L. Neil Smith L.Neil Smith is the libertarian movement's most prolific author, with more than twenty books to his credit. He lives in Fort Collins, Colorado. CLICK HERE FOR RATIONAL REVIEW NEWS DIGEST SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS WHY AREN'T YOU A SPONSOR?
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Bad Company Okay, now I'm pissed. It says here that Rosie O'Donnell, best remembered as the Great White Whale of victim disarmament, has decided that enough of her peers have declared themselves for peace, that it's now safe for her to come out against the Bush-Clinton-Bush Administration's plans for war. Guess I'd better explain that, in the 1960s, I actively opposed Johnson's war in Vietnam. It had taken me a long, painful time to get there, as the son of a career Air Force officer. Dad had flown enough bombing missions over Germany to come home, when he was shot down and spent a year in Stalag Luft III. Afterward, he wound up in Strategic Air Command. Later, when we were in Florida, he helped tune up for the opening movements of the WWIII symphony, during the Cuban missile crisis. In 1964, though I was too young to vote, I campaigned passionately nonetheless for Barry Goldwater, whom I increasingly came to see as an incarnation of the Objectivist pirate Ragnar Danneskold, sweeping like a corsair across the nation (I didn't know about his speech writer, "Ol' Shakespeare" -- Karl Hess -- or I would have been even more enthusiastic), ravaging the ill-gotten peace of mind of all of the James Taggarts out there and an occasional Ellsworth Toohey or two, to boot. In time I got to be a little disillusioned with Barry, as all of us did who were about to become the modern libertarian movement, but only a little. Barry wasn't one of us, but he was pretty good company, and a hell of a lot better than the Lodge-Scranton-Rockefeller gang of weepers and droolers in his own party who had bitterly opposed his nomination, stabbed him in the back, and allowed Johnson to win by a landslide. It was particularly painful and infuriating to me that Barry had been portrayed as a warmonger (he was not, nor are most military men) when Johnson turned around and pumped Kennedy's little incursion into Indo-China up into one of the worst shooting wars Americans have ever endured. When my opinion of the war changed, it was with unadulterated pleasure that I pitched in against the Texas Tyrant. When he quit, rather than face electoral humiliation, it was a high point of my life. I will always remember exactly where I was when he made the announcement. The years between the '64 election and the end of that war were long and wearying. Struggling to stay in school, I wrote columns for the campus paper and antiwar songs that I performed in the basement coffee house I managed. I was secretary for the area's enormous peace group, stood on picket lines, went to teach-ins, and marched in main street parades where I had eggs thrown at me and was almost run over by a semi steered by a "patriot" who may even still be in prison for it. But through it all, the worst of it was the company I had to keep. The creatures I worked with every day, opposing the war, were the same idiots and hypocrites and losers I had opposed in the 1964 election. They were exactly the same kind of lying, whining, socialist parasites I'd once thought were worth fighting in Viet Nam, worth containing worldwide. Except that the lying, whining, socialist parasites on "our" side of the line were worse. At least those on the other side were willing to pick up an AK47 and make the world safe for Marxism. Given enough power, most of the kitchen collectivists, Quakers-of-convenience, and salon Sandinistas I rubbed elbows with on the homefront wouldn't have hesitated to do to their fellow Americans what the Khmer Rouge did to the Cambodians. (I vividly recall a disciple of Paul Ehrlich saying that what the world needs is another Great Plague.) Yet they considered themselves too good, somehow, to touch an icky old nasty gun-thing. I may have been the only real folksinging, coffee house managing, antiwar activist in America who wore love beads and packed a .38. Today, it isn't any better. They're holding antiwar protests again on the corner of College Avenue and Mulberry Street (carefully matched by what can only be called pro-war demonstrations on the other side of the street), and as I drive by on my way to the shooting range, I see many of the same old faces, more wrinkled, to be sure, drawn and much grayer, but without a sign that they've learned anything in the past 40 years. If I were to join them, which I'm certainly entitled to do by virtue of conviction, seniority, or sheer literary output, I doubt I'd be welcomed. If I carried a sign that said, "Taxation is the Fuel of War" or "Arm the People -- Disarm the State", they'd scream, soil themselves, or faint in tidy bunches, like asparagus on sale at the market. These people have a use all their own for an all-powerful state; they'll never give up on it, even if it did mean an end to war forever. At the national level, having put myself on record as opposing the way the Bush-Clinton-Bush Administration is exploiting the World Trade Center attack, in order to enhance its wealth and power (my daughter says the "W" in George W. Bush clearly stands for "War", which makes him President Warbush -- and makes his father Daddy Warbush), I was prepared to be uncomfortable again at the company I knew I would be keeping. Sure enough, along came the Great Reneger, Alec Baldwin, and his soon-to-be ex, battered Kim Bassinger. Then it was Madonna and her ex, Sean Penn. Then Jeanine "the Bowler" Garafalo spoke out, and then Martin Sheen. Left wing antiwar socialists began to pile up against right wing pro-war socialists and I was horrified to feel heartened by it. Now Germany and France and the Vatican have made themselves heard, too. But Rosie O'Donnell, queen of the machinegun-toting bodyguards takes the whole thing too far. I will not sway in my opposition to this idiotic war, nor will I hesitate (as some libertarians seem ready to do) to participate in antiwar exercises that involve left wing socialists. Let them struggle with notion of being seen validating me. However I will not refrain from saying, whenever the occasion arises -- even if I have to make the occasion arise -- that the left is as much to blame for this war as the right. Had we followed the Founding Fathers' plan and stayed out of foreign entanglements of any kind, we wouldn't be where we are now. Every war of the 20th century was started by Democrats, even if it was eventually embraced by Republicans. Similarly, I blame Republicans of the Rockefeller-Nixon-Bush stripe for putting me on the same side, politically, as garbage like Rosie O'Donnell, and I will never forgive them nor forget. When this whole thing is over, it will be time for a couple of new political parties. Out with the Republicans. Out with the Democrats. How about Goldwaterites versus Hessians? |
