Author: Paul Gottfried

I’ve just been looking at an interview by clinical psychologist and University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson dealing with postmodernism and the triumph of Marxism in Canada. In view of Peterson’s brave struggle against Political Correctness at the U of T (which my late wife attended in more tolerant times) I was ready to treat his venture into my own field (European intellectual history) with a certain indulgence, until I encountered this opinion: Communism was not popularized in the West under the direct banner of communism. Instead, it came largely under the banner of postmodernism, and aimed to transform the values and … Continue reading →

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Feigned outrage against Marshall DeRosa, a professor of political science at Florida Atlantic in Boca Raton, has now taken predictable forms.  Nietzsche observed that a successful war can be used to justify any cause.  At Florida Atlantic, even going after an implausible victim can provide sadistic satisfaction to bullying students and faculty. Professor DeRosa’s picture has been plastered on the walls of college buildings by supposedly concerned students with demeaning messages that he’s a “white supremacist” and that his presence on campus is an outrage “demanding action.”  In my opinion, it’s ridiculous to describe those engaged in these defamatory actions, as some commentators … Continue reading →

The post The Pleasures of Bullying appeared first on LewRockwell.

Laurence Vance is a true polymath, who has published books and articles on a wide variety of subjects. One may be guilty of a sin of omission if one only notes a few of his numerous achievements, such as publishing a weighty tome defending Arminian Christianity against Calvinist theology, producing grammars for biblical Greek and biblical Hebrew, and writing on complicated economic questions. Vance is also a staunch opponent of American military ventures and combines his religious opposition with carefully wrought arguments against the effects of the interventions that he criticizes. To his credit he lost an academic post at … Continue reading →

The post ‘The Free Society’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Last week, retired Army colonel Ralph Peters quit his post at Fox News where he’d been a longtime fixture. Peters had become known for his impassioned commentaries against Russian appeasers, critics of Israel, and other enemies of American democracy. Over the last year and a half, Peters has warned incessantly against the brutal designs and antidemocratic maneuverings of Vladimir Putin. Almost as obsessively, he has declaimed against the current occupant of the White House, Donald Trump, whom he has invariably described as an instrument of the Russian government. In fact, he openly supported his opponent, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 election. Of … Continue reading →

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For about a week the conservative establishment lamented the fact that “AEI scholar” Christina Hoff Sommers was treated rudely by students while speaking at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon. The New York Post (March 7, 2018) complained about “campus fascism on the march” and then proceeded to explain Sommers’s unique contribution to our political culture: “She argues that much of modern feminism betrays the movement’s founding ideals.” Unfortunately the “lefty kids” at Lewis &Clark did not appreciate her message and her achievement in keeping alive a better feminism than the one that has now replaced it. It … Continue reading →

The post Betty Friedan Was a Communist appeared first on LewRockwell.

A distinguished social economist of my acquaintance, Carl Horowitz, produced a penetrating essay, which is available in the latest issue of Social Contract, on “The Alliance of Corporate Capitalism with Political Radicalism.”  Carl demonstrates that black nationalists, revolutionary socialists, and off-the-wall feminists have loyal benefactors among the corporate boards of high-tech enterprises and in older corporations like Pepsi-Cola and Citibank.  Carl’s illustrations are vivid and shocking, and his well constructed speech leads me to raise two questions occasioned by his evidence. One: Carl describes his targets as people who are betraying the free enterprise system that has allowed them to flourish, but it might … Continue reading →

The post Corporate America and the Left appeared first on LewRockwell.

Last Saturday afternoon, I listened to a gathering of Wall Street Journal editors and writers on Fox News discussing the congressional deadlock on immigration.  Paul Gigot, Jason Riley, and Karl Rove were all disturbed that the president and congressional Republicans who followed his lead were stalling a compromise over DACA and other related immigration issues.  These intransigents should have accepted something like the Graham-Durbin proposal that would have amnestied DACA recipients and their families while continuing chain migration but also making some provision for increased border security. As I listened to these judgments, I thought, “Spoken like true Republicans.”  These remarks explain why Trump rallied … Continue reading →

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George Mason professor of economics Bryan Caplan does not relegate controversial thoughts to footnotes. His most recent book, The Case Against Education: Why the Educational System is a Waste of Time and Money, and an essay on the same theme in The Atlantic,“The World Might Be Better off Without College for Everyone,” make unmistakably clear what he thinks about our “glut of sheepskin credentials.” Caplan never hides his views about how worthless he thinks college is as a rite of passage for most students. And the journalistic establishment cannot dismiss him as a grumpy reactionary. An associate at the Cato Institute, he has publicly proclaimed … Continue reading →

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I’ve just been reading on Breitbart a tirade against Bill Kristol, which features a comparison between this supposedly falling neocon star and the author’s friend Tony, who landed in jail after stabbing his ex-wife’s lover.  Just like Tony, who unsuccessfully tried to attract his divorced wife’s attention, Bill, we are told, is going nuts in expressing his contempt for Donald Trump.  But like Tony, who in a fit of frustration destroyed his own life, Bill may be self-destructing as he disses a transformed conservative establishment. I’m not sure that this labored comparison works since I’ve no idea what the equivalent is in Bill’s case … Continue reading →

The post Bill Kristol Is Not Yet Out appeared first on LewRockwell.

A controversy surrounds the new Polish law just signed by Polish President Andrzej Duda that criminalizes Holocaust denial and Holocaust trivialization but also extends the prohibition to anyone who ascribes Nazi atrocities to the “Polish government or Polish nation.” Although I’m passionately opposed to all such efforts to muzzle open discussion (and have paid a heavy price for this stand professionally), I certainly don’t find the Polish law any worse than the repeated attempts to muzzle open discussion by late modern Western democracies. Why for example is Poland’s law a greater outrage than the persecution of Christians in Canada who … Continue reading →

The post Poland’s on My Mind appeared first on LewRockwell.

I’ve just been looking at an interview by clinical psychologist and University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson dealing with postmodernism and the triumph of Marxism in Canada. In view of Peterson’s brave struggle against Political Correctness at the U of T (which my late wife attended in more tolerant times) I was ready to treat his venture into my own field (European intellectual history) with a certain indulgence, until I encountered this opinion: Communism was not popularized in the West under the direct banner of communism. Instead, it came largely under the banner of postmodernism, and aimed to transform the values and … Continue reading →

The post Getting the Culprits Right appeared first on LewRockwell.

In a recent television interview, leading neoconservative never-Trumper Bill Kristol scolded his erstwhile Weekly Standard employee Tucker Carlson for advocating for a reduced, merit-based immigration system. Kristol accused Tucker of being a full-blown ethnic nationalist, an identity that Kristol suggests was long latent in his acquaintance. “He always had a little touch of Pat Buchananism, I would say, paleoconservatism,” sniffed Kristol from his guest perch on CNBC. What pricked my ears was not the fact that Kristol had chosen to side with the liberal establishment over pro-Trump Republicans on this score. That’s a predictable development, given where Kristol is coming from. More striking … Continue reading →

The post An Old Paleocon appeared first on LewRockwell.

I’ve just been reading in the New York Post about the need for “centrist” politics in our polarized society. Post columnists, John Podhoretz and Seth Lipsky have both deplored an eroding center in American political life. Podhoretz compares the rampaging anti-Trump Left to the Tea Party, since both have made immoderate demands on our political leaders. Supposedly the Left “is becoming everything it hated,” by coming to resemble Republican extremists. Lipsky,  in his defense of the center, points to Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenberg, who ina recent biography by Hendrik Meijer is shown to be the quintessential Republican moderate. Lipsky pairs Vandenberg with “a member of my favorite endangered species, … Continue reading →

The post Inventing the Political Center appeared first on LewRockwell.

Like other political movements, American conservatism offers predictable explanations as to where bad ideas arise.  During the Cold War, the explanation for this problem that one would have found with some regularity in conservative publications would have been communism, socialism, the welfare state, or “totalitarianism.”  More recently, socialism has alternated with “fascism,” or “Islamofascism.”  For today’s conservative media, moreover, these “isms” are mostly interchangeable designations.  If Islamicists are against our “values,” then they must be “fascists”; “Marxists”; or, perhaps even worse, Democrats.  And lest I forget, Democrats used to be “fascists” and are now “socialists,” according to Glenn Beck, Dinesh D’Souza, and Dennis Prager. Making the identification of an … Continue reading →

The post Chronological Isolation appeared first on LewRockwell.

Having just read Matt Purple’s comments on The American Conservative as to why “Bannonism will live on,” I thought I’d weigh in as a critical observer of what now passes for the “conservative movement.” Like Bannon, I have generally chastised that movement from the right.  But like Mr. Purple, I find President Trump’s erstwhile adviser downright inept in selling his conservative populist message.  Bannon has behaved like an egomaniac, who viciously turned on the president he was supposed to be assisting.  He couldn’t even serve the populist cause he purports to believe in without making it entirely about himself.  Some of Bannon’s more widely publicized political choices, such … Continue reading →

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