A few weeks ago, the image of Charleston shooter Dylann Roof standing in his cell with two armed guards behind him was live-streamed to the courtroom occupied by the family, which was in turn broadcasted to news networks. Something kind of amazing happened. The teary-faced family members forgave him, and in fact said that they were worried about him. Why should they be worried about the rotten-to-the-core white supremacist that just murdered their loved ones?
“I pray God on your soul,” said the sister of one of the victims.
There’s actually some kind of symmetry in this scenario, even if it doesn’t initially look like it makes any sense. If the trick to being being a good person is to do more good things than bad things, Roof has an astronomically negative balance, approximating the national debt of the United States. So if anyone’s soul is in need of prayers, it’s Dylann Roof’s.
Before he committed the massacre, Dylann Roof took pictures of himself posing with the Confederate flag (actually the second Confederate Navy Jack, but whatever) which led to a wave of vandalism with text reading “black lives matter” over memorials honoring the Confederate dead. A more polite kind of iconoclasm came in the form of calls to remove Confederate monuments and rename landmarks.
The monument in the header image of this post, Spirit of the Confederacy, was one of the targets. It depicts an angel carrying away a defeated and dying Confederate soldier, who appears to need help standing. the base inscribed with the words “Gloria Victis,” which means “Glory to the vanquished.” It’s an uplifting reassurance that even the dead who fought on the wrong side were cared for and granted immortality.
It’s not easy to talk about left-libertarianism. These days most people still associate libertarianism with the right, and the fact that most left-libertarians identify as anarchist must confuse those not too aware of political philosophy; one might think that think left-libertarians are another kind of collectivist anarchists. I would to start by quoting perhaps the most well-known left-libertarian alive, Sheldon Richman, who was a fellow at several libertarian think-tanks and whose articles are reprinted by both Reason and CounterPunch. Curiously enough his most didactic article on left-libertarianism appeared at The American Conservative:
Left-libertarians favor worker solidarity vis-à-vis bosses, support poor people’s squatting on government or abandoned property, and prefer that corporate privileges be repealed before the regulatory restrictions on how those privileges may be exercised. They see Walmart as a symbol of corporate favoritism—supported by highway subsidies and eminent domain—view the fictive personhood of the limited-liability corporation with suspicion, and doubt that Third World sweatshops would be the “best alternative” in the absence of government manipulation.
Obviously radical statements like that don’t sound like the usual “free market” reforms that some people promote in the GOP, not even something that one could hear from libertarian institutions like the Cato Institute. It’s is probably the complex history of the libertarian movement that is most useful in explaining left-libertarianism. The libertarian story is long and had a particular relation to American history. I still recommend the marvelous Radicals for Capitalism of Brian Doherty, to these the day the most complete history of the American libertarian movement, readers could be surprised to know that despite its name, Doherty devoted a long part of the book to the left-libertarian writer Karl Hess. Another very interesting work is History of the Libertarian Movement by Samuel Edward Konkin, obviously like all of his writings it was from a more left-libertarian perspective.
The most common point of origin left-libertarians point to is the precursors of libertarianism, sometimes called proto-libertarianism. The nineteen century had several radical individualist anarchists that were in favor of free markets, including thinkers like Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker and Voltarine de Cleyre. Then in twentieth century the New Left-Old Right alliance that Murray Rothbard proposed in the context of the opposition to the Vietnam War was vital for the development of left-libertarianism. Probably the most known left-libertarians of this period is Karl Hess, the Goldwater speechwriter turned Black Panther ally, the National Review founder who wrote legendary manifesto The Death of Politics at Playboy, the man that leave the American Enterprise Institute for the Institute of Policy Studies, from working for the RNC to be an SDS activist.
The surprise of this primary season is probably Bernie Sanders. The independent Senator from Vermont who calls himself as a democratic socialist and is running for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination is doing very well in polls, drawing large crowds to his events, and has even raised considerable funds for a politician who relies on small donors. Some might say Hillary Clinton should be worried. In the beginning no one bet anything on him, and some think that his support for gun rights would affect support from his liberal base, but that doesn’t seem to have happened.
In America, people usually assume that everyone on the left supports gun control. Outside America, not many people speak about gun rights. As a Peruvian lefty, I never thought about guns. The exception was when I saw Bowling for Columbine, after that I supported gun control even if in my own country buying guns is actually very complex. I think that non-American leftists tend to sympathize with Michel Moore and other progressives from Hollywood, not out of affection for liberalism but to oppose conservativism; all gun rights advocates in the liberal conception are portrayed as gun nuts.
Some years after I had taken a position on guns, I joined the Socialist Party of Peru and started to be interested in the history of the New Left, first in my own country, then in America. When I read the libertarian Anthony Gregory defending the use of guns by the Black Panthers, my position changed and I became a supporter of gun rights. But that wasn’t my first step to being sympathetic to guns, I think it was reading the left-libertarian Alexander Cockburn that I started to be suspicious of the liberal arguments for gun control.
The idea is very simple — self-defense. Minorities throughout history have had to defend themselves from the aggression of centralizing powers including the State, from the militia movement to the Zapatistas. It doesn’t matter if they are a minority based on ideas or ethnicity, the thing that matters is that they are going to be able to defend their community, just like the Panthers did before the Reagan crackdown.
It is funny that liberals still often portray gun enthusiasts as closet white supremacists or something similar. Sure Dylann Roof was a real racist, but what about the Huey P. Newton Gun Club? Despite the popularity of Bernie Sanders, I don’t think that liberals are going to agree with him on gun rights, I think they would had been more comfortable with a gun control liberal like Elizabeth Warren, but the fact that Hillary was far to the right that Bernie became a choice for an average Democrat voter. Even if Sanders’ popularity hasn’t anything to do with his position on gun rights, maybe there are baby steps to toward a left favorable to the Second Amendment.
Some argue Sanders’ support for gun rights is simply a matter of Vermont being a rural state where guns are popular and maybe there some truth in that, it would be very difficult to get elected as a supporter of gun control. Some people think socialists are just like liberals, but it’s more complicated. In the years of war against the Sandinistas in Central America, even some social democratic parties from Latin America were in favor of them. While social democrats oppose revolutionary socialism, they more or less agreed that the Nicaraguans should resist. If you say that you are a fan of Che Guevara, it doesn’t make sense to be in favor of gun control. On the contrary, if you want to empower people, give them guns and the possibility to defend themselves.
For months now, I’ve predicted in the Press and Journal that the Supreme Court would foist same-sex marriage upon the country. Lo and behold, with the decision rendered in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Court came through in flying – perhaps rainbow – colors.
Gay marriage is now a constitutional right. Where language about marriage exists in the Constitution, I haven’t the slightest, but I’ll accept my prize for being prescient. Any day now…
And just as predicted, liberals went absolutely bonkers with the victory. The eve following the decision, the White House lit up with rainbow-colored lights. Corporations like American Airlines, Kellogg’s, Macy’s, and Visa all lauded the ruling over social media. Andrew Sullivan, the erstwhile blogger and gay rights champion who went into much-needed retirement earlier this year, wrote a powerful piece entitled, “It Is Accomplished.”
The good cheer was understandable. For decades, gays and lesbians have been treated liked underlings by mainstream America. It’s past time they were recognized with dignity. Alas, some revelers took the victory too far.
To the Dean of the National Cathedral, the Very Rev. Gary Hall,
It is my understanding that you have advised the Episcopal Church to replace the windows installed in 1953 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, in honor of Gens. Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee.
I will not criticize this decision. Jackson was a Presbyterian anyway, he doesn’t even belong there.
But, Dean Hall, your work isn’t done. You won’t have even gotten rid of all the Confederacy-apologizing Presbyterian bigots yet. There is another, and his bones lie beneath your feet.
Randy Barnett has explained why this disastrous president should be erased from all official government memory, whether on statues, plaques, street signs, microfiche databases, or commemorative spoons. But as people of faith, we must do better. We must take the lead in coming to grips with the dark past of the man who unveiled Arlington Cemetery’s Confederate memorial. By that I mean, it’s time to dig up Woodrow Wilson’s remains and hang them. Though this practice of desecrating the carcasses of bad people was most famously applied to Oliver Cromwell (or Akhenaten) we have recently crossed another threshold in which exhumation of those with Confederate sympathies is now acceptable. This is an incredible opportunity to bring social justice to the dead, Dean Hall, if only you seize it.
I’m surprised you haven’t gone through with it already! Don’t you know this is 2015? There have been fistfuls of articles in the last few weeks discussing whether “Gone With the Wind” should be licensed or even watchedanymore, but we haven’t yet dug up the man who literally screened “Birth of a Nation” in the White House? And whose administration resegregated government buildings? He also belonged to a fraternity alleged by Rolling Stone to have revolved around ritual gang-rape. With today’s epidemic of campus sexual assault, how can you condone the memory of someone who is clearly an enabler of rape culture?
Wilson wasn’t even an Episcopalian, his wife was. The New York Timesdescribes the circumstances of his internment like so:
He was buried in the cathedral because the Episcopal bishop of Washington wanted to make it America’s Westminster Abbey, and Mrs. Wilson, who was an Episcopalian, liked the idea.
While this neatly reflects Episcopalianism’s aspiration to state churchhood, best exemplified today by the Center for American Progress’s resident bishop (not to mention that healthy federal revenue stream), I urge you to consider the need to demonstrate your moral, as well as vexillological, superiority.
This is about not offendinganyone. And make no mistake, I am offended. This self-satisfied warmonger has no business being glorified by religious institutions.
Know that should you choose to do so, you would be acting within a venerable tradition. Apologizing for past sins is the dominant strain of modern Episcopalian theology. Take it from the energetic young pastor of St. Mark’s in the Bowery, who is upset that the General Convention decided not to divest from Israel yet:
The Episcopal Church has a troubled history of reconciliation. We are a church that never split on slavery. We welcomed back unrepentant, former-slave holding bishops after the Civil War. We chose a side. We reconciled with injustice, and we live with the consequences today.
Kudos to Rev. Verghese for recognizing that oppression is oppression, be it slavery or Sodastream. Rev. Verghese has also continued one of the other venerable traditions at St. Mark’s in the Bowery, where she is now rector; what the parish website describes as a “high energy, disco-tinged Holy Eucharist” for gay pride week.
Nothing says holiness like a drag queen named Velveeta singing out the Cross to “We Are Family”:
Do you want to be on the side of Anglicanism that views history (its own included) with judiciousness, yes, but also magnanimity? Or are you with Velveeta? Think very carefully about your answer, lest you end up on the wrong side of history. If you’ve decided to remain with the main thrust of Episcopalianism today, there is only one thing to do with President Wilson: Dig him up. As Rev. Varghese says, you can’t reconcile with injustice. It’s what Velveeta would want. I await your reply.
7:00 AM: Daily Caller hour with Daily Caller reporter Chuck Ross, and Daily Caller News Foundation reporter Erica Wenig, and Kevin Glass of Bloggingheads and the Franklin Center
8:00 AM: Religious liberty roundtable, featuring Catholic University professor Chad Pecknold, Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen, Heritage fellow and author of The Future of Marriage and Religious Liberty Ryan T. Anderson, and ThinkProgress religion editor Jack Jenkins
