Wayne Allyn Root Flip Flops on Hosni Mubarak

On February 3, 2011, Birther conspiracy source and Libertarian embarrassment, Wayne Allyn Root, suggested that the vast majority of Egyptians loved Hosni Mubarak.

One week later, on February 10, after an outcry from Libertarians, Root did a 180 flip-flop and condemned Mubarak for being a tyrant.

This is one of Root's fastest 180 flip-flops to date. Even faster, I think, than when he announced that he would testify against Obama at Reverend Manning's Birther sham trial, only to call it off following another outcry from Libertarians.

Then there are Root's flip flops on gay marriage (against it, then for it, then for state's rights on it), and foreign non-intervention [pro-war on Iraq (2006); then "Iraq is the wrong war, Iran is the right war" (2007); then radical non-interventionist (early 2008); then pro-Afghan surge (late 2008); then attacks Obama's Afghan surge (2009)..."]

Antiwar is my issue, but even I can't keep up with all of Root's shifting positions.

All these flip-flops imply a hollow man, a man without principles, an opportunist. Certainly not a serious libertarian thinker, much less "one of America's leading libertarian thinkers" as Root sometimes likes to spin himself.

Root not only flip-flops, but he does so without explanation or apology. No mea culpas. No thought-provoking essays on why, after long and difficult consideration, he realized that he was previously wrong and these are the reasons he changed his mind.

Root's flip-flops are positively Stalinesque in their swiftness, completeness, and ignoring that there even was a change.

This mindless, unprincipled, shameless, Stalinesque flip-flopping of political positions is best satirized in George Orwell's 1984.

Recall the scene wherein an Inner Party member gives an impassioned speech denouncing the Eurasian enemy. In the middle of his speech, he is handed a revised speech. He continues his speech without missing a beat, without losing his passion -- only now he is denouncing the Eastasian enemy, as though it were always so. Nor expecting anyone in the audience to notice or object.

But most LP members are not mindless Ingsoc members who force themselves to ignore party contradictions and historical revisions.

Doubtless, if Root seeks the LP's 2012 presidential nomination, he will hope that party members will remember him only as an early leader in the opposition against Mubarak, and that his previous praise of Mubarak will be buried by Google.

LP members must remember Root's long history of flip-flops, and remind others.