morality that conservatives never tire of telling us are under assault. The antiwar reputation of left-liberals, meanwhile, is almost entirely undeserved; the mainstream left supported every major U.S. war of the twentieth century.