More Palmer Libel of Hoppe

Palmer has now closed this thread, so let me make a coulple of comments.

First, Eli Feigenbaum writes,

...(In fact, it is the employment policy that independent educational and public-policy groups -- including both the Cato Institute and the Mises Institute -- basically employs, with some success.)

Gasp! Eli, horror of horrors, you've mentioned the Cato Institute and the Mises Institute ... in the SAME BREATH! You are evil by association!!!

The relentlessly dishonest Palmer repeats his libel of Hoppe.

Now if Hoppe were himself to deny that he has ever made disparaging remarks about others on the grounds of their race (say, being Indians), sexuality (say, being "Ambassadors"), etc. that would be interesting. I would not hold my breath. (And I should say that showing disgust at the idea of Indians and "white people" eating at the same table is....well, disgusting.

Yes, I agree. And Hoppe did not do this. He would not do this. Palmer is just repeating a stupid malevolent rumour. He is either clueless, driven to obsession by a bizarre monomania, or evil intentioned. I don't know which. I'll assume the first out of charity. He admits he does not know Hoppe. I do. Hoppe is not the type who would do this. It's ridiculous.

Further, the remark that someone is an "Ambassador" for a sexuality is not only a disgraceful example of the fallacy of the argumentum ad hominem, but is also fraught with connotations, all of which insinuate bad conduct.)

"fraught with connotations." What mealy-mouthed crap. Palmer despises Hoppe, probably because Hoppe is razor sharp, principled, German, a Rothbardian, and very popular. He insulted Hoppe personally and continues to do so, to the level of maligning his character falsely. I have no idea what reports Palmer heard but I can imagine--at worst, Hoppe heard of this Palmer criticizing him personally and shot back a personal retort. Only a fucking idiot would believe that implies "bigotry."

He has expressed bigoted and hate-filled prejudices on a variety of occasions. He may be a "martyr" to academic freedom, but he is not a decent person who has simply been misunderstood.

No, he has not expressed such prejudices; and yes, he is a very decent person. That Palmer is unable to see this, and that he continues to repeatedly misdescribe Hoppe out of ignorance, is a sign of malevolence or mental instability.

Mr. Kinsella has denied that Hoppe is a bigot. Coming from someone who denies that Sam Francis is a racist (Francis is an intellectual hero over at lewrockwell.com, as well as editor of an openly racist and segregationist, anti-black organization)

Actually, I know very little about Francis and as far as I know he has little to do with lewrockwell.com, and I do not recall ever saying anything about Francis--where did I take any position on Francis, Palmer?? Where? I denied Sobran is an anti-semite because every stinking piece of evidence you  egalitarian cocktail party libertarians produce is the same old tired bullshit.

and that Joe Sobran is an anti-Semite (Sobran writes astonishing screeds about "The Jewish Party" and speaks at the neo-Nazi Institute for Historical Review), such denial have no credibility. Anyone who denies that Francis and Sobran are racists or that the organizations with which they have chosen to affiliate or associate themselves are openly racist simply has no credibility. It's like denying that World War II ever happened and then asking us to believe propostion X or Y simply on one's say so.

Sobran is not an anti-semite. Palmer and his pathetic pack of hyenas have picked the wrong person to pick on. I don't need anything from any group, am beholden to no one, am self-made, and not some nobody whom they can walk over with a couple of waves of the hand. Maybe that's why they always make it about me. I don't want it to be about me, but honestly don't care a whit about these jackals. Bring it on, scumbags. I won't, and don't need, to play by your rules. I'm smart, not a nobody, and willing to say what I believe. Not good when someone is not cowed by the PC bullshit, eh--especially someone who is not a perpetual grad student or loser type? I guess that's one good thing about not being beholden to a benefactor or the leftist academic atmosphere that prevails today (witness Hoppe's travails).

(I should also add that I am sure that I am not the only who finds Mr. Kinsella's childishness and his remarkably immature sense of "humor" to be embarrassing -- for him.)

Yes, imagine that--I don't take you buzzing pests seriously; I don't give you the serious adult attention you don't deserve. Imagine that.

But I'll put in the last word, as I put in the first. I have read some of Mr. Hoppe's work and found it remarkably unscholarly and poorly argued, but we've never met.

As I am not a proponent of making things personal I will not ask Palmer to show a single thing he has ever written that is as scholarly as Hoppe's magnificent corpus. I cannot believe Palmer has read Hoppe's A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, for exampel, or the introduction to his Democracy book, or the Introduction to Rothbard's Ethics of Liberty.

My only interaction with him was many years ago when I attended a lecture he was giving and asked a quite reasonable question about a very strange claim that he had made but not substantiated, viz. that Ludwig von Mises had laid the foundation not only for economics, but for ethics, geometry, and optics. That seemed very strange to me and I asked Hoppe how he could defend that claim, since (setting aside ethics) geometry and optics had been rigorous sciences for many thousands of years. His response was to demand to know whether I had been listening, to which I responded that I had. He then insisted that I hadn't and that he wasn't going to waste his time with people who were too stupid to understand and who didn't listen.

Well golly gee willickers, if one time he didn't give you the respect you deserved, why, hell, he must be a bigot! After all, he's GERMAN!

I find Hoppe's attitudes toward others ("intellectual criminals," "worse than communists," "Ambassador of homosexuality," etc.) to be disgraceful.

What is disgraceful is your repeated foaming attacks on this fellow dedicated, sincerely, provocative, and influential  libertarian simply because your bread is buttered by a group that for some reason hates all things Rothbardian, or because of some stupid petty personal reasons. When did part of the libertarian movement become so damned politically correct? It would be amusing if it were not so pathetic.

Comments

[Mark D. Fulwiler]

Stephan:

You are correct that there is no evidence that Mr. Sobran is an anti-semite. However, I believe the man showed very poor judgment in speaking before the Institute For Historical Review. I have investigated this organization and have come to the conclusion, as have many others, that it is, more or less, an anti-semetic neo-Nazi front organization. The IHR publishes a booklet which denies the holocaust ever happened and repeats loads of anti-semitic tripe, and attempts to salvage the reputation Herr Hitler. Follow this link:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/qar/qar00.html

In his comments to the IHR, Sobran did not say anything specifically anti-semetic, but he implied that the IHR was a group of fine historians searching for the truth. This is totally false.

Frankly, it reflects poorly on libertarians in general when a leading libertarian columnist attends and speaks at events organized by neo-Nazis and acts like he is speaking before the Women's Garden Society. No, I don't believe in guilt by association, but many people have a hard time believing you are a virgin if you hang out at whorehouses.

[Stephan Kinsella]

I really don't know enoought about it, and frankly, don't care enough. I'm not on a witchhunt like some people are. I have read dozens of Sobran pieces and the man is brilliant and I have never deteced anythign anti-semitic in what he wrote. But I do know the ultrasensitive crowd accuses him of antisemitism even for some of the innocuous things I've read; so I tend to not give a flying fuck at any anti-semitism accusations any more. I don't believe those crackheads at all. So he attended some group. Who gives a damn.

[R.P. McCosker]

I followed Mark Fulwiler's link that's supposed to show that IHR is anti-Semitic and apologizes for Hitler. I must say I'm not very impressed. I was expecting the link to be to an IHR publication wherein it's prima facie evident that IHR is all that. Instead, what we have is a series of responses to an IHR publication--with no link, oddly, to that original IHR publication for ease of comparison.

This website also has a "Funding" page ( http://www.nizkor.org/league-donation.html ) which indicates that Nizkor is sponsored by B'nai Brith of Canada. B'nai Brith is of course the Jewish fraternal organization that organizes and funds the ADL and various other Zionist and "liberal"/left groups and causes. (Not to confuse Zionist and leftist: some varieties of Zionism are very right-wing in their own way.)

Now, B'nai Brith and its fronts are as entitled as anybody to have webpages. And it's heartening to witness B'nai Brith actually attempting to argue the specifics of claims made by certain of those who challenge the standard account of the Holocaust, because B'nai Brith and its fronts usually seem to deal with such claims via ad hominem attacks alone. But it's hard for anyone not immersed in the historical documentation regarding the Holocaust to sort out these issues, much less conclude that IHR's claims are anti-Semitic tripe aimed at salvaging Hitler's reputation, simply based on Fulwiler's link. Moreover, the historians it cites as authoritative, like Hilberg, are precisely among those whom IHR seeks to refute--citing them unqualifiedly against IHR claims seems like circular reasoning.

Fulwiler's link also includes some ad hominem charges against IHR, none of them documented therein. One is that Liberty Lobby (a defunct, anti-Semitic conspiratorialist outfit) head Willis Carto founded IHR. Nizkor fails to document this, though for all I know it's true. But if it is, it's hard to know what to make of that. The ACLU, after all, was founded by Roger Baldwin, a CPUSA member, back when being a CPUSAer meant being a Stalinist. Nobody seems to care much about that now, only whether the ACLU is taking the correct legal stands here and now.

With enough guilt by association, we're all damned. Why not give Sobran some benefit of the doubt?

[Jonathan Dingel]

Mr. Kinsella,
It's become clear that your ranting has little connection to reality, given your failure to provide evidence and preference for bold assertions. The breaking point has to be this comment, however:

"Well golly gee willickers, if one time he didn't give you the respect you deserved, why, hell, he must be a bigot! After all, he's GERMAN!"

Palmer is German.

[Jonathan Dingel]

(I admit that I am not 100% certain that Palmer is German-born, as I am basing that statement upon a recollection from last summer. Call it 90% certainty.)

[John T. Kennedy]

"Palmer is just repeating a stupid malevolent rumour."

A rumour? Palmer repeated a story told him by witnesses he finds reliable:

As he asked my friends in Guatemala when they took him to a restaurant: “Do Indians eat in the same restaurants as white people?” When told yes, and even that they sit at the same tables, he showed visible disgust.

http://tinyurl.com/695qv

You say it didn't happen, presumably based on the account of a witness you find reliable. How is that any less a rumor?

[Stephan Kinsella]

Kennedy: imagine this courtroom scene:

Atty: And so, in closing, Your Honor, it is clear Mr. H. is a bigot!

Judge: Excuse me, ... why is that, again?

Atty: Well, Your Honor, ... my client claims he heard from someone that...

Judge: You HEARD from someone? That's hearsay. But alright, what did he say?

Atty: Well, he said he took Mr. H. into this restaurant in Guatemala,

Judge: So? Why's that bigoted?

Atty: If you will, Your Honor, I'm getting to that. So according to my client's friend, Mr. H. asked if Guatemalans ate in this restaurant too, and, well,

Judge: What's wrong with that question?

Atty: Well,... nothing, really, Your Honor, but in context -- anyway, what he did was--according to my client's friend, Mr. H. kind of got this disgusted look on his face.

Judge: What?

Atty: Ummm, he got all disgusted at the Guatemalans there. I mean, he had this disgusted look on his face. Or so my client says. I mean his friend, his friend.

Judge: Hold on one goddamn minute. You mean, you are marching into MY courtroom, and telling me Mr. H is a bigot because someone said he got a disgusted look on his face?

Atty: Well... I bet it was a REAL disgusted look, Your Honor, if I had to... ummm... guess.

Judge: How in the world do you know what he was disgusted about? Maybe your client's friend had just farted?!

Atty: Ummm, well. You see.... my client says Mr. H. is despicable and a big meany, your honor. And, umm, he's German. Also, he called my client an Ambassador of Homosexuality.

Judge: What the.... Your client is gay?

Atty: Yes, Your Honor. As far as I know.

Judge: How would you know? Has he testifid to this under oath?

Atty: Well... no, but he mentions it all the time on his .... libertarian site.

Judge: What does his political philosophy have to do with his sexual orientation...?

Atty: .... I'll have to get back with you on that one, Judge.

Judge: Anyway, what in the name of tarnation is an Ambassador of Homosexuality? What does it even mean?

Atty: Ummmm. We don't really know your honor. But... I think it probably means, um, that my client's gay.

Judge: I thought you said your client is gay?

Atty: Oh, he is, he is.... Let me rephrase that, Your Honor. It shows clear evidence of Mr. H's bigotry.

Judge: [steamed] .... against Guatemalans? Gay ones?!

Atty: Sure, sure, but... regular ones too. And non-Guateman gays. And there were Indians in the restaurant too.

Judge: What the...? Indians? The woo-woo-woo kind or the dot-head kind?

Atty: Your Honor, I don't think that's a very sensitive--

Judge: Alright, but which kind?

Atty: Umm, the woo-woo kind, Sir.

Judge: ...

Atty: Your Honor?

Judge: Jesus Christ. Why do I get stuck with these cases?

Atty: Your Honor?

Judge: Go AHEAD Counselor, I'm waiting.

Atty: Well... one time he had a sarcastic comment about a friend of my client's doing LSD.... [trails off]

Judge: A gay Guatemalan friend?

Atty: Ha ha, um, that's pretty good Your Honor but ... No.

Judge: Well, was your client's friend doing illegal drugs?

Atty: Your Honor, I hardly see how that's relev--

Judge: YOU brought it up, Counselor. I'm just asking if what Mr. H. said was true or not.

Atty: Umm, Your Honor, I'd rather not say.

Judge: Fine. Strike it from the record.

Judge: So let me get this straight. Because Mr. H. allegedly "looked disgusted" ... and referred to your client as gay, in some weird expression none of us know what it means... and does not like LSD addicts (I have to say, I don't much either) ... you claim this proves that Mr. H. hates (a) gay and non-gay Guatemalans; (b) gay and non-gay Indians (the woo-woo-woo type); and (c) gay non-Guatemalan non-Indians. Do I have this straight?

Atty: .... Well. I mean, I would not ... You don't have to put it that way, Your Honor, ....

Judge: What way?!

Atty: Well, like ... like you're making fun of it. As if it's ... not really a serious charge.

Judge: Shut up. Let me ask you, counsellor. What is the label for Mr. H's particular brand of bigotry. Would you call it anti-Guatemalan-Indian/homophobic...?

Atty: Umm, well... that sort of makes it sound --

Judge: Silly?!

Atty: Well, it is too narrow, and at the same time, too broad.

Judge: How so?

Atty: Because it doesn't say he hates Jews or blacks.

Judge: Are you saying he's racist and anti-semitic too? What evidence do you have for that?

Atty: Well.... none... exactly, but we just assume--

Judge: You ASSUME!? Counsellor, didn't you see the Bad News Bears??

Atty: Excuse me, Your Honor?

Judge: Your remember it, Counselor. Jodi Foster. Don't bullshit a bullshitter. Now what did that movie teach you about assuming things?

Atty: Ummmm. [cough] That... you make an ASS out of U and ME?

Judge: EXACTLY. Now do you want to make an ass out of me, Counsellor?

Atty: No, no, no sir, Your Honor.

Judge: Good. Anything else?

Atty: Pardon?

Judge: Anything else to prove this strange bigotry claim?

Atty: Well... he once said that you can't have involuntary unemployment on the free market. And also, he was not nice to my client one time.

Judge: Counselor. You do realize you are about to piss me off, don't you?

Atty: Yes, Your Honor. I apologize.

Judge: You better hope Mr. H. didn't spend a lot of money on legal bills, because you're about to pay them.

[John T. Kennedy]

Kinsella,

Guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is not a standard that you apply yourself when publicly drawing conclusions about others.

If I trusted the judgment of the people who told me what Palmer's friends told him, then your protestations that Hoppe wouldn't act like that wouldn't cut much ice with me.

[Stephan Kinsella]

Who said anything about guilt beyond a reasonable doubt? I was talking mere preponderance. Even there, this is silly. Tou think you know why someone "looks disgusted". Give me a break. You are all a bunch of silly little politically correct fools.

[Stephan Kinsella]

Kennedy implies here, and in email to me--as does another correspondent--that my dramatization of the ridiculousness of Palmer's little charges in a courtroom setting is not sound, since not every setting is in a courtroom. In other words, they are basially saying (my words) that "all you have done, Kinsella, is demonstrate that in a neutral forum with objective rules of evidence, Palmer's contentions could not be established."

Er... right. That's "all" I've shown! LOL! It seems to me obvious (but then, I have normal morals, which I guess the haters don't) that it is quite irresponsible and very immoral to explicitly, publicly accuse someone of being a bigot, racist, anti-semit, etc., even if one believes this, unless one has solid evidence to back this charge up. Merely having a hunch or an opinion is not sufficient, for one is taking the risk that one is severely harming someone whose guilt of the charged offense is not at all certain. Therefore, it helps to consider whether, in a neutral forum like a court where objective rules of evidence exist, the charge one wants to make would hold up. Clearly, as I've shown in my lampoonery, Palmer would get laughed out of court. This gedankenexperiment is a way of demonstrating how flimsy Palmer's alleged evidence is. It is a way of making it obvious that if he wants to adopt this opinion about Hoppe, he is not basing it so much on evidence as probably on other factors such as personal distaste or dislike; and it clearly demonstrates Palmer is leveling a serious charge against someone he really does not *know* to be guilty of it, despite the potential damage and hurtfulness of such a charge. It demonstrates a callous disregard for the possible harm he is intentionally causing to a person who, for all he knows, is not guilty of what Palmer claims he is.

[John T. Kennedy]

Kinsella,

Feel free to post anything I've emailed to you, but I'd prefer you don't make claims about what I've said in email *without* posting my own words because you're not very good at identifying implications.

[Stephan Kinsella]

K-dog, I said, "Kennedy implies here, and in email to me--as does another correspondent--that my dramatization of the ridiculousness of Palmer's little charges in a courtroom setting is not sound, since not every setting is in a courtroom."

I looked at your email and believe I was mistaken--I don't think you implied this in email. Someone else did, who asked to be anonymous. But you implied it above in the comments, that's what I was thinking of: "Guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is not a standard that you apply yourself when publicly drawing conclusions about others."

To me, this implies you think that court standards (which you wrongly equate with "guilt beyond a reasonable doubt") are not appropriate.

Big Daddy stands by his comments.

[John T. Kennedy]

You just did it again.

Anyway, this isn't a courtroom. You don't treat it like a courtroom. I'm not offended by people saying what they judge to be true based on evidence or accounts they judge reliable. I don't know that Palmer is being unreasonable her, he may well have a very reasonable basis to consider it true. I know witnesses I would trust to draw such conclusions from a conversation they participated in.

I certainly don't think anyone else ought to draw Palmer's conclusion based solely on the story. I'd have to be very confident of his judgment to attach any significant weight to the story.

For myself, Palmer's Guatemalan story is of little interest in and of itself because I don't have any solid read on Palmer's judgment or that of his friends. I conclude nothing from the story on it's own, it's just a data point as far as I'm concerned.

And it's a data point in a matter I don't find particularly interesting. I'm not interested in whether of not Hoppe is a bigot.

[Stephan Kinsella]

JTK--I thought you had not made the mistake of referring to HHH as a bigot. You are just some obsessive gadfly. Much better than a malorific maligner. Bully for you.

By the way, do you know if Palmer has ever used the N-word?

"Anyway, this isn't a courtroom. You don't treat it like a courtroom."

I have no idea what your point is, or what the last sentence is even supposed to mean. Is it normative? Descriptive? Declarative? What? The first sentence is obvious, but what is the point of stating the obvious? I have already explained the relevance of using the courtroom gedankenexperiment despite the quite obvious fact that it's "not" a courtroom. So why repeat what is obvious?

"I'm not offended by people saying what they judge to be true based on evidence or accounts they judge reliable. I don't know that Palmer is being unreasonable her, he may well have a very reasonable basis to consider it true."

Know, he doesn't. Not at all. I know this for at least 2 reasons. First, HHH is not a bigot; I know this for a fact; so Palmer is wrong. He is repeatedly and emphatically wrong; so it is not innocent. It is at least reckless. Second, I've read his evidence and reasons; it's all a bunch of politically correct crapoloa. The kind of stuff that would, er, get you laughed out of court.

On whether you should just haul off and say what you believe. Well, my grandma--I asked her once--seems to believe that since drugs are bad (probably true), "of course" they should be outlawed. But then, she's not spouting that on a public platform. She doesn't pretend to have an authoritative view on this.

You may have a hunch someone is a bigot--or a fascist, or gay, or a pederast, or an atheist, or a leche, or cheating on his wife. But saying these things can harm someone badly. So the careful, moral, responsible person doesn't publicly accuse someone of such things without solid evidence. I'm sorry if you don't see this; but if so, it's no skin off my back. There are plenty of callous, indifferent, rude, and even criminal people out there. So what. If you are one of them, welcome to your life.

I would submit confidently that anyone who disagrees with the above is an oaf. Surely you should not make potentially damaging and serious accusations about someone unless you have damn good evidence. And Palmer has zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Just a bunch of drummed up, distored, and cockamamie hearsay. He admits he's never even met HHH. He for some reason is obsesed w/ LRC and HHH --- sayyyy, sound familiar, Kennedy? He "looked disgusted" about some Guatemalans being in the restaurant? Give me a break. What is this, the fucking thought crime tribunal? He called Palmer the Ambassador of Homosexuality? What in the name of living fuck does this mean, even if it's true? I firmly believe that only a craven, soft-headed, and outright cowardly idiot who is in thrall to the PC mania of our day would ever give credence to the above ridiculous and flimsy "evidence". I know gays all the time ridicule straights--they call us "breeders" for example. We don't go whining about it like a bunch of sniveling pussies. Grow the fuck up, all of you.

"I certainly don't think anyone else ought to draw Palmer's conclusion based solely on the story. I'd have to be very confident of his judgment to attach any significant weight to the story."

Well, you are a much better man than Palmer and his cronies, and those on your blog who also make half-cocked accusations against HHH.

"And it's a data point in a matter I don't find particularly interesting. I'm not interested in whether of not Hoppe is a bigot."

I'm not either, since I already know the answer. What I am interested in is when people falsely accuse him of it.

BTW, do you know if Palmer has ever used the N-word?

[R.P. McCosker]

I don't understand why anybody'd seek to post on Palmer's discussion blog anyway. Why keep promoting this chancre sore on libertarianism by suggesting he's worth conversing with anyway—especially in a format that he moderates?

As to this HHH business, I don't "get" why UNLV thinks it's qualified to judge the content of his lectures. If he was teaching, say, a physics class and said something controversial about the behavior of neutrinos, perhaps something unsupported by the scientific literature, the administration would never consequently investigate, judge, or punish the professor. Apparently that putative standard only applies when it comes to something that might hurt the feelings of an officially "protected" demographic group—a gender, race, ethnicity, sexual preference, so long as it's not white or straight or male or Christian. Scholars offended by certain neutrino theories unsupported by peer-reviewed literature are out of luck.

Looking through these various posting boards and links discussing the HHH controversy, it's obvious that there's at least some empirical support for his thesis anyway. I don't know whether they're "properly" peer-reviewed, but somehow I doubt UNLV would care anyway.

As for HHH's comment itself, he seems to be making a reasonable generalization about people who're less likely to have children. Certainly he expresses it clumsily, and doesn't bend over backward to clarify that other, countering motivations may influence homosexuals. (His affinity for praxeology may deflect him away from that kind of empirical consideration.) Of course, when feminist professors sneer about male patriarchy and oppression, that's just par for the course. If some student filed a complaint about that, the administration would never investigate the matter, much less hold a hearing, and consequently there'd never be this kind of public discussion in the first place.

The non-left just can't win in academic situations, because whole system is set up to maintain and enhance leftist control. Academic enemies of the left usually end up sounding like whiners and losers, because the general public doesn't understand or care much that government-accredited education is a special payoff and subsidy to the left. Which is exactly what the left wants.

[david]

Tm Palmer sez: The reasons for secession certainly matter when it comes to evaluating its legitimacy."

Sorry. Absolutely wrong. The right to secession is the foundation of liberty and the secessionist's reasons have nothing to do with whether secession itself is legitimate.

As a free person, I have (should have)the right to withdraw from the oppressor who controls me (in my case, the state). This is no different from the Southerner's right to withdraw from the the Union or his slave's right to withdraw from slavery.

The right to secession is the foundation of liberty.

[Li'l Mamzer]

You seem obsessed with this Palmer guy.

To the point that an objective observer (myself) who knows nothing about either of you would think you (Kinsella) has an unnatural obsession.

Don't you secretly have a huge crush on him?

IT'S OBVIOUS