Quotulatiousness

December 27, 2011

Finding the motivations for those scary “libertarian” folk

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

Jacob Sullum on a recent New York Times article that tried to define the typical Ron Paul supporter (and whether Ron Paul is responsible for their views):

Why does the Times think it is relevant to note that libertarians who focus on economic freedom are “backed to some degree by wealthy interests”? Isn’t that true of pretty much every political movement and organization, including Marxism and the Democratic Party? The implication seems to be that defenders of economic freedom are carrying water for special interests, who are in it only for the money.

Weirdly, the Times locates the scary militants in the part of the libertarian movement that focuses on “personal liberty,” which includes not only the rights explicitly protected by the Constitution (such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, due process, and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures) but also such unspecified rights as freedom to engage in consensual sexual relationships, to marry people of either sex, to bet on games of chance, and to ingest psychoactive substances (or even raw milk). So according to the Times, the right-wing extremists attracted to Paul are a tolerant, cosmopolitan group that nevertheless harbors odious views about blacks, Jews, and gay people. Also note that the Times, perhaps unintentionally, says the Constitution “at its extreme has helped fuel militant antigovernment sentiment.” All the more reason to be wary of defending this radical document.

In short, the libertarian movement consists of two parts: 1) self-interested tycoons seeking low taxes and minimal regulation in the name of economic freedom and 2) crazy right-wingers who take the Constitution too seriously and worry about personal freedom. I always thought the distinguishing feature of libertarianism was defending both economic and personal liberty, based on the insight that they are two manifestations of the same thing. But what do I know? I did not realize that the rule of law was a concept invented by F.A. Hayek until the Times explained it to me.

December 26, 2011

Brian Doherty doesn’t think the Ron Paul newsletters matter very much

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

Over at Hit & Run, Brian Doherty outlines why he doesn’t think the Ron Paul Newsletter kerfuffle matters:

Many voices whose accomplishments I otherwise respect think that the fact Ron Paul had associates who, for a brief period over a decade in the past, wrote some mean-spirited, nasty, and dumb stuff rooted in race and sexual orientation under his name is the most important thing to discuss about Ron Paul, and that the public condemnation and humiliation of those supposedly responsible is the most important public policy issue surrounding Paul’s campaign now.

Part of this seems to be based on a so-far completely imagined belief that this particular repetition of the newsletter story cycle is somehow destroying Ron Paul’s campaign and that such name-naming or “grappling with the past” is necessary to save that campaign. While this may become true (and the consistent harping on and reminding people of it can’t help), there’s no evidence for it yet; Paul’s still gaining in polls. Note this Fox story headlined “Newsletters, Statements Cause Campaign Problems for Ron Paul” where the only voices they can find who actually thinks it’s an important issue belong to Paul’s opponent Newt Gingrich and GOP apparatchik Karl Rove and National Review editor Rich Lowry (whose own publication’s history has worse to answer to in terms of racial insensitivity combined with actual expressed support for legal actions against the rights of African-Americans, which leads Paul fans to believe that none of this has to do with actual objections to anyone with connections to past awful race-based comments, but with scuttling what is good about the Ron Paul campaign).

[. . .]

By any standard of political or moral judgment that I can respect, that is what is important about Ron Paul and the story of Ron Paul now. And from my five years of experience reporting on the Ron Paul movement that’s arisen since 2007, both for Reason and for my forthcoming book, I can assure any old libertarian worried about old libertarian movement business that it is the good things about Ron Paul that have won him the support and love he has won, and that this old business is irrelevant to them, and thus irrelevant to the actual important political and cultural story about Ron Paul now.

December 21, 2011

Redefining the term “isolationist”

Filed under: Media, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:34

Jacob Sullum explains that mainstream journalists keep saying that word . . . but it doesn’t mean what they seem to think it means:

Reporters routinely describe Ron Paul’s foreign policy views as “isolationist” because he opposes the promiscuous use of military force. This is like calling him a recluse because he tries to avoid fistfights.

The implicit assumption that violence is the only way to interact with the world reflects the oddly circumscribed nature of foreign policy debates in mainstream American politics. It shows why Paul’s perspective is desperately needed in the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

As the Texas congressman has patiently explained many times, he supports international trade, travel, migration, diplomacy, and cultural exchange. Furthermore, he supports military action when it is necessary for national defense — in response to the 9/11 attacks, for example.

The inaccurate “isolationist” label marks Paul as a fringe character whose views can be safely ignored. Given the dire consequences of reckless interventionism, that clearly is not the case.

Update: E.D. Kain at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen examines the historical baggage that Ron Paul brings along as he suddenly becomes a serious threat to the GOP establishment:

I wish Ron Paul didn’t have the newsletter baggage, because it does raise questions about his leadership and integrity. Nor do I see Ron Paul as himself a racist, but rather a participant in what was likely a very dodgy experiment in paleo-libertarianism by Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard. Paul may or may not have been aware of what was going out under his byline, but it’s certainly still his byline and his responsibility. And yet…

…I simply can’t shrug off these other issues. I’m not sure what to do (again) at this point, because the simple quantity of pushback I’ve gotten on this issue from people I respect has me seriously questioning — not my motives — but my wisdom.

And Gary Johnson, a candidate whose socially liberal views are far, far more palatable to me, has just announced he’ll seek the Libertarian Party nomination. Now the LP is a third party, and I’ve said before that I don’t do third parties, but Johnson represents all the good things that Paul does without the bad past. The thing I couldn’t do with a clean conscience is vote for Johnson and help ensure the election of say Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney over Obama. [. . .]

Long story short, y’all have me thinking hard on this one. Like Matt, I look forward to the coming months too. I hope that Paul can keep pushing these issues front and center in the debates and in the race ahead. But I can’t ignore the newsletters or other signs of affiliation with racists which, admittedly, appear to go much deeper than I realized. I was too quick to dismiss mistermix last time around. This is a serious issue and I will need more time to think about it before I can say whether or not I was wrong to endorse the candidate who I view as the most likely to prevent future war and to end or at least curtail the war on drugs and terror.

I don’t think Ron Paul himself is racist. I’m not sure why he would be so cavalier and consistent on so many unpopular issues, but never toss a bone to that crowd in any public appearance. But he has certainly been a poor judge of character.

Update, the second: The Ron Paul investment portfolio, by way of the Wall Street Journal: “This portfolio is a half-step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and nine-millimeter rounds”

Panic in Iowa

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:26

Panic, at least, for the Republican establishment who are facing a full-scale Paulista Revolutionary outbreak:

    What has me concerned is that on Main Street Iowa people are coming up to me and saying, ‘What do you think about Dr. Paul?’ These are folks who have to be informed. They have to get past the 30- and 60-second ads. If you ask Iowans if they’re for legalizing marijuana or legalizing heroin, they’d say no. But Dr. Paul has said on many occasions that that’s OK. But people don’t all know that.

I’m not sure whether to be delighted or depressed by the reaction of Iowa Republicans like Andy Cable to the suddenly-real possibility that Ron Paul might win — and thereby discredit! — the state’s first-in-the-nation nominating caucuses. The anomalous importance of Iowa within the U.S. election system has traditionally been defended on two major grounds: (a), that the state is pretty representative of the American “middle” in both geographic and demographic senses, and (b), that a small state like Iowa (or New Hampshire) can scrutinize candidates with a salutary close-up intensity, given a long pre-election period in which to do it.

There is no doubt something to these arguments. (Along with obvious rebuttals to both.) But how can a major party have its cake and eat it too? Specifically, how can the concept of Iowa’s special mission as a testing range for candidates be reconciled with Mr. Cable’s panicky Yuletide talk of uninformed goon voters flying off the handle? Cable’s state has benefited significantly from being a political bellwether, both from the quadrennial media activity and attention and from the political pork that follows. (Ethanol accounts for 9% of the state’s GDP.) Yet Cable is not even waiting for Paul to be nominated before undermining the whole basis for taking Iowa seriously.

December 10, 2011

Nick Gillespie: Five myths about Ron Paul

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:20

Nick Gillespie in yesterday’s Washington Post:

Ron Paul is the Rodney Dangerfield of Republican presidential candidates. The 12-term Texas congressman ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket back in 1988 and was widely seen as a sideshow in 2008, despite finishing third in the GOP field behind John McCain and Mike Huckabee. Why, despite a small but devoted set of supporters, does this 76-year-old obstetrician turned politician routinely get no respect from the media and GOP operatives? Let’s take a look at what “Dr. No” — a nickname grounded in his medical career and his penchant for voting against any bill increasing the size of government — really stands for.

1. Ron Paul is not a “top-tier” candidate.

At some point in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, the mainstream media became more obsessed than usual with designating GOP hopefuls as “top-tier” candidates, meaning “people we want to talk about because we find them interesting or funny or scary.” Or more plainly: “anybody but Ron Paul.”

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has been accorded top-tier status from the start, but otherwise it’s been a rogues’ gallery. As their numbers soared, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and pizza magnate Herman Cain enjoyed stints in the top tier, and former House speaker Newt Gingrich is now ensconced in that blessed circle.

Back in August, Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) was designated “top tier” after winning Iowa’s Ames Straw Poll.Paul was not, despite losing to her by only about 150 votes. And when Paul won the presidential straw poll of about 2,000 attendees at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit in Washington in October, the contest’s organizer pronounced him “an outlier in this poll.”

November 4, 2011

Reason profiles Gary Johnson

Filed under: Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:11

I took the “scientific* survey” at the Reason web site and it matched me up with Gary Johnson as the GOP candidate who most closely matched my interests:

Aliases: Gov. Johnson, Iron Man, that libertarianish guy who’s not Ron Paul

Experience: Johnson founded his construction company Big-J Enterprises in 1976 and ran it for nearly two decades before becoming the Republican governor of the overwhelmingly Democratic state of New Mexico in 1995. Big-J, which Johnson sold in 1999, remains a leading construction firm in the Land of Enchantment. Johnson was re-elected governor in 1999, his tenure marked by a record number of vetoes, a winning struggle against tax increases, and prosperity in the state.

Hangups: low name recognition, severe soundbite challenges, Ron Paul’s prior claim on the uncoveted “mild-mannered libertarian” position

Spending/size of government/entitlement reform: Along with Ron Paul, Johnson is part of a fairly recent phenomenon: Republican candidates who take their small-government rhetoric seriously. In the New Mexico statehouse, he vetoed 750 bills, fired 1,200 state employees and left the state with a billion-dollar budget surplus. His presidential platform includes cutting Medicare and Medicaid by 43 percent and turning them into block grant programs. His budget cutting plans extend even to the bipartisan sacred cow of defense, which would also come in for a 43 percent cut. Tells ConcordPatch, “I believe that less government is the best government.”

September 7, 2011

The Perry-Paul pie-fight

Filed under: History, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:28

The Ron Paul campaign released a new video, pointing out the fact that Paul had been one of a small group that originally supported Ronald Reagan for president (on the basis of Reagan’s professed desire for small government and lower taxes). Rick Perry, on the other hand, worked for Al Gore’s first presidential bid:

As Michael Suede says, it’s amazing that the Perry campaign’s response actually highlights Paul’s consistency and principles:

The Perry campaign released this statement in response to the pummeling:

     “Rep. Paul’s letter is a broadside attack on every element of President Reagan’s record and philosophy. Paul thought President Reagan was so bad, he left the GOP,” said [Perry spokesman Mark] Miner. “It will be interesting to hear Rep. Paul explain why Reagan drove him from the party at tomorrow’s debate on the grounds of the Reagan Library.”

     In one part of the letter, Paul wrote, “There is no credibility left for the Republican Party as a force to reduce the size of government. That is the message of the Reagan years.”

     Paul continued, “Thanks to the President and Republican Party, we have lost the chance to reduce the deficit and the spending in a non-crisis fashion. Even worse, big government has been legitimized in a way the Democrats never could have accomplished.”

     Paul even went so far as to call Reaganomics, “warmed-over Keynesianism.”

In other words, Paul initially supported Reagan because Reagan talked a great game on issues that Paul supported: reducing the size of government and lowering taxes. Reagan was elected, continued talking the talk, but failing to actually do anything — in fact, government continued to grow during his presidency (even if you discount the military build-up). Paul broke with Reagan because Reagan hadn’t done what he was elected to do. And the Perry campaign thinks this is a negative?

You can say a lot of positive things about Reagan, but his actual record was not what his Republican hagiographers pretend that it was.

In the letter, Ron Paul explains that spending under Reagan exploded and that the administration didn’t live up to its promises to keep the debt under control. Then Ron goes on to PREDICT THE FUTURE as he explains the dangers behind exploding deficits. So in essence, the Perry campaign is saying Ron Paul is bad because HE IS TOO CONSERVATIVE.

August 22, 2011

US government spending: “we’ll pay for it all by raffling off unicorn rides and following leprechauns to find pots of gold”

Filed under: Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:10

Steve Chapman notes the difficult transition from supporting spending cuts in general to supporting specific program cuts:

The good news is that the idea of serious spending restraint has more support than ever before. The bad news is that getting people to support the concept is easy. The hard part is getting beyond the concept, and there is no sign so far of doing that.

Several Republican presidential candidates, including Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum, have taken what sounds like an uncompromising stand. They’ve signed on to a plan sponsored by a group called Strong America Now to eliminate the federal deficit by 2017 without tax increases.

But the plan is not a plan. It’s a fantasy. As Strong America Now’s website explains, it is supposed to “detect and eliminate 25 percent of spending per year across the federal government.” Per year. Seriously.

Not only that, but those cuts are supposed to excise nothing but vast quantities of waste — rather than programs that actual people care about. And my impression is that we’ll pay for it all by raffling off unicorn rides and following leprechauns to find pots of gold.

[. . .]

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid soak up some 40 percent of the budget, and their share will expand as baby boomers sidle off into retirement. But in an April Economist/YouGov survey, only 7 percent of Americans — including just 9 percent of Republicans — favored lower funding for Social Security. Medicare? Also 7 percent, with 11 percent of Republicans agreeing.

Even the rise of the Tea Party and the fight over the debt ceiling have not caused people to come to grips with fiscal reality. An August Economist/YouGov poll found that 56 percent of Americans said we can bring spending under control without reductions in Social Security and Medicare. Only 24 percent admit what every fiscal expert knows.

July 17, 2011

Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch on a libertarian foreign policy

Filed under: Government, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:31

The third part of an interview with Gillespie and Welch, covering libertarian foreign policy ideas:

June 20, 2011

L. Neil Smith on what defines a libertarian

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

From the most recent Libertarian Enterprise where L. Neil is discussing Ann Coulter’s dislike of Ron Paul:

In the column in question, she accuses Dr. Paul of hypocrisy, of being a libertarian who wants to get rid of government (both of which are untrue) while at the same time wanting people to elect him President.

There are two (and only two) fundamental tenets that an individual must accept wholeheartedly and without reservation in order to call him- or herself a libertarian. As decent and likable a fellow as Dr. Paul happens to be, I have never heard him specifically endorse either one.

If I am wrong, please correct me; it would be good news.

First of all, you have to regard yourself — as well as each and every individual around you — as the sole proprietor of his or her own life and, for better or worse, all of the products of that life, including the fruits of your labor and, equally, the smoke from your chimney. The concept is called “absolute self-ownership” — accept no substitutes.

Second — and this is the social and political manifestation of absolute self-ownership — you have to agree never to initiate physical force against another human being for any reason whatever, nor to advocate this initiation, or delegate it to someone else. This concept is called the “Zero Aggression Principle” and it is the absolutely indispensable bedrock on which political libertarianism rests.

If anyone argues with you about that, it’s because he (or she) wishes to reserve some right that he (or she) falsely imagines he (or she) has, to employ force against you whenever he (or she) feels it necessary or convenient. For the sake of national security. Or for the children.

Whatever you think of these ideas, they are unquestionably central to everything that is truly libertarian, and all proposed libertarian policies spring from them. Regrettably, the general freedom movement, as well as the Libertarian Party itself, are cluttered today with counterfeit libertarians — Nerfs and LINOs — who can’t make the moral cut. Coulter claims she has one libertarian friend who is “not crazy”, but if she regards him or her as “not crazy”, it’s certain that whoever she’s talking about is not a libertarian at all. This is among the best reasons I can think of for defining libertarianism properly.

May 13, 2011

To no great surprise, Ron Paul announces his presidential bid

Filed under: Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:30

He may not expect to win (he doesn’t have the support of the GOP backroom), but he will almost certainly make the race more interesting:

U.S. Representative Ron Paul, who has been called the intellectual godfather of the Tea Party, said Friday that the “time is right” for him to try once more to seize the Republican nomination for president.

The Texas Republican and anti-war libertarian announced his third White House bid on ABC’s “Good Morning America” program, saying he is already seeing unprecedented grass-roots support for his long-held calls to reduce the federal debt, government spending and the size of government.

“Coming in No. 1 in the Republican primary is an absolute possibility many, many times better than it was four years ago,” said Mr. Paul, an obstetrician who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican in 2008 and as the Libertarian Party nominee in 1988.

March 22, 2011

“He is kind of like a rock star, a nerdy professor, and your crazy uncle rolled into one”

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:22

Andrew Foy tries to place Ron Paul in the context of the modern Republican Party:

In his recent editorial “The Fighters vs. the Fixers,” appearing on National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg discussed what I suspect is his crop of contenders for the upcoming election: Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Huckabee. Considering that Paul smoked all of these candidates in the 2011 CPAC straw poll, where he garnered 30% of the vote, it was an odd choice to leave him out, and even more so when you account for the fact that Goldberg’s recently edited book Proud to be Right: Voices of the Next Conservative Generation featured several essays in which the authors expressed strong libertarian points of view.

Ah, but that CPAC straw poll was explained away as “Paultards” packing the event, which no other candidate would ever do, so the poll result was therefore invalid. Oh, and lots of chatter that Paul supporters would not be welcome to the next CPAC.

. . . Paul is an outspoken advocate of Austrian economics. Without being an economist myself, I would say that this economic school of thought argues against econometric models, state planning, bailouts, economic stimulus, and the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. One of the hallmarks of Austrian economics, for which Hayek won a Nobel Prize, is the view that central banks create asset bubbles and hence the business cycle. Austrian economics predicted the recent housing collapse and economic recession when the mainstream economists and politicians, to whom we’re still wedded, were telling us that everything was “A-okay.”

In a 2007 address to the American Economic Association, Bernanke proclaimed, “The greatest external benefits of the Fed’s supervisory activities are those related to the institution’s role in preventing and managing financial crises. In other words, the Fed can prevent most crises and manage the ones that do occur.” A year later, we were mired in the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression. While the great majority of politicians today (Democrats and Republicans) are happy to heed the advice and inflationary policies of the Fed, such as QE2, Paul is a lone voice in the wilderness crying foul. Conservatives should welcome his dissent.

June 25, 2010

QotD: The danger of electing real libertarians

Filed under: Humour, Liberty, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:35

I don’t know what it is, but when you go all the way down the libertarian path, it leads to complete insanity. Just look at Ron Paul followers — they’re pretend-to-be-Spock-and-bite-each-other crazy. The libertarian philosophy seems reasonable enough, but it somehow always leads to candidates who accidentally dye themselves blue or carry around a pet ferret named Gustav.

So anyway, let’s definitely get someone in 2012 sympathetic to libertarian ideals who is adamantly against fiscal irresponsibility and government expansion — and for individualism — but if any candidates start foaming at the mouth, screaming “FIAT MONEY!!!!!”, back away and don’t make eye contact. Still, pure libertarians have a place in the GOP, but they’re sort of like Murdoch to the Republican A-Team: They keep breaking him out of the insane asylum because he’s useful for certain situations, but they’re not going to put him in charge of anything. Or there will be much fool pitying.

Frank J. Fleming, “Libertarians and the Republican Party”, IMAO 2010-06-25

May 29, 2010

Random links

Filed under: Randomness, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:19

April 14, 2010

Poll shows Obama would beat Ron Paul . . . by 1%

Filed under: Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:18

Rasmussen Reports has an amusing poll of voting intentions for 2012 if Barack Obama faced Ron Paul:

Election 2012: Barack Obama 42%, Ron Paul 41%

Pit maverick Republican Congressman Ron Paul against President Obama in a hypothetical 2012 election match-up, and the race is — virtually dead even.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of likely voters finds Obama with 42% support and Paul with 41% of the vote. Eleven percent (11%) prefer some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided.

Ask the Political Class, though, and it’s a blowout. While 58% of Mainstream voters favor Paul, 95% of the Political Class vote for Obama.

But Republican voters also have decidedly mixed feelings about Paul, who has been an outspoken critic of the party establishment.

Obama earns 79% support from Democrats, but Paul gets just 66% of GOP votes. Voters not affiliated with either major party give Paul a 47% to 28% edge over the president.

Paul, a anti-big government libertarian who engenders unusually strong feelings among his supporters, was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. But he continues to have a solid following, especially in the growing Tea Party movement.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress