{"id":43755,"date":"2018-06-11T03:00:45","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T07:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=43755"},"modified":"2020-07-06T10:37:42","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T14:37:42","slug":"l-neil-smith-on-the-koch-brothers-and-the-libertarian-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/06\/11\/l-neil-smith-on-the-koch-brothers-and-the-libertarian-movement\/","title":{"rendered":"L. Neil Smith on the Koch brothers and the libertarian movement"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the latest issue of the Libertarian Enterprise<\/em>, L. Neil Smith<\/a> discusses his experiences working with the Koch brothers:<\/p>\n

It says here that David Koch is retiring. In case you don\u2019t know, he is the younger of two oil billionaire brothers associated with the libertarian movement who bankrolled the Cato Institute, and whom \u201cprogressives\u201d love to hate, automatically blaming them for what little they don\u2019t blame Donald Trump for.<\/p>\n

Genuine libertarians and conservatives don\u2019t like them much, either, for a variety of reasons. My own first is that I served on the 1977 Libertarian Party National Platform Committee with Charlie, David\u2019s older brother and found him to be a timid, unimaginative soul, more concerned with credibility and respectability than with truth or principle. At the time, the think-tank he and his brother created was attempting to turn the LP into a wholly-owned subsidiary (David ran in 1980 for Vice President with Ed Clark), and I didn\u2019t like that, either.<\/p>\n

The Koch brothers are also open-borderists, siding with establishment Republicans like that smirk-weasel Paul Ryan who want an imported servant-class they can abuse. I\u2019ve changed my mind on that issue for good and sufficient reasons, and they ought to be good and sufficient for the Koch Brothers, too, if they were really libertarians. American culture is unique and wonderful; I do not want to see it changed or destroyed as the cultures of Sweden and England are being, by uncontrolled mass immigration. Letting a lot of Third Worlders into the United States of America is like letting a lot of Californians into Colorado. Pretty soon it\u2019ll be just like the mess they made and left behind.<\/p>\n

We have a saying here: \u201cDon\u2019t Californicate Colorado\u201d.<\/p>\n

David is retiring, it says here, due to an extremely long bout with prostate cancer. It does not say what his prognosis is. My own father, whom I miss every day, fought prostate cancer for six ghastly years and died. I\u2019m sorry David has it now; I would not wish that fate on anybody.<\/p>\n

But the reason I\u2019m writing this is to speak the truth, to a great big pile of money, if not to power. The Kochs don\u2019t have power because they don\u2019t have a clue how to spend money politically, and, among other counter-productive follies, they threw their dough away with all four hands, supporting a think-tank incapable of reaching the people by the millions the way Donald Trump has. I have never known anyone who read a paper produced by the Cato Institute or listened to a lecture given by one of their wonks \u2014 except other wonks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the latest issue of the Libertarian Enterprise, L. Neil Smith discusses his experiences working with the Koch brothers: It says here that David Koch is retiring. In case you don\u2019t know, he is the younger of two oil billionaire brothers associated with the libertarian movement who bankrolled the Cato Institute, and whom \u201cprogressives\u201d love […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,53,13],"tags":[316,550,1382,315],"class_list":["post-43755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-politics","category-usa","tag-borders","tag-libertarianism","tag-lneilsmith","tag-wealth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bnJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43755"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58437,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43755\/revisions\/58437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}