Thursday, January 10, 2008
THE LIBERTARIAN RIGHT
I was with a sense of shock that I discovered an associate editor of "Latin Mass Magazine" is a libertarian.
Dr. Thomas Woods.
His biography on his webite reads:
About Thomas Woods Jr.
Thomas E. Woods, Jr., is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He holds a bachelor's degree in history from Harvard and his master's, M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University. His most recent book is Sacred Then and Sacred Now: The Return of the Old Latin Mass; his others include 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask (Crown Forum/Random House), the New York Times bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History (Regnery), How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization (Regnery), and The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy (Lexington). His critically acclaimed 2004 book The Church Confronts Modernity was recently released in paperback by Columbia University Press. A collection of Woods' essays, called W obronie zdrowego rozsadku, was released exclusively in Polish in 2007. Woods' books have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Polish, German, Romanian, and Chinese.
Woods' writing has appeared in dozens of popular and scholarly periodicals, including the American Historical Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Investor's Business Daily, Catholic Historical Review, Modern Age, American Studies, Catholic Social Science Review, Inside the Vatican, The Freeman (Foundation for Economic Education), Freedom Daily (Future of Freedom Foundation), University Bookman, Journal of Markets & Morality, New Oxford Review, Catholic World Report, Independent Review, Religion & Liberty, Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, AD2000 (Australia), Christian Order (U.K.), Crisis, and Human Rights Review. He is the editor of The Political Writings of Rufus Choate and of a 2003 edition of Orestes Brownson's 1875 classic The American Republic.
Woods won first place in the prestigious Templeton Enterprise Awards for 2006, given by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the Templeton Foundation, for his book The Church and the Market. He was the recipient of the 2004 O.P. Alford III Prize for Libertarian Scholarship and of an Olive W. Garvey Fellowship from the Independent Institute in 2003. He has also been awarded two Humane Studies Fellowships and a Claude R. Lambe Fellowship from the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University and a Richard M. Weaver Fellowship from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
For eleven years Woods served as associate editor of The Latin Mass magazine; he is presently a contributing editor of The American Conservative and a member of the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. A contributor to six encyclopedias, Woods is co-editor of Exploring American History: From Colonial Times to 1877, an eleven-volume encyclopedia.
Woods has appeared on Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes, Fox & Friends, and The Big Story with John Gibson, as well as on MSNBC's Scarborough Country and C-Span2's Book TV. He has been a guest on over 150 radio programs, including Fox News Live with Alan Colmes, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, and the Michael Medved Show. Published interviews with Woods have appeared in the Washington Post's Live Online, Washington Times, Our Sunday Visitor, the Pittsburgh Tribune, California Literary Review, Human Events, Italy's L'Avvenire, Spain's Alfa y Omega, Germany's Die Tagespost, and Brazil's Folha de S. Paolo.
Woods lives in Auburn, Alabama with his wife and three daughters.
Woods has written for the LewRockwell.com website.
In an article at InsideCatholic.com Woods explains why he is a Catholic libertarian.
Although I have no connection to the Libertarian Party, I've long been associated with small-l libertarianism. By the time I was finishing college, I found I could no longer be a cheerleader for the Republican Party, so much of my political evolution involves my disillusionment with the GOP. ...
A quick glance at the presidential debates reveals that the Democrats can come up with nothing more original than further proposals for looting the American population. I almost don't blame people for being Democrats, incidentally. Americans endure twelve years of propaganda in a government institution, learning (not coincidentally) about the government's glorious deeds and the terrible things that would surely happen to us in its absence. I can hardly blame someone who believes we owe our standard of living to labor unions and federal regulation: After hearing no other perspective on American history year after year, what else can the poor fellow be expected to think?
I don't expect much from the Democrats. But even the boldest Republicans suggest "replacing" the Internal Revenue Service with some kind of horrendous consumption tax. Instead, the IRS should be abolished and replaced with nothing. Impossible? If the income tax were done away with, federal revenues would still be sufficient to fund the federal budget from the year 2000. I rather doubt we would be climbing over corpses on our way to work if spending were scaled back to its level of seven years ago.
There's more. Go over there and read it if you're interested.
Wood's support of the Ron Paul campaign can be read here.
He is on the faculty at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
There is the Catholic Libertarian blog where the blogmeister spells out Ayn Rand's beliefs but still claims one can be Catholic and Libertarian.
Then there is well-known Catholic blogger Jimmy Akin's introduction of the Lovecraftian god Cthulhu on his blog. I have called his attention to the source of this god and the contemporary infatuation with it among the Discordians, but apparently he sees nothing wrong with it. Scroll through the comments over there and you will find one from Kevin Jones which would appear to be favorable to this Discordian universe. Akin has other blog posts about Lovecraft over there as well. In fact when I asked Google for "Jimmy Akin" and "cthulhu" I got 8 pages of hits. Scroll through the first page of them. You will even find my blog post about Akin's fascination with the subject in there.
The sci-fi stories about Cthulhu are so ridiculous they can evoke laughter, though Lovecraft took them seriously. Discordians love to laugh and poke fun at everything. Cthulhu. Jesus Christ. It makes no difference to them. The only thing they take seriously is their own enjoyment. But while these Catholics are embracing what may appear to them to be innocent fun, they are absorbing the cynical mindset that goes along with it, and that rejects the value of every form of "other", god or human. It just slides down more smoothly than a sober introduction to the ideology ever could.
Then there is Rich Leonardi's laud blog of Alejandro Chafuen.
What is one to make of this support of a system of greed being promoted by Catholics?
