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.

Boot Root at the Libertarian Party Convention

I've long blogged about the Clintonesque (even Stalinesque) Libertarian embarrassment that is Wayne Allyn Root.

So have many others. The problem with Root is not in digging up his dirt, but in keeping track of it all. (So much slime, so little time!)

Now longtime libertarian activist Carol Moore has amassed and organized Root's misdeeds from around the internet, compiling them into a webpage and PDF pamphlets. She urges delegates to the 2012 Libertarian Party convention to print and distribute her material.

Moore's Boot Root webpage begins by saying:

Since the mid-1990s various groups and factions of Libertarian Party members have been pushing for the Libertarian Party to become more "respectable," "mainstream," and "middle class," and less radical, outrageous and/or low income.

The party is being destroyed by people who don't care if they drive out members and reduce the number of candidates as long as those remaining are respectable, mainstream, middle class - or as Wayne Root puts it "high quality."

These people have fought to continue gutting the platform of meaningful libertarian content, including the non-interventionist foreign policy planks, and to drive more "hardcore" libertarians out of leadership positions on the national and even state levels.

They have tried to centralize power so that a small group of mainstream, middle class libertarians could control the whole party from the national level. They have been increasingly successful, using their higher incomes, allegiance to power over principle, and attendant political machinations to get their way.

That's just the beginning. Read it all at Moore's Boot Root page.