Lew Rockwell on barriers? What barriers?

Lew Rockwell is about as uncompromising a paleolibertarian (although that term seems needlessly limiting for him) as is out there. The longtime colleague of an American original, Murray Rothbard, Rockwell stands foursquare behind the rightness of free-will exchange with no bow to coercion whatsoever. His piece today takes a closer look at the barriers President-elect Barack Obama is alleged to have broken down with his victory Tuesday:

But why should politics be the standard for what constitutes a barrier or a barrier broken? The ability of individuals in a group to navigate the murky and treacherous waters of electoral politics has no necessary connection to the status of the group as a whole.

A much better indicator concerning the status of any group – racial, religious, sexual, or otherwise – is commerce, which is the real engine that makes society work. And here we see that there are no such barriers in existence. We need only look at the status of black-owned businesses to see that there are more than one million in the United States, generating revenue of some $89 billion per year, which is more than the GDP of 140 countries around the world, and growing (according to most recent data) at a faster pace than all businesses.

Tragically, Obama does not seem to see that expanding this trend is a pathway forward. For him, the answer is the failed politics of redistribution, a pathway that can only exacerbate racial tension. Far from being a healing force in American life, his success at taking from one group to give to another will only increase conflict.

Conflict is the critical word here, for the conflict view of society is what is really behind the hysterical claims that Obama's real contribution is to have broken through barriers. To understand this view, we must examine the implicit social philosophy held by those who write the headlines and put the political spin on all important events.

This is a point that Elizabeth Wright has raised again and again in her newsletter and blog over the years: Those who came before broke down the barriers, before African-American advancement became a matter for the government. Booker T. Washington. S.B. Fuller. So many others who managed to succeed on their own guile and genius at a time when racism was openly and aggressively practiced as a matter of policy.

As a symbol, Obama's victory is powerful, no question about it. But Obama also represents the triumph of grievance politics -- not freedom, but greater government control over every corner of our lives. As Rockwell writes:

You can go through the list here: age, ability, education level, class, region – really there is an infinite number of directions you can take this conflict view of society. One of them is race, and this one has been around a very long time and has its roots in America in genuine exploitation as represented by actual physical slavery. And yet under the conflict view, a form of slavery persists in all relations between black and white. They see only exploitation and antagonism while ignoring all contrary evidence. The path to advancement for blacks, in this view, comes only through taking power and wealth from whites, and the surest way to do that is to empower the state.

Really, the state couldn't lose in this election -- or any election. And when the state wins, liberty loses. Those two institutions cannot coexist, not even in tension; one exists at the expense and extermination of the other.