49 Comments

• 1. foo  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 8:12 am

  jesus christ, that libertarian fuck was annoying. he didn’t actually say anything interesting, he just kept defending his personal ideology the whole time. what’s that the scientologists say, the system is never wrong, there must be a flaw in you?

  “fighting the government at all costs will help us destroy the evil corporations”? how does that even make any sense! i couldn’t finish listening to the interview, i wanted to beat the smug out of him.

  but that’s all they do, those libertarians, jerk off to their gun collection, and stand by the sidelines being smug. republicans who like to smoke weed.

  fuckers.

• 2. bar  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 8:53 am

  Mark you always sound like you’re calling from a bunker, can you work on the sound quality.

• 3. Reggie Stropshire  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 9:14 am

  Mark Ames is a Soviet agent. I’m working on a book that will blow the lid off of all the Fifth Columnists in our media. Ames & tiabbi are the worst of the Red Lot. I will also be detailing Ames’s intelligence connections. He is a Mosad agent as well.

• 4. bar  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 9:19 am

  Aren’t these guys the ‘Looters’ in Ayn Rand’s world

• 5. Ayn Rand was a fascist  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 9:27 am

  Austrian libertarians say: Ayn Rand was a fascist.

  http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/11558.aspx?PageIndex=3

• 6. bar  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 9:36 am

  Mosad agent?! Mark you’re heeb-cred is growing

• 7. Necronomic Justice  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 10:18 am

  “It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.” — Ludwig von Mises

• 8. m  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 10:23 am

  I’m not gonna listen to this. libertarians are the worst idiots in this universe. of course they do serve a purpose, ie. channelling popular anger into non-nonsensical and self-destructive directions, that is, guaranteeing the status quo.

  one is reminded of Lenin’s apt term: useful idiots. indeed.

• 9. AE  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 12:17 pm

  Ames don’t listen to these douche bag fucking comments. That interview was probably the best thing I’ve heard or seen media-wise in a year or more.

  Excellent.

• 10. Frank McG  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 12:26 pm

  Libertarians have literally a child’s understanding of government; anyone who thinks a Libertarian system can work outside of a tribal village of a couple hundred people is delusional. Their minds lock up trying to imagine anything complex so their reaction to government is to tear down something they cannot understand.

  Then there’s the portion of them who are just hippies trying to sound like they have a legitimate political belief.

• 11. Carbon  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 12:41 pm

  Yo, Foo and m, either you’re rocking the excellent sarcasm, or you’re a bit off on your analysis. If the latter is true, then listen up. I give Mr. Horton credit for standing up to the military-industrial complex. I also give Mr. Ames for not balking at Mr. Horton’s “libertarian” label and listening to what he has to say. This is because Mr. Ames knows that most, if not all labels are toilet paper (especially in this day and age). Instead, Mr. Ames judges others by the specific policies they endorse, and by the specific actions they take. Unfortunately, the libertarian label has been taken up by numerous people deserving of a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick to the head, like Megan McArdle. However, this doesn’t mean that all self-described libertarians are ignorant douchebags. Just as there is a difference between war-lovin’ Joe Lieberman-Democrat and sensible Dennis Kucinich-Democrat, there are bad and good libertarians. Scott Horton is one of the good ones. If you were familiar with his work, you’d be firing the vitriol at a much more deserving target.
  The way I see it, the interview here was a friendly, casual conversation between two intelligent individuals who mostly agree, but aren’t afraid to express (and explain the rationale behind) their differences.
  If we are going to ever see a way out of the mess we’re in, you’d better hope that more conversations like this happen. United we stand, people…

• 12. Ayn Rand was a fascist  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 2:57 pm

  I don’t know if this ever became a meme, but around the time when Bush started becoming an embarrassment a lot of neoliberals decided to re-style themselves as “libertarians” without actually espousing any traditional libertarian policies like an end to foreign wars, the drug war, or any kind of war.

  Noticing the difference, some clever fellas nicknamed them lol-bertarians.

  And all this time the old school libertarians demanded respect before hitting some more weed.

• 13. Allen  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 3:20 pm

  The interests of accumulated capital, by which I mean the people who control it, will always be to seize upon the state to further the interests of capital. That’s why Capitalism and the modern State are as close as gums and teeth. They grew up together, and it’s safe to say they’re life long friends …

• 14. adolphhitler  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 3:47 pm

  that doesn’t look like ames shooting in the picture…also,thats not an m-1. its a ruger 10-22, a 22 rimfire that only a pussy would shoot…come to think of it, maybe that is ames

• 15. anonymous coward  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 4:46 pm

  Libertarianism is the sad consequence of people like Al Gore (husband of Tipper, of the Warning stickers they have on CDs) running for president and choosing a dried up moral scold like Lieberman for his VP. I swear it sometimes seems that the Democratic party goes out of its way to cater to the pleasure haters. Of course, it’s accurate to say that both parties hate pleasure, officially. But the Democratic party often goes out of its way to make sure there is no misunderstanding about it. (Nobody ever questions the Republican party’s anti-pleasure bona fides.)

  See, we have a two party system, and it takes a quixotic level of imagination (and Don Quixote was nuts, remember) to imagine anything realistic outside of it. The Libertarian party provides a kind of safety valve for disaffected sheltered suburban kids who want to play at third party but know in their hearts that they are just playing. It’s pretty absurd to think that the American two party system would ever be overthrown short of violent revolution. They have their little pretend anti-war, pro-pleasure party, that’s not going to win elections or have any real effect on anything and it lets them dream that they are doing something while not really doing anything at all.

  Of course, that’s changing now that the Beckists are rising to power and claiming the mantle of Libertarianism. We’ll see where it ends, but maybe the Libertarians will end up as yet another Republican think tank. The Rise of Bob Barr in the LP using Rovian tactics does not inspire confidence that this fun little play club will continue in the future…

• 16. Carlito  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 6:32 pm

  @Carbon, Horton is an anarchist not a conservative.

• 17. Homer Erotic  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 7:13 pm

  I would just like to point out that all the Ayn Randian stuff that Mark was bringing up, such as the sense of entitlement and the sense that everything the elite does is right, truly is the heartless heart of narcissistic personality disorder.

• 18. baal  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 7:36 pm

  hurrah! obammy and government are going to save your white ass. lot’s of high tech jobs running microwave ovens at McDungs. free health care and subsidized health insurance at the same time. lots of free drugs too… especially for the old folk.

  boy, you just gotta love that stimulus, all those proud rich old capitalists lining up for welfare handouts so they don’t have to cut back on buying jags, mercedes and jets….

  and yes you dumb smuck idiot asses get the bill ! do you like being the catcher all the time ? if YES, then repeat after me: “I LOVE BIG BROTHER……”

• 19. Sarah P  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 7:41 pm

  @ PIC: “(Yep, that’s Ames in the photo exercising his Constitutional Rights–and preparing for Judgement Day–with an old M1 rifle.)”

  Either you nattering nabobs of neonatal nincompoopery are jerkin’ my post-partum chains, or you can’t tell an M-1 from Ford fuckin’ Pinto!

  Wait ’til I tell Todd.

• 20. Frank McG  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 9:11 pm

  Baal just broke a record for incoherent conservative catch phrases.

• 21. VPC  |  November 2nd, 2009 at 9:49 pm

  Interviews like this one sustain my faith in humanity.

• 22. az  |  November 3rd, 2009 at 12:07 am

  @15 Naw, you don’t get it, man. Now that the Democrats shored up all the corporate sponsors, they’re the big liberal pseudo-progressive ruling party like Putin’s United Russia while the Republicans have to go into the corner of right-wing populism and weird economic shit that can even go anti-corporate like Zhirinovsky’s LDPR to get some kind of electorate. All we need now is a populist lefty soc-dem party always promising to do shit but never doing it and maybe the libertaritards kicking up more of a shit while no one cares about them except the media, and we’ll be like every third world liberal democracy out there.

• 23. Dr. Luny  |  November 3rd, 2009 at 12:44 am

  As a former libertarian I have to tell you that this is quite an interesting group of people. It’s basically people who were raised republican but had one of a few problems with the republicans: 1. They don’t stick to the constitution(Ron Paul et al.) 2. They’re paradoxically corrupt while being oppressive moralists. 3. They’re not ideologically pure enough to break down the government and establish a truly free society. Then you’ve got the ancaps, a really bizarre collection child molesters and libertine types who believe in some kind of anarchistic totally free market utopia with benevolent security companies or insurance companies to sell law and order on an open market. They all have in common a totally warped view of humanity, as some sort of rational machine, the “Homo economicus”, that will make perfect decisions in a free market for the betterment of all mankind.

  Humanity and human systems are far more complex and problematic than the libertarian free-market ideology can account for. We need competitive markets, not free markets, and that requires regulation. We need to acknowledge that some industries are naturally monopolistic or can’t be effectively run by markets(healthcare is an example), and require at the very least robust regulation. We need a political system that is thouroughly insulated from institutional and corporate influence. Libertarianism ignores these things in favor of living in a dream world. Just as well, they’re not going anywhere anyway.

• 24. az  |  November 3rd, 2009 at 12:56 am

  Okay, I listened to the segment. Mark, what you guys have been talking about is the ideologically anti-communist two-party system that was created in the 40s and 50s to turn people off about the CPUSA and other lefties in America and Western Europe at the height of the Cold War. This is the source of Barry Goldwater libertarianism, the atmosphere in which literary hacks like Ayn Rand could be propelled to popularity, and the motivation of Cleon Skousen who ended up creating the NWO conspiracy theory and who Glenn Beck loves so much as the eXile’s Alexander Zaitchik wrote in Slate. The irony behind this, of course, is that the intellectual background of this anti-communism comes from Horton’s best pals Mises, Hayek, et al.

  I guess we’ll see the seeds of destruction that this system has sown for itself unravel further as time goes on and the political machine disintegrates further, but maybe not.

• 25. Armen  |  November 3rd, 2009 at 3:00 am

  Capitalism does not need government to end end up concentrating money and power in the hands of the few. That’s what libertarians don’t understand.

  They think government is the source of corruption, when in reality it is merely the means of corruption.

  I’m not saying States are the answer; I’m saying getting rid of the State without changing the economy, the means of exchange, does nothing.

  You’re the man, Mark. You can give me the reach around anytime, bro.

• 26. Bubb  |  November 3rd, 2009 at 4:32 am

  I agree with Dr. Luny’s comments. Additionally, when you have systemic problems that systematically disenfranchise and prevent 3rd parties of all types from having any true power–there seems to be no true change agent. Dems/Rep’s work together to keep the two power party structure, despite rhetoric against each other. Most independents that I meet really aren’t very independent–they basically are Rep’s/or Dem’s who like to feel like they are different–but tend to vote for Rep’s/Dem’s when it comes down to it.

  When a system is flawed, the system needs changed–but if those with the most vested interest profit from the system, then not much chance of the system being changed from top-down, and the masses have little real power–particularly since the US has become “idiocracy” in large part, and most americans still think the sun is closer to the earth then the moon because “its bigga”.

  As times get tough–some goon thats really a fascist disguised as a “libertarian” will likely get some headway, since the reptilian brains that still work in most enjoy strong simple, inane statements–complexity kills the message.

  I’m a libertarian of sort, but clearly not the “pure” Idealistic (maybe crazy) version that are out there, clearly Objectivism as defined by Ayn Rand has many logical flaws–in part due to the fact that humans are primarily base emotional creatures–not logical “enlightened self-interest” types. Rationality is the tip of the iceburg only, and limbic mediated flippant bullshit and magical thinking makes up most of the rest. Thank goodness Santa Claus is going to save the world in 2012, and give us all presents of nano-bots that produce endless food, and eletric cars that run on Fast food waste products—can’t wait.

• 27. ray  |  November 3rd, 2009 at 6:21 am

  Damned good interview. Would have never pegged Ames for a closet Austrian.

• 28. Metallica  |  November 3rd, 2009 at 7:48 am

  I can’t help but laugh at all the losers who waste their time denouncing libertarians when libertarians have no power whatsoever to do anything to them, and the liberals and conservatives are actively raping them 24 hours a day for everything they have.

  Libertarianism is a dream world, sure, but when the reality is getting raped all day, the dream world sounds good. But yeah, don’t throw “the baby” out with the bathwater, or whatever that means. The democrats really do love you. They’re just beating you because they love you. And they promise to change.

• 29. az  |  November 3rd, 2009 at 11:35 am

  28: I think this is because people see how the current problems are caused by the interests of capital, and the libertarians, who have always been in favor of said interests, with a few minor aesthetic differences, and are going to these ‘tea parties’ and now have the nerve to tell us that they are anti-establishment when in reality all they want is an isolationist policy abroad, an even more total dictatorship of capital inside with all its glories like Pinkertons and absolutely no social protections, with an antiquated and inconvenient monetary system to match, then yeah, libertarians deserve to be laughed at and hated because they, even, as you say, just losers who play counter-strike and jerk off to pictures of guns and right-wing coups in their mothers’ basements, are an annoying distraction from the real problems we face. And no one here is supporting the Democrats (well besides, like, Grayson for some people) so you should probably shut your mouth when you have no idea what you’re talking about.

• 30. Judas Chongo  |  November 3rd, 2009 at 12:34 pm

  Ron Paul is on Medicare

  http://weiner.house.gov/news_display.aspx?id=1364

  Spread the word folks

• 31. m  |  November 3rd, 2009 at 1:24 pm

  @ az: I completely agree. very well put.

• 32. Carbon  |  November 3rd, 2009 at 2:26 pm

  @Carlito: I never said he was a conservative- but he does often characterize his thinking as libertarian.

  Anyway, in the spirit of the interview, I’d like to ask 2 questions of you and the other folks commenting here. You see, I’ve noticed there are quite a few passionate and well educated folks commenting on this site, so I want to sample some of their ideas/criticism. I enjoy this site because I see people who continually challenge widely acccepted ideas, and present interesting new (to me) pieces of info. Occasionally, I’m led to reconsider some of my own positions.

  Here are the questions:

  1. What kinds of policies do you think this country should adopt? I for one, would like to see harsher penalties for white-collar crime, the end of the drug war, the end of the Fed, and the end of Afghanistan/Iraq wars.
  2. Where do you see the country going in 10 years? I’m not sure about this one, but I have a feeling things will get way worse before they improve.

• 33. wengler  |  November 3rd, 2009 at 7:43 pm

  Good interview but the problem with the discussion is that it was full of very esoteric ideas about what should be the organization of society. We should instead look for any power that can push back against the people holding our economy hostage.

  Nobody in government wants to be in a position of responsibility when the economy blows up, which leads to even the non-corrupt doing bad things in the name of “saving America”. If you audit the Federal Reserve and it comes out that it has trillions in loan guarantees based on money that doesn’t exist what do you think will happen? A full and transparent accountancy that will drive the credit markets off the cliff? I don’t think so. It will be falsified and buried.

  I think Ames has made this point before but this whole bailout is just the slower unwinding process of a Brezhnev-like economic disaster. If the train were to go 100 miles off the mountain right now, the super-rich might lose everything along with everyone else. As long as it teeters off the side of the cliff, the people in power can liquidate the industries that they can(this is why they howled at saving a heavy industry like car manufacturing) and go off to wherever they want to watch the train slide over with the rest of us in it.

  What we have to do is find some American oligarchs who no longer want to participate in this economic treason anymore. It’s distasteful even to write that, but really only they have the influence and power now to punish their partners in crime. In the future, the organization of our society must change in order to survive, but right now we are pushing into a death spiral that needs to be immediately stopped.

• 34. calripson  |  November 3rd, 2009 at 7:54 pm

  Yeah Ames, your photo should be you shooting a full auto AK in the (Nevada) wastelands. Let me know and I’ll hook you up with a Class III dealer.

• 35. VPC  |  November 3rd, 2009 at 8:23 pm

  @ 25: That’s where I arrived on further thought.

  Ames-style lefties say the powerful will abuse the less powerful, and so government is necessary to protect society from the powerful.

  Horton-style libertarians say all government leads to abuses, so we should have no government.

  Neither position addresses the problems posed by the other.

• 36. aleke  |  November 4th, 2009 at 10:50 am

  socialism, bitches

• 37. Directm  |  November 4th, 2009 at 2:15 pm

  I found the last couple of minutes of the interview to be the most interesting. They were speaking about today’s disconnect between truth and action. It’s a question I have thought about for some time now. What can be done to address passive attitudes? Take it away Mark…

• 38. Metallica  |  November 4th, 2009 at 4:26 pm

  @Carbon

  You want a vision of the future of America, you should read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. The gist of it is that there are no policies in the future of America.

• 39. az  |  November 4th, 2009 at 5:22 pm

  33: Nader wrote one such fantasy fiction, I haven’t read it, but maybe you’ll find it interesting: http://www.amazon.com/Only-Super-Rich-Can-Save-Us/dp/1583229035

• 40. gatorade  |  November 4th, 2009 at 8:51 pm

  Ames blows another mic while he could’a been writing another cum Scott story. Lazy bastard, are ye 57 now, eich?

• 41. machete  |  November 6th, 2009 at 2:08 pm

  I’d like to think that Obama gave 25 trillion US tax $’s to wall street scum, but really it was Bush and the Republicans who gave most of that away. So Rand is the idiot? No, I’m the idiot. Because I read her. in her world, the bankster sheister hustlers are left to rot. In Obamas marxist world, they recive trillions for a job not well done. Which oddly enough is the same marxist world that Bush and the Republicans and in fact all the Rand followers live in. Go figure.

• 42. machete  |  November 6th, 2009 at 2:10 pm

  So the government gangsters in Alabama make a deal with scum new york banksters. The Alabama government employees receive billions in kickbacks,etc. But in a Rand world, idiots like me think everything works perfectly, and the rivers flow with chocolate, and children laugh and dance and sing while I fondle them.

• 43. Justen  |  November 14th, 2009 at 12:27 am

  I think it’s okay to use force and threat of force to get what I want, but others who do so are evil when their goals aren’t in line with mine. I think I ought to be able to take from other people to give to myself, and I ought to be able to imprison and kill other people who haven’t harmed me because I find them distasteful. I should be able to do all this as long as I get together at least half the population to write on paper that it is good. This is democracy, and it is philosophically and morally correct. I am so sure of that, that I am willing to dismiss all who oppose it as childish, stupid and evil. Principles and ethics are for impractical people who don’t see the “big picture” and realize that trying to evolve beyond tribalism and barbarism are hopelessly naive as long as people like me are alive to stand in the way.

  That pretty much sum up your mindless thug arguments, scum? I’ll go back to being smug over here now. Have fun with your stealing and murdering (or taxing and war or whatever politically correct words you scum use to describe your crimes).

• 44. Ron  |  November 30th, 2009 at 10:54 pm

  Hey foo, do you want to beat the fuck out of me.

  Come to my town, I’m broke, but I’ll stand in for “that Libertarian fuck”.

  Jesus, you fuckin retard.

• 45. Ron  |  November 30th, 2009 at 10:58 pm

  Sorry too hog the thread, but I hate libertarians too, but I’m defending Ames and the other guy wasn’t a pure libertarin, I’m not into that shit.

  I’m sayin you weren’t fuckin listening.

  If your going to make threats, back it up.

• 46. StrangeLoop  |  February 20th, 2010 at 12:00 pm

  The government is an organized composed of self-interested persons that engage in political coercion and mischief (time to google “logrolling,” you pinkos). The government promotes many monopolies (e.g., education, cable access, production of defense and law, etc.); so, this is my best measure against monopolies? There’s only one organization in society that can steal my money by threat of gun: the State. There’s only one choice that is between the “lesser of two evils”: politicians. I’ve never decided on the “lesser of two evils” when picking a refridgerator or pair of pants. There’s only one organization in this society that commits acts of war and foreign aggression in the name of “defense”–its alleged fundamental reason for existence.

  Capitalism is simply people cooperating freely. Exchange is not a zero-sum game; wealth is not a magical bread that miraculously drops from the sky.

  Regulations do not aid a free society. Regulations are “captured” (yes, you can google “capture theory” now) by powerful interests. Large industries have an interest to buy off congressmen, senators, and other officials–e.g., gaining a $1,000,000 subsidy is great for them, but fighting it (the subsidy is a dispersed cost, it might only cost me $5 a year) isn’t worth my time. Incentives, as economics teachers us, really do matter. If the State and the marketplace are not separated, then the State and the monied businessmen collude. That is no longer a free market. If the State intervenes, then those interventions simply create “interventionist” chaos where unprincipled politicians benefit anti-business, anti-competitive corporations.

  The dream world isn’t in the minds of libertarians; it’s in the minds of those that entrust a segment of our population to coerce, to drop bombs, to regulate our lives.

• 47. standard anthony  |  March 5th, 2010 at 6:52 am

  Ron Paul? No fucking way. Paul is a bircher and he used to do busine$$ with David Duke back in the eighties. Populist he ain’t. One of yer EXILERS should do a little research on his failed (Reagan backed) coup of Grenada with neo-nazi mercs in ’82-’83.

• 48. standard anthony  |  March 5th, 2010 at 6:57 am

  Fucked up. I meant the island of Dominica, which led to Grenada. Paul helped raise the money for this.

• 49. Zhu Bajie  |  April 4th, 2010 at 7:21 pm

  StrangeLoop | February 20th, 2010 at 12:00 pm — “There’s only one organization in society that can steal my money by threat of gun: the State.”

  You forgot your gun-nut neighbor!

  Zhu Bajie

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