THEFT OF A WORD

But the word has now been stolen by a crowd round the new Libertarian Review, who have not merely abandoned their professed principles, but who have repeatedly transgressed the bounds of human decency: They applaud the Ayatollah Butcher, since it is only "scum" that is being executed and flogged by his kangaroo courts, and they do not think "punishing the Shah's thugs as they deserve" is cruel or unusual; they allege that the Soviets were dragged against their will into the Cold War by the US; they consider bombs inadvertently missing military targets equivalent to bombs placed deliberately in schoolbuses by the PLO (but leave little doubt that their sympathies lie with the latter); and so forth.

The good news is that these uglies have now gone rabidly antinuclear; short of Idi Amin's bodyguard we could wish for no worthier group to adorn Ralph Nader's flanks.

As mentioned last time, government involvement in nuclear power is neither particularly drastic, nor incurable; but if that is what LR objected to, why would they need to lie about the technology as such? Why would they need to "refute" statements that were never made? Why would their special antinuclear issue not give a single line to dissenting opinion?

As pointed out in a letter by 20 prominent libertarians in the old sense (including Prof. Haspers, Prof. Machan, Rep. Ron Paul, and Reason editor Poole), these latter-day "libertarians" would have government ban nuclear, and push solar, technology instead of letting them stand or fall on their own merits; one of the articles proposes excess profit taxes to push solar power. The claim that "nuclear power is notoriously unprofitable" is not only incorrect, but the hope that it will eventually become unprofitable is based exclusively on the vast expenses due to intervenor funding, artificial delays, government over-regulation, and other coercive obstruction. In fact, this type of "libertarianism" differs from Barry Commoner's sunshine socialism only in subtle points, chief of which seems to be that Barry does not pose as a champion of capitalism or as an opponent of government intervention.

We have, of course, no quarrel with the vast majority of "libertarians" of various shades and sizes who have not changed their principles. (For that matter, we do not quarrel with people who do not accept these principles.) But it seems that it is the LR that now calls the tune on who is a "libertarian," and we will no longer use the word to denote a friend of liberty.