Vol. 16.8, October 1982

THE Libertarian Forum

Murray N. Rothbard, Editor

A MONTHLY NEWSLETTER

Volume XVI Number 8 October, 1982

Box 341, Madison Square Station, New York, NY 10010

US-ISSN0047-4517

THE MASSACRE

All other news, all other concerns, fade into insignificance beside the enormous horror of the massacre in Beirut. All humanity is outraged at the wanton slaughter of hundreds of men (mainly elderly), women, and children in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. The days of the massacre— September 16 to 18—shall truly live in infamy.

There is one ray of hope in this bloodbath: the world-wide outrage demonstrates that mankind’s sensibilities have not, as some have feared, been blunted by the butcheries of the twentieth century or by watching repeated carnage on television. Mankind is still capable of reacting to evident atrocities that are wreaked upon other human beings: be they thousands of miles away or members of a different or even alien religion, culture, or ethnic group. When hundreds of manifest innocents are brutally and systematically slaughtered, all of us who are still fully human cry out in profound protest.

The outrage and protest must be compounded of several elements. First, of course, we must mourn for the poor downtrodden people of Lebanon, especially the Palestinians, who were driven out in 1948 to a reluctant exile from their homes and land. We must mourn for the slaughtered and their remaining families. And for the hundreds of thousands in Lebanon and in Beirut who have been killed, wounded, bombed out, and rendered homeless wanderers by the aggression of the State of Israel.

But mourning and compassion are not enough. As in any mass murder, the responsibility and the guilt for the crime must be pinpointed. For the sake of justice and to try to make sure that such a holocaust—for holocaust it has been—may never happen again.

Who, then, is guilty? On the most immediate and direct level, of course, the uniformed thugs and murderers who committed the slaughter. They consist of two groups of Christian Lebanese, working their will on innocent Muslims: the Christian Lebanese Forces of Major Saad Haddad, and the Christian Phalange, headed by the Gemayel family, now installed in the presidency of Lebanon.

But equally responsible, equally guilty, are the aiders and abettors, the string-pullers, the masters of West Beirut where the slaughter took place: the State of Israel. When the PLO was evacuated from West Beirut, to the fanfare of an international accord and international armed force supervision, the State of Israel saw its way clear to the conquest of Muslim West Beirut. Its protectors gone, the international forces cleared out, the poor huddled people of West Beirut had to put up with the conquest of the Israeli aggressors, who marched in on September 16. It was the deliberate decision of the Israeli government to usher the Phalange and the Lebanese forces into camps, to have them, in Israel’s words, “purify” the camps and rid them of PLO members who might be lurking therein—masquerading, no doubt as babies and children. Israeli tanks guarded the perimeter of Sabra and Shatila to permit the Christians unlimited control of the camps, and Israeli army observation posts on rooftops supervised the scene less than 100 yards from the slaughter.

On Friday, on the scene, Reuters correspondent Paul Eedle spoke to an Israeli colonel who explained about the operation: it was designed to “purify” the area without the direct participation of the Israeli army. This policy is of course all too reminiscent of the Nazi policy on the Eastern front, when the German soldiers stood by and benignly allowed the Ukrainian and other non-German SS to massacre Jews and other natives of Russia.

Also on Friday, it is particularly edifying to know that the Phalangists came to Israeli positions on the perimeter of the camps to relax, eat and drink, read and listen to music, and in general “rest up” before returning to butcher the few people still remaining. A Phalangist officer, a gold crucifix dangling from his neck, later told a reporter that there was still shooting going on in the camps, “otherwise what would I be doing here?”

Writing from the scene of the crime in evident horror, New York Times reporter, Thomas L. Friedman (Sept. 20) wrote that from the Israeli observation posts “it would not have been difficult to ascertain the slaughter not only by sight but from the sounds of gunfire and the screams coining from the camp. In addition to providing some provisions for the Christian militiamen, the Israelis had tanks stationed on the hilltop, apparently to provide cover for them if the militiamen encountered fiercer resistance than had been anticipated.”

We know now that by Thursday night the Israeli army and government knew about the massacre, and that yet they did absolutely nothing for 36 hours, until Saturday morning, when, the bloodbath completed, they gently waved the Christian murderers out of the camps. All was secured.

As a grisly finale to Israel’s blood crime, even after the world outrage, the Israeli army turned over a huge number of captured weapons to the Lebanese Forces—the Haddad army which Israel has trained and armed for seven years, which has held and occupied the southern Lebanese border for many months on behalf of Israel, and who, as the New York Times put it, are “virtually integrated into the Israeli army and operate entirely under its command.”

One of the most heartening aspects of the response to the massacre has been the firestorm of protest within Israel itself, even from the ordinarily pro-Begin press. Thus, Eitan Haber, military correspondent of the ordinarily pro-Begin Yediot Ah-ronot, wrote in shock:

“Government ministers and senior commanders already knew during the hours of Thursday night and Friday morning that a terrible massacre was taking place in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, and despite the fact that they knew this for sure, they did not lift a finger and did nothing to prevent the massacre until Saturday morning. For 36 additional hours, the Phalangists continued to run rampant in the refugee camps and to kill anyone who fell in their path.”

An editor of the Beginite daily paper, Maariv, appearing on ABC-TV Nightline, was evidently shaken and pinned full responsibility for the holocaust on the Begin government, and clearly called for its resignation.

Unfortunately, the response of American Jews was not nearly as outraged as that from Israel itself. It is well known that the lockstep and knee-jerk support by American Jews for any and all acts of the State of Israel is scarcely replicated within Israel itself. But even here the ranks were broken or at the very least confused. Even William Safire, always ardent in support of Israel, attacked its “blunder”—a strong word coming from Safire. Only the “professional Jews,” head of the leading Jewish organizations in America, continued to alibi and excuse. For a few days, they fell back on the view that “we can’t judge until we know the facts,” but even this lame alibi fell apart when Begin arrogantly refused any impartial judicial inquiry and pushed his view through the Knesset. Among the American Jewish leaders only Rabbi Balfour Brickner and the highly intelligent Professor Arthur Hertzberg—who have always been unafraid to speak their mind—lashed into the responsibility of the state of Israel.

An illuminating scene occurred on ABC’s Nightline, when Rabbi Schindler and Howard Squadron, two top “professional” American Jews, were asked their views of the Israeli action. It was squirmsville. One particularly sharp question was asked by Nightline: How is it that American Jewish protest has been so muted compared to that within Israel itself? Rabbi Schindler’s response was one for the books. In essence he said: “Within Israel there are political parties which can be critical of the government’s action. But our role as American Jews is to support the State of Israel regardless of its specific actions.” A chilling admission indeed!

And so American Jewish leaders consider it their role to support the State of Israel come hell or high water. How many deaths would it take? How many murders? How much slaughter of the innocent? Are there any conceivable acts that would turn off the American Jewish leadership, that would cause these people to stop their eternal apologetics for the State of Israel? Any acts at all?

After this statement of his role, the rather startled Nightline interviewer asked Rabbi Schindler, “but what about support for right and wrong? Doesn’t that count?” Having marched to the edge of the abyss and perhaps revealed too much, Rabbi Schindler rallied, and muttered something about “of course, we’re interested in right and wrong; but we can only judge after we know the facts.” Since Begin had just vetoed a fact-finding board of inquiry, this line fell pretty flat.

In American politics, the magic attraction of the State of Israel has at last lost some of its power. Even Scoop Jackson, even Senator Alan Cranston (D., Calif.) have become critical of Israel. The leading all-out supporter of Israel in the Reagan Cabinet—Al Haig—has been booted out, perhaps partially on that issue. But these are only small, fitful steps toward de-Israelizing American foreign policy.

One bizarre aspect of this affair has been the American perception—at least until the massacre—of the Gemayel family and its Phalange. It has now been revealed that the Israeli intelligence services—notoriously savvy people—had warned Begin and Defense Minister Sharon in advance that the Phalangists were likely to commit a massacre if the camps were turned over to them. To say that these warnings were “ignored” by Begin, Sharon & Co. is putting matters very, very kindly.

Well, what are the Gemayels and the Phalange like? Perhaps it is best to contrast reality with the Alice-in-Wonderland comments of the Reagan Administration upon the assassination of Phalangist leader and near-president of Lebanon Bashir Gemayel on September 15. “A tragedy for Lebanese democracy,” opined the Reagan Administration, while Ronnie himself spoke of Bashir as a brilliant, rising young democratic politician. The U.S. and Israel both spoke of their hope that Bashir could impose a “strong, centralized government” to unify anarchic Lebanon.

Since the Massacre, we should now have a better idea of the sort of “unity” that the Gemayels propose to bring to Lebanon: the “unity” of the charnel house and the cemetery. Perhaps the name of the political and military organization known as the Phalange should give a clue. For Bashir’s father, Pierre, founded the Phalange after an enthusiastic visit to Hitler’s Germany. The Phalange (named after Franco’s Falange) are fascists, pure and simple, in goals and in method.

But let us concentrate on the rising young politician and see if we should shed any tears for Bashir. Bashir is distinguished from other leading Lebanese politicians in that he is himself a mass murderer. I mean personally. The Gemayels had two sets of powerful rivals among the fascistic Maronite Christian community. “Pro-Western” and “Pro-Israeli” a little less fanatically than the Phalange, these were the followers of elderly exPresidents Camille Chamoun and Suleiman Franjieh.

Here is the way that young democrat, Begin and Reagan’s Man in Beirut, dealt with dissent within the Maronite community. Five years ago, the then 29-year-old Bashir Gemayel led a commando raid on Franjieh’s mountain stronghold in northern Lebanon. Bashir made Franjieh’s oldest son Tony watch while he and his gang tortured and killed Tony’s wife and two-year-old daughter. Bashir then murdered Tony and 29 followers, calling the massacre a “social revolt against feudalism.” Two years later, Bashir took care of the Chamouns. In May, 1980, Bashir and his men, in a lightning strike, massacred 450 of Chamoun’s followers at a beach resort near the city of Junei. Over 250 were murdered on the beach or while swimming. The wife and daughter of Camille Chamoun’s son Dany were both raped. Less than a month later, Bashir and his men invaded Chamoun’s headquarters in east Beirut, and savagely killed over 500 of Chamoun’s followers as well as bystanders. Many of the victims were castrated by Bashir’s thugs, and one captured Chamounite was blown apart with a stick of dynamite shoved down his throat.

Who assassinated Bashir? It could almost have been anyone in Lebanon.

The fascist savagery and the willingness to be a catspaw of Israel may be partly explained by demographic factors. Lebanese political rule is set by quota system, in which dominance— including the Presidency—is assured the Maronite Christian community. Unfortunately, the census on which the quotas are based is that of the early 1930’s, when the Christians were a majority in Lebanon. The early 1930’s census still rules, even though it is now conceded by everyone that Muslims are about 55% of the Lebanese population, to the Christian 45%. This means that freezing Maronite Christian rule over a majority of Muslims—the Begin-and-Reagan solution to the Lebanese problem—in addition to being profoundly immoral, in the long run will not work. The Muslims are out-producing the Christians in future population, no matter how many Muslim babies the Phalangists are proposing to kill.

Unfortunately, no matter the anguish and the outcry within Israel, there is little hope that the Israeli opposition will be able to do much to correct the fundamental problem. For while individual voices are raised on the massacre, politically there is almost no opposition to the fundamental Zionist axiom within Israel. The chief opposition Labor Party, the Founding Fathers and Mothers of Israel, paved the way for Begin in their commitment to the Zionist ideal and to the consequent expulsion of 1 million Palestinian Arabs from their homes and their lands. Only a few minor parties in Israel, such as those of Uri Davis and Shulamith Aloni, can be considered to have broken with the Zionist paradigm, and these are only on the fringe of Israeli politics.

The fundamental problem, the Zionist paradigm, is simply this: The establishment of the State of Israel was accomplished by the expropriation of the Palestinians from the overwhelming bulk of the land of the “original” 1948 Israel. Over a million Palestinian Arabs fled outside the borders of Israel, and the remaining Arabs have been systematically treated as second-class citizens, kept down by the fact that only Jews are allowed to own land within Israel that once falls into Jewish hands. (And more is doing so all the time.) In 1967, Israel aggressed against and conquered the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights of Syria, which it is in the process of annexing. Palestinian Arabs in the occupied territories are, again, treated as second-class citizens, and Zionist settlements are planted amongst them.

Israel and its American apologists are wont to blame everything on the dread bogeyman, the PLO, and to excuse all Israeli crimes as necessary to defend the security of the Israeli state from PLO “terrorism.” And yet it is conveniently forgotten that there was no PLO at all until after the shame of the 1967 war, when the Palestinians realized that they had to stop relying on the faithless Arab states and could only try themselves to win back their homes and their possessions. Since there was no “PLO terror” until 1968, how come that Israel aggressed against and terrorized the Palestinian Arabs for two decades previously?

The answer lies in the Zionist paradigm. Zionism was a nineteenth-century creation of European (not Middle Eastern) Jews, and was sold to Great Britain as a conscious colonial settlerstate, a junior partner to British imperialism in the Middle East. After World War I, when the British and French dismembered the Ottoman Empire, they betrayed their promises to give the Arabs their independence, and they established mandates or puppet states across the Middle East. We are still living with the legacy of that final outcropping of British imperialism.

How did the early Zionists sell their scheme to Western public opinion? The favorite Zionist slogan of the day rings peculiarly hollow now: “A land without people [Palestine] for a people without land [the Jews].” A land without people; there are no Palestinian Arabs, the Zionists assured everyone, and so a million and a half people, many of them productive farmers, citrus growers, businessmen,—people “who made the desert bloom” first—were at a stroke written out of existence. And before the PLO launched its fight-back, Israeli leaders stoutly continued to deny reality, Golda Meir repeatedly maintaining that “there are no Palestinians.” Say it often enough and maybe they go away. Maybe.

Libertarians are opposed to every State. But the State of Israel is uniquely pernicious, because its entire existence rests and continues to rest on a massive expropriation of property and expulsion from the land. Libertarians in the United States often complain about the radical libertarian adherence to “land reform,” i.e. the giving back of stolen land to the victims. In the case of expropriations centuries ago, who gets what is often fuzzy, and conservative libertarians can raise an important point. But in the case of Palestine, the victims and their children—the true owners of the land—are right there, beyond the borders, in refugee camps, in hovels, dreaming about a return to their own. There is nothing fuzzy here. Justice will only be served, and true peace in the devastated area will only come, when a miracle happens and Israel allows the Palestinians to stream back in and repossess their rightful property. Until then, so long as the Palestinians continue to live and no matter how far back they are pushed, they will always be there, and they will continue to press for their dream of justice. No matter how many square miles and how many cities Israel conquers (shall it be Damascus next?), the Palestinians will be there, in addition to all the other Arab refugees newly created by the Israeli policy of blood and iron. But allowing justice, allowing the return of the expropriated, would mean that Israel would have to give up its exclusivist Zionist ideal. For recognizing Palestinians as human beings with full human rights is the negation of Zionism; it is the recognition that the land was never “empty.”

A just Israeli state (insofar as any state can be just), then, would necessarily be a de-Zionized state, and this no Israeli political party in the foreseeable future would have the slightest desire to do. And so the slaughter and the horror will go on.

DEBATE ON ERA

(In our June-July 1981 issue, we published an excellent critique of the ERA by anarchist scholar Wendy Me Elroy. ERA was a cause that unaccountably captured a large majority of libertarians, and so Wendy’s strictures were especially welcome.

In response, Joan Kennedy Taylor, once of Libertarian Review and now of the Manhattan Institute, sent us a critique of the Me Elroy article, and Wendy has offered a reply. The original article was a year ago, but the issue is timeless, and so we are happy to present the exchange now. — Ed.)

McELROY ON ERA

by Joan Kennedy Taylor

I would like to call attention to some factual misstatements in Wendy McElroy’s article “Against the ERA” in your June-July 1981 issue.

She states, “It was the opinion of the originators and chief proponents of the ERA (the National Woman’s Party) that the ERA would extend protective legislation to both sexes.” Some of them may have hoped for that eventuality, but it could not have been their opinion. The 1920’s was the period in which the Supreme Court was consistently holding that any regulation of the working conditions of men was a deprivation of their liberty of contract without due process of law, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Such legislation for women, however, had been held to be permissible, because the state has an interest in protecting “the future of the race,” because women are inherently . . . . . . . weaker, and because women are not legally “persons” within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. The ERA was introduced in 1923 to invalidate these rulings. By mentioning that there was a conflict over protective labor legislation among feminists and then making the above statement about the National Woman’s Party, Ms. McElroy clearly implies that it was the National Woman’s Party that was the group in favor of such legislation. This is not the case — the argument was between the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor, which was introducing such laws, and the National Woman’s Party, which supported ERA even though it would invalidate them.

McElroy’s discussion of the concept of state action is similarly misleading. The concept was introduced in the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, as follows: “Until some State law has been passed, or some State action through its officers or agent has been taken, adverse to the rights of citizens sought to be protected by the 14th Amendment, no legislation of the United States under said Amendment, nor any proceeding under such legislation can be called into activity. . .the legislation which Congress is authorized to adopt in this behalf is not general legislation upon the rights of the citizen, but corrective legislation, that is, such as may be necessary and proper for counteracting such laws as the State may adopt or enforce, and which, by the Amendment, they are prohibited from committing or taking.” McElroy is correct in implying that “state action” has been loosely interpreted to include some private-sector activities.

However, the first example she gives, the HEW rules interpreting Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, has nothing to do with state action under the Fourteenth Amendment (which would similarly apply to the ERA). The Civil Rights Act doesn’t get its constitutional sanction from the Fourteenth Amendment, but from the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce — it deals with the private sector.

Earlier, McElroy cites the Yale Law Journal article of 1971 — an article cited as definitive by both proponents and opponents of the ERA during the Congressional debates on the subject — as an authority on the impact of the ERA on the draft, but she neglects to mention that the same article says, “. . .under present court decisions on state action private educational institutions would remain within the private sector, not subject to the constitutional requirements of the Equal Rights Amendment.”

McElroy also implies that “some form of license” would trigger the invocation of state action, but a case in the mid-1970’s, Moose Lodge v. Irvis, specifically rejected the concept that state action is involved in the granting of a liquor license to a private club.

She has a long description of a case which she misidentifies as Marsh v. Alabama (1946), a case that held that a company town is a town and must allow freedom of speech to religious groups on its streets. That case was a precedent to the case she describes, which is Food Employees v. Logan Valley Plaza’ (1968). However, Logan Valley was the high water mark for this particular expansion to the concept of state action, and (partly because of a ringing dissent in Logan Valley by Justice Hugo Black which championed private property) the Court refused to apply Logan Valley to two similar cases in 1972, holding instead that property rights must not be violated. So the libertarian arguments that Ms. McElroy refers to ultimately prevailed, contrary to the implication of her article.

My own research into state action cases is sketchy as to what has happened after 1977 — it is entirely possible that there are recent cases which would indicate that the concept is being expanded again, but Wendy McElroy has not supported her contention by the evidence she cites.

Finally, I would like to make two points about her concluding argument, that “If one-half of the energy and money that has been thrown into the ERA had been used to repeal specific laws that oppress women on a state-by-state, perhaps city-by-city level, freedom would have been substantially increased.” First of all, such an effort has been made under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which has brought suit on a selective basis to invalidate individual laws, and this effort has in my opinion lessened freedom, because the basis for the suits was the power of congress to regulate commerce and demand that no sexism be involved in the production of any good or service that might in the usual course of events ultimately cross state lines.

And secondly, women have been trying to repeal discriminatory laws on a law-by-law basis since the 1840’s when the first Married Woman’s Property Act was passed in New York State, allowing a woman to keep the title to real estate which she owned before her marriage. What women have consistently found is that, while they are working to dismantle the state apparatus in one area, additional laws were being passed in another — as they were working on the legal disabilities of married women, protective labor legislation began being passed for the first time, for instance. After all these years of working to repeal discriminatory laws, thousands of them are still in place. It is not surprising that women wish to invalidate them all at once.

REPLY TO MS. TAYLOR

by Wendy McElroy

If someone were accused of stealing a 1978 Buick and a voice in his defense declared, “That’s quite wrong; it was a 1978 Ford!”, observers might well be at a loss for words. Joan Kennedy Taylor’s critique of my article opposing the E.R.A. (L.F. June-July 1981) leaves me in a similar state. In that article I raised important moral objections to the E.R.A. To indulge in the nasty habit of quoting oneself, I wrote: “Equality under government laws means equality under laws that are overwhelmingly unjust in content and indefensible as to means of enforcement.” Moreover, I questioned the wisdom of libertarians appealing to government for the achievement of social goals. In concluding this section, I stated, “without resolving these moral objections, a discussion of strategy is superfluous.” It was explicitly for the “sake of argument” that I continued to discuss the strategic aspects of the E.R.A.

Ms. Taylor’s critique is remarkable in that it does not address these objections even in passing It concentrates entirely upon my discussion of strategy, and comments, “I would like to call attention to some factual misstatements.” Although my response to Ms. Taylor’s critique will be to emphasize, again, the fundamental moral principles, I would like to discuss Ms. Taylor’s comments.

The easiest criticism to dispense with is one in which Ms. Taylor is correct. Through an error in transcribing notes, I did misidentify Marsh v. Alabama though my description of the case was accurate. Ms. Kennedy does not contest my presentation, but points out two subsequent court cases which did not violate rights in a similar manner. Thus, it is demonstrated that when government is given the power to violate rights sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. What importance does this have for libertarian theory? Surely this underlines rather than denies the folly of appealing to government and to the state court system. If I were to engage Ms. Taylor in a debate on her own terms of quoting court cases and legal precedents, what would it prove? Courts across the country interpret the constitution and laws in a diametrically opposed manner. What the Supreme court gives, it can also take away. The libertarian stand on E.R.A. must be based on principle, not on the shifting sands of a government agency. (For additional reading see J. Stanley Lemons, The Woman Citizen, and Crystal Eastman, On Women.)

The longest paragraph in Ms. Taylor’s critique deals with an historical aside which I interjected in parentheses. I observed that the National Woman’s Party (N.W.P.), the originators of the E.R.A., initially believed it would extend protective labor laws. Ms. Taylor emphatically states, “it could not have been their opinion.” Although this historical dispute is superfluous, it has arisen and should be answered. The N.W.P.’s position on protective labor legislation underwent a pronounced shift from 1921 to 1923. Originally, it maintained that the E.R.A. would not endanger such legislation or that it would extend protection to men. When this notion was severely attacked by “social feminists” and legal experts, the N.W.P. backpedalled to label protective labor laws as a form of reverse discrimination. The original stance of the N.W.P. is exemplified by the response Alice Paul, head of the Party, made to Mary Anderson’s conclusion that the E.R.A. would do away with special legislation. Paul responded, “It won’t do anything of the kind,” and refused to speak to Anderson for several years. Whatever position the N.W.P. assumed after the dust had settled, they initially envisioned the E.R.A. as compatible with and/or extending protective labor laws.

If Ms. Taylor wishes to address the core of my objection to the E.R.A., it will be necessary for her to answer the following questions:

1. Is it proper for libertarians to turn to government for the solution of social ills?

2. Is the equality called for the equal protection individual rights and not the socio-economic equality endemic in contemporary feminism?

3. Will government use additional power to protect the individual or to extend its own authority?

4. Will all the laws which will be extended protect rather than violate rights?

This last question cannot be overemphasized. If some averaging mechanism could prove that the E. R. A. violated some rights but was generally beneficial, libertarians would have no alternative but to condemn it. The cornerstone of libertarianism is the non-aggression principle. As a libertarian, it is not within your range of discretion to violate rights of some people in some instances. Logic denies you this option. You cannot on the one hand say it is wrong to violate rights and, on the other hand, say it is beneficial to violate rights.

Ms. Taylor has entirely missed the point of my article. And of the E.R.A.

SMEAR: THE STORY OF UPDATE—PART III

by Derrick “Ed” Welles

The June issue is particularly replete with misinformation and ranting. The attack on SIL’s study course continues at full blast, SLS gets more kid-glove treatment, Project Liberty absorbs a double blow with a “news” article and another “review” by Update’s expert reviewer Leslie Key, and more Updating. Let’s begin with the latter case.

On page 2, Tom Palmer is quoted criticizing David Nolan’s Project Liberty because its call for libertarians to get involved in the drive to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment “has right-wing connotations in the eyes of the media.” All tax-limitation, tax-abolition drives have “right-wing connotations” in the eyes of the media. Why then didn’t Update reject the LP’s Tax Protest Day? It was directed from LP National by Craniac groupie Bruce Majors. As with the vaunted “proceduralism” problem, a strategy or principle is to be adopted or rejected not on its own merits, but depending on who’s in charge

And, if right-wing connotations are to be avoided, why then does Update tell us, on page 10, that Craniac hireling Milton Mueller had a Cato study published “that explains the application of property rights in the telecommunication field”? Well well, here would seem to be a prime target for Palmer and Update’s anti-“right-wing connotations” counsel! Why doesn’t Update warn that this stuff about property rights is a right-wing concern? Because Mueller is a faithful Crane servant?

Key’s review of Joe Cobb’s booklet for Project Liberty, “The Income Tax Must Go!”, suffers from more of her distortion and misunderstanding (if not deliberate misrepresentation). She attacks the work for appealing, not to the general public, but to those who are already convinced about abolishing the income tax: “it is impossible to believe that anyone who doesn’t already support income tax repeal will be convinced by this book.” In so saying, she misses the point of the book. Nobody ever said that it was intended for a mass audience. It was sent to libertarian activists, not to the public at large, and is being promoted in libertarian publications, not in general-interest periodicals. Its purpose is to galvanize libertarians into implementing a strategy of advocating income-tax repeal, and thus draw new recruits, contributions and votes from among disillusioned taxpayers and from dissatisfied tax protesters who haven’t had anti-tax candidates to vote for and contribute to.

Another interesting comment by Key is her insinuation that Cobb’s book has “obvious” overtones of anti-ethnicity (because “‘waves of immigrants’ were ‘envious of rich industrialists’ ”). Remarkable that Leslie Key would count alleged “anti-ethnicity” in Joe Cobb’s disfavor, yet thought nothing of denigrating an SIL issue paper’s statement that “sexism is morally wrong and irrational.” Is sexism OK, Leslie, but racism bad? What substantial difference is there between the attitude of a sexist toward the opposite sex, and that of a racist toward another race? Again, the only criterion seems to be that whatever non-Craniacs say is to be criticized because they said it, not because of lack of validity in their positions. Key criticizes the (alleged) views of non-Craniacs, even if she has to take self-contradictory positions in order to do so.

The Project Liberty article (page 2) is another instance of weighted coverage to place non-Craniac projects in a disparaging light. It states that “about 25 candidates have responded favorably to the suggestion that they make [income-tax repeal] the major focus of their campaign. [Nolan] had originally hoped that 150-200 candidates would. The Libertarian Party plans to run at least 1,000 candidates in 1982.”

Note how Update gives a figure for how many candidates Nolan seeks to recruit for his strategy, and contrasts it to the actual number achieved by that time (without pointing this out); then Update gives a figure for how many candidates the LP seeks to run in 1982, and does not report how any have actually announced their candidacies. Moreover, the LP “plans” to run 1000 candidates, while Nolan only “hoped” that 150-200 candidates would run on antitax planks. Another slick use of vocabulary to slant perceptions in favor of Update’s faction and against others. (Note: in fact, we have learned that nearly 100 Libertarian candidates have already endorsed Income-Tax Repeal, in a paid advertisement to appear in The Duck Book and The liberty Amendment News.)

Elsewhere, the article tries to give the impression that the income-tax repeal strategy is right-wing (as already discussed) and that it doesn’t have much support—both, supposedly, reasons for rejecting the strategy. Nowhere does Update report the very relevant fact that their darling Dick Randolph is a Project Liberty endorser, and that he has introduced the Liberty Amendment into the Alaska legislature. Why not criticize him? Ah, but Dick, whose campaign for Alaska governor is managed by Kent Guida, is one of their boys. The news doesn’t fit so it’s dropped. (The failure to provide this relevant information contrasts with the quickness with which Update offered background information to dispute Nolan’s assertion that Income-Tax repeal is a popular issue, in noting that only two state legislatures have passed the Liberty Amendment in the past 17 years.) Once again, relevant information is given in Update only when it advances the views and fortunes of Craniac sympathizers or discredits their opponents.

On the same page begins the article on the A/PRC and SIL’s course, Principles of Liberty. Again conveniently handling words to inflate Update’s claims, the article starts by saying there were strong protests “from several quarters” against Bergland and Poole’s position on reviewing POL. One would think that Update would dredge up and quote as many critics as it could on this one, as it does with anything it wishes to criticize. However, the only person from these “several quarters” who is cited in opposition to Bergland and Poole, is Chris Hocker. No one else was named. How much opposition is there, really, to Bergland and Poole’s position? Update makes a misleading statement to make its friends’ case stronger than it really is, and its enemys’ weaker than it actually is.

We have already contrasted Update’s detailed coverage of Rothbard’s CLS’s financial woes, with its nearly nonexistant and very cursory treatment of SLS’s even more serious troubles. At the end of the A/PRC article, SLS’s own study course is finally—and very briefly—described. It is referred to as a “new publication” that “has not yet been widely distributed.” The first statement is flatly wrong; the second, while literally true, is one more instance of distortion through omission of information. In reality, SLS’s study program has been around for a year, having made it’s debut at the 1981 SLS Convention. It is in no sense a “new” publication. It has not been widely distributed (Update’s euphemism for poor sales), not because it is “new,” but because it is much more expensive than the SIL course ($14, compared to POL’s $5), it calls for 14 meetings (POL suggests 6 to 8 meetings), and it requires an amount of reading that makes it comparable to a full semester’s college course. All in all it demands a much greater degree of time, expense and commitment than the SIL kit, a degree which few if any students or others have to allocate to a study course. In addition, it has not been promoted at all, except in SLS’s own publications. This is why it has not “been widely distributed.” Quick to point out shortcomings in the activities of anti-Craniacs, Update makes no similar analysis of the failures of its kindred institutions.

“We will seek out and print the truth in a straightforward fashion,” proudly declared Update in January 1982. In fact, however, the truth has been run straight out of Update since the beginning. When it comes to reporting the news on and about Craniac allies and critics, reality and logic take a back seat to distortion, innuendo, logic, omission of inconvenient facts, and creation of convenient facts.” These are all built into what is supposed to pass for objective reporting, in a fashion started by historiographers and statist sycophants bent more on presenting a favorable view of our pet ideas and factions than in reporting facts and presenting all sides of controversies. From a journalistic standpoint, Update is a disaster. In terms of benefiting the libertarian movement, Update inhibits the search for effective strategy and sound principle by biasing unsuspecting readers’ perceptions of personalities and ideas through selective, partial reporting—to the benefit of the beleaguered, yet still powerful, action that brought us low-tax liberalism and opportunism rampant. As one victim of the Crane Machine has put it, “I’d rather read Pravda than Update. At least Pravda makes less pretense to objectivity.”