Skip to main content

A neat twist on the abortion murder case: now the killer is supposedly a Libertarian

I'm not sure if this is (a) comic relief; (b) an attempt to deflect; or (c) an attempt by the Huckabee "we hate Libertarians" faction of the Lawn Jockey Caucus of the GOP to equate Libertarians with political violence, but it's in the Western Standard.CA:

Prominent abortion provider murdered (suspected killer may be a libertarian.)

...

It appears that Roeder is also a tax protestor, linked to the Montana Freemen, a group that -- if not exactly libertarian -- espouses libertarian-like views about individual sovereignty and the illegitimacy of government.

This may come up over the next few days.


Now it is important to note that the AP story which the author cites tying Roeder to the Montana Freeman makes no mention whatever of Libertarianism, as opposed to what the sentence might lead you to believe. Here it is, in its entirety:

TOPEKA, Kan. - A man identified by the FBI as a member of the anti-government Freemen group was arrested yesterday after deputies found what they called a bomb-triggering device in his car.

Scott Roeder, 38, of Silver Lake, Kan., was arrested in Topeka and held on charges of criminal use of explosives, driving with a suspended license and failure to carry registration and insurance.

Roeder was stopped because his car didn't have a legitimate license plate. Instead, it had a tag indicating the driver was a "sovereign" citizen and immune from Kansas law.

The same type of tag is sometimes used by Freemen, whose members in Montana are in the fourth week of a standoff with federal agents.

Roeder's name is included on an FBI list of Freemen, said Shawnee County Sheriff Dave Meneley.

In Roeder's trunk, authorities found fuse cord, a pound of gunpowder and two nine-volt batteries, one wired to a switch - the alleged triggering device. Ammunition and a blasting cap also were found in the car.

In Montana, meanwhile, federal agents increased security around the barricaded Freemen compound yesterday. And the FBI field commander refused to see Michigan Militia leader Norman Olson.

Olson said he had come Montana to help the FBI avoid "a field of battle."

The FBI has headquarters in Jordan, Mont., about 30 miles from the Freemen's farmhouse.


So how does this get linked to Libertarians? Terrence Watson, the author of the original post quoted above, does so by referencing the Wikipedia page on the concept of Individual Sovereignty [not the page on the Montana Freemen, which mentions Libertarianism not at all], which mentions Libertarianism in passing, along with multiple other ideological perspectives:

This notion is central to classical liberalism, individualistic political philosophies such as abolitionism, ethical egoism, rights-based libertarianism, objectivism, and some forms of anarchism. Sovereign-minded individuals would then seem to prefer an atmosphere consisting of decentralized administrative organizations acting as servants to the individual.


Even sites sympathetic to the Montana Freemen mention virtually nothing about Libertarianism, which is as it should be, since the primary foundation of Libertarians is the Zero-Aggression Principle, which--among other things--rules out violence such as the Freemen advocate.

But, you see, we've entered a segment of history in which Americans are being consciously divided against each other in draconian, divisive factionalism. It's more important to score points demonizing your political opponents than to reach common ground as American citizens, and wherein the ruling wing of the Demopublican Statist Party paints the concept of bipartisanship as getting exactly what it wants without any demur.

Libertarians, oddly, should view this sort of distorted gotcha pseudo-journalism as an advance: it used to be that our ideas and our positions were considered way too marginal to be worth attacking.

What was it Gandhi said? Oh, yeah:

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."

Comments

Anonymous said…
I have a hard time believing this murderous nut is really a liberterian...that goes against everything liberaterians believe in. Lets face it, we have a lot of nut jobs in this country. While Catholics hate abortion (they shouldnt have them), they should honor our Consitutional rights to be free from their religious blight on the common politic. This person is a domestic terrorist and should be treated as same.
Townie 76 said…
Steve,

The problem we have here is the MSM is incapable of differentiating between the various varieties of political ideology. Except for George Will and the late William Buckley I doubt many in the MSM could tell you the difference between the political philosophy of John Locke, Thomas Hobbs, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, William Gladstone. They would find it impossible to tell you the difference between Classical Liberalism and Modern Conservatism, they could not differentiate between the beliefs of Harry Byrd, Sr., Thomas Jefferson, and Judge John Paul. In short they are ignorant, so they are forces to go for the easiest path which is to associate a right winged nut job with Libertarianism because it is outside the mainstream of Liberal and Conservative. What we have here, to quote Strother Martin in Cool Hand Luke, 'What we have here is a failure to communicate [understand].'

Hank Foresman

BTW: As a Catholic (sort of) I find the remark about Catholics having abortions revolting--I respect Anonymous right to say what he/or/she has to say, they should respect of the right of Catholics to believe that abortion is wrong.
sinatracat said…
I totally agree with Anonymous. I think we need to reduce this murder to what it is, a person who did what he preached against. He murdered someone. He let his beliefs guide him to commit murder against a doctor. All this intellectual rhetoric makes one think too hard. Shouldn't we all remember "Thou Shall Not Kill?"

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

With apologies to Hube: dopey WNJ comments of the week

(Well, Hube, at least I'm pulling out Facebook comments and not poaching on your preserve in the Letters.) You will all remember the case this week of the photo of the young man posing with the .22LR squirrel rifle that his Dad got him for his birthday with resulted in Family Services and the local police attempting to search his house.  The story itself is a travesty since neither the father nor the boy had done anything remotely illegal (and check out the picture for how careful the son is being not to have his finger inside the trigger guard when the photo was taken). But the incident is chiefly important for revealing in the Comments Section--within Delaware--the fact that many backers of "common sense gun laws" really do have the elimination of 2nd Amendment rights and eventual outright confiscation of all privately held firearms as their objective: Let's run that by again: Elliot Jacobson says, This instance is not a case of a father bonding with h

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?