A Libertarian’s Reckoning with “Blowback” and Selective Outrage
Excerpt Real libertarianism demands intellectual honesty about threats from every direction, including radical Islamist terror, socialist central planning marketed as “anti-colonialism,” and authoritarian regimes that crush both markets and speech. It requires weighing the whole body of evidence instead of collecting anecdotes that flatter a preferred story. When “anti-war” rhetoric leads people to rationalize or soft-pedal violence by movements that would build something far worse than a liberal democratic republic, it has stopped serving liberty and started undermining it. The liberty movement does not need more voices that reflexively blame the West while excusing the worst conduct of its adversaries. It needs thinkers anchored in cause and effect, willing to face uncomfortable truths about ideology, culture, and human agency wherever those truths lead. Read in the Rational Standard.