My guy T-Schall will likely not be on Ron Paul's Xmas list.
Article from Bal Sun here (reprinted pretty widely)
Now, full disclosure, T-Schall is my student, back from UNC-CH days. We have published together. So I am hardly neutral on this topic.
But it seems to me that Dr. Schaller has this right. The attraction of Dr. Paul has always escaped me. Yes, he is clearly right about several things. But he is wrong, and not just a little bit wrong, about a lot of important things.
Overall, I am grateful to Dr. Paul. He has been brave and consistent about advancing his views. But the people who come up to me and say, "Oh, you must like _________, he's a libertarian," only to have me stare at them in horror....you people are crazy.
Here is a partial list of people you goofballs think are libertarians. They can call themselves what they want, of course. But they are NOT libertarians.
Neil Boortz
Glen Beck
Ayn Rand
Ron Paul
So, when one of this group is discussed, or lauded, or is for some other reason in the news, please don't say, "Oh, you must be happy."
What DOES make me happy? Harry Browne's New Year's Day Resolutions. Harry Browne was a Libertarian.
9 comments:
More evidence: I have (years ago, admittedly) also heard Bill Maher call himself a libertarian.
Mike, isn't making the perfect the enemy of the good what got us, and by us I mean libertarians construed sufficiently broadly to include Rand and Paul, in this mess in the first place? I'm a little bit tired of the purity tests.
I am satisfied with this explication:
http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2011/12/libertarianism-and-morality/
W was re-elected after DOING some pretty morally reprehensible things. B.O. will most likely retain his throne after DOING the same things.
Ron Paul voted against the Iraq war and the assinine defense of marriage act. Now the point is to go after him for allegedly having WRITTEN morally reprehensible things? (I think it is more appropriate for modern libertarians to go after him for having accepted Rothbard's guerilla tactics-after all, that would be something he DID.)
I too am a bit tired of the libertarian purity tests. We're already a tiny minority. Why so rigorous in excluding people based on a few issues where they are heretic? I'm not sure why Neil B. is excluded from the fold.
"But he is wrong, and not just a little bit wrong, about a lot of important things."
Could you expand on this? I absolutely disagree with his stance on some tings, but my guess is none of those fall into perhaps the top 10 most important issues to me. To call them important seems to me like the PC ho-hum crap blogging that you seem to reject and make fun of all the time.
I'm happy that Ron Paul is doing well. I'm happy about the forest, which is damn hard to see for all the trees blocking the view.
People who back Ron Paul see the forest: the limited and restrained government, the free trade w/o meddlesomeness, the spirit of the tenth amendment, no support for a new war, no support for quiet (and permanent) suspension of Habeas Corpus, and a NO vote on Defense of Marriage. One can still see (if one looks) an old, long dead tree of racist comments and also a poisonous vine of nativism. But there is a spirit in the forest that will be all that remains after Ron Paul doesn't win the Republican nomination. That spirit is and that memory will be that support for individual rights, peace, and circumspection with the people's money is not kooky nor fringe. That spirit is why I take joy in Ron Paul's ascendency.
Agree with everyone bitching about the purity tests here. I can't tell if Mungo is just engaging in a subtle reprise of the Judean People's Front bit from Monty Python, or whether he really has a deep penchant for libertarian snobbery (which I agree is silly when libertarians are already such a tiny minority).
Look, I'm not a huge Paul fan myself; I much prefer Gary Johnson's brand of libertarianism. I agree that Paul's dead wrong on immigration, a loon when it comes to his obsession with the gold standard, and pretty wacky on plenty of other things. (I also disagree on him with abortion, but I don't really think there's a true "libertarian" position on that topic.) BUT, I don't know why someone who wants to legalize all drugs, keep the feds from denying same-sex couples from marrying, end the department of education, and take seriously the constitutional limits on executive power seriously can't plausibly be called a libertarian. And say what you want about his particular policy positions, he's done more to put the word "liberty" into the national discourse than anyone else I can think of recently.
What, Mr. Mungowitz, is the litmus test for being a True Libertarian that Mr. Paul fails? Where is the word "libertarian" defined so clearly as to make your statements that this guy isn't really a libertarian tenable?
I'd think a libertarian would be a little more tolerant of ideas and not so caught up in what label to call someone.
This is all why I started calling myself a classical liberal. Not many people think they even know what it means, and you come off as so boring, no one wants to talk about politics with you. Which provides a lot of serenity.
The biggest thing against him in this article is voting against commemorating the Civil Rights Act? That makes him racist? Whatever. That was a very un-libertarian piece of legislation.
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