Thursday, June 12, 2014

#1076: Lew Rockwell


We generally avoid writing directly about politics, and the writings of Llewellyn Harrison Rockwell, Jr., usually concern politics – Rockwell is a libertarian writer, activist, and founder and former president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, who currently runs a rather (in)famous website. Still, Rockwell is in many ways a rightwing mirror of Arianna Huffington, and just like the latter promotes all sort of fluffy moonbat pseudoscience, Rockwell promotes a range of pseudoscientific bullshit usually associated with wingnuttery.

Thus, his site offers a plethora of cargo cult science and denialism in the service of global warming denialism (often of the “environmentalists are racists” type), and Rockwell is a staunch promoter of the paleo diet, raw milk, barefoot running, and coconut oil, and the site often runs articles by none other than quack supreme Joe Mercola. Indeed, Rockwell.com even has a history of offering articles on AIDS denialism – not to speak of Rockwell’s own advocacy of eliminating of drunk driving laws, claiming that they persecute people solely for having a particular chemical in their bloodstream. The site has also served as a platform for dominionists like Gary North, exemplifying once again the uneasy and peculiar connection between American libertarianism and Taliban-style theocrats.

Diagnosis: Given his ample demonstration of poor reasoning skills and shitty ability to assess evidence when it comes to pseudoscience, woo and denialism, you may be excused for questioning his reasoning ability concerning politics as well (which, by the way, would be one of very few applications of ad hominem reasoning that would not be fallacious). Influential.  

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