Carrots And Sticks

Part 1

Reading over past columns for SLR, Your Friendly Neighborhood Anarcho-columnist notices that they have been uniformly negative. Now YFNA is not at all that sort of person who is gnawed upon by a general hatred. So let the brickbats flit out of this dark corner, carrying the corpses of the deviationists they struck, and let a few kudos be distributed.

Since SLR is East-Coast-oriented, let me start by bringing to your attention some Western libertarians who have been all-too-neglected. Robert M. LeFevre, for example, shines in the anarchofirmament with Murray Rothbard, but not, alas, with the same magnitude in this longitude. LeFevre has an excellent journal (LEFEVRE’S JOURNAL, of course) which is free of both deviationism and big words like “deviationism.”

It could be passed on to your reactionary parents and read with enjoyment by them, but gives a thrill to this wild-eyed bombthrower as well. The only thing I disagree with the estimable grand old man of Western libertarianism on is his pacifism, which, when compared to the Partyphilia of some other mentors of our Movement, is like comparing a cold to cancer. And if your libertarianism is objectivist-based, watch it. He will mess with your mind without you even noticing before it’s too late and you may be too far gone! (LJ, Box 2353, Orange, Calif. 92669, contribution of $10 suggested)

Even-handed Lloyd Licher could be credited with single-handedly keeping the Calif. libertarians in alliance since the Browning out of the great Dana Rohrabacher. Lloyd runs the Libertarian Supper Club of Los Angeles; and every month, the Movement gathers at the Taix Restaurant to recharge their intellectual batteries with another speaker (and fill their anarchobellies while they are at it). If you want to meet a lot of libertarians in L.A. quick when you visit or move there, write ahead of time to Lloyd and send a couple of bucks so he can mail you his newsletter and let you know when next they gather well in advance. (Libtn. Sup. Club of L.A. Newse letter, Lloyd Licher, 12536 Woodbine St., L.A., Calif. 90066, $1.50/year until the postal rates go up again)

Dare I forget John Yench? John 15 a reporter for the ANAHEIM BULLETIN, a mild-mannered to boot. Ah, but when he slips into a telephone booth, out comes...another Free Enterprise Forum (libertarian conference, to which he kindly invited me last year, to speak, etc.) and maybe another issue of CHRISTIAN LAISSEZ FAIRE! What? “Christian”? Yes, and hard-core anarchoagorist, too. Did he ever check his premises, you ask? Yes, and he found a big cross over them every Sunday. I find John indispensible as a contact with a whole body of people outside the decadent, unbelieving East and a healthy antidote to the Conservative Christian quasilibertarian Foundation for Economic Education. (CHRISTIAN LAISSEZ FAIRE, Box 772, Anaheim, Calif. 92805. About $2 per year, last I heard)

Seymour (Sy) Leon is a hard-core activist who is also a real live entrepreneur. Sy has taken LeFevre’s old Rampart College and turned it into a profit-making Operation. He has been advance man for Harry Browne, spreading the message to those on whom it will do the most good. He is the instigator and chief honcho of the League of Non-Voters and has received publicity for the Libertarian Movement with next-to-no-investment and no vote-chasing that the Partyarchs would eat their hearts out for. He has so integrated theory and practice (or should I say preaching and profit) to make me eat my heart out. (Seymour Leon, Box 11407, Santa Ana, Calif. 92711)

Christopher Bates is somebody I just had to like. He got YFNA to autograph every copy of NEW LIBERTARIAN NOTES he had in his collection. Chris is also from the Commonwealth (Britain in his case), and a fan. Of perhaps more import to the reader, Chris was in the thick of the San Diego Ten (or eleven, I lost count) Tax Rebellion Case. And he won. And he could be deported at any time (like me, for example) without trial or any other of those statist’s lulls of security. Chris is like a lot of other “immigrants” I know, who had this dream of finding a land full of heroes and Good Guys and, when they found them scarce, became them to fulfill their dreams.

Although gone the way of all-too-many anarchomarriages, that of Sy and Riqui Leon has been the biggest boon to the Calif. Movement for several years. Riqui was the Dolly Madison of the Movement, throwing parties every so often at their Orange County house. Recently she has been prominent in defending Women’s Lib from a libertarian perspective against Arch-Chauvinists such as Murray Rothbard. Riqui has also played den mother to many a libertarian growing up a bit slow.

Before I leave Southern Calif., let me not slight anyone, but simply affirm that there are many libertarians I know well enough to exalt but who have not the general fame for their less persistent endeavors (generally due to working for a living, an affliction found rarely on the E. Coast). And there are others of fame that do not enjoy my personal knowledge, such as Joe Galambos, Natallee Hall and Skye D’Aureous, El Rayo and Naomi Gatherer, and Lou Rollins, whose good and worthy efforts will someday earn them a more adept chronicler.

Let us move up the Coast to the neglected Northwest and stop briefly in Oregon. In Portland you will be utterly unable to find, since he is a confirmed recluse, someone of libertarian bent who cares little enough for “The Movement” bow, scrape. In fact, he is the fellow who taught me to write in asterisks like this praise, praise and set a revolution in style and literature throughout Science Fiction fandom with his SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW. Richard E. Geis is passing through his middle age, but remains young of heart and Spry of brain, and will probably unfailingly put out some sort of fanzine that will make me drop all my activities and labours when perusing my mailbox and finding him. And have me seek some nice corner complete with couch to curl up and read. So his reviews are infallible in telling you who to read and who not to, though granted, only for form and style. But if Dick is cavalier towards content, his unflinching eye will observe for you who’s saying it well for us and them, and who is botching it. And as his famous “Alter Ego” revealed in WORLDS OF IF, he is a lover of “Romantic” fiction, that which is written for you and not for the literary critic and his set. (SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW, P.0. Box 11408, Portland, Ore. 97211. $4/year)

Still further north, in the Washington area, we find lurking one Joseph Michael Sharp, Mike to his anarcho-friends. Besides trying to get Libertarian Alliances going on Washington campuses, and keeping campus papers hopping with columns, Mike tried lighting torches for Ludwig von Mises, even putting out an issue or two or WERTFREI, a journal of praxeology. When last heard from, Mike was Browning, but I assume not for long. He is being persuaded to grace the pages of NLN with reports from that Dark Area of our communications, and perhaps he will be seen in SLR.

Before we leave the West Coast, let us not forget to cast an aloha over the waves. Although the PACIFIC LIBERTARIAN is gone, Jerrold D. Dickson and his FREE has the Movement in Hawaii relatively pure and lively. Jerry is also a fan, and is building a libertarian alliance of some sort, not scorning our New Libertarians. Hawaii has always been a hotbed of activism, with a libertarian radio station being driven off the air and libertarians being busted in a Census Resistance case, the only such bust from the great Census Resistence organized by SIL in 1970. I’m sure it’s a great comfort to Jerry that I expect him to follow in their footsteps, but perhaps he will tread with greater care. (FREE, Box 2776, Honolulu, Haw. 96803. $5/yr.)

So, says the faithful reader, the West Coast and the East Coast are filled with the great and the good. What a pity that the Middle of the Continent has such a dearth of wise and true! Hah, replies YFNA. Just wait until the next issue.

Part 2

In the last issue of SLR, Your Friendly Neighborhood Anarcho-columnist decided to toss some carrots of praise to neglected W. Coast libertarians and to rest the stick with which he beats various deviationists. But the coastal regions of the U.S. have received more than enough good press coverage. Let YFNA’s roving eye cast itself on Middle America, that paradise promised us by the Prophet Murray, the Profit Incarnate.

Colorado, of course, was gifted (or cursed, as you will) with the Nolans. But how many of my friendly neighborhood anarcho-readers know that one of the truly great libertarians of all time still lives high up in the mountains?

James J. Martin was a hard-core Stirnerist-type free market anarchist back in the dim, dark days of World War II. He fought the draft and the war with brilliant revisionist history from the beginning. Martin’s REVISIONIST VIEWPOINTS contains essays from the old RAMPART JOURNAL of Robert LeFevre that are still pace-setters in libertarian historiography. Recently Jim appeared at a libertarian conference which ran concurrently with the ill-scarred Dallas LP convention. He may yet return to liven up the pages of the journals of the modern Movement.

Up north, in Illinois, Joe Cobb prowls. I have much quarrel with Joe’s present Partyarchist actions, but in the sixties he put out a great little journal called the NEW INDIVIDUALIST REVIEW: A Journal of Classical Liberal Thought. In it Murray took cudgel to minarchists, and Austrians battled with Friedmanites. Joe’s own chapter of the Radical Libertarian Alliance was humorous, though perhaps unintentionally, since he worked for an alliance with ACLU-liberals while the rest of the RLA was trying to embrace the New Left. Whatever degradation Joe slips into these days, his fame and value has already been vouchsafed by history, which is more than the rest of us can safely assert about ourselves.

In Barry’s Back Yard

Arizona was the home of the original Student Libertarian Action Movement, once described by this writer as the “Weathermen” of the libertarian movement. SLAM’s classic battle with the police on the U of A campus won them accolades and collections for a defense fund around the country. Alas, SLAM is gone, after a brief split into SLAM and “North American Libertarian Alliance,” though Fred Woodworth and Conrad Goeringer have gotten together in the modern MATCH! to got their left-deviationist way.

Ralph Kerner brought the Libertarian Caucus home from the ’69 YAF-con in St. Louis to La., and he and Evan Soule have been fueling the flame of freedom there ever since. Evan went on to create the Committee to Legalize Cold, a strange animal in the libertarian bestiary of front groups. After all, it actually succeeded in achieving its goal!

The Lone Star State once boasted Scott Tips and Mike Holmes, with their HARD CORE NEWS. “Hard Core” is still the highest exclamation of approval in the Movement, and the famous Hard Core sweatshirt is a rare collector’s item.

Mike Holmes has since sunk into Partyac, and Scott has Browned out and moved to Southern California, but their legacy remains. Over at Sul Ross State College, Tony Warnock teaches “logic,” his name for the basic libertarian principles. Tony was once at the U. of Wis. with YFNA, and gave Free University classes in Praxeology while YFNA roused the rabble a bit more crudely.

Still in Wis. is Don McKowen, trying to liberate minds in Milwaukee, a truly Herculean task. Many a libertarian leaflet has been passed to the unsuspecting masses by Don, and many of the Rationalist Church of America objectivists have been shaken out of their views by his Stirnerism

The Deep South Folks

Recently Browned out in Georgia, but still watching us with some interest, is David Rosinge Dave’s original SOUTHERN LIBERTARIAN MESSENGER was a brilliant Rothbardian beacon in a branch of the Movement which once predominantly Randist and Banneristi. Dave’s activism brought about the first two Southern Libertarian Conferences, the second of which featured YFNA routing Mike Holmes and his attempt to get a libertarian part going in the bayous and magnolia. Dave has also been into revisionism, and the only ISOLATIONIST pamphlet was written by him and printed in NLN for the now defunct radical caucus.

Down at the south end of Alabama teaches a university professor by the name of Steve Halbrook. “Crazy Steve” was one of the great deviationists of the Movement, and today’s heretics pale in comparison. Today I regard him wit nostalgia, remembering his articles (like “Classical Utopianist Anarchism vs. Leninist Libertarianism,” and his urging us to consider Mao a libertarian) as something a critic could really sink his teeth into. While his Vanguard Party thankfully never got off the ground, Steve was instructive to us in showing how libertarians should not go.

Not all Middle American libertarians have faded into the Shadow World of Mundanity. Still plugging away in Pa. is the Society for Individual Liberty of Don Ernsberger and Dave Walters. While the coasts never did get into a SIL frame, preferring libertarian alliances of a local nature, most of Middle America knew of other libertarians only through their SIL NEWS.

One neglected area of interest is Canada. During the heyday of the Libertarian Alliance, a group put out an occasional journal in Winnipeg, Manitoba, called THE SKEPTIC. While the zine ha faded out, it briefly gave hope for the expansic of libertarianism into some of the more outflung areas of the world. Currently, revival of activity in Ontario and Alberta gives us hope.

Many other bright comets soared across the libertarian skies in the early seventies in the Middle of the Heartland, and with the upcoming collapse of the LP and its stifling influence and rigid conformity to outworn institutions, we can hope that a general renaissance is in the offing.

(What about the E. Coast? For those readers who are interested in YFNA’s views on that subject, a quick subscription to NEW LIBERTARIAN NOTES will bring NLN 40 and “Farewell to the East,” where that is well taken care of.)

Contributors

Abby Goldsmith, another dropout from state level LP leadership, has been active in the Movement for many years in Conn. and Fla. She is a regular contributor to such publications as NEW LIBERTARIAN NOTES and SOUTHERN LIBERTARIAN MESSENGER.

Samuel Edward Konkin, III, is the editor of NEW LIBERTARIAN NOTES, the Movement’s most outstanding monthly magazine. A doctoral candidate in theoretical chemistry at NYU, Konkin plans a move to the west Coast this summer.

NOTE: NLN 40 wasn’t published until after (it was also NLW 88-89, the fifth all-sf ish) and contained no such material. But it might’ve been published somewhere else...