If you begin your discourse with the notion that your political opponents are sociopaths, you’re not off to a good start. Apparently Barbara O’Brien does precisely that. Steven Taylor provides a good response to her claim that people on the right are “sociopaths” (I followed the link from Chris’s post that wonders whether we here at Signifying Nothing are indeed “right wing”).

Since Steven has already addressed her in some detail, I want to address a more narrow topic: her forgiveness of Lew Rockwell and his fetishists simply because they oppose the Iraqi war. This I find simply amazing. My disdain for Rockwell is known (look here) and I should add that I have a similar disdain for his contemporaries, Paul Craig Roberts and Jude Wanniski. They all fit under the labels “paleo-con” or “paleo-libertarian” and I find them all equally reprehensible. Each time one of them publishes, the sum of human knowledge is diminished.

I’ve gone into my own views with regard to natural liberty just recently and I don’t want to rehash it again. I do want to mention that, at a quick glance, my views might seem similar to those of Rockwell, et. al. They’re not.

The Rockwell fetishists are using their opposition to the Iraqi war as a means of giving greater exposure to some views—such as homophobia and xenophobia—that I find intolerable. They’ve been apologists for Jim Crow as well, which you won’t find me doing.

Why, when they throw the far left a bone, such as opposition to the Iraqi war, do purportedly rational and “reality-based” leftists overlook numerous flaws? Is it because they find America and its supposed “world hegemony” more appalling than the very real views of these idiots? I don’t know why, but it’s there for everyone to see:

Now, a rightie reading this might be saying, you are stereotyping righties. Well, no, I don’t think so. There are conservatives who write with reason and factual support, but they don’t tend to be part of the rightie pack. A good example is the libertarian Lew Rockwell site, which features a lot of articles with which I do not necessarily agree, but to which the authors have applied some independent reasoning and factual support.

But then, as Mr. Rockwell does think for himself and considers facts, he is not a big George Bush supporter.

The bald truth is that to be a Bush supporter means that you are (a) ignorant of what’s going on; (b) suffering massive cognitive dissonance; or© are a soulless sociopathic bastard.

Apparently, these days, all you have to do is hate George Bush passionately to avoid being a “sociopath”. Ms. O’Brien’s ravings are beyond parody, which makes me glad that I haven’t read her site in the past—and will not see it in the future.