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Times Change, Principles Don't
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

[Posted September 12, 2003]

A libertarian must never tire of saying "I told you so." Nor is there a dearth of opportunities to do so. Before 9-11, for example, it was the libertarians who said that 1990s sanctions against Iraq and broader intervention in the middle east would inspire terrorism. The libertarians also warned that FAA regulations weren't really making the airlines secure. The libertarians further saw that hundreds of billions spent on "defense" and "intelligence" weren't really providing either.

Thus was 9-11, two years ago, a big "I-told-you-so" moment for libertarians. The hijackers, seething in anger at US policy in the Gulf region and the middle east, exploited a FAA-regulated system with plenty of loopholes for bad guys, to crash into a major financial center, and the US government, despite all its spending and promises, was powerless to stop it.

And yet, in this upside-down world, the big message after 9-11 was not that the government and its ways had failed us. Quite the opposite. We were told that the government would save us. It was libertarianism that failed.

Remember? Hillary Clinton, always exploiting the political moment, said of the efforts to cope on that awful day, "we saw government in action…. It was the elected officials who were leading and comforting." That's an odd way to describe running for their lives, prior to seizing power from their bureaucratic bunkers....