We have been long critical of a “libertarian international” (think of it as “LIBINTERN”, like the old COMINTERN) that has emerged (with lavish funding from the US government, as well as from the various hydra heads of the George Soros world, the shadowy Atlas Network, and elsewhere) to invariably chime in for US “regime change,” sanctions, and militarism overseas. These “libertarians” are critical allies of the neocons and the US deep state, which needs validation for its destructive policies from all ideological corners – especially “non-interventionists.”
The foreign policy goals of these soi-dissant “libertarian” advocates for “freedom” overseas coincidentally always align with the foreign policy goals of the US government, as I pointed out in a 2019 speech to the Mises Institute. Isn’t that funny? Libertarians for global US empire?
In the latest push to war with Russia by Obama flunkies like Nuland, Blinken, Sullivan, et al, these bought-and-paid-for fake libertarians could again be counted upon to come out all hands on deck for team war.
And so they did.
A Students for Liberty affiliated website, Freedom Today Network, recently published a letter to the Cato Institute signed by more than 100 “friends of liberty” demanding that Cato silence longtime scholars (ed: and Antiwar.com columnists) and actual libertarian thought-leaders Ted Galen Carpenter and Doug Bandow for continuing to call for US restraint in conflicts that have little to do with US national security interests, particularly the Russia/Ukraine dispute.
Bandow and Carpenter’s writings on Ukraine, Russia, and elsewhere across the globe have always been the same: we are not in charge of the world and we should not attempt to run the world. It’s an idea that is shared not only by all actual libertarians, but also by the vast majority of Americans. Those who support continued US foreign adventurism are the real fringe minority.
Nevertheless these “friends of McCarthy”…er…”liberty” have accused Ted Carpenter of making “some of the propagandist arguments generated by the Kremlin in its information warfare against the USA and the West.”
Digest that for a moment: these people are accusing Ted Carpenter, a foreign policy specialist at Cato for more than 30 years, with a Ph.D. from the University of Texas and 15 serious scholarly books – and literally thousands of articles under his belt – of being an agent for the Russian government!
Lawyer up, Ted! This is clearly libel designed to destroy your reputation.
Likewise Doug Bandow, who has also written thousands of articles in places like Fortune magazine, National Interest, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Times – and who was a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan.
Reagan???? Good God, man, this Russian conspiracy runs DEEP! Someone call up Rachel Maddow! Maybe “Moscow Bandow” and “Red Ted” can bolster her sagging career!
Hey Hillary! Good news!
Signatories – which include reliable has-beens Mart Laar and Leszek Balcerowicz from Estonia and Poland, respectively – have achieved an own-goal with this letter, however. Wrapping themselves up tightly in the mantle of “Western values” and “liberal democracy,” they have actually shown their true colors: they are precisely the intolerant authoritarians they accuse the Russian government of being.
These wannabe Stalins demand that the two Cato scholars toe the party line or be sent off to gulag. How liberal. How open-minded. How tolerant of differing views. According to these “friends of liberty” the Cato Institute must fire or otherwise silence the analysis and opinion of these scholars.
Deviationism must NOT be tolerated!
Scratch the surface of the signatories of this scurrilous letter, or their organizations, and you will most often see an astro-turfed, fake network of government-paid propagandists for war and empire. Anyone claiming that the recipients of US “regime change” are not massively worse off after being given their “freedom” by US bombs and bayonets needs a one-way trip back to planet reality.
The LIBINERN has its snout deep in the money trough of the US State Department, NATO-funded Atlantic Council, and the cancerous Sorosian global empire. Each of these signatories should feel the wrath of the scholars they have shamefully maligned.
Let the lawsuits fly!
Daniel McAdams is director of the The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity. Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.
