-Caveat Lector-
"One night, probably in 1880, John Swinton,
then the preeminent New York journalist,
was the guest of honour at a
banquet given him by the leaders of his craft.
Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton offered a
toast to the
independent press.
Swinton outraged his colleagues by replying:
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's
history,
in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know
it.
There is not one of you who dares to write your honest
opinions,
and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never
appear in print.
I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of
the paper I am connected with.
Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things,
and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest
opinions would be out on the streets looking for another
job.
If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my
paper,
before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
"The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth,
to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet
of mammon,
and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread.
You know it and I know it,
and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes.
We are the jumping jacks,
they pull the strings and we dance.
Our talents, our possibilities and our lives
are all the property of other men.
We are intellectual prostitutes."
(Source: Labor's Untold Story,
by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais,
published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of
America,
NY, 1955/1979.)
Lloyd Miller wrote:
>
> -Caveat Lector-
>
> The following appeared in the December 1995 issue of OUT OF STEP, my monthly
> newsletter, under the headline "Calling for a Left-Right Anti-War
> Coalition":
>
> "So Clinton is getting his damned shooting war - er, his 'peacekeeping
> intervention.' American troops are being launched into what has already been
> the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II. After his November 27
> television address, the president quickly fled the country while the
> nation's money powers, intelligentsia, and media fell into line behind his
> plan.
>
> "The New York Times called Clinton's plan 'limited, achievable and in
> accordance with American national interests.' The Miami Herald agreed with
> the president that 'only America has the armed might and geopolitical
> suasion to make this peace agreement work.' And the Los Angeles Times chimed
> in by calling Clinton's arguments for intervention "compelling." It
> continued: 'The United States has no choice. Clinton said the U.S. troops
> should be out in a year; that sounds optimistic. Congress must question that
> target date. But the president's cause is right.'
>
> "In a bizarre analysis, Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to
> President George Bush, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that to not
> send 20,000 troops to Bosnia would be a 'catastrophe for U.S. reliability.'
> He then added that if troops are deployed, 'the possibility for significant
> reverses, if not disaster, is fairly high.' Sounds like a no-win situation,
> doesn't it? Henry Kissinger, never far from any significant moves toward a
> New World Order, weighed in with some uninspired comment: 'I do not believe
> we have a vital national security interest in Bosnia. But the president has
> committed us and I don't believe that Congress will disavow the president at
> this stage. That would be harmful to the United States.'
>
> "Then, of course, the Republican Party leadership caved in to Clinton's
> desires 'reluctantly.'
>
> "But not so the American people. They don't seem to really have the stomach
> for another Iraq, or Somalia, or Haiti, or any U.S. military presence on
> foreign soil. Curiously, Clinton's TV talk was not followed immediately by
> the usual polling results. Instead, it took a day or two for any solid
> polling numbers to come in as Clinton's journalistic lapdogs scrambled to
> gather 'good news' for their man in the White House. And even then, the
> president's planned I-FOR - 'peace implementation force' - garnered a
> lackluster 46-percent support. This number will likely rise as the troops
> actually arrive in Bosnia accompanied by the expected patriotic pomp, then
> nosedive after the first few American deaths are revealed and the body bags
> start arriving home.
>
> "The most stirring speech given at last month's annual meeting of the
> paleo-right John Randolph Club in Northern California erupted from Justin
> Raimondo, libertarian political activist and author of Reclaiming the
> American Right, a well-written history of the Old Right of Albert Jay Nock,
> H.L. Mencken, and Garet Garrett. Raimondo called for the building of a new
> America First Committee, following closely the anti-war and anti-imperialist
> model of more than 50 years ago. Declaring that the anti-war movement is now
> located on the Right, Raimondo concluded, 'We must act and organize now to
> stop the War Machine of the Power Elite!'
>
> "Raimondo's correct. The time to act and organize is now. And I think his
> call for a new America First movement is well-intentioned. But his
> right-wing vision may be too small. Take a look at the articles on
> intervention in Bosnia that appear on page two of this issue - one from the
> Far Left, the other the Far Right. We have now a rare opportunity to forge a
> solid coalition of New Left and Hard Right - anti-imperialist, anti-war,
> anti-interventionist, anti-conspiracy, anti-statist, and strongly anti-power
> elite - to fight the American Warfare State, now led by Bill Clinton but led
> earlier by every president since Woodrow Wilson.
>
> "The idea of such a coalition isn't new. The late founders of modern
> libertarianism, Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess, tried to build such a
> Left-Right Opposition back in the late '60s. Well, it's time to try again -
> particularly while the real Left is demoralized by liberal-centrists of the
> Clinton school and the hardcore libertarian Right is compromised and
> sold-out by political hacks of both the Republican and Libertarian Parties.
>
> "Earlier this year, my friend Samuel Edward Konkin III, of the Movement of
> the Libertarian Left, reintroduced the idea of a radical Left-Right
> partnership. He wrote in a pamphlet titled 'What's Left?': 'While we can and
> should discuss and debate the merits and demerits of a Left/Libertarian
> coalition, ultimately, someone will have to, as libertarians say, take the
> risk and make the investment.'
>
> "The time is now to take the risk and make the investment.
>
> "It's never been truer than it is today, friends: we have nothing to lose
> but our chains."
>
> The following appeared in the January 1996 of my newsletter, OUT OF STEP:
>
> "Editor's Note: Samuel Edward Konkin III (SEK3) has been at the center of
> radical, anti-party libertarianism, agorism, and Counter-Economics for
> almost 30 years. In January 1970, he began publishing New Libertarian (first
> appearing as Laissez-Faire!, then New Libertarian Notes, then New
> Libertarian Weekly). In '78, Konkin founded the Movement of the Libertarian
> Left. His stirring call to Counter-Economic activism, New Libertarian
> Manifesto, first appeared in 1980. Konkin now serves as Executive Director
> of The Agorist Institute, which was founded (symbolically) at the end of
> 1984. For that organization, he produces The Agorist Quarterly, a scholarly
> journal, The New Isolationist, and Counter-Economics: The Newsletter.
>
> "Early last year, SEK3 addressed the idea of forging a Left-Right Opposition
> movement in a widely-circulated pamphlet titled 'What's Left?' I endorsed
> such a coalition in these pages last June, then again last month in response
> to Clinton's U.S.-U.N. imperialist military intervention in Bosnia. It is to
> last month's article that Konkin is responding below.
>
> "Counter-Conspiring
> "by Samuel Edward Konkin III
>
> "For many years, I have enjoyed and increasingly admired out of step and
> hope that it is signing up only 'for the duration.' Nevertheless, I applaud
> Editor Conger's decision to enlist in the Grand Coalition that I called for.
>
> "Actually, Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess called for it in 1965 with their
> Radical Libertarian Alliance (RLA), and I joined in the chorus belatedly in
> late 1969. When the New Left exploded, the RLA died, and the Libertarian
> Party (LP) came along, I intensified the call, reviving the all-anarchist
> Student Libertarian Action Movement (SLAM) and creating a brief "radical
> caucus" within the infant LP, using proven New Left tactics to break off the
> hardcore into SLAM. But as the historical moment 'slipped away,' we
> libertarian revolutionaries belatedly joined our Weather-cousins underground
> as the New Libertarian Alliance, testing and proving Counter-Economics.
>
> "Surfacing in the Agorist Institute (AI) in 1985, I had no trouble
> attracting 'Old' New Leftists to my publications. Some, such as Robert Anton
> Wilson and Carl Oglesby, crossed over to become Libertarians. (Oglesby ran
> for the LP in Vermont three years ago.) Most relevant to Editor Conger's
> call was the strong positive response to New Isolationist. When AI started
> up that newsletter with reprints seven years ago, Noam Chomsky and Alexander
> Cockburn were supportive enough to lend their articles to it and refer us to
> their friends.
>
> "Anecdote: when Cockburn was signing his Corruptions of Empire at Midnight
> Special in Santa Monica, I bought one for my sidekick, Kent Hastings, and we
> stood in line for his signature. I had sent him several zines but handed him
> a copy of New Libertarian with his picture on the cover before asking for
> his autograph for Kent. One of his comrades asked him puzzledly, 'Do we like
> Libertarians?'
>
> "Cockburn answered, 'I love Libertarians!' And he autographed the book,
> 'Happy Birthday, Kent. Best for a Libertarian World.'
>
> "In November 1994, the Monday morning after the election, I was still up in
> the wee hours with C-SPAN on the TV in the background, when a Left-Right
> panel came on. Mona Charen represented National Review and Christopher
> Hitchens came from The Nation. Charen gloated. Phone calls poured in from
> triumphant Republicans and downcast Democrats.
>
> "Finally, one disheartened liberal asked Hitchens for some ray of hope. What
> would he do to save the Democratic Party? Replied Hitchens, 'I don't want to
> save the Democratic Party.' He preferred the left-wing to split off and join
> 'the Libertarians' in a new opposition movement.
>
> "That night, the Karl Hess Club was meeting, and when the Republican and
> Libertarian Party spokesmen had their say, I brought up the revived Third
> Alternative: as the Italians say, appertura alla sinistra. The responses
> were highly instructive.
>
> "The LP rep, Ted Brown, uneasily suggested that the New Leftists interested
> in such a coalition should join the LP. 'O.K.,' I replied, 'but what if they
> should outnumber the existing Party membership?' No answer from Ted, but
> several other Partyarchs (i.e., 'party anarchists') cried for membership
> requirements and non-aggression pledges.
>
> "The Republican, who had been chosen because he had been a former LP
> candidate, simply looked dumbfounded at a front table made up of well-known
> Left Libertarians such as myself, Brad Linaweaver, Kent Hastings, and
> others, and said, 'What's a Left Libertarian? I don't believe they exist!'
> As the psychobabblers say, he was in Serious Denial.
>
> "The Karl Hess Club was created for a variety of reasons. Karl Hess had just
> died and so had the Albert J. Nock and H.L. Mencken Forums (fora), leaving
> L.A. without a non-party supper club. But of all the things Hess was known
> for in his half-century of activism, it was his call under the arch in St.
> Louis at the 1969 Young Americans for Freedom convention for young
> libertarians stuck in the conservative-controlled YAF to split and join the
> New Left for which he will be remembered. He joined the Black Panthers and
> the Institute for Policy Studies, and when Murray Rothbard swung Right,
> Left, Party and Paleo, Hess kept up his associations.
>
> "Let Murray's words (from 1965 in Left and Right) and Karl's actions, Carl
> Oglesby (in 1965 in Containment and Change) and Alex Cockburn's responses,
> down to Chris Hitchens and myself only yesterday, provide the historical
> chorus to Wally Conger's Clear Call for a Coalition against The Third Balkan
> War, and against the Imperial State that could create such a monstrosity.
>
> "Then let's roll up our sleeves and build this movement."
>
> I would tremendously appreciate any comment anyone might contribute about
> this material. Are Left-Right "pop front" coalitions viable in fighting
> issues where Right and Left may agree? Must Left and Right agree about
> *everything* in order to work together?
>
> Wally Conger
> 74603,2710
>
> Forwarded for info and discussion from the New Paradigms
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spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
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