Note: For the record, there are two Libertarian Alliances – both with the same logo and identical claims to apostolic succession from the LA established in 1979. This article refers to the other Libertarian Alliance, not to the Gabb/Davis/Meek/Kersey et al organisation that is descended from the Tame/Micklethwait reconstruction of the 1980s. Also for the record, our LA does not encourage derogatory speech about people of different colours or sexualities.
All this being said, I have spoken a number of times at meetings of the other LA, and I have spent time afterwards in the bar at the Institute of Education. Never once have I heard derogatory comments of the sort alleged in the article below. I have known David McDonagh since the 1970s and Jan Lester since the 1990s. Other people who regularly attend these meetings also attend functions of our LA. I simply do not believe such words would be uttered. I also find it hard to believe that, if overheard, such words would be tolerated by third parties: the bar staff in the IoE are usually black, as are many of the students.
I will go further. The LA of which I am Director is generally sceptical about mass-immigration. The other LA is more relaxed about open borders. Nico Metten, for example, often posts on this blog in opposition to those of us who do not share his fundamentalist belief in open borders. I do not believe that he would sit quiet while someone spoke about “macaroons.”
I suggest that, unless he can produce a recording, we should assume that Mr Ezra is mistaken. I might also ask why he appears to have made no protest at the time, but chose to denounce the other LA in a blog posting.
We take no responsibility for anything said or done by the other LA. At the same time, each organisation enjoys a close, if perhaps complex, relationship with the other. I do not like to see my friends insulted, and take this chance to protest at the insults offered in the article reposted below. SIG
Racism at the Libertarian Alliance
Michael Ezra, May 23rd 2014, 1:45 pm
On Tuesday evening I attended 
Like many political meetings across the political spectrum – and I have attended many such gatherings – the evening ended with a visit to the bar. In the last year I have attended a few meetings by the Libertarian Alliance and the same faces turn up.
I was quite shocked by the brazenly racist comments made by some of the people in the bar.
As examples, I heard black people referred to as “macaroons” – where the term macaroons was explained as a derivative of “coons.” One of the attendees (who is white) mentioned that he was once, physically assaulted for no reason by a black man. He concluded from this that this was evidence of “a race war.”
Libertarians would view it as a violation of the liberty of a racist to prevent him from expressing racist views. People have the right, in libertarian theory, to be racist. Libertarians are in favour of free speech and would be against any laws that would make the expression of a racist view illegal. A libertarian would also permit a company to have a sign on its door saying “No black people admitted.” Likewise a company would be permitted to advertise for jobs saying “It is our company policy not to employ black people.”
This might be shocking to some but it is important to understand what libertarianism is about. And what it is about is liberty. According to the libertarian conception of justice, there is justice if everyone acts within his rights. As a black person has no right to be employed by a company, he has not been wronged if a company will not offer him a job. A black person might be offended if a company does not offer him a job – but he has no right not to be offended. This is what libertarians think.
But just because libertarians would permit racist views and racist employment practices in the private sector, it does not necessarily follow that they either approve of or encourage racism. As a comparison, libertarians are also in favour of repealing any laws that make drugs or guns illegal – but that does not mean to say that they wish to start injecting heroin or shooting people. In fact, racism as a concept would be an anathema to many libertarians qua libertarians for the following reason: libertarians champion the individual, not the collective. Ayn Rand (The Virtue of Selfishness, [Signet, 1964], pp.147-48) expressed it as follows:
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to man’s genetic lineage – the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors…..
Just as there is no such thing as a collective or racial mind, so there is no such thing as a collective or racial achievement. There are only individual minds and individual achievements – and a culture is not the anonymous product of undifferentiated masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men.
Tuesday night’s meeting was not the first Libertarian Alliance meeting I have attended where I joined people in the bar after the talk and heard racist views expressed. And quite frankly I find it disgusting.
