The Right Wing Moonbats

Most conservatives have no difficulty identifying the common moonbat who can't fly because his has only a left wing, but they tend to be blind to the right-wing moonbat. I pay attention to this fascinating but dangerous species. When I heard that Mark Cuban, a billionaire entrepreneur and owner of a sports team, is funding the 9/11 conspiracy theory film "Loose Change", my suspicions about his motivation were immediate, an instantaneousness reflex on my behalf. Yet when I ask other people the most probable reason for Cuban's funding of film that claims 9/11 was a government conspiracy, instead of muslim conspiracy, they draw a blank.

My guess was that Cuban is a libertarian and perhaps a libertarian of the Ayn Rand denomination called Objectivism. (Technically, Rand and the Objectivists hate the Libertarians, but it is one of those Judean People's Front vs the People's Front of Judea fights and not easily understood by outsiders.) To test my theory of Cuban's belief, I went to the Wikipedia and, gosh darn it, I was right. If my understanding of Cuban's thinking is correct, Cuban is being slippery when he defended his decision to fund "Loose Change" on the O'Reilly Factor by saying "its better to have the film out in the open than lurk in the shadows." Cuban hints that we should understand his funding as similar in motive to those of former Senator Alan Cranston (D-CA) when he translated Mien Kampf into English. Yet, if I'm right about how Cuban thinks, his funding of "Loose Change" is in fact out of sympathy for its message. Many Libertarians have the moonbat perception that the United States government is a bigger threat than Islamic terrorist. Thus, Cathy Young, the editor of most important Libertarian magazine, Reason, holds that Islam is no threat to us. And like the moonbats of the left, libertarian views of the Iraqi can descend to hopes of US defeat just like what you would see in the Kucinich moonbat cave. The current Liberty Unbound journal features an article this month on why the surge in Iraq will fail.

At first glance, it makes no sense that the Libertarians would undermine the United States in the fight against Islam. Why would Libertarians hate the United States, one of the most stalwart defenders of capitalism in the world? In fact, the United States ranks fourth world-wide in Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom. Part of the problem is simply the United States is not a libertarian utopia, and American democracy stands in their way. Thus, as always with fanatics, the US government is evil. Permit to pause my anti-Libertarian rant to observe that we make more reasonable decisions when we view decision making as balancing between different values, when we think economically in terms of costs and benefits rather than when we pursue a true faith. Without this pluralism of values, we observe creatures like one libertarian I met who compared a publicly funded library to a Nazi death camp. I have found that my friend's over the top comparison of a public library is only slightly more unhinged than what you will encounter in the average discussion with a libertarian about the government, but there is no reason to listen to me. Please read up about libertarianism yourself, here's a link which will help you find many Libertarian sites on the web: http://www.rlc.org/Libertarian.html. And remember even if the idea seems a joke, they mean it. I had a discussion with a guy who had been an intern at the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank. He believed we could solve the Greenhouse Gas problem by painting Canada white with the stuff that makes toothpaste white. He was completely serious! I asked him what we would do if Canada got dusty. There are other amusing libertarian "solutions" to climate change out there if you google around, and while you're googling try "blue libertarian candidate Senate Montana" for more wacky libertarianism. And I once rented an apartment from a libertarian whose blue in the last story was orange! It was the magic of beta carotene, completely excessive amounts of beta carotene. The Libertarians are a colorful bunch.

In fairness to libertarians, I should point out that libertarian ideas about economic policy are in almost every case are the best ideas (e.g., the Cato Institute's ideas about Social Security) and that not every libertarian is anti-American. For instance, the Ayn Rand Institute has good ideas about how to deal with Iraq. In fact, I was too glib in my earlier statement about the lack of real difference between Libertarians and Objectivists. Some Objectivists do seem willing to defend the West. I welcome their aid. However, despite the exception of some Objectivists, we should view Libertarian organizations--despite being right wing--as every bit as disloyal to the West as John Murtha's congressional office.