I decided to move some discussion from this post up to the top level here. Specifically, Watoosh wrote: "Well, if violence is defined as initiation of force (which, of course, presupposes certain property rights), then I think Rockwell is correct..." Well, if we define cats as elephants, then many people keep elephants in their house. More seriously, firstly, violence is not usually defined that way. It's defined as, you know, violence, so that, say, someone may respond violently or non-violently to someone who aggresses against them. Otherwise, it would make no sense to say, for instance, "He punched me, but I did not stoop to violence in response." And, secondly, the libertarian usage of "initiation of force" is very offbeat. If I wander onto someone's meadow, most people would not say I had "initiated force" -- I mean, sure, I used "force" against the earth to push off walking, but that's not force directed against...
Somewhat irrelevant comment, but the people on Alternative Right have taken the strange stand of adopting their opponent's language.
ReplyDeleteThe word "right wing" really doesn't mean anything, but is widely used by certain groups to paint a broad brush stroke across their disparate, unrelated opponents, from religious traditionalists to pro-NAFTA wonks to supporters of interventionist wars.
If you were one or the other of those things, you wouldn't necessarilly relegate your views to that of people with entirely different agendas. A pro-NAFTA wonk would call himself pro-NAFTA, not necessarilly "right wing" in the same sense as Pat Buchanan.
In the French National Assembly, they only concocted the word "left wing" to refer to the Jacobins who sat at the left side of the house. Everybody, who was scared of them, sat a little further away. Being scared of Jacobins does not mean being of another monolithic agenda. It just means you are scared of the Jacobins! Given the craziness of Jacobins, that could mean just about anybody.
It's like entire generations have grown up hearing their far more nuanced views being reduced to a part of a broader group, and hence those people can now only think of things in terms of their opponent's categorizations.
I have been told that the web site on which this article appears has become something of a White Nationalist site. That's too bad. In any case, that is not the position of the article to which I linked nor of its author.
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