Well of course it did:
A meeting of Anarcho-Syndicalists devolved into chaos at Portland State University last week. The “Law & Disorder” conference presented by the Students of Unity was disrupted by protesters complaining about “survivor trauma” and the “patriarchal society” which is “prioritizing powerful white men.”
Eventually police were called, causing the protesters to flee.
I used to joke that the problem with doctrinaire libertarians is that it’s difficult for them to win any real battles when they’re busy getting into fistfights amongst themselves over the best way to privatize the sidewalks — and here we have a case of pretty much just that.
Allow me to elaborate on that, even if only very briefly.
For a movement based on the idea of leaving everybody alone, Big L Libertarians can be a strangely intolerant bunch. They (formerly “we”) enjoy nothing better than determining who is a real Libertarian and who isn’t. Notice that this particular meeting was of Anarcho-Syndicalists — one of the countless branches of libertarian thought. You have your Objectivists, your anarchists, your minarchists, your classical liberals, your left-libertarians, your Tea Partyers… the list goes on, with seemingly endless factions within factions. Don’t you dare get an anarchist even started on those statist anarcho-syndicalists.
As the State encroaches further and further upon what few liberties we have left, we become less and less relevant as we debate more and more about who, exactly, fits into our intellectual molds. The GOP has factionalized itself over similar lines — albeit far fewer of them.
Honestly, oftentimes these days we on the right sound like Democrats in the ’80s, but less effective.
We need to get our stuff together, and soon.
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