August 29, 2007
Unlike my eldest daughter, who is a mathematician and econometrician, I have about as much training in statistics as did St. Anselm of Canterbury or Augustus Caesar. But I did check out the recorded hits for major paleoconservative and paleolibertarian websites with those who have knowledge of such matters, and so I am surprised that my figures did not always match those cited by others. From information received, it seems that I understated the monthly hits for vdare.com, a mistake that I shall happily acknowledge. What has been demonstrated, however, is that the surge reported by leftist websites is also occurring on our side, but neither the Left nor the neoconservative media seems interested. Their lack of curiosity is especially striking given that the upsurge of Ron Paul as a presidential candidate seems directly related to the activity of his supporters on websites.
An interesting criticism of one of my readers concerns my application of the term “right” to the antiwar Taft Republicans, who are now making a comeback. Apparently such types have more in common with Cindy Sheehan than they do with Blue Flower’s conception of the “Right.” But the problem with this interpretation is that it does not correspond to the way the political class, including the media fans of Mrs. Sheehan, see friend/enemy relations. Has Blue Flower noticed that both the establishment boosters and detractors of the antiwar activists never mention such controversialists as Lew Rockwell, Justin Raimondo, or the world-famous antiwar zealot Paul Craig Roberts? Why exactly is this so? The opponents of America’s entry into World War Two grouped around America First made no such distinction between right and left in attracting its members. Norman Thomas and Chester Bowles joined that movement from the left; Henry Regnery, Sr. and Charles Lindbergh from the right. Why does the antiwar Left, which appears on TV programs and in the national press in the company of neocons, not run to embrace its potential allies on the right?
The answer quite simply is that there ain”t a dime’s worth of difference among the chatterers in the media class. What Sam Francis called the “verbalizers” are so much alike socially and cosmologically, that they are happy to talk to each other without inviting along the Old Right. One might wonder whether much of what is now the antiwar Left wouldn”t go back to being pro-war, with a Democratic administration in power. If memory serves, I don”t recall establishment liberals complaining when Bill Clinton decided to blow up Serbian settlements in Kosovo. It may be a matter of which party’s ox gores whom or what. Unlike Democrats, however, Republicans are non-discriminatory gorers. They happily support military violence, no matter which party’s president happens to launch it.
There are of course isolated exceptions but those are fully explainable, and they do not challenge the generality. Gore Vidal, who occasionally blurbs for antiwar libertarians, is simply a WASP maverick, who combines his nostalgia for an older America with pro-gay activism and anti-Zionist invectives. The stimulating military historian Andrew Bacevitch is a non-leftist who is allowed to express his opposition to the war in Iraq in the New York Times. But despite his occasional references to himself as a “paleo,” I find no hard evidence that Bacevitch is what he sometimes says he is. Note I am not criticizing this courageous and spirited gentleman. I am only trying to show why the liberal and neocon establishments bend the rule by featuring Bacevitch’s antiwar observations in their publications. But such exceptions are so rare that it is almost painful to look for them.
