A Semi-Monthly Newsletter THE Libertarian Forum Joseph R. Peden, Publisher Murray N. Rothbard, Editor VOLUME 11, NOS. 22-23 NOVEMBER 15 - DECEMBER 1, 1970 35C THE ELECTIONS We live in a time of increasingly intense and unpre- bers, etc., they also have a great need to revere their dictable changes in attitudes and values, a time when a valid President, to consider him as a wise authority figure analysis of existing social and ideological trends may be a bit above the battle. And so the brawling nature of the completely outmoded a few months later. Who, for example, Nixon-Agnew campaign put the Middle American voters could have predicted last spring that the flourishing anti- off, discomfited them, made their wise authority images war movement would now be dead as a dodo? Dead.. .or seem too much like local wardheelers for comfort. Fur- dormant? Any analysis of the November elections has to thermore, the Democrats were able to draw the teeth keep this humbling fact in mind. of Agnewism by shifting notably rightward, by stressing Be that as it may, the press has underestimated the their own devotion to "law and order". Thus, the clumsy crushing defeat suffered by the Nixon Administration. attempt by the Republicans to turn such a generally Despite an ardent nation-wide galvanizing effort by Nixon revered and moderate figure as Adlai Stevenson into a and Agnew, despite their continual hammering at the seem- crypto-Weatherman backfired badly by making the Repub- ingly popular issue of polarization against the Left, despite licans rather ridiculous, a backfiring that also beset Agnew's enormously greater financing and a demoralized Democratic attempts at rhetorical alliteration. opposition, the Democratic Party has emerged from the The failure to polarize the country against the Left was 1970 elections as the secure majority of the country. The also considerably helped by the fact that the Left seems Democrats gained nine Congressmen and no less than to have suddenly disappeared. The campuses are always eleven governors, and their victories were scored through- quieter in the fall than in the spring, but even so the extent out the country, South, West and Middle West. The famous of campus relapse into apolitical passivity this fall has Nixonian "Southern strategy" totally collapsed, and gover- been truly remarkable. The Yale students have turned norship races were lost throughout the South; only in dramatically from the Panthers to football and Boola- Tennessee did the strategy succeed. In fact, only in Boola, and on campus after campus the story is the same. Tennessee, New York, and Connecticut did the Republicans The larger meaning of the election, then, is that the do very well at all. The common argument that the Re- prospect of civil war that seemed to be looming~onthe publicans lost far fewer House races than the Admini- horizon, a war in which fascist repression would have stration usually loses in off-year elections overlooks crushed a vociferous Left, seems now but a ghost of the a crucially important fact: that President Nixon, in contrast past. The Center still holds, and more strongly than to all previous Presidents, did not bring a Republican it has for several years. House into office with him. Furthermore, the fact that the Democrats lost a few seats in the Senate takes on proper perspective only when Retreat From Freedom we realize that an unusually large number of Democratic Leonard E. Read seems to be worried; apparently he senators were up for re-election this year-the products is having considerable difficulty in defending the thesis of the Democratic sweeps in the 1958 recession year and that everyone must obey all laws, no matter how noxious in the 1964 Goldwater debacle. It is all too easily forgotten they may be. And so in the current Notes from FEE that the Republicans began 1970 with the expectation of ("Defiance of Law", November ), Mr. Read returns to capturing the Senate. the dialogue (see "On Civil Obedience," Lib. Forum, It is about time that political commentators face the July). Except that it is a curious form of dialogue indeed, fact that the Republicans have not organized either house for Mr. Read cleaves to his lofty principle that no critic of Congress since 1954, and that, apart from the Presi- or emitter of fallacy may be mentioned in his work. At dency , we are drifting close to a one-party Democratic first glance, this principle seems to have a monkish, nation. Furthermore, there is no hope for Republican almost saintly air, an air of discussing only ideas and control of Congress in the foreseeable future. never people; until we realize that this attitude stifles The Nixon-Agnew failure seems to be due to several any sort of intellectual dialogue whatever, for it means factors. One is the offsetting of the anti-Left "social that one need never comes to grips with anyone else's issue" by the mess that the Nixon Administration has views. If philosophers or scholars upheld this view, any made of the economy; a second is the fact that the peace sort of intellectual advance would be stifled; there would issue, despite its dormancy, still remains (the peace can- be no book reviews, no critique of the unsound ok advance didates in Congress did fairly well). Another reason of the sound in anyone's work. If, for example, Henry is the fact that Nixon-Agnew overplayed their hand. While (Continued on page 8) Middle Americans revile the Left, hippies, students, bom- Page 2' The Libertarian Forum November 15 - December I, 1970 STIRRINGS, RIGHT AND LEFT In these changing times, it becomes increasingly- dif- ficult to tell "leftn, "right" or in between without a detailed anarchism with socialism. scorecard. There are new stirrings throughout the left- In his review of Guerin, Widmer criticizes the French right spectrum, and all t h r o ugh that spectrum authori- follower of Proudhon and Bakunin for still being tied to tarian and libertarian elements appear and vie for support. the mystique of the "working class" and ignoring the The November Festival of Liberation in Los Angeles, individualist aspects of anarchism, while Chomsky is for example, was addressed not only by such veteran criticized for "his narrow insistence on following some- anarcho-capitalists as Robert LeFevre and the editor what doctrinaire European historians and seeing anarchism of the Lib. Forum , but also by the confused and incon- as purely integral to socialism. He does not recog- sistent but definitely anarchistic "leftist" Paul Goodman, nize that much of what can, and has been, reasonably called and also by the great-one-man crusader for liberty in the anarchism, from William Godwin through Paul Goodman, psychiatric profession, Dr. Thomas Szasz, who while has been non-Socialist in any usual leftist sense. The anarcho-Marxism of the New Left, now often subordinated now embraced by the New Left, himself looks upon Hayek and Mises as his philosophical mentors. And over at the to neo-Leninism, linguistically misleads him." bastion of Conservatism, Yational Review, a recent reviewer, Widmer concludes his review-article on a hopeful and ecumenical note. "Whether by way of traditional European while hailing Soviet Democrat Irving Howe's recent edited Left- libertarianism, n a tiv e Am e r i c a n individualistic work attacking the New Left, also praised the New Leftist rightism, or philosophical anarchism, we arrive at the journalist Nicholas von Hoffman for his critiques of necessity for transforming our institutions. Why are we Liberal Social Democracy. anarchists now almost in fashion in America? Because, On the Left, increasing support for the libertarian and in fact, the state's illegitimacy is becoming widely, if anarchist positions has appeared recently in severalforms. fragmentarily, manifest to many." The liberal weekly The Nation has recently acquired the In the meanwhile, left-liberal Margot Hentoff has a veteran left-anarchoid Emile Capouya as its literary perceptive review of Bill Buckley's The Governor Listeth editor, a move which is perhaps reflected in the recent in the New Y ork Review of Books (December 3). (Worth favorable lead review of several anarchist books. (Kingsley the price of admission is the cartoon of Chairman Bill Widmer, "Anarchism Revived: Left, Right, and All Around," by the marvelous political caricaturist David Levine, The Nation, November 16). Professor Widmer, himself making Buckley look something like an evil chipmunk). an anarchist (probably of the anarcho-syndicalist variety), Essentially, Mrs. Hentoff is nostalgic about Buckley's reviews the Tuccille book, Radical Libertarianism, Daniel former libertarianism and attacks him for abandoning his Guerin's Anarchism (both recently reviewed in the Lib. previous quasi-libertarianism principles to sit at the feet Forum), and Professor Robert Paul Wolff's ( a recent of Power and the Establishment. yrs. Hentoff observes convert to anarchism) In Defense of Anarchism (Harper the fact that in his recent essays, we come upon him in & Row, 86 pp. $4.50, Paper $1.00). Even though he dis- the middle of a journey toward a rather awful kind of agrees with Tuccille's lai ssea- faire capitalism, Widmer's moderation," a moderation that has come upon Bill as he treatment of Jerry's book is the most favorable of the three. "moves away from the absence of power, that condition Widmer sees that our kiud of anarchism is the expression which was his abiding charm." Hear, hear! Buckley, she of a native American libertarianism which "may be one of notes, "is beginning to take on the weight of middle-aged our finest and most redeeming heritages." Widmer calls responsibility, sounding more often like a resilient prince our position "anarcho-rightism", which "takes laissez- of the Church than like a purifying spirit." faire economics and open competition seriously-not just For example, Mrs.