I gotta admit, I have a love-hate relationship with LewRockwell.com. Admittedly, I visit their site daily. I often print off at least one or two of their articles for my daily “read file”. For the most part, I find their opinions and commentaries to be insightful and intelligent. As I’ve stated before, I’m no Paleo-Libertarian, but I can certainly empathize with their points of view from time to time.
Now, for the hate part. While perusing their blog today, I ran across this entry:
A school’s anguish reports that “Des Moines police awakened several families before dawn Tuesday to break up a suicide pact that involved at least nine Lincoln High School students.”
Thank goodness this potentially tragic event was detected and prevented! Why, just think where society would be without these fine kids growing into adults. After all, it’s common knowledge that people who almost killed themselves in their teens tend to be the pillars of society–mentally strong, hard workers, stable, and so on. I mean… it would be heartless to say that “we’d be better off without them,” wouldn’t it?
Say what? Now, I realize that the folks over at LewRockwell have made a name for themselves with their “in your face” contrarian views, but this is way over the top, bordering on inhuman. To be fair, at least one member of the blog later chastised the writer with this entry:
I’m disappointed to see on this blog possible victims of the state portrayed as instigators and worthless corpses. There but for the grace of god. May Stephan’s baby have the same perfect childhood with which his dad apparently graced the world. For my part, I would say that libertarianism allows for mistakes and growth. That we may justly deride spiteful and stupid adults does not make general heartlessness a virtue.
To which the original author replies:
Chris and Charley–okay, okay, point taken. Sheesh. I don’t want to imply that we should not regret lemming-like teen suicides. We should. It is very sad. Yes, it is callous to pretend not to care a whit about the mental torment these disturbed young people must obviously be in. I agree.
But it does not mean we can’t put it in perspective and give appropriate weight to various tragedies, ranging from totally innocent, helpless victims of violent crime, down to self-destructive, but still sad, actions. As a libertarian, I suppose I sympathize first and foremost with genuine victims–that is, those whose rights are violated by violent criminals. Far more so than for “victims” of their own actions.
Maybe I am over reacting with a bit of self righteousness but, this whole thing just puts a sour taste in my mouth.
