The Ron Paul Delusion
Why the Texas congressman does not represent the future of conservatism
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GoogleWhat are we to make of the Republican Party's future now that libertarian Rep. Ron Paul won the presidential straw poll at the well-attended Conservative Political Action Conference last week?
Is the GOP about to transform into the party of the gold standard?
Let's, for a moment, forget Paul (and how I wish this could be a permanent condition, considering the congressman is neither a serious politician nor—and I can't stress this enough—a serious thinker).
Libertarianism offers conservatives—many of them new to political activism—an earnest ideological alternative to the process-heavy politics that dominate Washington.
It allows Republicans to cleanse themselves of the GOP's failure to deliver on promises of smaller government and fiscal restraint.
None of which is new. The 1964 Barry Goldwater would be considered a libertarian today by many measures. The National Review constructed a "fusionist" effort to bring the parties together. Ronald Reagan explained to Reason magazine back in 1975 that "the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism."
Two sticking points preventing this fling from turning into something more serious have been social issues and war. Has anything changed to alter the dynamics of the relationship? Probably not.
Patrick Buchanan recently claimed that the GOP is showing signs of turning away from its recent foreign policy positions. The focus of policy may have changed—and perhaps there's more reluctance in nation building—but polls pretty clearly illustrate Republicans still believe in a robust and proactive national defense.
Social issues are far more complex—and they always have been, despite caricatures. But the reality is that most of the cultural issues that divide Americans have been mired in political stalemates. You can debate abortion all day long; policy won't be changing.
Economics, on the other hand, touches almost everything in a tangible way. That—and one of the most aggressive left-wing economic agendas in American history—makes the libertarian fiscal message seductive.
Does that mean we need Paul?
"Congressman Paul is committed to bringing the conservative movement back to its traditional platform of limited government, balanced budgets and a foreign policy of nonintervention," claims Jesse Benton, Paul's spokesman.
If only it stopped there. Paul isn't a traditional conservative. His obsession with long-decided monetary policy and isolationism are not his only half-baked crusades. Paul's newsletters of the '80s and '90s were filled with anti-Semitic and racist rants, proving his slumming in the ugliest corners of conspiracyland today is no mistake.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Paul is that thousands of intellectually curious young people will have read his silly books, including End the Fed, as serious manifestoes. Though you wouldn't know it by listening to Paul or reading his words, libertarians do have genuine ideas that conservatives might embrace.
A serious libertarian, David Boaz at the Cato Institute, found that 14 percent of American voters could be classified as libertarian. "Other surveys," he points out, "find a larger number of people who hold views that are neither consistently liberal nor conservative but are best described as libertarian."
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
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Oh boy, here it comes. Paulites will run will wild.
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No one chums the waters like H&R. I predict 500 comments by 5:00 EST.
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One hour down, almost 100 comments; we're on pace.
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I for one never liked the Paultards.
Here they come now, decrying "so called" libertarian publications like Reason... apostates! How dare they cover Ron Paul without slavish loyalty and obescience! How dare they have their own opinions!
They're like Deadheads who refuse to acknowledge that, quite often, the music really really sucks. Dude! Dark Star!!
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Hey, disagree with him, that's fine, but at least have substantive points. This artcile lacks them.
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As a former neo-con, I understand the feelings of the author. But a 'reason'ed approach would have been far more appropriate for this magazine. A few recent quotes from Paul, and a clear explanation of exactly why Ron Paul was wrong would have made for a reasonable article that could be respected. As it is, ad hominum attacks, appealing to the majority and other logical fallicies cause me to despair of 'reason' or logic getting through to this writer.
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But a 'reason'ed approach would have been far more appropriate for this magazine.
Har, har. We've never heard that one before.
Oh, and Penny, you just bought a round for the house...I'm drinking tequila, thanks.
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Drinking game: har har. Haven't heard that one before. Tonio, you're as mindless as those you laugh at: actually, a little more, because they make some valid points
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OK, Dy-no-mite, you want substance? See my posts @1:09 and 1:20.
The sad thing, for you, is that I actually kind of like RP, but I'm realistic enough to realize he's completely unelectable to the office of POTUS. But please, do continue doing everything you can to alienate potential allies...
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Idiot, I'm sorry that you like Ron Paul. Destroyed your 100% wrong track record. So what if Paul is not electable? I don't care the hell about some puny congressman or president. Paul has brought more people into the libertarian fold than anyone in history (excepting, perhaps Rand). Not a bad track record.
I'm snapping at you not only because you are an idiot, but a snarky one at that. The drinking game line is old. get over it.
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Of course he's unelectable. The media made it popular and chic to say the word 'unelectable' when referring to RP which is why the pod people keep parroting it.
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I agree, Penny. The author makes derogatory claims and doesn't offer anything to back up his claims. You would think you would want to point out references, if nothing else, to make your argument stronger. This piece seems more like a vindictive rant than an informative and well thought out progression of ideas. Oh...and I'll just leave this here before I go....Ron Paul 2012 R3VOLUTION!!!
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Hey, sorry guys...I got stupid drunk last night and woke up in a commune with a blinding headache and a sore ass...needless to say, I didn't have time to write up a well researched article.
So I just strung together some haphazard attacks on Ron Paul, which tends to be good enough for a Reason article, and turned it in...like next to last minute.
I wasn't even sure what I was writing...I just googled "I hate Ron Paul" and grabbed sentences.
Sorry again folks. My next article will probably be about what drugs NOT to take at a gay bar.
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David, thank you for apologizing!
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Awesome. You finally wrote something honest.
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Now that sounds like science fiction David. We all know that no gay guy would ever try to infiltrate your buttcheeks. Have you taken a good look at yourself in the mirror? Although do have some resemblance to Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, more towards the end - where he is dying!
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Did someone say buttcheeks?
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That's pretty funny. But to address the author - what a pathetic attempt to trash someone.
As for the Buchanan observation - the GOP (unlike the author) should really listen to the normal folk and realize that the interest in selling out our grandkids to support a fear-mongering "war" on terror is fading.
Anybody that can "reason" recognizes that a $708bn ($1T?) DoD Military Empire can not be sustained on a fiat house of cards and failing economy. Blowback happens and Empires implode.
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Way awesome!!! Hey David; you probably woke up with someone from FOX?
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Good job. I wondered what Doc did with my 50 bucks. If it went to your bar tab, I'll consider it a good investment.
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I agree. Even if you hate Paul supporters, HATE with some back up points!
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Yes thanks Dave. You sound like your talents lie elsewhere. When are you in town?
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So... I'm confused. I didn't actually see a single criticism of Ron Paul in this entire article. Except, perhaps, regarding his--what was it, "obsession with monetary policy and isolationism?"
And even so, the author fails to mention what, exactly, is wrong with his focus on monetary and foreign policy.
So, I guess I'm a "Paultard", but I'm having a really hard time figuring out why this article was ever written or read. Next time add substance, Denver Post.
Shame on you, reason.
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Or why in the hell the editors decided that this egregiously poor piece of writing was worth publishing. Does someone at Reason magazine have a hard on for Ron Paul. If so, try finding a writer who can research, can write and one that can argue.
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Obescience?
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It helps if his assertions are true. This is a smear peace. I'm an anarchist so I don't care either way but this is pure nonsense. the author has obviously never researched the claims he is making about RPs 80's anti-semetic newsletters.
Tell me, what is silly about ending the Fed?
Also, the founding fathers preached not getting involved with other countries domestic issues.
I really never dug into the Reason comment sections much because I just read the mag. Apparently, it's more of a statist bunch.
http://operationdefuse.com
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Reason is your typical beltway-libertarian rag, espousing libertarian-lite principles only as far as it does not upset the Establishment's sacred applecart.
And I thought it curious enough, as Paul has admiration for (and of) both Jews and Blacks, to actually read those newsletters in their entirety. Howdy! Was I surprised! Not only were they not "racist", they were not - in the best of libertarian sensibility - politically correct.
(And, anything that's un-PC, really set-offs the Quisling libertarians)
That Paul means to cut gov't to garner liberty à la Mr. Conservative and, employ a policy of non-interventionism à la Mr. Republican, is all that I need to know.
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In Ron Paul's office, he has several pictures on the wall of economists he admires, all of whom are Jewish.
I don't know if reason is faux-libertarian or not, but if they are, they should read some books by the economist who Ron admires the most: Mises.
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The article's problem is that all it really amounted to was "Ron Paul is a big ugly booger-head". It didn't even go into why, when, how, or anything else that would amount to logic and reason.
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This seemed to just be a smear piece. If it wasn't for R.P, I wouldn't be Libertarian or even Republican. This belongs on a Democrat site. And if you're going to hate, please make better points and back them up w/ facts.
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You sound like your are one of them blunthead SSI groupies. Take your meds today....
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It's official: Reason officially jumps the shark.
Someone call the coroner.
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Is that the explanation for Hearsaynei? He's a poor man's Camille Paglia brought in to churn up interest like she does for the Salonites?
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right on!
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Wow...a Reason article quoting another supposedly libertarian institution, Cato.
Both turned their backs on libertarians in 2008 and will do so again and again.
You'd think that Glenn Beck was running them both.
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That's hardly fair - Glenn Beck is at least a little libertarian.
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Beck in only as Libertarian as he needs to be to stay ahead of the crowd. Pure posturing on his part.
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Hey Reason...good luck with that 'donate' button after publishing crap like this?
By no means am I a fan of Ron Paul, but this article is plain crap.
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+1
As they practically said they ran it to get into the heat and smoke of the current conservative whining and foot stomping over the Paul straw poll win.
The "American Spectator" column is better. Between AS and Mother Jones lately reason is getting liber-scooped every week.
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Yeah, got to agree. I liken the Paul fanatics to a really creepy cult, but while I think Ron Paul is a terrible politician who's gotten by on a cult of personality more than smart policy ideas, I don't believe he's a particularly shallow thinker. He gets it right more often than not on the economics and he could probably handle himself in a debate on social policy. His weakness comes in his inability to stay on topic in debates and to kind of flit onto tangents that water down his message...that and he hires really inept people to run his campaigns (which is what happens when you surround yourself with family members instead of real political advisors).
A shallow political thinker? Maybe....probably. A shallow thinker in general? I wouldn't agree with that. Paul himself certainly isn't the future of the GOP and I question how many of his ideas will catch on outside of Republicans already predisposed to libertarians, but this article was most definitely a smear piece.
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Well hello UCrawdad, that's by far the most unbiased and un-libelous comment regarding Ron Paul I've ever read. Cudos.
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ya he is terrible in debates, that is why I told fox news to not let him participate in any more debates. He was ruining the good discussion between master debaters like Romney, Huckabee, McCain and Giuliani...all the practical libertarians. Who can forget such innovative libertarian policies as forcing everyne to buy insurance from a cartel of insurance companies that lots of money to crooked politicians, or getting seriosu about torturing more brown people or ending free speech during important times of the year like election time. With Ron Paul in the debates the people couldn't hear the serious thinkers.
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I just peed my pants a little!
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"cult of personality"
You just made me snarf.
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Future of the GOP? Without big changes, there is no GOP. As it is there is no essential difference between the GOP and Democrats. Both stand for expansion of Government, endless counterproductive wars and attacks on personal liberty.
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I believe RP is unelectable for the office of POTUS, as a Republican, Libertarian or Independent.
10 to 12% of the vote, under the most advantagious conditions is the most he will ever get. If he was ever to run for POTUS, he would be the spoiler that helps put a person like Barry Obama or Joe Biden into the Oval Office.
The Libertarians should dump RP as their standard bearer, and look for a more 'electable' candidate.
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Like who???
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Ron Paul has done more to promote liberty than anyone in recent history. I am extremely disappointed that Reason of all places is trashing him, especially for unsubstantive reasons.
Drop Harsanyi so I don't have to drop Reason.
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No no no. Big tent libertarianism. I am just going to crawl out of my sleeping back one night and visit some naughty boys like DH on the other side of the tent.
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Reason is bitter that the paleo-libertarian camp is enjoying more success lately than their own neo-libertarian camp. Largely due to Paul.
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And as long as old right populists, with their waxing influence in the market place of ideas, show Reason for what it is: a tired establishment mouthpiece, the substance-lite hit pieces will keep a coming!
Bring it on!
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Give me a break! Point me to other articles in Reason that are this bad. What is it you expect them to do? Blow up the Washington Monument?
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Agreed. Reason need not criticize the political process, nor criticize any political player, but when it does I expect a rational attempt at truth.
I don't read Reason much, but it seems to be very inconsistent. How can such an intellectually lazy (dare I say dishonest) article find itself published?
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I'm with Mark. This article is pure Trash. We only had this childish diversion in Vermont once, and the conflict monger found himself with no friends in the liberty/constitution movement.
I've read an article in reason defending Bernanke. Something stinks like sh**
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Ron Paul has done more to promote liberty than anyone in recent history. I am extremely disappointed that Reason of all places is trashing him, especially for unsubstantive reasons.
Harsanyi needs to go.
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Sorry for the double post.
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Sorry for the double post
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Sorry for the triple double post.
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Actually, that was a triple post, this is a double double post.
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Yes, but you can say that again.
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I guess i'll get it out of the way: KOCHTOPUS KOCHTOPUS KOCHTOPUS KOCHTOPUS
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Isn't one of the non-libertarian Koch brothers gay? Is he single?
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looking to get in on some of that Koch cash?
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Yes. To support me in the manner to which I would like to become accustomed. So I may become a gentleman who lunches and spends Koch money on my favored libertarian causes. Call me gay Koch brother!
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As Pualites should, this is a hatchet job. There is no substantive criticism of Paul in the entire piece.
Regards,
TDL -
As a liberal, I find hope for my cause when reading articles like this. Ron Paul is the only legitimate political thinker on your side of the aisle, and this is how you treat him? Calling him "silly", and condemning him on those grounds?
Are all libertarians/conservatives as elementary as Harsanyi?
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Yes, Lt, I'm sure that "as a liberal" you 'd like nothing better than for the LP to give RP the nom. Then all you liberals would suddenly forget about him being a "legitimate political thinker" (LOL!) and start dragging up his old newsletters.
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I can agree with Paul on many issues, and do not associate him with the rst of the GOP. I am just glad that this is how far conservative intellectualism has fallen, resorting to accusations of "silly", and then condemning legitimate candidate on those grounds.
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No.
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Ever hear; "I think thou do protest too much"?.... Well the neo-cons and their allies are getting worried. One of the complaints about the CPAC straw poll was that it was a bunch of inexperienced young people who were the Paul supporters. What a laugh. Youth is always the driving force for real change. By statements such as these, the naysayers didn't discredit Paul. Like Harsanyi they have discredited themselves.
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All establishment "libertarian" and all conservative mouthpieces hate Paul. He is the voice of reason to GOP's drug addled whorish ways. The GOP sold its soul to big gov't under W and Paul is the intervention. Independents may throw the levers of power back into GOP hands in this next round of elections but the populace is pretty pissed at the moment. And the pendulum will swing again. Three outcomes, the people will go back to sleep (that means some prosperity returning). There is a split in our one party (two party) system. Or there will be massive civil unrest. Right now I am leaning toward civil unrest. The GOP is still prostituting itself to the neo-con movement, the Dems are sold on a Euro-style social scheme and illegal immigrants and the people want change.
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If I wanted to read vacuous smears of Paul that by extension imply that all non-interventionists are isolationist and anti-zionist and anti-Jewish, I could read my new friendly cyber-acquaintance Andrew Ian Dodge's many blogs.
What both the Paul people and their detractors should do at CPAC 2011 if not before is have a DEBATE, not parallel track panels down the hall from each other with antithetical views.
Pretend that Obama and the demwits and Cindy Sheehan and Nancy Pelosi are irrelevant. Intellectually they are. Debate amongst yourselves instead.
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That sir, is a sensible suggestion regarding cpac 11. Funny I love reason.tv...but this article is shit. I wonder if the false claim that Ron Paul is an anti-semite stems from the fact that he wants to remove U.S. influence from Israel...and the Author is somehow upset by the notion.
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Puerile rants like Harsyani's are more suited to LRC than HNR.
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Why was I expecting a linky to the Weekly Standard?
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First?
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Paul is certainly flawed, but I don't see how anyone can attack him for his largely libertarian outlook. I'd rather have a somewhat wacky libertarian than a more polished statist any day of the week.
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It isn't about teh wacky for me. It's about the pandering.
I can't take the pandering. I saw him pander to people in his newsletters. I see him pander to people about gold and the fed...
I see him trying to pander to me, and it makes me want to disagree with him just for pandering.
My only definition for a real libertarian is someone who doesn't think politicians are the answer to our problems, and Ron Paul is a pandering politician.
Our nation's most pressing problems aren't because of ideology--they're because of politicians and the people who believe in them.
And it makes me feel a little nauseated to see the one movement that's really supposed to stand against the politicians with a politician as a figurehead.
Pass the bucket. *ralph*
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Re Ken Schultz,
I can't take the pandering. I saw him pander to people in his newsletters.
Oh, you read them all?
I see him pander to people about gold and the fed...
Yeah, those two are the most popular topics for most people in the world . . . never kind the pandering done from DC to pressure groups and special interests through arguments from envy, no. PANDERING, the very definition of the word, the VERY IMAGE of it, is gold and the Fed. Right?
I see him trying to pander to me, and it makes me want to disagree with him just for pandering.
Oh, so you're paranoid, then?
My only definition for a real libertarian is someone who doesn't think politicians are the answer to our problems, and Ron Paul is a pandering politician.
So you're an anarchist? Welcome to the club, my brother!
Our nation's most pressing problems aren't because of ideology--they're because of politicians and the people who believe in them.
And people's belief in politicians does NOT stem from ideology, right?
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I don't know. How much is he pandering when he frequently takes on such polarizing positions? Granted, he's able to do that because of his constituency, but I'm not sure a true panderer would be taking some of the positions he takes.
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It's like opening a burger joint in a town that doesn't have one--he saw an underserved market, and he pandered to it.
Just because he's pandering to us, though, doesn't mean it isn't pandering. He was the only one in power pandering to us for along time, but it's still just pandering.
I'm sure the Greens have the same discussion. I'm sure there were Greens who thought Ralph Nader was the only game in town, and then there were greens who thought he was the only one in the public eye who really "got it".
But in our case, it's the politicization of issues that's the enemy, and it will have to be a bottom up solution that fixes things. Until we get to where we want to go with these politicians' constituencies, top down solutions are the enemy...and once we get that fixed, politicians won't be the problem!
Again, how do we convince people that politicians aren't the answer to their problems--so they should vote for a politician like Ron Paul?
...nevermind the pandering. The guy was hawking a gold standard even as our bonds were auctioning at negative interest! People are willing to pay us to borrow from them, but you think we should squander real money on gold, Mr. Paul? Really?!
That's not a real solution to our problems--that's just pandering.
And that's just one example, but Ron Paul is all about pandering to an underserved ideology, and that's it. But This emperor's clothes are just like all the others!
And we should know that. That's what we're about.
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You are only saying he is pandering because he has a following... ask yourself which came first, his ideas or his following. As far as I know, he had his ideas first and then gained a following so that is NOT pandering. He has been speaking the same for at LEAST 30 years since when he had no following... he wasnt pandering to anyone then and he isnt now either
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"squander real money on gold"
you really don't know anything about money and economics do you?
Don't talk about what you don'tk know; that's why I don't give lectures about astrophysics.
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Yeah, I'm a real dummy, BadgerDave...and squandering money on gold as it's hitting new highs in recent decades is just too smart for me...
Yeah, you're too smart for me...
And anytime you want to pay me to borrow money from you, you be sure to let me know.
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Pandering pandering pandering pandering pandering pandering pandering. Perhaps you should mention a few more times that he was pandering?
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"Pandering pandering pandering pandering pandering pandering pandering. Perhaps you should mention a few more times that he was pandering?"
Really? Is that an invitation to talk about more of Ron Paul's pandering?
I thought you'd never ask!
How 'bout his ridiculous tilting at the fed? ...especially for keeping rates too low before July of '07--that was the problem, right?
...except that the fed kept pretty darn close to the market interest rate, and has done so since at least the early '90s by any measure you want to point at.
But nevermind that. Ron Paul knows more than the yield curve! The yield curve could never know what Ron Paul knows! Because he's ingenious. ...or is it because he has the right ideology?
Nevermind that the overwhelming majority of adjustable rate mortgages sold since 2003 were marked to LIBOR, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the fed!
In fact, isn't that what Ron Paul wants to replace the fed with? Something more or less like LIBOR? But what we're seeing is the result of LIBOR! Not the fed! And the fed and LIBOR hardly differed at all until the crisis hit...go look at the charts!
Scratch that. ...nevermind the facts. Nevermind reality. That doesn't have anything to do with Ron Paul's ideology! You can't pander, pander, pander to facts! To pander, you need a bunch of ideologues.
Have a nice day and thank you!
P.S. Pandering.
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"..except that the fed kept pretty darn close to the market interest rate, and has done so since at least the early '90s by any measure you want to point at"
You sir, are a moron. There is no market in interest rates as the federal reserve is the sole institution which sets them for the rest of the country's banks.
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You don't think there are market interest rates?
What do you call the rate on bonds? Magic? You are aware that people trade treasuries, right?
What do you call LIBOR?
There aren't any market interest rates?! You don't think the fed looks at market interest rates?!
Jesus Christ!
What do you think variable rate mortgages were set to? Have you ever even heard of LIBOR before...
Wait, wait... You got me! I fall for that every time! You're agreeing with me about Ron Paul's followers being a bunch of ideologues who have no idea about anything except their ideology, right? ...and you're making fun of them! That must be it!
I fall for that every time! Good one.
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There is no market rate for interest. The rate you are talking about is the manipulated rate. Biggest buyers of the treasuries in the world are Central Banks.
Yield curves happen the way they are because manipulation of short term rates are higher in intensity than long term rates. But both are manipulated by the supply increase of money, facilitated by central banks.
You need to study subject of money and interest.
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Doesn't the term "Yield Curve" mean anything to you?
Hello?!
You're not even aware that treasuries are sold at auction?
This is like talking to a faith healer about evolution! It's like talkin' to Moonies!
Snap out of it, or for goodness' sake, or please don't tell people you're libertarians! It's embarrassing.
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Interest rates are the "price" of money and the Fed can manipulate this price by changing the money supply, that's the general idea behind "cheap money".
Lets say there is a market for Widgets, normal supply and demand, buyers/sellers, there is even a Widget Exchange Market in London. Well lets say I have a Widget counterfeiting machine and flood the market with fake Widgets. Since these counterfeit Widgets are indistinguishable from real Widgets, what will happen to the prices of Widgets on the WEM? Maybe they'll fall, eh? Of course Widgets are not money, but the point is that you are making a ridiculous claim that a major player cannot possibly have an overwhelming impact on prices. -
I seen now. The Fed purchase of Treasuries has no effect on interest rates. The Fed purchase of mortgage assets has no effect on prices. Thanks for enlightening me.
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Might I suggest an interesting article on Seeking Alpha called Something Very Strange is Happening With Treasuries.
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Ken Shultz
Your line of thought is very interesting. Please keep up the posts.
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Pandering. You keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means.
He's pandering to the ever-so-popular "Gold Standard" crowd? And that trendy "Anti-war Republican" demographic? Don't forget that blatant pander to the booming "Rosa Parks Sucks" segment of the American population when he voted against that congressional medal of honor.
He is saying exactly the same things he did during his 3rd party run for president 22 years ago, and you think that now he's just pandering? Look it up, you can find stuff Paul said in 1988.
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"Pandering. You keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means."
pan·der /ˈpændər/
–nounAlso, pan·der·er.
1. a person who furnishes clients for a prostitute or supplies persons for illicit sexual intercourse; procurer; pimp.
2. a person who caters to or profits from the weaknesses or vices of others.
3. a go-between in amorous intrigues.http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pandering
See No.2. I hit the nail on the head.
This idea that our problems are associated with the fed going against market rates (so it should be replaced with a market rate) is wrong on the facts. The fed's followed the market since Paul Volcker cranked them up to where the market said they should be (at 20%) back in 1981.
Since 1981, there have been no major deviations from that for any meaningful period of time. When markets crashed hard in '87, '98, etc., the fed lagged briefly ('cause the last thing the market wants to see in a crisis is a new federal funds rate every day for a couple of weeks). But other than that, the fed's done exactly what Ron Paul seems to want it to do--it's followed the market.
And that's what LIBOR does, only it really is set every day (at 11 am London time). ...and that's what most of the adjustable rate mortgages in the United States that went belly-up were tied to...
So a floating rate wouldn't have changed a thing...
And Ron Paul knows that. I didn't say he was stupid. I said he panders. He's telling people whose ideology is about floating rates and don't know anything else about finance that the fed was the problem.
...but in order for the fed to have behaved differently, it would have had to go against the market before July of '07. And I don't want the fed doing that...
And Ron Paul knows all that too.
And I'm...saddened to see my fellow libertarians made a fool of, just because Ron Paul wants them to help him fulfill his political ambitions. And I think that's all this is about...because what he's saying on this issue, and a bunch of others, just doesn't add up.
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Right. And all the alphabet programs the Fed set up didn't effect the LIBOR either.
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Ken is apparently completely unwilling to acknowledge that someone else might have reasons for believing something different from him. You may not believe he's right about it, which is fine, but Austrian economists do believe the Fed affects interest rates, driving them below what the free market level would be. It's not pandering when you believe it to be true.
And if the Fed is simply trying to follow the market rate, as you suggest, why bother? Why not just let the free market determine rates on its own? How can the Fed lend money to banks at a certain interest rate and not affect the market rates?
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Ron Paul can speak without a teleprompter, as can Andrew Napolitano, Gary Johnson, Bruce Fein, Tom Woods, Tim Carney and the rest of his crew. I went to CPAC and saw them do it.
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"Ron Paul can speak without a teleprompter..."
I think that's probably an easy thing for ideologues.
I've seen a lot of religious people do that too.
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The lack of teleprompter is because he has firm beliefs that are embedded into his brain...which really you should investigate (mises.org). I mean do free market ideas offend you or something?
I don't really see the pandering that you are calling foul on either. I was a reluctant Gulliani supporting moderate republican in early '08 because I saw nothing else out there made much sense to me. Then that whole Gulliani/Paul debate happened, and it intrigued me. I began to question why I believed what I believed, and fell headlong down the rabbit hole of Mises, Rothbard, Hayek and anarcho-capitalism. By the end of the year I was a card carrying member of the LP. Now I don't think there is a goddamn thing in this world that could convince me that my political beliefs are wrong at this point. Was I pandered to? No. I was simply shaken awake by the idea that personal freedom was more valuable than reluctantly trusting the establishment. Paul will never run for president I mean for Christ's sake he'll be almost 80 in 2012 but he will have a growing following of college kids like myself who are more than happy to buck the steering of our Liberal Arts Professors and walk away from college flipping off the tired old establishment song and dance they try and cram down our throats day in and day out. The Ron Paul movement inspired independent thinkers out of the masses of hopeless drones.
This guy's article is irresponsible for not recognizing the value in that.
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You should stop reading books from anti-intellectual,anti-semitic authors. They have poisoned your brain. We need to bomb more people not fewer. The people of this country love wars and will never accept your half-baked ideas.
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Thats because he speaks from his heart, which you obviously detest.
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I'd much rather an ideologue to the US Constitution and sound money than to the ideologues of globalism and "international norms." Paul was the only person on either side of the hall that wasn't trying to sell his/her soul to globalists.
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Agree with Pro Lib, especially since -- in my experience, at least -- most people see libertarian-types as somewhat wacky anyway.
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So the gripes of this article about Ron Paul are that
1. The author doesn't want to abolish the Federal Reserve.
2. The author is upset about the newsletters from the 80's & 90's.Suprisingly little substance for an article from Reason. Reminds me of the Palin articles that came out as of late.
I agree with ProLibertate. Fine, Paul isn't perfect. I'd take him over anyone else considered a "serious" contender at this point in time.
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Seriously. I thought, "okay, page 2 is where he wallops him." Nope. Page 2 comes, and you realize that all you've read is a cursory rehash of old charges and a bit of name-calling.
(And, "oh, look, my friend David Boaz is oh-so-serious." Maybe he is. Who cares?)
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I had the same reaction. "Okay, Ron Paul is an 'unserious' thinker according to you - and the evidence for this is? Oh, conclusion. Wonderful."
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Agreed.
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Yes Ron Paul let some crank write a newsletter 20 or 30 years ago under his name. I seem to recall half of Reason's editors/contributors endorsing a candidate who much more recently sat in the pew at a church with a racist preacher.
Why the double standard? Is it (liberalatarian) racism?
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http://goo.gl/TnJ9
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Agreed.
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I'm sure the author doesn't think that Ludwig Von Mises or Murray Rothbard were libertarians either...
I'm not a "Paulite" but god damn if central banking hasn't screwed this country up.
I think every Austrian would say that the key to long term sustainable growth and freedom is a stable monetary policy which will NEVER come from Central Banking.
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I'm sure the author doesn't think that Ludwig Von Mises or Murray Rothbard were libertarians either...
Not to forget Ayn Rand, F.A. Hayek and young Alan Greenspan.
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(yes two of these aren't libertarians, but this shows how stupid it is to dismiss anyone who is against the FED as a crackpot)
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Bingo.
I especially love this:
"His obsession with long-decided monetary policy and isolationism are not his only half-baked crusades."
Paul may be quirky, but the "long-decided" monetary policy that this author brushes off without any analysis *is* undoubtedly very problematic. The fact that it is "long-decided" doesn't mean that it's sensible or beneficial.
As for "isolationism", if the author means that Ron Paul is against, say, imperialism and warmongering, then where's the problem? Certainly the author would, at the very least, admit that imperialism has had a direct impact on the nation's financial health and individual freedoms. On the other hand, I've never once heard Paul argue that the U.S. should end global trade or global dipolomacy.
If I didn't know any better, I'd have assumed this post was a lazy attempt to rack up pageviews. Disappointing from Reason.
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It was a crappy article. Considering that we just had the biggest credit meltdown in history, perhaps that long decided policy isn't so decided anymore. I don't agree with Paul about this stuff. But, it is pretty shoddy work just to dismiss his views that way.
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Agreed. I kept waiting for the first shoe to drop, indicting Paul for his unlibertarian actions, but it never really came. Mostly, it was just kvetching.
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Agreed. Highly disappointing smear link from Reason. I admire Paul for a few key reasons, and while I certainly don't endorse or agree with him across the board, this article was nothing but a smear. Not very 'reasoned' at all.
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drink.
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God damn you are very clever! Har har!
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Not to mention his monetary policy is actually getting serious legislative attention as of late. Audit the Fed anyone? The economic system is broke and the Fed's only answer to create more cheap credit. Long decided isn't the same as successful or viable.
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+1
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You have to have someone who is politically skilled and charasmatic enough to win. Nothing against Paul, but is he really that guy in his 70s and with God knows what kind of dirt the Dems could dig up? He has always been a movement type guy. And movement type guys tend to say radical things that can be used against them in a general election.
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Then dont run him as prez. Make him Chairman of Ways and Means after the GOP takeover of the House this fall.
And vote with him on spending issues.
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Agreed. He would be a great guy to have in a leadership position in Congress. But he is not a viable Presidential candidate.
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You didnt agree when I suggested that as the compromise in the thread yesterday.
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Firing Steele and putting Gary Johnson in his spot would also be a part of that (Unles GJ wants to run for Prez).
And Flake as speaker.
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Well I was wrong then.
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If you could find a blogger who actually provided any coverage of Paul at CPAC here on Reason.com you would know that his various panels came off more as an attempt to introduce Gary Johnson to followers than as a pre-cursor to a Paul 2012 run.
I don't think DH was there and for that matter I didn't see any other Reason peeps there either.
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Glad to hear that. Unfortunately, RP is too old. 1988 was his year.
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Chairman No. I love it.
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MAKE HIM THE SPEAKER!!!
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So be it. If he tells the truth loudly in a presidential campaign and we elect more keynsian, wiretapping, warmongerers then people can look at the results and decide who they think was right at some point int he future. My guess is that the sales/downloads of austrian economics books will go up a lot more and that is good for the world.
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Horrible article, and I'm not even a Ron Paul guy. There are some good reasons to criticize Paul, but the only one that the article even touches on (pandering to right wing populist wackaloons) has been hashed out 5 million times here and elsewhere. Paul is not a serious theorist but he does a good job of publicizing some very good libertarian ideas, and his thoughts on monetary policy and foreign policy are far better than anything being bandied about on the left or right.
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So does the author mean that only theorist are "serious thinkers"?
Regards,
TDL -
I don't know what the author meant. I think Paul is a serious thinker, but his contributions to libertarianism have been to popularize certain ideas, not to contribute new ones of his own. My statement was not meant as an insult. As an anarchist I don't really put my trust in Ron Paul, and even if I were a minarchist I would have certain misgivings, but he's easily the best (or least bad) elected official in DC.
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Sorry, but his thoughts on monetary policy, if implemented, would lead to disaster. Obama doesn't understand why -- neither does just about anyone in Congress of either party -- but it's true just the same. At this point, the only thing we have to fall back on is peoples' resistance to radical change. And serious person is listening to Paul anyway.
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How would they lead to disaster exactly?
Regards,
TDL -
Hey aren't you the guy who thought Bush's deficits were just right? If not, sorry.
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No I was not.
Regards,
TDL -
No, but I'm the guy who said that 1) ongoing deficits are necessary to economic growth in the US (or any nation with a fiat currency) and 2) that therefore it's not a matter of eliminating them, but "right-sizing" them to achieve the aim (growth), but avoid inflation.
You and a bunch of other knuckleheads read that as "this guy is bashing Democrats so he must be saying that Republican deficits were just the right size."
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You keep coming back to this - care to explain how deficit spending on the part of the government is necessary for economic growth, or is it just something you tell people with the expectation that they will accept it without debate?
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Oh, so you should centrally plan the economy better. Someone should have given this advice to the Soviets.
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Does this secure a long term contract for Harsanyi with The New Republic, or with Weekly Standard? Maybe both.
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Wrong Republic -- not New, but Free.
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The New republic just laid several people off.
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David Harsanyi is a wise fellow. Libertarians should heed his warnings.
I am a conservative libertarian who believes in a muscular and proactive (and preemptive) foreign policy (but not nation building), and who realizes the Fed and fractional reserve banking isn't a conspiracy to fleece the American people of its wealth. For me, Ron Paul wasn't a serious candidate for president.
Of course, neither was Obama, who wasn't in the slightest qualified for the office.
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I don't think the Fed was designed to steal. I just think it has failed. The biggest reason is that in the 1970s Congress decided to make the feds job to keep the economy going rather than keep prices stable. You really can't do both. And thus the fed has failed miserably at its primary job of ensuring a stable currency.
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John, I like you, and I think we agree on many things. But I'd just say, here (and suspect you'd agree) that we live in a highly imperfect world, and that, in that world, the Fed has done a better job with the economy and the currency than Congress would have likely done. I think we're lucky it was set up the way it was, compared to most of the likely alternatives.
People at the Fed understand things a lot better than they did in 1929, but they're still human after all.
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They're either corrupt or they're idiots. The Fed has done nothing but debase the currency for the past thirty years. Better than Congress? That like saying a fox is better at watching the chickens than a pack of wolfs.
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Hey better the devil I know than the one I already know will screw up everything it touches.
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His fists feel like kisses. He's a good man! Don't take him away!
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There is no doubt in my mind that Paul Volcker knew what he was doing back in the '80s. I used to have a pretty good opinion of Greenspan, but not anymore.
Bernanke, I'm not sure he really has much of any idea of what he's doing at all, but I hope I turn out to be wrong.
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The Fed came to us in 1913. Soon, it will be 2013 (unless the 2012-tards are right). Depending on whom you ask, the dollar in the 2nd decade of the 21st century is worth no more than a nickle -- maybe just two cents -- of the dollar that we had in the 2nd decade of the 20th century. Clearly, the Fed has failed SPECTACULARLY to protect the value of our currency. Any other failure of that magnitude would have been cause for heads to roll -- literally. The fact that our most recent generation of pols can do nothing but apologize for the Fed, and even hand more power to it, is just one more reason we need to sweep them out of office starting in November and for several Novembers after.
Leave no incumbent standing. They really need to get the message that the people are boss, that the "public servants" serve at the pleasure of the public, and that the public is not pleased. Sadly, electoral defeat is the only thing politicians seem to understand. So we must use that tool to make them understand.
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I bet they understand pitchforks and torches, too.
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Warren-They're either corrupt or they're idiots. The Fed has done nothing but debase the currency for the past thirty years.
I'll fix that fer ya.
The Fed has done nothing but debase the currency for the past
thirtyhundred years. -
Then, if we want to keep the Fed (which I don't), then one way to make it run better is to stop expecting it to maintain employment. Price stability will suffice.
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"I don't think the Fed was designed to steal."
So if having the ability to create money out of thin air, then loaning to the government with interest, so said government will be perpetually in debt isn't stealing what is it?
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+1
Without qualification, it is theft.
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It wasn't designed to steal. It was designed as quasi-governmental support for the fractional reserve banking cartel. The fact that it also makes it easy for the government and the well connected to steal via inflation is just a bonus.
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FED was designed to facilitate a partnership between the banking industry and the government.
Banks wanted to continue fractional reserve banking without the danger of bank runs.
Government wanted a strong cartel that would continually buy their bonds.
FED isn't being used directly by the banking industry or the government, but indirectly. That is the evil genius of it.
But in the end, two partners steal from the dollar holders (not necessarily tax payers).
Banks steal purchasing power by using the extra money and gaining interest on the money they create and lend out. Without money creation they could only lend from savings and that has a limit.
Governments steal, by the way of paying less interest than otherwise. If the FED didn't exist government couldn't finance deficits this much and this cheaply.
At the end these ill gotton gains are paid by the dollar holders, especially the savers.
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The Fed wasn't designed to steal like the kitchen knife wasn't designed to murder, but once that becomes the wielder's intent...
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"...and who realizes the Fed and fractional reserve banking isn't a conspiracy to fleece the American people of its wealth."
Whether it's a conspiracy or not isn't the issue. The real issue is that the central banking system is a bad idea.
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Amazingly popular bad idea isn't it, since every advanced industrial nation has embraced it? There just might be a reason for that.
The basic reason is that the gold standard for currency is a superficially appealing but ultimately wrong idea, and returning to it now would be insanity, and would lead to economic collapse.
In any case, it will never happen, short of armed insurrection and revolution.
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Central banking bad. Must eat Bernanke's brains....crap, going to starve.
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"Amazingly popular bad idea isn't it, since every advanced industrial nation has embraced it? There just might be a reason for that."
They've also all embraced national health care. Maybe you want to join up with the president on that.
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Hey look. There's a cliff! Everyone else jumped off of it so there must be something in it for me!
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The gold standard is a straw man Draco. Is this ignorance or mendacity on your part? Have you ever read Hayek or Lawrence White on market-based competing currencies?
The reason we have central banking is that the government (i.e. the tax predator ruling class) gives a group of banks a cartel and lets them have a monopoly on creating fiat credit denominated in terms of the state monopoly currency in exchange for buying (and brokering out) government debt (i.e. "monetizing the debt"). That is, for selling China and others marketable title to tax serfs from whom loot can be extracted in the future (even unborn tax serfs).
Not because voters or citizens in every country, who have an antithetical class interest to the tax predator ruling class, understand the system and consciously decided it was good for them.
How full of shit are you?
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Oh you mean "advanced industrial nation(s)" like those in Japan, Greece, UK and the Euro nations that have been running negative GDPs throughout this crisis which was the result of the very bubbles that the Fed and other central banks created.
Someone please explain to me how a currency that has a real, tangible value would "lead to economic collapse." Heaven forbid if governments actually had to possess the money they spent! They might actually have to appropriate funds only for real necessities rather than for the reelection and personal financing of national politicians' own coffers.
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Draco-"The basic reason is that the gold standard for currency is a superficially appealing but ultimately wrong idea, and returning to it now would be insanity, and would lead to economic collapse.
The US left the gold standard in the early 70s when Nixon abandoned the Bretton Wood Accords. Not in the 30s as progs love to claim.
So, you shouldn't hate the gold standard, unless you think the years 75-2005 were economically better than 1945-1975.
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...it will never happen, short of armed insurrection and revolution....
Where do I sign up?
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I don't think ron paul thinks it's a conspiracy (beyond the literal definition), either. I mean I think most end-the-fed leaners really do think that those running the fed don't have malicious intent - the notion of controlling growth and pegging it to, say a 'stable 2%' really is appealing.
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literal definition, as in, 'people conspiring together'.
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As if the clandestine trip to Jekyll Island was what, a lesson in transparency?
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The actual trip to Jekyll Island is a conspiracy theory written about by a anti-semite. Next you'll tell us that the bankers wanted to get us into WW1...you are insane. Read some serious history.
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[citation needed]
On all of the Jekyll Island shit...
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Fractional reserves and maturity transformations are inherently unstable. A deviation outside the norm of economic activity (such as we are witnessing today) lead to multiple bankruptcies among financials.
Regards,
TDL -
"I am a conservative libertarian who believes in a muscular and proactive (and preemptive) foreign policy" = "I like to kill brown people."
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Agreed. Too bad Paul's immigration policies are pretty hostile to brown people.
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Re: Tristan Band,
Agreed. Too bad Paul's immigration policies are pretty hostile to brown people.
Proof? Because saying it is so does NOT make it so, just because you said it - after all, who the F. are you?
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It would be nice if the folks at Reason at least were willing to debate folks like Paul and Hoppe on the issue of immigration.
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You are an idiot. Typical of the left-wing libertarian rabble, though.
I don't "like" to kill anyone. But when someone is a threat, and it's either me or him, he's done for. Even a left-wing libertarian should be able to understand that.
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Preemptive war means you want to attack a country if if you think it has the potantial to be a threat in the future. Basically what it ultimately boils down to is that you have the right to attack anyone for any reason. You can't support preemptive war and be a libertarian.
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I am all for premptive strikes against actual weapons and tyrants who have them and say they plan to kill people with them.
But all the trillions Draco's friends have spent on centrally planned defense services seem to have been used for bungled nation building, destroying weapons that were either never there or had already been moved, and for teaching Americans to accept regimentation whenever they get on a plane.
Meanwhile it seems to be the case that anyone who wants to drop a plane on an American citizen in Manhattan, northern Virginia or Texas can do it, and the main reason planes don't blow up in mid-flight is because of direct action by private citizens.
So I think Paul's critique is validated. We need to denationalize defense services. Then airlines and (privatized) airports can just hire Israelis or someone who knows what they are doing to run things.
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No, but you can write for Cato or Reason.
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In my lifetime the US military has attacked, oh, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq (multiple times), Panama, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Somalia, El Salvador, Libya, Honduras, Bolivia, Columbia, Sudan, Pakistan, Yemen...and I'm probably missing a lot of others.
In my lifetime, the United States has never been attacked by any of those countries. Just about everyone of the countries the US has attacked have been economic basket cases with no ability to project military force. My interests, nor the interest of my family, friends, or anyone I know have never been threatened by any of these countries.
I totally agree with the concept of using force in self-defense. The US has been attacked in a major way all of two times in the last century--at Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Last time I checked, 9/11 was carried out by a bunch of Saudis. So the only country we would be justified in attacking is Saudi Arabia. They are pretty much the only country we don't attack. Attacking Saudi Arabia would be hugely beneficial to the world. We'd likely break up OPEC, and I don't think any of us here like cartels. And by flattening Mecca and Medina we'd undermine faith in one of the stupidest belief systems on the planet. Now that is a war I can get behind. Beyond that, I see no reason to go bombing anyone else.
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In my lifetime, the United States has never been attacked by any of those countries.
I can't agree completely with this assessment.
Afghanistan - 9/11
Libya - The bombings of the nightclub in Germany and the Pan Am flightYou can further argue that Al Qaeda, while not a country, receives substantial support from the elements within the governments throughout the Islamic world. We have currently chosen not to deal with the material support they receive from these governments, though the case can be made that aiding groups in attacks on the citizens of the United States is tantamount to waging war against us.
Also, the nationality of the 9/11 hijackers does not determine where military force can be applied in the prevention of future terrorist attacks. They received assistance and safe-haven from the then government of Afghanistan. The Christmas Day bomber was Nigerian who was trained in Yemen, but a bombing and subsquent invasion of Lagos is not warranted.
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Ok here come the conspiracy nuts. Next we are gonna hear some lies about the Bin Ladens being friends witht he Bushes or Henry Kissinger. The myths with these people never stop. Kissinger doesn't even have anything to do with our foreign policy.
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But when someone is a threat, and it's either me or him, he's done for.
Very few people disagree with the use of force for self defense. It is the categorization of "threat" that is at issue. Having mustard gas and Saran and being on the other side of the planet doesn't constitute a reasonable threat under any circumstances.
It really is true - with this "logic," you can justify attacks on anyone.
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"David Harsanyi is a wise fellow."
Thanks for informing me that he's a wise fellow, for there is no I would have figured that out on my own after reading this crap.
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"who realizes the Fed and fractional reserve banking isn't a conspiracy to fleece the American people of its wealth."
You apparently do not know who owns the private stock in the Federal Reserve Banks that you and I can not own because we are not part of that privileged class that benefits from the outright rape and pillage of our US treasury.
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"Muscular Foreign Policy".
I see, another right wing insecure closet case. Why not try sneaking off to the rest stop or a public park in the middle of the night to get your fix, when the misses is asleep, instead of getting your rocks off when the State kills foreigners?
At least at the rest stop or the park you can actually get off.
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Yeah! No nation building, just nation destroying! Liberty for us, bitches! The rest of the world can suck it!
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Agree with Deluded.
Having read one of Paul's books, I'd say his positions are well thought out and not wacky or half-baked. Also, he's one of the few politicians who has a consistent platform. You don't get stuff like "I'm for personal freedom unless it involves national security" or "I'm for the little guy unless there is a union or campaign donation involved".
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don't normally comment, since my small hands prevent me from eating Whoppers and typing.... but this article was just bad. Not up to Reason's high standards.
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What a load. How can Harsanyi seriously dismiss Paul's economic analysis, especially in light of the fact that he largely predicted the economic crisis before it happened? One of the lamest pieces I've read in Reason in a long time.
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especially in light of the fact that he largely predicted the economic crisis before it happened?
In fact, he's predicted 12 of the last 3 economic crises.
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In fact, he's predicted 12 of the last 3 economic crises.
He predicted the current one. He did not make 12 predictions, he just mentioned THIS one more than 12 times in the span of several years, and said exactly the reason why it would happen.
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As someone who has been inclined to gravitate to Ron Paul, without necessarily having done a lot of homework on his ideas, I was interested to hear what Mr. Harsanyi had to say. Unfortunately it's not much. This piece insults Mr. Paul without providing any real evidence to back it up. I'd very much like to have read some serious criticism.
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Terrible article and a hatchet job.
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Duckspeak.
No evidence given to the contrary, anyway.
And by the way -- I fundamentally disagree with Paul on monetary theory. Not that it seems likely the author would be interested in understanding the concepts involved though, were I to expound.
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whenever someone writes "half-baked" i get hungry for peanutty chocolate half baked cookies!
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Hot baked chocolate cake with vanilla bean ice cream and hot fudge sauce...
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Let's, for a moment, forget David Harsanyi (and how I wish this could be a permanent condition, considering the hack is neither a serious journalist nor—and I can't stress this enough—a serious student).
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+1
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Paul's newsletters of the '80s and '90s were filled with anti-Semitic and racist rants, proving his slumming in the ugliest corners of conspiracyland today is no mistake.
Ah! Now I see why Harasanyiiiiiiiiiiii (sp?) has his blinders on. He can't see past the rogue anti-Semites that slipped one or two articles into Paul's newsletters from the...1980s? Jeez! Get over it!
Paul is, by all lights, one of the most decent politicians around (definitely THE most decent one who will make a run for POTUS anytime soon).
He definitely isn't the raging anti-Semite that you implicate (using *implicature*, that is) him to be...unless you consider not being Israel's fluffer grounds for accusing someone of being one.
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Well, regardless of whether RP was in any way responsible for the content of the newsletters, they will follow him for the rest of his life. Practically, this means he's not electable as pres.
We can either accept this and adjust our strategy accordingly, or play the denial game then wonder why we never win elections.
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Tonio,
Well, regardless of whether RP was in any way responsible for the content of the newsletters, they will follow him for the rest of his life. Practically, this means he's not electable as pres.
I don't think it will be because of the newsletters. It will be because he's not fascist enough for this nation, not akin to those in the Pantheon of fascists the USA has elevated to the highest post.
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Old Mexican, you are one of my favorite commenters on Reason. Keep it up.
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If only he had just fucked a hireling and then drowned her to cover up the pregnancy when she wouldn't abort. Or murdered a starlet who thought he really loved her because she let him have some strange. Or enjoyed smoking cigars christened in vajayjay. Or had made a sex tape of himself with a New Age loon concubine on his campaign payroll.
The media would have never dug into any of that.
It's his god damn Christianity that's the problem!
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http://goo.gl/TnJ9
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Thank you for that link. I like this part especially...
"Ron Paul is, in many ways, the exact opposite of the Beltway fake-“libertarians.” He’s a populist: they suck up to power, he challenges the powers-that-be; they go along to get along – he has never gone along with the conventional wisdom as defined by the arbiters of political correctness, Left and Right. And most of all, he’s an avowed enemy of the neoconservatives, whom he constantly names as the main danger to peace and liberty – while the Beltway’s tame “libertarians” are in bed with them, often literally as well as figuratively."
That last line is a little over the top, but whatever. Stick it to 'em Justin!
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Let it be clear: I'm in favor of ending central banking. I'm in favor of free banking, where banks can issue their own commodity or fiat currency while competing for customers. I'm against imperialism and nation building, and in favor of cutting military spending to boot.
However, I don't thing Ron Paul is the best person for the job. First of all, he's an old man; he's not getting any younger. His newsletters were unmistakably awful. But, those are not the reasons I don't support him.
His immigration policy is the worst sort of paleoconservative tripe. Very unlibertarian. Would artificially restrict the supply of skilled and unskilled labor, and violate the rights of immigrants.
Lastly, his books are simplistic regurgitations of Mises. Rothbard, and Hayek. Those three have gone into more detail and depth on the same issues. We don't need Ron Paul to implement these ideas.
Further, the dirt that's on him wouldn't just affect him; it would destroy libertarianism as well. We cannot keep it a secret in this day and age, and nor should we.
Listen to David, guys. I'm just as libertarian as the rest of you.
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Your post is what the article might have been, not necessarily in content, but in substance, had the author been even a slight bit interested in exercising the old grey matter.
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Re: Tristan Band,
His newsletters were unmistakably awful.
Oh, you read them all?
His immigration policy is the worst sort of paleoconservative tripe. Very unlibertarian.
Really? I gathered an entirely different policy from him, and I am an immigrant.
Would artificially restrict the supply of skilled and unskilled labor, and violate the rights of immigrants.
Wow - - - Uh, how?
Lastly, his books are simplistic regurgitations of Mises. Rothbard, and Hayek. Those three have gone into more detail and depth on the same issues. We don't need Ron Paul to implement these ideas.
Because Mises, Hayek and Rothbard can do this themselves - now that they're all dead, right???
Further, the dirt that's on him wouldn't just affect him; it would destroy libertarianism as well.
What dirt? Did he make a love child? Did he work with Acorn and then lied about it? Did he have sex with the fat intern? I mean, what could this man do that would amount to be called "dirt"?
Listen to David, guys. I'm just as libertarian as the rest of you.
"There's no one else here but us chickens!"
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Old Mexican wrote: 'I am an immigrant.'
Completely OT, but you know what? I just realized that I've always taken your moniker, subconsciously (I assume, since I just realized it), to be some obscure reverse reference to the state of New Mexico. And now, I am completely confused as to whether that realization is supposed to speak for or against my underlying racist nature. You just gotta love the mind fuck that is political correctness. Sheesh.
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I use the moniker because, first, I AM from Mexico, and second, as a way to lampoon Neu Mejican, another poster here (he's the one from New Mexico.)
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Thanks, now that you mention it, that's probably the deal. Carry on...
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I thought you took the name because you're from Mexico and you're old...
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Well, I'm not old. I'm still foxy, but I thought Foxy Mexican sounded too vane.
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Dude, you're a girl.
Didn't see that one coming.
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That's the 2nd time you've made the inane, "oh, you've read the all," comment regarding the newsletters. That's an absurd standard. I don't have to have read every issue of Reason Magazine cover to cover to have an opinion on it. The same goes for any other publication.
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Re: pmains,
That's the 2nd time you've made the inane, "oh, you've read the all," comment regarding the newsletters.
There's nothing inane about pointing out an absurd statement like: "His newsletters were unmistakably awful."
He didn't say some, he didn't say "those I did read". NO, his assertion implies ALL.
"All absolutist statements are wrong."
[Disclaimer: The above is a funny aphorism] -
If his libertarian is so big he should whip it out and show it. Until then I don't believe him.
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"His immigration policy is the worst sort of paleoconservative tripe. Very unlibertarian. Would artificially restrict the supply of skilled and unskilled labor, and violate the rights of immigrants."
Bullcrap, I was just watching a video of him in a debate that happened 4 days ago and he came of as pretty pro-immigration. -
I agree with much of what you say. (though you seem to think regurgitating Mises, Rothbard, and Hayek is a bad thing?) However, for all his faults Paul is still a bazillion times less Douchebag than any other voice on the political stage.
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Fair points about his age. His views on immigration though are not Tancredo type. Everything Ive heard him say is that in a ideal world workers would be invited legally to come and work by business owners in a truly free market. Has he called for restriction of illegal immigration? Sure. This is not a simple mess to clear up and is a good example where the question of applying the most consistent libertarian theory to an actual real world problem is tricky. Frankly Rep Paul is doing the best job of it.
As for "regurgitation" of Rothbard, etc, so? Every generation of young folks should be introduced to these authors. May he write many more level headed books.
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"His immigration policy is the worst sort of paleoconservative tripe. Very unlibertarian. Would artificially restrict the supply of skilled and unskilled labor, and violate the rights of immigrants" - His views are extremely libertarian. You as a property owner aren't obligated to allow folks onto your property; same goes with immigration. And on the non-libertarian side the idea of wanting to eliminate illegal/undocumented immigration is not the same as wanting to restrict documented/legal immigration. If we had an ancap society immigration would likely be even tighter.
And as far as the newsletters are concerned; I'd rather have a closet bigot in office who doesn't try to impose his racist views on others through legislation than someone who tries to impose love and tolerance and multicultural/multiracial harmony through the coercive power of the state.
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A "closet bigot" doesn't put a racist newsletter for a decade...
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>Lastly, his books are simplistic regurgitations of Mises. Rothbard, and Hayek. Those three have gone into more detail and depth on the same issues. We don't need Ron Paul to implement these ideas.
Because there are so many other politicians stepping up to the plate...
Hayek/Mises 2012!
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Are you serious?
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How can you say that a guy who has been in the House for years isn't a serious politician? Pretty unserious criticism here.
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I quit reading this retarded article the second it said gold standard. You'd think writers could write facts once in a while. Competing currencies doesn't equal gold standard.
I love Reason but god you're so dumb sometimes. You guys act just like Fox News, where when it is politically acceptable and Paul is not in the lime light Reason will align itself with him and/or his views, but the second he gets an once of attention or does something significant Reason has to dig up any possible reason to dismiss him. Its like they're scared what the National Review will think. Disgusting.
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hmm, different Tyler? Maybe I should get a handle.
Luckily, you said basically the same thing I was going to. This article is unoriginal, poorly thought-out, weakly argued, and if it's in the least bit "libertarian" I'm worried about the libertarian movement.
The sad thing is, it's not even really conservative. I don't know what you'd call it... big-government establishmentarianism for the sake of being liked by the right people?
Disgusting.
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Sorry about that, didn't know there was another an original Tyler. But I agree.
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Hey! Get out of my head!
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>implying anyone cares what people at the National Review think about anything
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If you guys will hold the Reason editors down I will spank them. Hard. Until they pink up nicely.
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Paul's newsletters of the '80s and '90s were filled with anti-Semitic and racist rants, proving his slumming in the ugliest corners of conspiracyland today is no mistake.
Unfortunately, for faux and Beltway "libertarians", any essay arguing against giving away stolen money (what some of you call with a morbid sense of humor "taxes") to Israel, as "foreign aid", or any essay to stop financing criminality through the welfare state, is ipso facto either "anti-Semitic" or "racist", end of discussion. That is what passes for logical discourse for the likes of Mr. Harsanyi.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Paul is that thousands of intellectually curious young people will have read his silly books, including End the Fed, as serious manifestoes.
Now we have the pleasure of having Mr. Harsanyi's 10 second book review of "End The Fed": The book is silly. Thank you, Mr. Harsanyi. I read the book before I got the opportunity to read your sage opinion on it, and unfortunately agreed with the arguments in it before knowing what your fine mind had decided regarding it. If I only was prescient enough to know what you thought about it . . .
His obsession with long-decided monetary policy[...]
Long decided . . . despite what sound economics and reality have shown. Seems that for Mr. Harsanyi, if Big Government decided it, then it IS decided, never mind the title of his book: The Nanny State.
[...] and isolationism are not his only half-baked crusades.
. . . Because nothing is friendlier and wordlier than sticking your nose in other people's affairs and killing their descendants. Instead, minding your business and keeping your opinions about others to yourself is the hallmark of "isolationism."
For Mr. Harsanyi, "isolationist" is the person that does not want to use stolen money to finance wars. Good to know, David!
Ok, Reason staff - who said this guy was a libertarian? HR would like a word with you . . .
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http://goo.gl/TnJ9
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Let me be sure I have this straight. You guys endorse liberty, right? You are supposed to be a libertarian publication, right? And so the basic strategy, like during the campaign, is to discredit and marginalize the only national figure who actually promotes libertarian views? Or maybe it's time for a piece entitled "The libertarian Case for Palin" or, maybe, "The libertarian case for Ghouliani", yeah, that's the ticket!
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I am stunned. Harsanyi is usually a very good voice of the more moderated libertarianism. I have had the opportunity to speak with him several times. I have read his book "Nanny State". This article will be a blemish on his reputation in my opinion. Not that I am some big RP guy. While I like RP I am a big L and therefore am working that angle. What I don't like about the article is what has already been said. It is not substantive, it shows David as favoring the more interventionist policies, it shows that he is ignorant about history AND monetary policy. RP may not be the prefect choice for the Repukicans but he is BY FAR the best thing they have...they will never realize that however. This is another example of why I chose the long, unrewarding, painful road of 'another party'. The repubs can't be saved. Shame on you David for joining the ranks of Scott Brown, John McCain, and Newt Gingrich.
Alos, I believe Reason has a standing deal with David to re-post his articles. He writes for the Denver Compost twice a week...the source of these articels.
Weeping Statue of Liberty
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There are thoughtful criticisms to be made of Ron Paul. This article didn't make any.
The criticisms he does make aren't even quite on the mark. While Paul certainly believes in abolishing the Fed, what I heard in his campaign was allowing competition in central banking function (de-central banking?). I thought that was a clever political angle.
And I say this as no big fan of Dr. Paul -- I voted against his nomination in '88; I didn't give money in '08 (and didn't vote for him in the primary because, um, I'm not a Republican).
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Harsanyi did not have one good reason for criticizing Paul's policies other than their being "silly." Why, might I ask, are they "silly"?
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Harsanyi no longer belongs on reason.com if he is going to put out pieces as elementary as this one.
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This is the worst article I've ever seen in Reason. Absolute dreck.
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Agreed.
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I'm rethinking another contribution to Reason in the wake of that festering pile of horseshit. I can get that sort of garbage for free in the MSM.
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+1
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I have no problem with critical analysis of Paul's positions and actions, and he's gotten his share of it at Reason. The guy has his faults. But this is the type of non-substantive "that guy sucks because I said so" piece that regularly gets blogged about and heavily ridiculed here. Disappointing.
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Social issues are far more complex—and they always have been, despite caricatures. But the reality is that most of the cultural issues that divide Americans have been mired in political stalemates. You can debate abortion all day long; policy won't be changing.
Policies never change, until they do.
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This would be OK as a blog post, especially if it were shorter. But as a full-fledge piece it's easily the worst I have read on this site in months. Since when does rehashed, substance-free criticism deserve this many words? The only thing this article makes me want to do is punch DH in the face, and I'm a nonvoting anarchist with no real love for Paul the politician (although as others have said already, the he's best of a sorry sack).
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For a magazine called Reason...
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What an idiot!
Earth to Harsanyi: Ron Paul favors competing currencies in the market, not a government administered gold standard!
There were no legitimate points made in this article. Ron Paul is growing libertarianism and proper free-market economics the fastest it's ever grown!
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After this, I don't know if I can respect anything Harsanyi writes, or anything Reason publishes for that matter.
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Articles like these will prove to be the death of Reason.
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I'm shocked that Lew Rockwell hasn't disapprovingly linked to this yet. He never wastes the chance to say "tREASON", you know.
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Sadly, he gets a lot of chances.
War is the biggest personal liberty issue imaginable, and all of Lew's writers got that one right, while several of Nick's failed.
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Well said.
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http://www.lewrockwell.com/blo.....51686.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blo.....51686.html
Harsanyi brings in Boaz in his hit piece on Paul. Woods brings in Mises, Hazlitt, Hayek, and Richard Cobden( 19th century classical liberal) in his hit piece on Harsanyi. In a debate of ideas and history folks likes Woods would eat Harsanyi for lunch. Unless you got a room full of morons who are swayed by shrieks of "neo-confederate!!". Namely those who have never read Acton* or actually read or listened to what Woods and DiLorenzo, among others, have to say about the Civil War.
*"I grieve more for what was lost at Appomattox than I rejoice at what was gained at Waterloo." - Lord Acton
Acton wasn't a supporter of slavery, but like most classical liberals of his time understood the dangers of the centralizing state.
I've yet to hear folks actually criticize the historical research of Woods and DiLorenzo, without distorting it and claiming they support slavery and the Confederacy and not just the right of the Confederacy(or any other state, locale, and ultimately individual) to secede from the Union.
Reason are intellectual lightweights compared to the LRC crowd, Blink 82 to the Agnostic Front. They've confused watering down ideas for smart compromise, and name calling for wit. Doherty is decent and I like Drew Carey's pieces, but this big tent "You're a libertarian if you believe in preemptive war and a large central state" bullshit has got to end.
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I think Lew was reading this!
Cause we got the tReason blog post...
And it was well deserved. This article sucks.
Doherty did put out a positive piece today on Paul though.
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Harsayani disappoints. He's usually an interesting commentator, but working face control at a club called Serious is a waste of his talent.
If I were in the mood, I would start a list of execrable politicians who Harsayani does consider serious. Wouldn't that say it all?
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Silly conservatives! Ron Paul is the only legitimate candidate on your side of the aisle, and this is how you treat him? Are all of you guys like Harsanyi? If so, the end of conservatism/libertarianism is near!
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Are all of you guys like Harsanyi?
No.
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conservatism/libertarianism
The two isms are so far from each other that it staggers me that anyone would conflate them. There's very little about the present state that we want to conserve, dude.
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The constitution is still there.
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Harsanyi has shown his true colors and chosen to be on the side of the redneck good ol boys.
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I agree. Since when has Reason supported thinkers like this? There is not a hint of reason in this article! I don't know how I can respect Gillespie or Reason after reading this.
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"I don't know how I can respect Gillespie or Reason after reading this."
You mean, you did up until now?
*Gulp*
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I haven't read the article, and despite my name, I'm not a Paul-ite... but taking the articles premise at face value, who else is left?
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Seriously? That's the article? I clicked on it expecting some specific criticizing of his policies, but instead it was just " he is aracist and an isolationist"
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Calling it thin gruel would be an insult to gruel.
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I honestly wonder if this article is a joke.
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Reason is so corporate orientated these days, it's perilously close to fascism. Cutting the government out of the equation altogether and letting the corporations run the country is not a libertarian stand... no matter how the cash and prizes it can bring to the quisling waterboy Koch-suckers who write here.
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What is wrong with wanting to end the FED and placing the currency under the control of congress as per the constitution?
Note to Reason: If you must publish this guy, could you ask him to explain?
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That's not how it works. The article is supposed to be the explanation. If some unforeseen questions come up, then maybe the author might be called upon to explain them, but this is something different.
Harsayani's good sometimes, too.
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After reading this, I honestly do not think am going to renew my subscription to Reason Magazine. This is crap, and either they need to quit pblishing Harsanyi or apologize for the publishing of this article.
I am not a Ron Paul fan, but I do repect him as a fellow libertarian. To criticze him without any reason like this is childish.
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I'm with you. I am in email contact with David in hopes that he will retract this article after I pointed him to the facts and post an apology and an update. It's a disgrace to those us who don't think this is a game. It's not about Ron Paul. It's about the message, he just happens to be the only one in Washington speaking it.
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Paul's newsletters of the '80s and '90s were filled with anti-Semitic and racist rants, proving his slumming in the ugliest corners of conspiracyland today is no mistake.
Unfortunately, for faux and Beltway "libertarians", any essay arguing against giving away stolen money (what some of you call with a morbid sense of humor "taxes") to Israel, as "foreign aid", or any essay to stop financing criminality through the welfare state, is ipso facto either "anti-Semitic" or "racist", end of discussion. That is what passes for logical discourse for the likes of Mr. Harsanyi.Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Paul is that thousands of intellectually curious young people will have read his silly books, including End the Fed, as serious manifestoes.
Now we have the pleasure of having Mr. Harsanyi's 10 second book review of "End The Fed": The book is silly. Thank you, Mr. Harsanyi. I read the book before I got the opportunity to read your sage opinion on it, and unfortunately agreed with the arguments in it before knowing what your fine mind had decided regarding it. If I only was prescient enough to know what you thought about it . . .His obsession with long-decided monetary policy[...]
Long decided . . . despite what sound economics and reality have shown. Seems that for Mr. Harsanyi, if Big Government decided it, then it IS decided, never mind the title of his book: The Nanny State.[...] and isolationism are not his only half-baked crusades.
. . . Because nothing is friendlier and wordlier than sticking your nose in other people's affairs and killing their descendants. Instead, minding your business and keeping your opinions about others to yourself are the hallmarks of "isolationism."For Mr. Harsanyi, "isolationist" is the person that does not want to use stolen money to finance wars. Good to know, David!
Ok, Reason staff - who said this guy was a libertarian? HR would like a word with you . . .
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Good luck with that "donate!" button.
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Ha! Agreed. See if I ever donate to Reason again.
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I honestly thought you worte "detonate!" button, and almost fell for it. Oh, my dyslexia...
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Reason, Drop Harsanyi from your contributors or I'm dropping your magazine.
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Hey Reason! With this article, I am cancelling my subscription.
Are you being paid by the GOP establishment or something?
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Sort of, I guess.
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Mr. Harsanyi, you write for Reason.com yet this piece provides very little reason to back your claim that Dr. Paul should not be a leader of libertarian conservatism.
Please write a followup article in which you provide definitive reasons why you disagree with Dr. Paul.
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Harsanyi is a fake. His Facebook says he's a fan of Hayek - and yet he writes THIS?
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Well, maybe for him, being a fan does not mean following his economic theories. After all, David Harsanyi thinks that monetary policy as "long decided", probably meaning decided for us by the Gunvermint and the banksters.
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How does slop like this get posted in a magazine that takes itself serious?
"If only it stopped there. Paul isn't a traditional conservative. His obsession with long-decided monetary policy and isolationism are not his only half-baked crusades."
For millenia it was "long-decided" that kings were given their power through god. Would the Reason editorial board present similar smearing defenses based on such "logic" to have entered their pages when that idea was questioned during the Enlightenment Era??
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With friends like Reason, who needs enemies?
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QFT
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That article read like an HnR post by some republican troll.
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Take note Chad/Tony and MNG, this is how trolling is done.
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Summary of Reason Columnist views:
Moynihan: If you are not a cold warrior then your a hippy communist. The Vietnam war had to be done to protect us from communism.
Harsanyi: Keynes was right, it has been decided for a long time by the most serious deciders. To argue against Keynes is silly. The Fed is good and we have great Monetary policy. We also need to keep bombing brown people regardless of cost, because it is so popular and just good. Besides Ron Paul is a anti-semite so we need to torture more people and invade more countries.
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Good summary. Pretty much this guy's bullshit, in a nutshell.
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I think you meant to write "serious deciderer"
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I can't recall ever writing in defense of Vietnam. But the Cold Warrior label is fair...
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Gulf of Tonkin is a conspiracy theory right?
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only wackos would question the government justifications for war....sound familiar?
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When will the Buckleyite cold warriors admit they did more damage to this country thant he USSR ever could have?
from Rothbard:Thus, take one of Buckley's early efforts, "A Young Republican's View," published in Commonweal, January 25, 1952. Buckley began the article in unexceptionable libertarian fashion, affirming that the enemy is the State, and endorsing the view of Herbert Spencer that the State is "begotten of aggression and by aggression." Buckley also contributed excellent quotations from such leading individualists of the past as H.L. Mencken and Albert Jay Nock, and criticized the Republican Party for offering no real alternative to the burgeoning of statism. But then in the remainder of the article he gave the case away, for there loomed the alleged Soviet menace, and all libertarian principles had to go by the board for the duration. Thus, Buckley declared that the "thus far invincible aggressiveness of the Soviet Union" imminently threatens American security, and that therefore "we have to accept Big Government for the duration – for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged … except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores."
the guy worked for the military industrial complex to promote war from within a traditionally anti-war element of the country...enough said.
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His book is called The Nanny State. The subtitle is: How It Is Better To Have The State Be The Nanny Of The Foreign Brown People Than Have It Here.
Because, after all, he's no isolationist, right?
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Yeah, the use of that term in particular shows a very weak understanding of Pauls principled position, which is actually non-interventionism.
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Do people like David "I'm a shill of myself" Harsanyi write whatever they feel like writing without doing adequate research? Outsource his job, I say. Free market FTW!
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Great Article! I had my thoughts on Ron Paul, but after reading all of the stuff that you posted on your article, I must say that those thoughts have been cemented. Ron Paul is the most evil person in the United States.
Thank you for the analysis and the insight into this crazy man. Where can I sign up for more of your articles? You are a great writer.
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His next book will be a defense of the Fed and Treasury ‘Take my money please”
Followed by a book on foreign interventionism “”Occupation, or how to make friends and influence people”
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or "Serious Foreign Policy- how to make a country safer by killing millions of foreigners, thousands of the natives and bankrupting the taxpayers"
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So a serious candidate is a republican that supports government-run insurance, deficit spending, nation building, bailouts, farm subsidies, government-run schools, etc. Because that's what the rest of the republicans have supported and continue to support. This article is Olbermann-esq nonsense.
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a robust and proactive national defense.
Let's be clear - the GOP/Neocon approach for the past 10 years has been ruinously expensive, shortsighted and counterproductive. Since 2000 the GOP has succeeded in weakening the US, and strengthening Iran, China and Russia. Great job guys. The Paul approach is actually the "robust and proactive" one if you care about America.
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The policy of building and expanding bases, while bombing people all over the world creates more enemies than it kills. We fund this by borrowing trillions of dollars from some of the people the establishment tells us are potential enemies(Russia, China, Oil producing countries). We are at record debt levels now and the economic conditions continue to deteriorate. How is this "robust"? Create more enemies while bankrupting the country is a recipe for disaster. Even if it is "popular" which DH claims...it is oonly popular amongst the most shortsighted of people. However, msot people agree that the least popular part of the Bush/Cheney era was the foriegn policy, if the rpeublicans really want victories then this is a place to start modifying strategy, especially given the fact that Obama has kept the same unpopular policies as Bush(Gates didn't even change jobs!).
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I have yet to see a shred of evidence that bombing people "all over the world" is making America more enemies. The neocons are wrong about nation-building and they brought great ruin to America but RPs no-foreign-policy foreign policy is suicidal.
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Re: Cytotoxic,
I have yet to see a shred of evidence that bombing people "all over the world" is making America more enemies.
Quite right, because people actually like to be bombed by the US.
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I see no evidence that bankrupting this country is a bad thing, therefore I have to say that the only serious option is to bomb lots of brown people and bankrupt our own country...it is the only moral option as well. If we don't do this then how will my shares in Lockheed Martin continue to rise?!! ya I didn't think you could answer that you stupid anti-semitic paleos.
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Wow, with that quality of argument I need not do anything other than declare victory. I win!
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Cytotoxic is right,
These islam loving appeasers who advocate no foreign policy at all
are probably Al Qaeda types(probably the dificult to track down white Al Qaeda) that we haven't been able to capture yet, but now that we have captured the #2 terrorist in the entire network we will be tracking them down soon and dropping bombs on their entire village if I get my way.Sure there will be collateral damage and some people will just be at the wedding party to throw a couple of stones at the women being gang-raped as part of the islamic celebration and I do feel bad for these people, but it is either us or them and even my democratic friends can agree that is a easy choice. There is little evidence that when people are bombed like this that it really makes anyone angry, the orphaned children quickly adjust to life as normal and they will probably thank us when they learn that we have actually saved them from living under a cruel dictator. The experts agree that these orphans actually liek the new found freedom of being able to stay up and watch tv as long as they want without being bossed around my annoying parents. It is difficult to imagine how any survivors would want to get revenge. No the real danger comes from Islamic Fundamentalist and that is why we must continue to support Saudi Arabia royalty...they help us limit the islamic element over there.
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Um. What?
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You're a supporter of horrific, orphan-making, and short-sighted policies that anyone with common sense can see creates a class of survivors willing to find absolution whether proactively or passively, rationally or irrationally, against those they deem responsible, that's what.
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Is Radley Balko the only reason to come to Reason anymore?
Garbage piece through and through, whether you are a Ron Paul fan or not. If I wanted this kind of baseless un-researched garbage agenda pieces I'd read the NYT.
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Good luck with that "donate" button after publishing this crap.
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Stop linking to this article and the site. Don't give Reason any more ad money. They think they can come up with any "article" with Ron Paul's name in it and get traffic money?
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I doubt that traffic money even covers their expenses.
Harsayani, who now gets to sell a putatively libertarian anti-Paul opinion to liberty-hating newspaper editors all over the country, on the other hand, will probably benefit financially from this.
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I just read all these comments and thank god the drinking game wasn't on...
I'm no fan of Ron Paul, and took much heat for it a couple of years ago, but this column was really awful on several levels, as many above me have pointed out. There are indeed good criticisms to be made (although his opposition to central banking is NOT one of them), but there is just no substance here.
It's time to send DH away, not because of what he thinks but because he's mailing it in with crap like this.
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Why the Texas congressman does not represent the future of conservatism.
Good! I am GLAD!
Jerk.
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"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance."
James Madison"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws."
Mayer Amschel Rothschild, 1790"I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution - taking from the federal government their power of borrowing."
Thomas Jefferson, 1798"Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce... And when you realise that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate."
James Garfield 1881"The financial system has been turned over to... the federal reserve board. That board administers the finance system by authority of... a purely profiteering group. The system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other peoples money."
Rep Charles A, Lindbergh (R-MN)"We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board... This evil institution has impoverished... the people of the United States... and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through... the corrupt practice of the moneyed vultures who control it."
Rep. Louis T, McFadden (R-PA)"Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders... The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and... manipulates the credit of the United States."
Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ)Ando so on. Harsanyi is now with Steve 'Medium Inflation' Chapman on my 'never to read' list. Balko is all you guys have left. Almost makes me wish I has a subscription so I could cancel it.
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Madison? Jefferson? Goldwater?
Harrumphs Harsanyi, "Cranks everyone of 'em!"
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Seriously? With the isolationism thing again? Don't you guys have a dictionary?
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Isolationism is in the media’s big book of scary evil words and if you are going to write a hit piece it’s almost obligatory for a “journalist” to use it when mentioning foreign policy.
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boy they really came out of the woodwork for this! how many of you were donors in the first place, anyway?
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I've been a subscriber to Reason for nearly 30 years. Things like this are making me reconsider that.
Much like the LP, as I've become more strongly anti-government, Reason has become more pro-government.
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I'm not a fan of Ron Paul because of the newsletters, some of which went out to the more "colorful" conservatives in my family. (Yep. Seen them. Yep, he said that. Yep, he was a bit racist.)
But this article is namecalling and nothing more. I would have preferred a reasoned statement and assessment.
As for him being the standard bearer for liberty, well.. I don't buy that either. Look what he's gotten done and what he's not gotten done. He's voted no. A lot. (Except when money goes to his county, then he's like everyone else) What legislation has he pushed for that has passed?
I admire some of his ambition and his ideas. But at the same time, I don't really see how he's been a good libertarian politician.
There's a guy who comes to preach at the college I went to. He says, every year, "Jesus is coming this year and you're going to hell!" He's been saying it for twenty years, from what I've been told.
Ron's done the same thing with his bills, bringing them up every year, and having them knocked back down. The persistence is admirable, but the results are negligible.
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[F]or faux and Beltway "libertarians", any essay arguing against giving away stolen money (what some of you call with a morbid sense of humor "taxes") to Israel, as "foreign aid", or any essay to stop financing criminality through the welfare state, is ipso facto either "anti-Semitic" or "racist", end of discussion.
So these newlsetters were "racist", huh?
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Yes. They were. Period.
Look, for someone who wants someone accountable for their words and actions, you should just accept that the newsletters and columns that were written in Ron Paul's name, and contained racist speech, is his responsibility.
He made a good sum of money off those newsletters. He put his name on them. Shouldn't he be accountable for what was written in his name, with his signature on it? If not , then do you really think he'll be accountable as a president?
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You Americans are funny when it comes to racism. When I read the newsletters I saw a politically incorrect critique of a victim culture, not race.
Do you think all the members of black race in the world have a ghetto culture? Do you think this ghetto culture is based on some genes? If so you must be the racist.
Also victim cultures are not unique to blacks. If you have a collective identity and if you think your ancestors have been wronged in history you act like you yourself are entitled to some special treatment. Even Armenians today only can identify themselves by the genocide and nothing else.
Wrongdoings in the past is awful but getting stuck in that state of mind in a collectivist mindset is sad really and critiquing this is not racist.
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http://goo.gl/TnJ9
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My note to the author on monetary policy, it was once "long-decided" that the earth was flat (unlike inflation since 1913).
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I'm starting to wonder if no-name "journalists" like this clown deliberately attack Dr. Paul so that someone will actually read their columns. I'll guarantee that more people read this (because it had Ron Paul's name on it) than any of the rest of the garbage that this author has ever posted. You douchebag bloggers and "journalists" can write whatever BS you want, but there is nobody else in American politics with half the common sense of the good doctor. By the way, you discredit yourself and your profession when you make up bold-faced lies about Dr. Paul being racist. His respect for individual liberty and consistent urging for equal justice under the rule of law represents the most humane ideology in politics today--Libertarianism.
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The best ticket for 2012 - Gary Johnson and Ron Paul!
This article is monetarists' delusion and doesn't help the libertarians cause. Calling Cato serious but Mises whacky is childish at best.
Let interest rates be ruled by the market and let people decide which money is worth transacting (Hayek!).
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By the way, you discredit yourself and your profession when you make up bold-faced lies about Dr. Paul being racist
he said, what he said, in his name. Let it go. He was a racist and is probably still a racialist at least.
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http://goo.gl/TnJ9
foolish people. letting your ignorance show.
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The article is such a useless piece of crap. What facts are used to support the opinions of the writer? It's simple name-calling, and not very clever at that. There's nothing reasonable about this thing so why is it on "Reason"? Reason.com, you are severely damaged. I and many others will never see you the same way again.
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Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Oh, David, what a hilariously false article! Thanks for the laugh!
PS - you probably think everything you wrote is true, which only goes to show that Reason has become far too chummy with Fox News and other NeoCon organizations. How shameful.
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Oh look another conservative craping on Ron Paul, why am I not surprised. Also before conservatives start calling Paul a racist how about they take a look in the mirror and people like Buchanan first.
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Collectively my girlfriend and I donate about $1k of our money to Reason Magazine. Collectively our little libertarian sect I'm part of donates well over 5k to Reason Magazine. I was a support of Reason Magazine well before Ron Paul ran for in 2008, but I do know a lot of people jumped onto the Reason Magazine bandwagon exclusively because of Ron Paul. It's not a good business model to pin a lot of your reads into a corner. It's simply bad customer service and I simply won't allocate anymore funds to Reason. I also know that I received 5 email links from my little libertarian circle and I'm pretty sure they won't contribute anymore.
If it was any other type of business I'd ask to speak to your supervisor, which we all know is Matt Welch, which I absolutely have nothing but contempt for. How I miss the days when he wasn't part of Reason Magazine.
I find it more disheartening that pretentious keyboard gangster blogger did a great article on how thin skinned we've become with derogatory remarks. He then uses racist rants as a talking point to dismiss Ron Paul.
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Yeah, it's pretty shocking. Thank you for taking a stand.
It's the ideas Ron Paul taught me that made me receptive to Reason in the first place.
But if shoved into a corner, I'll choose Ron over Reason anyday.
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Ron Paul has argued and voted for these ideas on free markets, monetary and foreign policies for almost 3 decades. They're nothing new. The fact that these attacks really only picked up after his 2008 presidential run is evidence of Dr. Paul's growing popularity.
Remember, if you don't draw opposition and attack from the establishment, you ARE the establishment.
This is actually great news for Ron Paul supporters. Bad news for Reason, because they are in bed with the establishment.
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What the fucking hell. I expected more from reason than claiming ron paul is a nut. Fuck you, David.
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Only the nutcases and tinfoil hat wearers amongst us are not surprised by this article. What does that tell you?
If you consider yourself libertarian and are surprised/disappointed by this article then you have not been watching very closely and you are also a bit naive.
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It's really sad when a writer gains notoriety not based on the insight of his work...but by his unsubstantiated attacks on someone of note.
Then again, this fits right in with the faux libertarianism of Reason, backed up by the "good" libertarians-CATO(the ones that the DC crowd likes cause they do just enough bootlicking). Good Forbid anyone takes the logical extension of true libertarianism to it's natural conclusion....then you are a "radical".
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This reads like a long-winded whinefest on Hot Air.
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Hearing the little cunt Malkin talk is much more painful than reading her whiny articles
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Just...I don't know...I can never understand how ridiculously stupid you think we are?? "Reason-Free minds and Free Markets" doing a hit piece on the only politician in the United States that has a life long, indisputable record of standing for free markets....
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You have to give Harsanyi credit...Ron Paul does look like a gadfly trying to change our long decided drug policies. Our drug policies are pretty popular, how would he ever be taken seriously advocating such crazy ideas. We need serious leaders who will comprimise on things that are not popular.
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You want to compromise on something that has caused more problems than it has solved, and on top of that it is immoral and unconstitutional?
Real smart.
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Do you own your body? If yes, then you can't argue for drugs being outlawed.
Also, you seem to forget that drugs were legal for quite a long time before they were outlawed. How's the war in drug working out for us? Do you really think people are going to all of the sudden start doing heroin just because it's legal?
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Just admit it. You run these anti-Paul columns to drum up page views and ad revenue.
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His obsession with long-decided monetary policy
The science is settled!!:D
I know zilch about monetary policy, so as far as I know either Harsanyi or Paul could be correct, they both could be or neither could be. But the argument "this is the way we've been doing it for years, and so we need to keep doing it this way" is fundamentally a weak one.
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i hear journalistic integrity is bolstered by making unsupported assertions about unquantifiable qualities of dubious value. Go read some Greenwald to see how much your undocumented charges of a lack of "seriousness" matter to anyone. It seems you use these sorts of ad hominem attacks to attempt to discredit people with whom you disagree. that's integrity in a nutshell. you sound like you're in substantial agreement with the folks over at RedState. go go Reason bully team!
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So who linked here? I count like, five regulars. The rest are probably sockpuppets for Jesse Benton. Hey, jesse, when are we going to get transparency on where those 2008 donations went?
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*grins* They went to buy gold, duh. :P Poof. Gone. Just like in the 80s.
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i'm not a regular commentor, but I am a Reason subscriber... and he spent most of his money during the campaign, on advertisements all throughout the primary season (more respectable than not trying when people of that state had donated to you) and paid maybe around 200k to family members for REAL work
all this petty bickering is worthless and pointless if we really care about the cause of liberty. When I look at what Paul did in 2007-8 for the liberty movement, getting voluntary donations and doing with them even in the utmost reckless manner really doesn't matter to me. You'll know why his presidential run was important 20 years from now.
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Actually, his FEC disclosures prove you wrong.
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Some rich libertarian could make me very, very happy by hiring Welch, Moynihan, and Harsayani to write exclusively about sports.
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I'm so disappointed "Reason" published this tripe.
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Kind of a silly column. Paul is for competing currencies, not a government planned gold standard.
"Long decided" monetary policy? Why expose yourself as an idiot in public Dave? Your monetary policy is teetering on the brink. It doesn't matter how many of you "decide" about it when Iran and China and Russia and India dump the dollar and Obama devalues it and there is double digit (or worse) inflation.
And non-interventionism isn't isolationism. And remind me again how the trillions in defense spending done by Bush and Clinton and Bush and Obama kept someone from dropping planes on Manhattan, the Pentagon and Austin? Perhaps you want to claim that those passengers who stopped the underwear bomber were a project funded by the stimulus bill?
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This is a horrible article. There are no specifics mentioned regarding the accusations about Dr. Paul. No one is going to agree on everything but Dr. Paul is easily the least corrupt politician in D.C. I cannot believe that Reason online, which I have much respect and admiration for, would choose to print a piece of garbage like this. Reason should be ashamed and can expect a backlash from this. Paul's ideas are as popular as ever. To say that a man who has woken up so many people to the abuses of the government and the Fed is not a serious politican is absurd. I question now whether Reason truly stands for what it says. This article will only increase Dr. Paul's popularity and the popularity of his ideas.
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a hit piece on the only politician in the United States that has a life long, indisputable record of standing for free markets
Except for that pesky NAFTA/CAFTA opposition, eh?
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managed trade != free trade
NAFTA/CAFTA = managed trade (sugar tariffs anyone?)therefore, NAFTA/CAFTA != free trade
qed
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Other than the title of those bills, what parts of NAFTA and CAFTA have anything to do with free trade?
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So NAFTA/CAFTA were about free markets and free trade - am I understanding you correctly?
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Were they better or worse than the status quo? Immediate elimination of half of the tarriffs amongst the nations, with many more phased out over 15-20 years.
Not ideal, but much better. hence why you guys are not serious libertarians.
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Better?
It depends on the perspective.
The agreement may have lowered prices in genreal. So in that part better.
But it also feeds the corporatism since only corporations that can handle the regulations of trade outlined in the agreements are better off.
I challenge you to trade anything with some individual living in Mexico and then tell us your experience.
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I think some people here suck at boolean comprehension.
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Re: The Angry Optimist,
Except for that pesky NAFTA/CAFTA opposition, eh?
You mean the controlled trade agreements? The make-believe "free" trade agreements? The agreements the USA has violated several times when it came to fulfill her obligations to the Brown People, pandering instead to the Teamster unions? THOSE agreements?
Why, the man should be tarred and feathered! Why should he oppose these two enormously bureaucratic gifts the Gunvermint gave to us the peasants?
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To counter this obvious attempt to gain revenue by attacking Ron Paul.
Please go to http://www.randpaul2010.com/ and donate at least $10.
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You can also donate to Mises.org to tick them off.
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And LewRockwell.com - that would REALLY piss them off!
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"Reason" despises Ron Paul? Color me shocked. It's pure jealousy because the Paul movement is gaining ground and very few people give a whit about this website by comparison.
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What a simple-minded prick. Just another court journalist that can't grasp the big picture. He's stuck in his place and his time; and anything else is scary. Congratulations on being an Establishment sycophant. I wonder if he ever questions why certain monetary policies have been "accepted". Ron Paul has some defects as a libertarian but the author seems to really be attacking the Mises, Rothbard school as a whole. This was an epic fail.
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I can't believe I just read this on Reason Magazine. I will be cancelling my subscription. If you are going to attack a Libertarian at least back up your shit. Your probably cointelpro, anyways.
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No one is going to agree on everything but Dr. Paul is easily the least corrupt politician in D.C.
Where did the 2008 donations go? We're still waiting on an answer for that one. 30 million dollars - for what? What did it get spent on?
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Who cares? I may be mistaken, but once a candidate's run is over, he/she has no obligation to anyone for the excess donations given to him/her through voluntary action.
I know he used some of it as seed money for CFL, I know he subsidized the cost of his Rally for the Republic with it, I know he's donated generously to YAL, and I'm sure he donates to Lew Rockwell and possibly even Reason, as well as other pro-liberty institutions.
Who's looking for an itemized list, and what would it matter if we had one? It's his money. He can burn the 30 million for all I care.
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Nobody is going to be canceling any subscriptions over this, no matter what they say. All the people who would have already did.
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First, I believe that Reason has an automatic re-posting agreement with the Denver Post for Harsanyi's columns. That is where these are written. Even printed in the actual Denver Compost rag. That does not remove the responsibility of the Reason Staff to QC shitty work. One of the most clear barometers for Harsanyi's "libertarian cred" is the comments on the post site when his articles go up. Usually they are fille with vapid vitrolic stupidty surpassed only by Andrew Sullivan. Today they are "I never thought I would agree with Harsanyi but I do on this." OBVIOUSLY this article is fucked up cause his comments NEVER say that (and that is a good thing considering the Post is a socialist agitprop piece).
Truely, Reason should reevaluate the quality of work. Not because of the anti-Paul article but because, as has been stated, the shitty argument and writing.
The Jacket! has the day off apparently
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Alright. I know you've lost four torchbearer donations for sure. I'm sure by the end of the day someone won't have a salary, or a few. Hopefully one is Matt Welch.
But, if there is anyway we can deposit money directly into Nick Gillespie account, because we still love Nick and his leather jacket.
To put it to cheesedick David in his own "priggish moralist" Denver capacity, he pulled a Kyle Orton. It must have something to do with the gay glasses you see both and him and Welsh endorse.
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You do realize that Gillespie is responsible for what appears on Reason.com, don't you?
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already emailed him and i suggest others do as well. if this guy wants to attack libertarians go knock yourself out at fox news, huffpo, cnn, redstate, etc. i dont wanna deal w/ this shit here.
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Other than the title of those bills, what parts of NAFTA and CAFTA have anything to do with free trade?
better half a loaf than none at all, folks.
So...about that 30 million dollars...
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Alright. I know you've lost four torchbearer donations for sure. I'm sure by the end of the day someone won't have a salary, or a few. Hopefully one is Matt Welch.
Yeeeaaaah right...
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Agreed with most of the comments here. If you are going to critisize make it in depth. Really lay out your reasons, don't just make a couple of aspersions. GIVE EXAMPLES.
I'm not a huge Paul fan, but we expect more out of Reason.
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Ridicule is the first and last resort of a fool.
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I want one of the Paultards to answer me: where did the 30 million dollars go?
I know 1 million of it went to Chris Cupit, to a bogus company called "Campaign Market Strategies", that doesn't even have a phone number!
So where's the rest?
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What 30 million?
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http://www.opensecrets.org/pre.....=N00005906
All the data is available to the public for all campaigns. Good website. Check it out.
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Sorry: here- www . opensecrets . org / pres08 / summary . php ?cid=N0 0005906
Delete the spaces and you're set.
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how much of that 30 million did you provide?
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$300. Why?
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Funny that supposed individualists keep blaming Reason for what David Harsanyi wrote in a column for the Denver Post. It's one thing to argue that Reason should no longer run DH's columns (a position I agree with), but it's another to somehow say that everyone at Reason should toe the exact same line on every issue and that any deviation makes Reason collectively suspect.
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Okay, Dr. Horwitz. That's great, except that's certainly not what I said and not my feelings. I'll go out on a limb here and say that's not representative of a lot of "supposed individualists" here, either. There are good people at Reason for sure.
You should not collectively condemn people while you deride those same people for failing to promote individualism.
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"a robust and proactive national defense"? You don't have to endorse their euphemisms.
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Well, we know Harsanyi got the memo.
Seriously, what is Reason doing publishing this drivel? Was this fulfilling some contractual obligation for Harsanyi or something?
At the very least, now I've got something concrete to point to when my wife asks me why I didn't renew our subscription.
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Wow. Piss poor.
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...regardless of whether RP was in any way responsible for the content of the newsletters, they will follow him for the rest of his life...
This is true. The hardcore need to accept this. Whatever role Paul has to play in the future, it isn't going to be standard bearer.
TAO's comments about the vanishing campaign contributions are also on the mark. I was bitterly disappointed that multi-millionaire Harry Browne pulled some similar shit after I donated some of my hard earned lucre to his campaign.
Sadly, those two comments by H&R folks are far more perceptive and relevant that anything in the Harsanyi column.
Given that he has had some good columns in the past, this is especially disappointing. I might expect a real crap column like this from Chapman, but I had higher expectations of Harsanyi.
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Thanks, BP, I'm honored.
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Who gives a shit where the 30 million dollars went. It's a bullshit side-note. It wasn't even mentioned in the article. These people aren't Paul disciples, they understand where his ideas come from and that he's just the voice. Who fuckin cares where some voluntarily donated money went.
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Dear Reason,
I hope that you may see readily the inherent and blatant contradiction in your article. You claim that Mr. Paul has not substance to his theory and they are in fact very shallow. You do of course realize that at no point have you gone into any the actual theory to show any of the flaws. I am not Freud or anything but one might consider your claim that Mr. Paul has no substance really to his philosophy a projection of sorts, as your attack has not provided any substantial reason for your claim.
Beyond this I wonder precisely which points of Mr. Paul’s philosophy have outraged you so?
Could it be the fact that he thinks that in order to kill another human being one's own life must be under direct attack or have solid evidence that the former is about to result?
Perhaps it is regard to his financial policy (as a side I find it almost funny to call an entire economic movement, i.e. Austrian economics, unsubstantiated). Though I am not sure which part of his policy you are unhappy with, is it the amount of the money supply itself, where as money always correlates to goods will result in higher prices? Maybe it is the part of the large money supply being given to one group before another, creating higher prices before the majority of people have even touched the new money supply? If so this idea is no more Mr. Paul's than it is former NY Times columnist Henry Hazlitt’s (see Economics in One Lesson).
The only other area I could imagine a gripe arising would be Mr. Paul's stance on civil liberties. Do you disagree then that the human being in an autonomous one and as such does not need Govt. to provide him with liberty but needs Govt. be removed so that his natural autonomous state can emerge? Do you disagree that if Govt forces policy and laws on the people that with each new one another area of autonomous choice is now stripped from the people and absorbed by the government? Perhaps you are wary of the idea that a human being as an autonomous being is charged with the taking care and owning of his own life and as such would include no laws as to what can go into his body, including narcotics? Even so, this would again be hardly Mr. Paul’s' own ideas more than they would also be Milton Friedman’s ideas, though I am hard pressed to find such aggression on your site towards Mr. Friedman.
Conclusively then there is simply not much to your arguments as you have presented nothing of intellectual substance. In fact all claims against Mr. Paul’s ideas as illustrated above are seemingly absurd. Considering of course that the above ideas I have presented all seem within the strongest of rational and reason.
Perhaps you may wish to change the name of your magazine as "reason" certainly does not seem fit at this moment.
http://autonomyandpolitics.blogspot.com/
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Ayn Rand has rolled in her grave. Both Ron Paul and Reason seem to have the same ideological background. Ayn was the most principled radical for capitalism in her era, and Ron represents our generation. A radical for capitalism can only live freely under a commodity money system. Reason's free minds and free markets slogan holds ZERO credibility unless they remove and denounce this utter crap. I would like to know who David Harsanyi believes represents free minds and free markets better than Ron Paul. As a free individual I am forced to live in a world where even the products of my mind are not considered my property. This is immoral and stands against the foundation of REASON. For this magazine the principle of "live free or die", has been sold out to pay Harsanyi.
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Ayn was no fan of libertarianism, and she'd be no fan of RP given his bizarre foreign policy stance as well as his anti-freedom position on abortion and free immigration. I'm pretty sure he's no fan of judicial activism either.
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During 2007 I attended several Reason events at their beautiful office on Connecticut Avenue in Dupont Circle. I was a big Ron Paul supporter an expected to find others at the events.
I was quite surprised to find mostly hostility for Ron Paul from the people there, especially Reason and Cato employees. Their reasons, like Harsanyi's in this article, were rarely elucidated and when they were they seemed nitpicky and odd.
I couldn't figure it out; when was the last time a hard-core libertarian had raised $6 million in one day? And yet Cato endorsed Fred Thompson (!) and Reason published nothing but "Yes, but..." article about Ron Paul.
I was mystified, but found out the truth later and it all made sense. Cato and Reason are fronts that exist to siphon off and co-opt libertarian energy and then, when it counts (like during campaigns) cause the energy to fizzle. Expect many more of these hit pieces, and then the MSM chimes in with "Even libertarian Reason Magazine agrees that Ron Paul is not a 'serious thinker'...
There are many such institutions in D.C. whose job is to snuff out movements that may threaten corrupt business as usual in that most corrupt of towns. If you care about freedom and liberty, don't look to Reason or Cato.
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Part of the explaination for Cato is that they had Rupert Murdoch on their board of directors after a large donation.
Who knows about Reason. They are rather Glenn Beckish as far as changing colors when they're needed the most. -
I expect them to be milquetoast with various of their positions, but to be at least somewhat intellectually rigorous in presenting them. I can respect that -- it's not about some ideological purity standard for me.
I could go either way with respect to support for Ron Paul -- whatever -- the problem here is that this article argues its points more like one you might expect to find on dkos, not a site called reason.
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That Fred Thompson lie (really, that is the only word for it) should be put to rest. The Cato Institute does not endorse candidates. Period. Not any one. One analyst there in a blog post after one of the debates noted with approval that Fred Thompson had raised the issue of federalism in the debate. That ain't an endorsement. It's a comment and nothing more. So put that lie to rest.
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So there's hope for a movement of limited government and fiscal conservatism, just as long as it includes policing the world and a centrally managed economy?
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Hey guys, thanks for the traffic. I just got 3 calls from other news sources wanting to bring me aboard. Politco, NewsMax and HuffingtonPost.
Sorry I went the lazy route of attacking Ron Paul in such an Olberman sort of way, but you can't blame me for looking out for number one.
It is all about individualism...and I'm an individual that needs some spinners on my Taurus.
Thanks again folks...I'm movin on up!
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Haha! You're a douche!! Haha! Y'know at first I thought this article was a joke, now I know it is.
You showed through your article that you haven't the slightest clue of what Libertarianism is. And, you show through this pathetic post that you haven't the slightest clue of what Individualism is.
If this really is David Harsanyi, then you're pathetic for posting in the comments of your own article. If you're not, then the first part of my post "Haha! You're a douche!! Haha!" still stands.
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David,
You suck.
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Reason magazine? I think "Reason" would be more accurate. This article was a lazy, shallow misrepresentation of Ron Paul and his positions.
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So libertarians are supposed to oppose the notion of competing currency?
This author doesn't seem to have the capacity for critical thought. He simply repeats the absurd straw man that you can find from Hannity, Limbaugh, etc, etc.
The fact is Paul isn't asking for, nor wants a gold standard. He simply wants people to be free to engage in commerce to their liking. Only two things need changed
1) No tax converting paper fed money to/from other commodities
2) Uphold contracts
wow, that is some crazy stuff there! /sarcasm
I dare any "thinking" libertarian to challenge those positions.
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My girlfriend got me a subscription to Reason as a present a year ago and we were just talking about renewing it... this certainly helps make that decision easier.
I can read Balko on his blog and visit h&r from time to time but unless there's some kind of excuse for this bullshit then here's one customer lost.
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Man, Paultards buttons' are easy to push. You guys are dancing on a string. you know what's funny? The article sucked, but you're not mad about that; you're mad that someone pointed out that "Saint" Ron is running a scheme just like any other politician: pander to an untapped group (in the 80s it was crusty conservative racists) and blow the donations on family members and friends.
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Saying the same thing you've said for 30 years only to have people finally pay attention to what you're saying is far from pandering.
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Amen to that.
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I love all the "substantive" criticisms coming from the neo-conservatives and Beltway libertarians since Ron Paul won the CPAC straw poll, it really reinforces how scared and intellectually bankrupt they all are of his ideas. Reason magazine, the 5th grade called and they want their name-calling prowess back.
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If returning to what made America great is kooky then we get what we deserve.
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Whoa. When did Jami Kirchickenhawk change his name to David Douche-bag Harsanyi and start working for tReason? Did he get his cool guy leather Fons jacket like that unprincipled dipshit faker Matt Welch with is lack of balls and his tiny pecker.
After all, tReason didn't even know about those newsletters, and did a cover story on Paul the same month Jami Kirchickenshit drug up those "mysterious" newsletters that are only mysterious to dipshits dilettantes like Matt Welch and the rest of his Orange Line Conspiracy, Cosmopolitan Libertarians (i.e. the so-called Libertarians whose main hobby are partaking in buttfucking drug orgy cocktail parties with progressives on the hill).
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I couldn't figure it out; when was the last time a hard-core libertarian had raised $6 million in one day?
Hardcore libertarian? Try again, short stuff.
And where did that money go, anyway?
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I'm guessing quite a bit of it was used to organize the Campaign for Liberty, hence the recent CPAC victory. It's politics. see.
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"Free Minds and Free Markets"
=
"Fair and Balanced"Why was this published, bashing Ron Paul, when he represents FREE MINDS AND FREE MARKETS. He's always preachin' those ideals!
And LMAO! David, POLITICO and HUFFINGTON POST, from what I've read, is FULL of garbage articles like the one you wrote here. LACKING investigation of facts, LACKING substance, LACKING truth.
Good luck. I'm 20 years old and could get a job at Politico/HP in a heartbeat. Nothing amazing, Mister.
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People, it's been less than 2.5 hours and we're already up to almost 250 comments. Keep it up and we can hit 500 by 5:00 PM (ET).
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Interesting article terrible conclusion. You can site one CPAC poll and denounce the other. The same people who voted for smaller government and limited spending voted for RP
I dislike articles that attack personalities and not substance. With out RP towing the line most most small government people would be either Obama supporters or still playing Neocon -
You've just lost a fan, Reason.
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Interesting article terrible conclusion. You can site one CPAC poll and denounce the other. The same people who voted for smaller government and limited spending voted for RP
I dislike articles that attack personalities and not substance. With out RP towing the line most most small government people would be either Obama supporters or still playing Neocon -
David, this is sooo bad.
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David Harsanyi is a Paultard!
In my book, there are two kinds of Paultards. One idolizes and obsesses about Ron and believes absurd conspiracy theories; the other hates and obsesses about Ron and believes he is a secret racist or isolationist.
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In 1978 National Review published an article Party demonstrating that the Libertarian Party was "communist".
A hit piece in other words.This article has a similar sent.
"Long decided" means "unalterable"?
If that's the case, libertarians might as well pack up and go home.
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I love how there's now a movement on Facebook to (OMG!) unfriend Reason for posting this article. You stay effective, libertarians!
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I don't think there is a question to whether or not Ron Paul is the future of the conservative movement. The fact is Ron Paul will be 77 in 2012, already answers that question...he won't be. However, many of his ideas should be a part of the movement's future. What libertarian and pro-liberty conservatives should focus on is getting people like Rand Paul, and Mike Lee elected to Congress. This is how his ideas will be best represented and this is where the future of the liberty movement will be.
Libertarians should also keep the alliance with today's GOP situational. It makes no sense to vote for folks like Mitt Romney, when they barely agree with us on anything.
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This author is a liar. Ron Paul is not racist, neither anti-Jewish.
Hail the Paul! Full of courage.
St. Paul of our age. -
If someone wants to accuse Ron Paul of not being the best choice to represent libertarians in the GOP primary I will agree with them.
But currently he's the only choice. His candidacy in 2008 was about expressing libertarian ideas not addressing actual policy matters. That was the best we could do. Were there any other quality candidates for promoting liberty? Not one.
I'd love to see a serious libertarian leaning candidate run for president and actually campaign like they want the job. So far nobody appears to be stepping up to the plate. Instead we get Ron Paul.
So I'll keep voting for him and sending him money until another libertarian runs instead. If he decides not to run and is replaced with nobody I won't vote at all.
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Libertarianism as defined by tReason Magazine:
Buttfucking drug orgy cocktail parties with like-minded progressives and statist in the Imperial City on the Hill, principled, serious progressive like Jami Kirchickenfucker and tReason's other intellectual bedfellows at The New Republic.
That's true Libertarianism folks, tReason style! Marty Peretz Approves!
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Reason has often conflated libertarian with libertine.
A libertarian might not support "Buttfucking drug orgy cocktail parties with like-minded progressives and statist in the Imperial City on the Hill...," but allow for their occurrence.
However the folks at Reason demand such activity be supported, championed and generally made a cause célèbre. Anything less? A violation of of the rules of PC.
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Mr. Harsanyi personally doesn't like Ron Paul. Okay got it thank you for sharing your opinion.
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Stacy, Stacy...that was a joke post, Paultard.
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I'm not a Paultard, I'm a sensible anarchist, dumbtard.
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And AH, I get it now. My boyfriend explained to me how the Reason commenting usually goes . . .
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David,
I would advise you to hold out until The Enquirer calls you. You could head up a new politcal section for that rag. I'm sure they'll pay you more than the others. Yup, you're indeed moving, noy "up" though. -
Are you serious? "Is the GOP about to transform into the party of the gold standard?"
The Republicrats are probably going to get one last shot at power and then they will be gone - extinct! Dave, have you been paid off to write this obvious smear? Or are you mentally irregular as Rocky Balboa would say?
You should apply for a job at Red State with EricK "The Fascist" Erickson.
You don't have a clue of what American Constitutional government was designed to be, have or do.
Ron Paul is so pure in the pursuit of true American Constitutional government that you can't comprehend what he stands for. He has (wisely) mobilized and entire generation of well studied Constitutional, self governed young Americans who will rescue and restore this Republic when the empire collapses. Which it will, like all empires. -
Hey guys, just got a call from Nancy Pelosi. Seems she likes what I have to say and wants me to come to a dinner with her and Dick Cheney to discuss my vast knowledge that I demonstrated in my article.
It seems I'm quite the hit now with the Washington elite. I can't thank you all enough for reading my article and commenting.
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It should go fuck itself. It is probably so proud of itself, tReason's ignorant little puppet ember stocking puppet that goes by the name of Douchey Dan Harry Pussy.
What's it like to be a lesser, more pathetic version of Peretz's little liberal puppet Jami Kirchickenshit? I wonder it hurts when they tug its tugs strings, does it hurt Douchey Dan Harry Pussy?
I hope it enjoy its buttfucking drug orgy with Cheney and Pelosi. Really embrace the "values" of those Cosmopolitan Beltway Libertarians that the little puppet strives to emulate while perceiving itself as speaking for A Sacred Libertarian Tribe that doesn't exist. It probably thinks to itself, "If I smear Paul it can do great things for my career. I could become the next Jami Kirchickenfucker!"
It's nothing but a lesser version of puppet tribalist Jami Kirchickenhawk, how proud of itself it must be.
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That you Dumbdero? Sounds angry like him, but not quite drunk enough. Although it isn't quite noon yet so there is still plenty of time for some Drunken Dumbdero.
DUMBEROOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Nah, Donderooo isn't an optimist. He's afraid that brown skinned people are going to eat him in his sleep.
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You have to remember TAO is one of those people who gives legitimacy to the proposition that libertarianism is the political expression of autism.
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you must not be up on your regulars to think that.
I suggest you research your regulars before you embarrass yourself any further
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Thanks for reminding me of the reason why I cancelled two subscriptions to Reason magazine and chose to read American Conservative instead.
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Have you noticed that the AC is becoming more and more libertarian and less neocon? Even on social issues
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It's moving in a very old right/libertarian direction.
Quite the metamorphosis.
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Another piece of evidence that Reason is going through downward spiral of the anti libertarian road to nothingness.
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Wow, yet another Reason attack on the most popular living libertarian. Next to Cathy Young's silly attacks on Ayn Rand, this is the most mysterious thing I've seen in these pages.
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It's been fun reading reason, but I guess I will not be renewing my subscription.
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Another ineffective beltway loser jealous of Ron Paul's political success.
All that the Harsanyi can do is try to promote himself by attacking someone that's more successful than him.
They pulled the same crap in '08 and two years later the man wins CPAC! Now that's gotta hurt you bitter beltway losers!
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Reason really doesn't care to much if people cancel subscriptions. They will still get money from somebody who likes to have a "libertarian" magazine publishing pro-war pieces. We are talking trillions of dollars in revenue for some big companies, the budget for Reason magazine is small compared to awhat hey'd spend on one national ad campaign and it effectivly neutralized much of the libertarain movement for years.
Some of you folks who are all surprised about this article really need to join the coffee party and wake the fuck up. This ain't the first propaganda outlet that has mixed in articles and employees that help gain credibility in order to help keep a hostile political movement under better control.
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Hey Reason...F U! You guys are non-libertarian beltway garbage. "Ron Paul not a serious thinker" - surely you jest. As a serious libertarian myself, I will continue to totally ignore your organization until every so often a real libertarian website will link one of your articles because of how shockingly anti-libertarian it is.
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"A serious libertarian, David Boaz at the Cato Institute, found that 14 percent of American voters could be classified as libertarian."
Ha!
"If only it stopped there. Paul isn't a traditional conservative. His obsession with long-decided monetary policy and isolationism are not his only half-baked crusades."
Yes, because the anti-Jeffersonian monetary policy of big government mercantilists and socialists of various stripes is DEFINITELY fully-baked... we are talking about smoking way too many drugs, right?
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"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win."
Seems to me we're almost there . . .
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Does Reason get funding from the neocon world or something? Just curious due to how ridiculous this article was.
Reason = US Weekly for now on.
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It's amazing so many libertarians here support the 5th plank of the communist manifesto and American Imperialism. I guess opposing mass murder and theft is not high on the list of priorities for the modern Libertarian.
I'm not a Ron Paul fan but the way you guys sabotage and undermine your natural allies just affirms that Libertarians as a party and political philosophy will always be relegated to obscurity and continually laughed at by all those "serious" statist figures you so pine to be accepted by. If it wasn't so tragic it'd be funny.
Keep up the good work Reason, without such counter productive tripe the rabble might actually begin to re-embrace classical liberalism.
Long live the state!
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I read it again, and try to find an argument. There is nothing but name calling. "silly" "unserious".
Why is Ron Paul not a good thinker or politician? You give no argument, but he is a very effective politician. He single handedly made the Federal Reserve part of the political discussion. The proof is the Audit The Fed bill having 317 cosponsors.
You also criticize his books as "silly". Again, we don't hear one argument backing your position.
Why does reason publish this crap?
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I'm sure the author doesn't think that Ludwig Von Mises or Murray Rothbard were libertarians either...
Not to forget Ayn Rand, F.A. Hayek and young Alan Greenspan.
Ah, Greenspan. You know, a tear comes to my eye when reading his academic work as a young man, and realizing just how completely he whored himself over the years in order to become Grand-Poobah of the FED.And, just like with Ole Yeller and his rabies, I would gently wipe the tear away just before I pulled the trigger.
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"Does that mean we need Paul?"
Well, actually, yes. Paul is a politician and is not required to be a deep thinker. Do you think perhaps that F.A. Hayek should have dropped out of academia to run for office? Or do you think perhaps that as serious ideas percolate down into politics that they get simplified and championed by politicians who connect with large numbers of people in a way that originators of these ideas could never do?
I cringe at some of Paul's excesses and quirks too, but until you find us a libertarian who looks and speaks like a Romney or Obama who can and will make a breakthrough like Ron has, we do need Paul and should stand up for him. Perhaps Paul, with all his clumsy earnestness, has opened a door for such a person in the future.
I'm sorry you are embarrassed, but let's get our priorities straight, Mr. Harsanyi.
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I cringe at some of Paul's excesses and quirks too, but until you find us a libertarian who looks and speaks like a Romney or Obama who can and will make a breakthrough like Ron has, we do need Paul and should stand up for him. Perhaps Paul, with all his clumsy earnestness, has opened a door for such a person in the future.
Ironically, we have found that charismatic version of a genuinely libertarian leaning 'Pub and his name is Paul too.
Rand Paul honestly could be the attractive, marketable, and viable candidate that we all wished RP could have been.
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I'm starting to wonder whether Rand is quite as libertarian as he says he is.
Oh, and shit article.
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A Rand Paul victory in Kentucky this year, could be similar to Reagan's California win in 66. Such a victory though would have to be followed up by similar wins in other states for libety-minded candidates. And it would also help if we had someone like Gary Johnson winning some primaries in 2012.
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BTW, Note that Reason Magazine voted for Obama:
http://lesterhhunt.blogspot.com/search?q=reason+magazine
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Ron Paul isn't a serious politician? And how many times have you, Harsanyi, Valiant Warrior of the Keyboard, run a successful campaign and be elected to the U.S. Congress?
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This is hands down the most badly written, emotive, and poorly reasoned Reason article I have ever read....What the hell? And to think I donated money to this organization...
I recommend editing modifying this article and inserting some hard evidence to support your claims. I doubt you can. Otherwise, this article is close to what I could read on CNN's website.
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In stereotypical Ron Paul chant style,
"TAKE IT BACK, TAKE IT BACK." -
And CNN articles are written better. Less balls-out opinion . . . more "facts" to mind control the masses.
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While I agree this is a shitty article and it's certainly not the first Harsanyi (or Reason in general) article I've hated, the histrionics in some of these comments are absurd and dare I say, unreasonable.
I don't have much disposable income, but I'm almost tempted to subscribe just to counter some of you fools.
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I agree, it is good that some of the serious people like AppleBerry haven't been corrupted by the silly wing of libertarianism. It is easy to get sucked into swampholes like monetary policy, just war theory and conspiracy mongering about how the government might lie to get people into wars. insane I know...our government is too incompetent to tell lies and all of our wars have been fought for legitimate good reasons.
All of that stuff is for gadflys and morons. We need to get serious about fixing "don't ask don't tell" and saving social security. If we can just figure out a way to make Social Security solvent for another decade then you'll see things really start to change, a real revolution! We can have real change only by keeping everything right in the middle of current accepted thinking...maybe start one or two new wars etc and create some new divisions of Homeland security to fix a couple of the more pressing problems.
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Did reason forget to publish the page between the two presented here? I expected to find some evidence on the second page to support the assertions made on the first. Instead I found a single paragraph conclusion. Where's the serious thinking?
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I must have missed when "serious" libertarians became supporters of the Federal Reserve System. How old is David Harsanyi? He seems to have a really deep grasp of the history of libetarianism.
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Serious libertarians hate the Fed. Centralized banking? No transparency?
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Screw this. I'm gonna crank this sucka up to a 1000 by the end of the day.
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Donderoo!!!!
Go McCain!
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Go pot-smoking buttfuckers!!!
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Man, you're so smart and witty. I wish I could be just like you. It's too bad I'm stuck being the exact opposite.
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Is Ron Paul's agenda focused on sex and drugs in the Imperial City?
No? That's why tReason isn't interested.
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Hey, sorry guys...I got stupid drunk last night and woke up in a commune with a blinding headache and a sore ass...needless to say, I didn't have time to write up a well researched article.
So I just strung together some haphazard attacks on Ron Paul, which tends to be good enough for a Reason article, and turned it in...like next to last minute.
I wasn't even sure what I was writing...I just googled "I hate Ron Paul" and grabbed sentences.
Sorry again folks. My next article will probably be about what drugs NOT to take at a gay bar.
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haha
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that approach probably would have resulted in a better article than this.
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One day I hope that my college degree will allow me to be a big a**hole like you and still get paid well.
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Actually, that's a pretty good excuse for writing the article. You are forgiven. Now Reason just needs a better excuse for publishing it. Any suggestions for them?
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"Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began."
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So?
What is racist about this comment?
Unless you think black people everywhere in the world has the same victim ghetto mentality, as the black in the US.
If most of the black people in the US didn't feel they have right to welfare checks, there wouldn't be a statement like this. Hence the statement is not about some genes, but the welfare checks.
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"What is racist about this comment?"
"blacks" is not the preferred nomenclature.
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Reading this and I begin to understand why libertarians get called 'crazy'. "Hey Reason, you did not express undying worship for The One, you statist POS/recipient of $ from unknown company/neocons/meanies/(*^&(*!!11! Calm the fuck down.
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Lol!
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It's not about undying worship, it's about substantive argument and explanation.
This article expresses neither, and the author is being called out on it. This isn't surprising, and your oversimplification of what I'm sure you already understand is careless, in my opinion.
You deliberately miss the point in order to be the cool person that tells everyone else to take it easy.
But then again, I'm probably just crazy...
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Not unknown, dude. Not unknown.
Bwahahahaha! -
zactly. its not about RON PAUL. its about the message. ron paul just happens to be the only one in washington speaking the message.
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I am truly embarrassed for Reason magazine after reading this pitiful excuse for "reason". A supposed libertarian magazine trashing the lone politician who regularly cites Hayek, Ayn Rand, and Ludwig Mises? And has consistently (although imperfectly) preached libertarian principles and kindled somewhat of a movement out of it? Yeah, the guy's annoying and sometime inarticulate, but aren't there bigger threats to libertarianism than Ron Paul?
I guess he's anti-Semitic, though, because he doesn't think we should give billions to support Israel's military, though. I fail to see the connection. And I have researched this issue and have found nothing whatsoever to support your claim that he rants about Jews and conspiracy theories. Cite your sources, otherwise you're no better than Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olberman.
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Yup, you convinced me. He's no racist.
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He didn't write any of that, if anything, he excercised poor judgment in the appointment of a staffer or an editor twenty years ago.
Talk about eating our own young.
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David Harsanyi makes some excellent points in this article. There is room for a lot of different beliefs under the label 'libertarian.'
I certainly consider myself a libertarian, and yet I support preemptive war, economic growth through easy monetary policy and deficit spending, reasonable restrictions on free speech, a moratorium on immigration, increased financial regulation, protection for key industries via tariffs, and the sanctity -- butressed by law -- of heterosexual marriage.
These are serious libertarian ideas. Ron Paul and those CPAC kids are nuts!
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Re: Louis Barlow,
I *almost* fell for it.
Good one.
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I agree, serious libertarians need to take a long and hard look at what important and necessary government policies they should support. I'd hope that an expanded homeland security agency that didn't have to deal with the shackles of the constitution would be one of them. The fed also needs more power to keep capitalism running smoothly.
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Chumming the water, indeed!
Well played. -
Sorry guys. It's me again. Quick question, does anyone know where to score any ecstasy and leather chaps in the DC area? I have a meeting with Marty Peretz tomorrow and need to bring my A-Game.
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This article doesn't warrant comment other than as a long time subscriber (13 years) I will be cancelling today.
I've seen freshman highschool papers better researched than this.
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YEAH, Tyler! We ain't renewing our subscription!
http://www.indegayforum.org/staff/show/98.html
For someone who supports gay rights/advocacy, it is surprising he would bash Ron Paul of all congressmen...
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http://www.tnr.com/article/pol.....-white-man
Yeah, and all your Democrat buddies are SO PRO-GAY RIGHTS.
This guy is stuck in the left-right paradigm and doesn't even get it.
STATE VS YOU.
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Oh, the newsletters again! Funny how the people who complain about old newsletters with comments that had a dubious connection to Paul had no problem with Obama's 20-year connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Come clean, already! It was never about the newsletters, the cosmotarians and neocons hate Paul for sin of being a patriot. He's quite clear about to whom he owes his loyalty - to America and Americans. He's not a cosmopolitan "citizen of the world", or a promoter of wars that benefit Israel more than anyone else. He's hated because he believes the American people have elected him to - *gasp!* - promote first and foremost the interests of Americans, not every aspiring illegal immigrant trying to crawl over the border.
In cosmotopia, patriotism is the one unforgivable sin.
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You sir, are evil. Everyone bow down to the cosmotarian rulers of the universe, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Cato Institute, and their glorious propaganda unit, Reason.com.
Corporations are GOD!
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I wonder how all the hero-worship sits with Dr. Paul? I like to imagine him, like Shatner on SNL, telling the Trekkies (or in this case the "Paultards") to get a grip.
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ron paul certainly does not represent the future of the "conservatism." they will never embrace that much freedom and non-interventionism. but that's beside the point. this article is a despicable smear with no reasoning accompanying the myriad outrageous claims. it demonstrates the ignorance of the author. articles like this, are why i no longer support reason.
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APRIL FOOL!!
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You need to either admit that you're a lousy writer as your piece had no real credible evidence to back your allegations or that you're a whore doing the neo-con's bidding in an attempt to discredit Ron Paul and his message. Either way you're a CLOWN! Grow your self a pair and find yourself some moral courage and get back to us
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Hey, long-timers: I don't want to shift through all the crap. How many drinks do I need to take to catch up?
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Just go until you pass out. And you might have to start drinknig again once you wake up.
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There's not enough alcohol in my county to catch up. You'd be bombed after the first 20 comments.
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'I voted for Harry Browne in 2000 and, reluctantly, for George Bush in 2004.'
- David Harsanyi
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For anyone who wasn't around when tReason did a cover piece on Paul for dilettante Matt Welsh donned his cool guy leather jacket to throw PAul under the bus on O'Reily after Jami Kirchickenhawks TNR smear, I present to you everything you need to know about "cosmopolitan" Beltway Libertarians:
The Orange Line Smear Campaign...
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Good article.
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Thanks.
History repeats itself, eh?
From the article:
"If a person cared about liberty, why would they be eager to mindlessly repeat smears about the most popular libertarian candidate in decades on the very day of the most crucial “king-making” primary in the United States? Yet that is exactly what a number of popular “libertarian” bloggers did that day. The Ron Paul Newsletters are voluminous and even a small fraction of them could not possibly be read in the very few hours that passed between the posting of the actual newsletters (the afternoon of the 8th) and the smear campaigners’ posts (also the afternoon of the 8th). All of these “hit and run” blog posts, except Kirchick’s original, must then be based on Kirchik’s piece rather than on actual reading and analysis of the newsletters. Clearly the purpose of these posts was not to initiate a thoughtful discussion of the newsletters, it was to spin libertarian voters on the most crucial election day short of the November general elections."
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1) Smear Ron Paul!!!
2)???
3) Profit!!! -
er, it wasn't welsh but Nick Gillespie. He's the douche bag with the stupid leather jacket. Apologies, sometimes it's hard to keep track of all the feckless faker retards.
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"douche bag with the stupid leather jacket"
As slimy in real life as he appears on (internet)TV. Used to come in to my bar in Oxford, OH and hit on the college girls. Hilarious.
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"not every aspiring illegal immigrant"
Thank you that's all I need to know.
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If this is going to be the anti-RP article linked on RCP later today, I wonder who will be writing/publishing the pro-RP one?
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Heh...I see they're running Doherty's (much more substantial) article and not this one. Smart call.
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Hey -- did any of you guys hear that Ron Paul put out some fishy newsletters?
Anybody know what's up with that? -
"Let's, for a moment, forget Paul (and how I wish this could be a permanent condition, considering the congressman is neither a serious politician nor—and I can't stress this enough—a serious thinker)."
And this is no longer a serious magazine. If this is the best you can come up with after Paul's win at CPAC then we're dealing with some seriously screwed up people. Good-bye!
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How many drinks do I need to take to catch up?
I dunno, man, i'm struggling myself. It's gonna be a four-bourbons night when i get home.
This thread is a total, boring, hilarious, awesome disaster, and i kind of suspect Harsanyi knew exactly what he was doing.
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Bingo, X.
Back when I was writing a politics column, I found a large part of my self-worth was determined by the amount and vehemence of my hate mail.
I saved, and still treasure, all the "best."
And what's the best way to generate a good hate when writing for Reason? Take a dig at the good doctor.
I'm sure Harsanyi digs the sweet, sweet Paulista tears. (And Reason.com digs the hits.) -
Do they let anybody write for this site now? Set a side your feelings for Ron Paul or his avid followers, this article was full of uneducated opinions masked as factual information.
Maybe if Ron Paul thought murdering brown people for oil and lobbyist money he would be less 'racist' in the eyes of this author?
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***Maybe if Ron Paul thought murdering brown people for oil and lobbyist money was the right thing to do he would be less 'racist' in the eyes of this author.
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There's a lot of overreaction in the article and in the comments. I probably wouldn't ever vote for Paul, but if it were between him, Obama and say...McCain I would. I don't view the straw poll as being an endorsement of Ron Paul. I viewed it as a shift toward meaningful small government ideas, instead of simply giving it lip service. Paul could never win a national election, and it's not only due to his ideas. He's also not charismatic enough and makes John McCain seem young.
That said, I view Paul as like the libertarian Palin. By themselves they are not the future of libertarian or conservative politics respectively, but they do serve as symbols of discontent by those who hold those views. Goldwater was very libertarian back in 1964 and he would still be very libertarian today. While he lost big to LBJ, as was considered "extreme" in his pro liberty stances, he was still mainstream enough to get elected and reelected to the Senate for decades, as well as mainstream enough to win the GOP nomination. Reagan is considered very mainstream, but he really espoused much of what Goldwater did. Paul, while libertarian seems like a wacko to the same people who loved both Goldwater and Reagan. While I think the article is a bit extreme in denouncing Paul as the future of libertarianism or conservatism, the comments are equally over sensitive. Think of Paul as a marker in the libertarian movement, not the end result.
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CLAPTRAP! As much as I respect Goldwater, the man was a shameless hawk and wanted a total war with the North Vietnam. Granted, one has to wonder what Goldwater would have thought of the "Peace Dividend" and the War on Terror. But a part of me fears he would have said "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!"
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He hated Falwell so I dont think he wouldve bowed down to Israel.
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At least total war with NV would've brought it to and end sooner.
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Passing off trash as professional articles nowadays are we?
Mad because Mises.org and Lew Rockwell are getting way more play than Cato and Reason? Yea I'd be mad too.
Lets see some Alexa rankings shall we?
Lew Rockwell- 1934
Reason - 3542
Mises.org - 4191
Cato.org - 10,418
clearly neo-libertarianism is inferior.
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clearly neo-libertarianism is inferior.
"Neo-libertariansim" doesn't quite capture the zeitgeist. Neither does "cosmotarian", really. Maybe "swpltarian" would be closer to the truth.
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Sure the conspiracy mongerers are more popular with the hicks out there, but we don't stoop to that level. The serious thinkers are always part of a smaller elite.
It takes a special person to understand that you have to kill/torture a bunch of people to make the rest of us safe from terror. We don't like it, but somebody has to do it. We are willing too and that is why we are the true humanitarians. The gutless hipies out there live in a naive world where everyone is nice, in reality there is true evil in this world. The tinfoil crowd goes one step too far and says those evil people will seke positions of power, like in our government. This is crazy talk. However, there are real evil terrorist trying o take away your freedom and we are luckily the super nce people here who are trying to protect all you stupid fucking hicks...I almost want to kill you people your so dumb, but I am too nice I only go after the terrorist, but you never know they will probably get through our defenses one day ...and then you'll learn your lesson you stupid white trash hicks. then you'll support more wars and taxes.
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That's it,isn't it?
Reason and Cato, deep down, despise Ron Paul, as alas his momentous movement is not theirs. And his affiliation with Lew Rockwell & Gang only salt the wound.
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Well sure that is only human that petty jealousies would arise, but the real fun comes in when we use that natural human instinct to our advantage and have Reason do take down jobs on opponents of our money making system(the military-banker-industrial-big government complex). We like to use people's self itnerest and moral weaknesses to further our goals, this way fewer secrets need to be kept.
Plausible deniability is maintained and if anyone figures out what we are doing then we can easily use a straw man argument to kill the attack...this is exactly what we say "you believe in a conspiracy?! how many people would it take to keep this big secret IMPOSSIBLE!" or "the joos did it huh?". real simple way to shut people up.
Of course intelligence agencies, which financial institutions had long before the CIA even existed developed various methods and procedures to keep big projects secret long ago...the hierarchical "need-to-know" policies of these agencies allow large groups of people to work on big projects even though most of the people have no idea what the over all project is.
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Libertarians have to be well-coifed, and 'serious'? Uh, I think David Harsanyi needs to read Brian Doherty's 'Radicals for Capitalism' for some historical perspective. Eccentricity is not new to the movement.
But what I find even more ironic about this article is that Young Republicans like David Harsanyi tend to be even worse dorks than we are. Look who is calling the kettle black!
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"As children [blacks] are trained to hate whites and believe that white oppression is responsible for all black ills [and] To steal as much money from the white enemy as possible."
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it's a shame people just look at quotes.
http://goo.gl/TnJ9 -
Excellent link, another classic from Raimondo.
Vichy "libertarians" .... LOL
Another major reason for the antipathy to Paul coming from these quarters is his uncompromising opposition to U.S. foreign policy. A good half of the Reason crowd were pro-war, some ambivalent, and a powerful minority within the Cato Institute rallied to the cause of “liberating” Iraq, or was at least sympathetic to the idea of “exporting” free market liberalism at gunpoint, once the war was a fait accompli. Reason itself took no position on the most important question of the day, I’m told because of the influence of big contributors. And now I learn, from inside sources, that Reason senior editor Brian Doherty, author of the monumental Radicals for Capitalism, a “freewheeling” history of the American libertarian movement, is in danger of being fired because he’s too pro-Paul.
ORLY...
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Re: Cytotoxic,
I have yet to see a shred of evidence that bombing people "all over the world" is making America more enemies.
Quite right, because people actually like to be bombed by the US.
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Yeah, like in WW2, we bombed all those Germans, and now they'll never stop hating us! They blow up 35432 internets just last week! Oh God if we had just had freer trade.
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Re: Cytotoxic,
Yeah, like in WW2, we bombed all those Germans, and now they'll never stop hating us! They blow up 35432 internets just last week! Oh God if we had just had freer trade.
They were already the enemies of the US, Cytotoxic. Your retort is simply stupid.
The question becomes - why wouldn't people that had NO BEEF with the US suddenly LIKE to be bombed by her, for no other reason that they simply exist? The US attacked Somalia, for NO reason. It bombed Servia and allowed ultra-radical Muslims to get a foothold in Bosnia, for NO reason. It attacked Iraq, for NO reason. It invaded Afghanistan for a dubious reason (to get their hands on a guy they have NOT gotten their hands for 8 LONG YEARS NOW) and have bombed Pakistan for NO reason. You think that does not create enemies where there were none?
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The bombing of AfPak and Somalia actually has a pretty good reason-Al Qaeda and other jihadis are present and must be destroyed. Saddam Hussein gave shelter to the guy who helped mix chemicals for WTC attack #1. He was an anti-American kernel that had to go. Serbia was because...Bill Clinton and Tony Blair felt like it. Not so good a reason.
THis 'no beef with us' crap is just that. The global backlash against the Danish cartoons should have demonstrated that the problem is with the Islamists, not us. Our major sin is to allow regimes that sponsor terrorism to exist. -
The marshall plan was also about bombing lots of germans right. That was the key to how we got the germans to like us again. If the commie pinkos had been in charge they would have naively gave them capital and stuff...of course then the germans would have only taken capital and used it against us...luckily the Marshall plan was all about bombing the women and children and that is why we are so popular there today. Cytoxic, you are a good history student. Keep up the hard studying, you are a real true American!
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I was just given reason magazine for the first time, and after my first read through I was immediately on the website looking for more.
I am more than happy to read somebody who disagrees with RP. I will read your position, consider your facts, and make my conclusion. But to see such a worthless smear peace on this website is not what I expected. I came here to order a subscription, but now I will wait to see if trash like this is the norm...
Oh and by the way...how did I first hear of reason magazine?? At CPAC Campaign for Liberty gave them out to volunteers.
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Wow. The organization Ron Paul created, C4L, was handing out this rag?
Ron Paul is above this b.s. and has done more to advance liberty and libertarian ideas than this magazine or a million David Harsanyi's ever will.
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I didn't even think about that. Great timing for people who are looking to learn about libertarian values to come and see this bullshit.
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How many drinks do I need to take to catch up?
Holy crow, dog, you don't want to know. You should pop down to the Arena District and not come back for three days.
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A consummation devoutly to be wished.
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Donderooooo!
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dharsanyi@gmail.com
Denver Post 303.954.1255
http://davidharsanyi.com/blog/contact/ -
Look, I was going to sit this one out, but I have to say this:
I do not think a near-term return to a metals-based currency is a realistic policy, for a number of reasons I won't detail here.
But that doesn't mean that the case for a metals-based currency can't be credibly made, or that it has no place in debate, or that people who advocate such a currency are automatically kooks with "silly books".
Were the Austrian economists kooks who wrote silly books?
David Harsanyi is being a great, big, giant dick here.
DICK.
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But are you canceling your subscription, Fluf? "Cause if you don't threaten to cancel a subscription, nobody will take you seriously.
(Believe me, I know.) -
Commodity-backed money is good money in the same way that a spork is a good fork.
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It's just funny seeing how the goldbugs and paultards really don't know the basics of current micro or macroeconomics.
*giggle*
(although as a microeconomist, this moose finds that macro, in any iteration is rather strange ...)
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agreed Viking. Wilson really was smart to figure out that we needed to create a secretive group and give them the keys to the printing press and have them repeatedly inflate the money supply to get people over extended in debt(build up their confidence) and the repeatedly freeze the money supply up so that it will be impossible for everyone to pay off their debts. Nobody with contacts at the Fed could take advantage of this system in anyway, it is for the good of all. This was a genius system and everyone knows that average economic growth was horrible before the Fed and has improved dramatically the last 100 years. Only the Paultards can't figure it out and the rest of us love the economy we have now. Soon the green jobs will be coming on line and we will see a huge recovery because the government is engaging in fiscal and monetary stimulus and this is all you need for a good economy, Keynes proved this long ago.
The Austrians have no clue really, Bernanke just got unlucky and got surprised by this random housing bubble.
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""Bernanke just got unlucky and got surprised by this random housing bubble."
He forgot about the animal spirits.
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If you need to report your purse getting snatched, go here.
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This is nothing more than an attack article. Ron Paul is a leader. Noone has fougth harder for following the constitution and inspired so many. To even mention long discredited newsletters from the 80s or to insinuate anti-semi agendas should be proof enough to ignore everythingyou have to say.
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I can't directly answer the "pandering" guy in the comment thread above, but I will say this:
Paul's very first public policy position, FORTY FUCKING YEARS AGO, dealt with gold.
When someone stakes out a public policy position and argues for it strenuously, often to the detriment of his own career, for FORTY FUCKING YEARS, it's a bit late in the day to claim that he's pandering.
I am more sure that Ron Paul believes in the gold standard than I am sure that Bill Clinton likes pussy. That's how sure I am that it's his REAL position, and not one he made up to pander to a constituency.
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This is nothing more than an attack article. Ron Paul is a leader. Noone has fougth harder for following the constitution and inspired so many. To even mention long discredited newsletters from the 80s or to insinuate anti-semi agendas should be proof enough to ignore everythingyou have to say.
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On the merits, the few that Harsanyi's piece included:
Paul focuses on the foundations of liberty: a rock-solid constitution, a monetary supply that cannot be expanded by government (or Fed) decree, transparency between the military and the public, and and limited powers--legislative, state, and federal--which cannot be easily co-opted by corporations or corrupt insiders. Reason magazine tends to focus only on the ends of liberty, easily visible issues like pot legalization (which I support). But the analysis of our nation, and how libertarianism could help fix its problems is pointless without addressing the growth of government, increasing Federal power, the lack of a free market in currency, the lack of constraint on military operations, the excess of subsidies, tax breaks, and other protections, the excess of licensing requirements, etc. If Reason's libertarians would talk more about these issues and less about some cloudy notion of beltway-palatable ideology, then maybe people would actually listen to what you have to say.
Also, the newsletters were written by a ghost-writer, possibly a friend of Ron Paul's, but he has ALWAYS denied both knowledge of their content as well as any sympathy for the racist views they contained. As he has said many times, racism is fundamentally compatible with any notion of liberty, which doesn't even categorize people into groups which could be targets for discrimination. There are some ugly views mixed in with anti-government/libertarian sentiment, and some of them are racist. But not Paul's.
The brief history of Goldwater and Reagan is absolutely not all that we need to know, primarily because the first movement failed and the second lied through its teeth as it pursued all kinds of governmental growth which its purported "libertarian" roots would prohibit.
What people need to know is that there's a movement of individuals who are concerned about the direction of our government, our military, and our economy, and they are not concerned, on any given day, with what David Harsanyi thinks, today included.
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C'mon people. Those 'freedom' and 'peace' things were decided long ago. Get serious!
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"Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Paul is that thousands of intellectually curious young people will have read his silly books, including End the Fed, as serious manifestoes"
we can at least take solace from the fact that there is no such risk with harsanyi's scribblings.
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The interesting thing is, Harsanyi writes for the Denver Post, which has a daily circulation far in excess of the number of books Ron Paul will ever sell.
True story. -
Want to bet on it?
The Post's daily circulation is about 250,000.
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So one of Paul's books has sold more than 250,000 copies? I'm very surprised. But good on him, if true.
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“I think it’s going to be an announcement of a new monetary order, and they’ll probably make it sound very limited, they’re not going to say this is world government, even though it is if you control the world’s money and you control the military, which they do indirectly.”
“A world central bank, worldwide regulation and world control of the whole system, of all the commodities and all the natural resources, what else can you call it other than world government?”
“Obama wouldn’t be there if he didn’t toe the line, and when the meeting starts on November 15th for the new monetary system, this could be the beginning of the end of what’s left of our national sovereignty.” -
This is a very poorly written article. There are no facts to support many of the claims that he writes "silly" books which include racist comments. Instead of having a logical discussion regarding foreign policy and monetary policy, Harsansyi resorts to the typical neoconservative position which is to make the false claim that Congressman Paul does not represent the future of the Republican party.
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Dear Reason,
You guys sent me an e-mail just yesterday asking me why I haven't renewed my subscription to your magazine for a third year.
Other comments, especially the one left by "Old Mexican" have already articulated everything that I could hope to say about this article. Needless to say, if I wanted to hear unsubstantiated bullshit like this I'd turn on Sean Hannity, who at the very least, won't ask me for money/donations.
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Also, the newsletters were written by a ghost-writer, possibly a friend of Ron Paul's, but he has ALWAYS denied both knowledge of their content as well as any sympathy for the racist views they contained.
"Boy, it sure burns me up to have a national holiday for that pro-communist philanderer, Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman...We can thank [Ronald Reagan] for our annual Hate-Whitey Day!"
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http://goo.gl/TnJ9
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Is that the "racism" in Ron Paul's newsletter? Calling MLK day a hate whitey day holiday?
A dumb thing to say but hardly racist. And I can tell you that I have shown property in DC neighborhoods where I have had 13 year old kids out of school on MLK day follow me and my female clients up to the doors of a building shouting to us "do you want some black cock" (and then become temporarily confused and paralyzed when they realized one of the parka clad figures they had been screaming at was a man. I've also had gangs of African American urchins scream at Asian or Caucasian families I was showing property to that "soon you will be our slaves." Someone taught them to do this.
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"Is that the "racism" in Ron Paul's newsletter? Calling MLK day a hate whitey day holiday?"
No, it's not racism, but, and this is the catch, it's not PC.
And libertine Reason lurves PC.
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"Invariably, the comments section to such an article criticizes Ron Paul supporters on the grounds that they unthinkingly support him and cannot brook criticism. The truth is that we can’t stand idiotic, dumb-guy criticism, from a supposedly libertarian source, that condemns Dr. Paul for holding what are traditional, long-standing libertarian views."
Uh-oh. Don't tell that to my alter-ego, Mr. Woods. He's having so much fun with all of the comments!
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Look, I posted again! Weeeee!!!
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I'm gonna bring this biznitch to 1000 posts all by myself if I have to.
Woooohooo!!! I'm witty, like me, like me!
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We need SugarFree to pop in now with a good Steve Smith/Ron Paul encounter story.
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What's with the hit piece? Reason should be an ally of the Ron Paul revolution. Congratulations, I have just cancelled my Reason subscription and urged all friends to do the same. Maybe Reason is just jealous that Ron Paul is stealing the libertarian thunder?
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Just checkin' in. Anything new? No? That's okay, I'll check back later.
Yippeee!!
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I don't see why libertarians pick on Paul. are you afraid you might actually get a libertarian elected president? keep trying to destroy your own movement and things will never change, for the libertarians or the republicans. I have no doubt that if Ron Paul won the Republican nomination he could defeat Obama. silly books? you mean you think the Federal Reserve is a good thing? are you even a libertarian?
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another thing I detect is extreme jealousy. don't hate Paul because he's
beautifulsuccessful. no other republican or libertarian in recent memory has gotten the youth and people in general interested in libertarian ideas as Paul has. -
Here's a novel idea... Do a modicum of objective research on your subject before you write. "Let's, for a moment, forget Paul (and how I wish this could be a permanent condition, considering the congressman is neither a serious politician nor—and I can't stress this enough—a serious thinker)." This is a textbook example of the pot calling the snow black as the author has obviously not put much thought into this poorly composed smear piece. "His [Paul's] obsession with long-decided monetary policy and isolationism are not his only half-baked crusades." These monetary policies may have been long-decided by those elites who benefit from them, but they are still detrimental to the productive class and the US economy. A fifteen minute voyage into the apparently arduous task of fact finding would demonstrate that Paul is an advocate of non-intervention, which is quite a bit different from isolationism. This article is so poorly conceived it could qualify for a libel suit. It is thoroughly unreasonable and inexcusable.
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Okay, I guess I'll stop now, because unlike my much cooler and smarter alter-ego, I can tell when I'm wasting time on something so futile such as relentless, anonymous posts on an article written by someone else because I'm not cool enough to have my own thoughts published. Unless my alter-ego is the aforementioned writer, in which case I take it all back. He's a genius!
*sigh*
Poor me...YAY!!!!!!!
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"His obsession with long-decided monetary policy"
This has to be the most curious statement out of this rag. So if something is "long-decided", it's not to be challenged? Like when slavery was long-decided? Or how about when a war is "long-decided"? No need for opposition if it's long-decided we must bomb. Right?
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What a horrible piece. Absolutely no substance and I'm not much of a fan of Ron Paul. By the end of it, I had no idea what the point of the article even was.
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It was guised as a piece pontificating the possibility that Ron Paul doesn't really represent the conservative movement, which would be a valid issue to ponder and debate.
But then it turned sharply into a slanderous hit-piece, that I'm not entirely convinced isn't supposed to be a joke, it is so poorly structured, researched and written.
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it's amazing some still have no idea what isolationism is. or non interventionism. which are complete 180's.
isolationism-berlin walls, border fences, tariffs, protectionism, lack of commerce with other nations, no diplomacy. north korea, cuba, venezuela etc.
non-interventionism- avoiding entangling alliances, aggressive wars and empires while maintaining diplomatic relations through commerce, travel and regard for sovereignty of nations. unfortunately there are not examples of any nation practicing that philosophy.
ron paul has predicted many of the things that have happened in this country in real life. it's probably time we start taking his advice on how to avoid some of these problems. maybe he doesn't represent the future of the label of conservatism. maybe the failure of our republic is the failure of the false idea of conservatism that many have been led to believe is really any different at the root than progressivism.
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also, I would much rather see someone like Goldwater and Paul run and spread good ideas than a lump of shit like McCain, Palin, and all the other neocons. I would vote for Paul but I will never vote for a lump of shit.
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also, this article is a lump of shit.
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+1
I told someone at Reason once about this and they obviously didn't listen:
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Are you guys at Reason nuts? Do you not care about liberty at all? The country is dying.
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Ok this column is the equivalent of a trash dump so I am sticking a billboard on it:
Tea Party Protest 2/25 at Blair House
9:30 am 1651 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. If anyone wants to meet for coffee beforehand at Caribou Coffee at 1701 Pennsylvania Avenue NW at 8:45ish -
Tom Woods' take on the hit piece against Paul by David Harsanyi:
[M]y favorite line in that dumb-guy hit piece is this: “His obsession with long-decided monetary policy and isolationism are not his only half-baked crusades.” So a libertarian is evidently supposed to think like this: since the establishment tells us it’s just swell to have a monopoly central bank, and that to think otherwise would place one outside the mainstream (and we can’t have that; surely we don’t want to be outside that glorious continuum from Mitch McConnell to Hillary Clinton), the matter is thus “long decided” and closed for discussion. The establishment has spoken; the matter is closed.
This, of course, would mean Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, F.A. Hayek, and other free-market economists — that is, the kind we libertarians tend to like — were all stupidheads. Didn’t they know these issues are “long decided”? Curse you, David Harsanyi, for not having been born sooner, that you might have urged the crazy men who developed (and won the Nobel Prize for) Austrian business cycle theory to quit wasting their time. Central banking causes no discoordination after all, the Denver Post columnist would have us believe. Next time, Dave, it might be better to make an argument. Some of us may need something more substantial than your ex cathedra pronouncement.
The “isolationism” remark, straight out of traditional commie agitprop, is too stupid to reply to. I’d point out that Ron Paul is adapting to the present day the traditional classical liberal foreign policy of Richard Cobden, but I suspect Harsanyi’s exhaustive studies have yielded him no acquaintance with Cobden.
Invariably, the comments section to such an article criticizes Ron Paul supporters on the grounds that they unthinkingly support him and cannot brook criticism. The truth is that we can’t stand idiotic, dumb-guy criticism, from a supposedly libertarian source, that condemns Dr. Paul for holding what are traditional, long-standing libertarian views.http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/51699.html
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Brilliant.
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Did Woods just bitch slap Harsanyi?
I think he did, and it it smarts - bad.
*snicker*
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Hey [t]reason, please rename this article to 'The David Harsanyi delusion'.
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Uh-oh, my alter-ego is gonna post again, and so are some of his crazy Angretards and Optimites!
Look out for these guys. They're all nuts and can't stand it when people criticize crappy journalism.
Who wants to bet that we'll reach 20 million posts by the summer equinox because of these mindless followers?
Haha!!! Two can play this game alter-ego!! Now, if you or any of your Optimites respond to anything you're just proving me correct!!!
Hahaha!!!!!
Weeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
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Oh, and if you or your cronies don't post anymore, then I still win because that would just mean that you're too proud to speak your mind.
Yippeee!!
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Why would anyone want sound money. I like the fake money the FED prints up and loans to banks for 0.5% so they can charge me 29%. Sad part is the banks are so greedy and reckless they can't even make it work. Ron Paul must be crazy lol.
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Wow. Very disappointed. I don't agree with everything Paul says by any measure but this was just un-called for and juvenile. Bad Reason. Bad!
I was waiting for a point and all I read were insults and half truths about ghostwritten newsletters he has long since apologized for.
I'll tell you what I want in a politician: one who is honest and sticks to his convictions, even if they are a bit loony in areas. Paul is that if nothing else. Anybody else I wouldn't trust with the power.
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Ron Paul has done more for the libertarian movement then anyone in the last 20 years. He single-handedly in 2008 turned libertarianism from some fringe idea to a serious and popular ideology.
I can say that Ron Paul also changed me from a neocon into a non interventionist freedom lover. This article is a joke.
P.S I cant recall that big speech RP gave in which he proclaimed himself the perfect representation of libertarianism. He's not perfect, but hes better then any of the other clowns in D.C
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How bad does the Fed have to screw up before Harsanyi is willing to admit that the Austrian critique of inflationary central banks is correct? Do we have to wait for Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation before the punditry admit that the current system is fundamentally flawed?
As for social issues and the military-industrial corporate welfare complex, the sooner mainstream conservatives let go of those dogs, the sooner they focus on genuinely small government, the sooner we'll enjoy the fruits of freedom in our lifetimes.
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"Paul isn't a traditional conservative. His obsession with long-decided monetary policy and isolationism are not his only half-baked crusades. Paul's newsletters of the '80s and '90s were filled with anti-Semitic and racist rants, proving his slumming in the ugliest corners of conspiracyland today is no mistake."
Ooh! Double whammy with the Straw-man uppercut followed by the ad hominem roundhouse!
I think you can do better with that, Dave. Let's try this:
Ron Paul's crackpot views on the War on Terror are just plain nutty; he was also seen talking to a pedophile in 1996 at a Dairy Queen in Houston.
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If you want to see Ron Paul's real first response to the news letter controversy, check out the May 22, 1996 article in the Dallas Morning News entitled, "Candidate's comments on blacks questioned"
Choice exerpts:
"Dr. Paul, who is running in Texas' 14th Congressional District, defended his writings in an interview Tuesday. He said they were being taken out of context.""Dr. Paul, who served in Congress in the late 1970s and early 1980s, said Tuesday that he has produced the newsletter since 1985 and distributes it to an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 subscribers. A phone call to the newsletter's toll-free number was answered by his campaign staff."
"Dr. Paul denied suggestions that he was a racist and said he was not evoking stereotypes when he wrote the columns."
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If you want to see Ron Paul's real first response to the news letter controversy
Um, no. Not really. No.
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No linkey, no existy. Ask your mommy to go to a fishing expedition if she wants to.
By the way, there was NOTHING racist about the comments in some of those newsletters. Political Correctness acolytes may think so, but not reasonable (and intellectually honest) people.
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I paid NewsBank for the article, it's no longer on the internet, but I cans end it to you if you want.
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What does it have to do with anything? As a libertarian and a minority, I would rather have a racist president that does not aggress against me than a non-racist president that does aggress against me. Paul has been in congress since the 70's and you can not find one vote that can be classified as racist. In fact, if anything, it's the opposite. Do you think he had a 30 year plot to gain everyone's trust so he can become president and unleash a wrath of racist legislation?
Racism is nothing more than a specific form of stupidity. I think nothing less of a guy that hates me for my race than I think of a guy that hates me for my politics. As long as they don't aggress against anyone, libertarianism has nothing to say about stupidity except that it's your right to be stupid.
So, even if Paul is racist (he's not), he'd still be a much better person than a non-racist who wants to aggress against me (say Obama or Harsanyi).
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I'm also surprised tha he always get accused of being a "crackpot" and a crypto-racist at the same time. Pick one. He's demonstrated very clearly that he doesn't give a crap if people think his ideas are kooky. Out of all the people in congress, if he really was a racist, I don't think it'd be secret at all. You wouldn't have to be quoting something he didn't write 30 years ago, you could call his ass up right now and he'd tell you all about it.
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Maybe we should send more American jobs to China and India to save big corporations some money. If China had free importation it may work but the way they peg their money it is no wonder we are flooded with lead covered junk and unemployment is at 20%
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Re: Cytotoxic,
Yeah, like in WW2, we bombed all those Germans, and now they'll never stop hating us! They blow up 35432 internets just last week! Oh God if we had just had freer trade.
They were already the enemies of the US, Cytotoxic. Your retort is simply stupid.
The question becomes - why wouldn't people that had NO BEEF with the US suddenly LIKE to be bombed by her, for no other reason that they simply exist? The US attacked Somalia, for NO reason. It bombed Servia and allowed ultra-radical Muslims to get a foothold in Bosnia, for NO reason. It attacked Iraq, for NO reason. It invaded Afghanistan for a dubious reason (to get their hands on a guy they have NOT gotten their hands for 8 LONG YEARS NOW, when the US normally does not invade countries that harbor criminals) and have now bombed Pakistan (an ally!!) for NO reason. You think that does not create enemies where there were none?
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Slow down guys! We're gonna blow past 500 comments way too fast.
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I am a huge fan of Harsanyi. Huge.
This is the very first thing he's written since I've started following his work that I disagree with. And do I.
Ron Paul is not perfect - and I am no Paulite - but he is a serious man and our most loyal supporter of liberty in Congress. He is not to be dismissed.
I am seriously disappointed with this piece.
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Once again, Reason Magazine is betraying libertarianism by printing trash such as this. Last time I checked, the most fundamental issues of true libertarianism are sound money and opposition to the warfare state. As Randolph Bourne wrote, "war is the health of the State." Furthermore, we cannot have peace, liberty, or prosperity and allow government to counterfeit money. The results of governmental counterfeiting of money are the financing of war and economic downturns which are used as an excuse to expand government. Those who support foreign entanglements or monetary debasement have NO claim to be even remotely libertarian.
If Reason Magazine wishes to be taken seriously by libertarians, I would suggest getting rid of all writers who are pro-war or pro-Fed. There are issues on which libertarians can hold differences of opinion, but these issues are too important to compromise.
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Last time I checked, the most fundamental issues of true libertarianism are sound money and opposition to the warfare state.
You mean, it's not gay marriage and open borders?
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Our founders wrote a Constitution that could be ammendeded. Those ammendments could even be repealed. That way "long decided" wrongs could be right.
Anything else the mental midgets want to challenge the constitution with? -
I though Nick Gillespie was a supporter of RP? Why would he allow this crap if hes the editor of the website? If this were an intelligent critique of RP record thats one thing, but this is just ignorant name calling
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I'm adding to the commentary here for the sole purpose of driving us over 500 comments before 5 PM EST, as if I needed to add something for that purpose.
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I'm not necessarily a Paul fan, however David has apparently lost his mind if he thinks the Fed and central bankers aren't the absolute biggest criminals on the planet.
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#500!
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The author's beef is with Mises, Hayek and Rothbard. And now, with posting Harsanyi's vicous and untrue characterization of Ron Paul as a racist, my beef is with you, Reason. You quite literally just lost a customer.
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Just want to add to the noise. This is the worst article I have ever read on Reason.
Utterly vacuous.
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Damn, 500 comments in 4 hours. You humans have outdone yourselves. Just for that we're going to kill even more of ProLibs comments.
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HEY EVERYONE.
READ THIS ARTICLE. IT'S BETTER.
http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/24/the-paulpocalypse
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Did the author even read End the Fed? It was a thoughtful and reasoned critique of all the mischief and counterfeiting the FED does. I guess thats "silly" to poser libertarians like the author. Keep drinking the MSM kool aid David
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Harsanyi, you ignorant prat. Go and read what Tom Woods wrote about this screed of yours:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/51699.html
-jcr
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You're a moron.
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This is the stupidest thing yet penned on Ron paul. It reads like something out of The Nation or The Daily Worker.
The tired accusations of "anti-semitism" flop wheh AIPAC boasts of total control of Congress. And Black sociopathology has reached epidemic proportions in all US cities. Non-
interventionist foreign policy and the end of worthless paper currency under the fraud of fractional reserve banking are basic libertarian planks. There's nothing to conserve in the 100 year old tradition of the warfare-welfare state, so thankfully Paul is
not a conservative. If Paul had flopped in the CPAC poll jerks like Doherty and Harsanyi would be trumpeting that as proof his crusade was over.
So when he wins.........Reason has become totally irrelevant to libertarianism. -
There is much to criticize in Reason's approach to libertarianism. Still, I'd hardly lump Doherty into the same class as Harsanyi.
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David Harsanyi probably hates Frank Zappa for his remarks towards Jewish people. Zappa still has a following, the anti-defamation league couldn't stop him.
Enough of the PC bullshit.
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Would agree then Rev Wright's antics then are just anti-PC and not racist?
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I don't care about Rev. Wright. I was talking about Frank Zappa and some of the scorn he received from Jewish groups.
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Im just trying to get some consistency from the right. They claim to be anti-pc but when someone like Wright comes along they go full retard.
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from the right? come on now. zappa was a cult icon, a big personality. comparing rev. wright to zappa is like comparing apples to oranges. the point is zappa said many things about jewish people that weren't in good taste and many groups targeted him in the same fashion david is going after ron paul. last time i checked a lot of people still like zappa. it didn't work, it was useless dying banter. it's like the race card, it's become tacky.
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reason sucks.
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Haha!! Joe M proved me right. I am witty and smart after all!!!
Weeeeee!!!!
Better slow down Joey and fellow Angretards, or else you may hit that 20 million mark well ahead of the equinox!
Yipeee!!!
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Thank god I don't have a subscription to Reason Magazine as it saves me the trouble of cancelling it for publishing such a factless screed.
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This article makes me want to subscribe just so I can have the satisfaction of cancelling it!
(joke)
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Was just thinking the same thing...
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HAHA! This is officially - THE - LAST - TIME - I ever look at [T]Reason again! Goodbye!
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I'm just glad my first issue of Reason was free. Too bad...it looked promising.
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Anybody playing the Reason drinking game would have died of alcohol poisoning about half way through this thread.
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Im surprised John hasnt commented yet
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David Harsanyi is dumber than dirt.
Ron Paul rocks.
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Hey, Ron Paul is aiight.
I'm gonna get an "RP '12" tattoed on my big toe.
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I encourage any self-respecting Reason writer to quit the magazine. I hope at least Brian Doherty is decent enough to do it.
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From his 1990 Newsletter:
"If a clean, bright Negro who speaks without a dialect is ever elected, this country is in big trouble."
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Well, he was, and we are, ain't it?
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Except he never said that, liar.
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"If a clean, bright Negro who speaks without a dialect is ever elected, this country is in big trouble."
Wait a sec...
Harry Reid and Chris Matthews had a newsletter?
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Mothafucka! I don't be noin' nothin' 'bout a nigga's cleanliness. Gots to axe MC Biden, biotch.
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"Raaaaacist!!"
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Thanks for giving me another motive to NOT read REASON and to continue to read WWW.LEWROCKWELL.COM daily.
Well done. Brilliant. Bravo.
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Here Comes Everybody!
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It really is a disgusting shame that libertarians sabotage themselves with sectarian infighting. A viable movement knows when to bury the hatchet and promote unity.
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Ron Paul is for sound money, non-interventionist foreign policy and for real federalism. Yeah, nobody serious could be for those things. Spare me. The Kochtupus attempts to strike again. Cato, Reason et al. please stop suckling at the Koch teet and get serious.
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Fool. Few are those who can resist my sweet, sweet teat.
And my omelets. I make a mean omelet. -
550-some-odd comments (emphasis on the "odd") and rising. Can we get to 1000 by midnight? Come on, people! YES! WE! CAN!
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OK, X.
Who would win a Martin Luther King Jr. Day 10K foot race - Ron Paul, Ben Bernanke or the typical black boy? Discuss. -
Depends - can Ben use the helicopter?
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"Racism is the biggest forum of collectivism and anti-liberty"
-Ron Paul
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I thought reason used Cathy Young to write substanceless articles to opine against libertarian ethics and ideas. I guess it's possible David Harsanyi is a new alias for Cathy since it's the first I've heard of him.
I wonder why an anti-semite like Paul would go around promoting the ideas of a bunch of Jewish guys (like Mises & Rothbard).
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W.
T.
F.Randian - you've got your own paultard spoofbots! contrats!
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Lol hes getting burned @ http://townhall.com/columnists.....e#comments too
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Long decided monetary policy??? Decided by whom??? If the author believes that the state should control the economy and money, then how can he call himself a libertarian? Here is the main tactic of Ron Paul attackers: dismiss his ideas as "kooky" and "quixotic" without taking any time to refute them. God forbid someone oppose the standard wisdom of Washington's monetary policy. In the author's view, anyone who opposes the all-encompassing wisdom of a central bank doesn't deserve to be seriously considered.
As for the smear term "isolationism," Ron Paul is NOT an isolationist. What the U.S. engages in now is isolationism -- imposing trade sanctions on and bombing countries the government doesn't like. Paul, in contrast, advocates the policy of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson: free trade with all nations and entangling alliances with none. The alternative is what we have now -- an endless orgy of blood and death in the name of "protecting our freedoms."
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Nate from NOLA?
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WOW. Thanks, for the article, now I know where Reason stands. This was a very ugly hit peace on a honest and principled man, one of the few left in congress. I am truly disturbed by this awful article. I'm telling you, people are really beginning to listen to Ron Paul, so go ahead and continue to marginalize and demean him, it does not matter, the people are seeing through your tactics. Reason: just another lying suedo-libertarian MSM RAG. good riddens.
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Of course you'll be reading Brian Doherty's positive piece on Ron Paul today and you'll immediately change your views on where "Reason" stands? Let's see: Doherty actually works for Reason, Harsanyi doesn't. Sigh.
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so, there is no approval process for your blog content? This guy is writing under your publication, representing Reason. How could anyone have decided this was in any way appropriate for a principled publication? help me out here, because I am about to delete the bookmark to this site.
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Reason publishes Harsanyi's columns, which are written for the Denver Post. Evidently Reason thinks Harsanyi is interesting to a libertarian audience, which he often is (and he's done some very good stuff). But like any author, he has his own views and since Reason doesn't, to my knowledge, require a loyalty oath from its authors (disclaimer: I've written for the print version), they are willing to publish whatever he has to say.
Yes, this piece was really weak and that's from a guy who is not a RP fan. But blaming *Reason* for it seems crazy, esp. when on the same day an actual Reason employee is writing a pro-Paul piece.
Go give Harsanyi a piece of your mind, but don't assume that everything that every author writes at Reason is somehow "Reason's party line." In fact, there IS no such thing from what I can see.
And thank god for that.
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Fair enough, but you have got to see how this looks to "new" people. I just found Reason by watching Stossel's new show. Now I see that Reason apparently, in your words "thinks Harsanyi is interesting to a libertarian audience". Well, after reading this piece, one might question why that is so. And I do not care about loyalty to any party or person. What I care about is loyalty to at least an ounce of integrity and debate based on substance. I am sorry if I hastily accused Reason for this piece, but......it does appear in Reason. So why would Reason continue to give such a person their audience?
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Because he has things to say on many issues that are of interest to libertarians. But why expect any website or magazine to toe a party line? The staffers at Reason actually disagree on things and not all are libertarians of the same variety or intensity. And that's a good thing!
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I get it, many different types of Libertarians here, Great no problem. What I do not get is why you are defending this hit piece? Do you not realize just how many people have found the ideas of Libertarianism through Ron Paul? First I found Ron Paul, then I found Libertarianism. And while I do not expect any site to tow any party line, I would expect a site dedicated to Libertarianism to not trash another principled Libertarian. I dont get it. And what's with all this I hear about some rift with the Lew Rockwell site? I think that is an amazing site, does Reason hate them? what the deal there? And why do people call this site "TReason", and "Beltway libertarians"? As you can tell, I am new to Libertarianism, about 1 year. So can you help me understand what is going on in the movement, because I am confused with a supposed Libertarian site allowing a tacky hit piece on Ron Paul, and why there seems to be MAJOR division among Libertarian sites, much more than "just not agreeing on everything".
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Yes please do not draw conclusions about Reason from Harsyani's piece.
As Dr Paul himself said at CPAC, we need to be tolerant of different ideas.
Harsyani's an ass, that occasionally posts free market-ish articles critical of current policy.
Dr Paul understands more about economics than Harsyani ever will.
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Let me begin by disclosing that as someone who has been very influenced by Rothbard, I have some trouble with Dr. Paul's positions because they are not libertarian enough and fall far short of what I would prefer. That does not mean that I oppose Dr. Paul. In fact, as a libertarian I find him preferable to any of the major candidates in any of the parties in the US.
From what I read, the article does not contain much that is of substance and is entirely unconvincing. There isn't anything particularly 'half-baked' with Dr. Paul's insistence that the US government and the President follow the Constitution or that the US does what the founders advised when it comes to foreign policy.
And Dr. Paul's, 'obsession with long-decided monetary policy,' is not to be condemned as Harsanyi wishes, but to be commended because it shows that Dr. Paul understands the folly of central banking and a fractional reserve system that is built on a foundation of continual inflation and fiat money. Savers and workers should thank Dr. Paul for trying to protect their purchasing power and should condemn David Harsanyi's preference for the constant inflation that transfers wealth to the banking system.
I also do not see any convincing evidence of Dr. Paul being an anti-Semite or racist. While Dr. Paul has admitted to making errors by allowing others to write inappropriate pieces in his newsletters without proper oversight, those errors were corrected a long time ago. His opposition to giving taxpayer money to arm Israel, Turkey and Egypt has little to do with anti-Semetisim or racism but with a proper reading of the constitution. There isn't much in Dr. Paul's foreign policy positions that would have made Jefferson, Adams, or Washington uncomfortable.
Sadly, David Harsanyi's hatchet job reveals far more about his own prejudices and ideology than it does about Dr. Paul's. But I suspect that most of Reason's readers should be able to see through Harsanyi's bias and can make up their own minds on the balance of the evidence. While I do not expect the Republican Party to be very influenced by Dr. Paul's positions, if it wants a sniff at returning to power it will have to move far closer to him than the dinosaurs who run the party are comfortable with. Of course, having Republicans in power is probably not any better than having the Democrats in power. Both parties are run by self-interested statists who care far more about taking their turn at the public trough than about the principles that once made the US the greatest nation in the world.
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"If the author believes that the state should control the economy and money, then how can he call himself a libertarian?"
He can't call himself a libertarian. But we know that many people like to apply labels to themselves that are clearly inappropriate. From what I can see, Harsanyi's preferences make him a statist.
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David, you're an idiot as evidenced by the fact that you and morons like you cannot even understand the difference between "isolationism" and declining to drop bombs on people in third world countries thousands of miles away that pose no threat to us. Most of your other "points" are equally stupid. Please do us all a favor and switch careers. Thank you.
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If you're going to say the guy's ideas are half baked then show that they're half baked. Leave the name calling to grade school.
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Is Harsanyi egregiously ignorant or just dishonest? Why in the world would Reason allow such anti-libertarian garbage like this to be posted? It is inexcusable to attack Ron Paul in this way, he deserves better from an alleged libertarian writing for a presumably libertarian publication. Isolationism was the early Japanese policy of executing foreigners who had the misfortune of landing or being shipwrecked on their islands, and their outlawing of foreign travel as one example. It has NOTHING to do with a policy of non-interventionism
A "serious" libertarian should know the difference. Also, I think Ron Paul's views on economics and monetary policy are roundly vindicated by the catastrophies long predicted by the austrian school.
If anything is "half-baked", it is this article.
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ABC,
I'm not sure this is really worth my while. The article both annoyed me and bored me at the same time. I've heard this all before. Nothing original here.
How about Ron Paul being a racist or anti-semite? We've been down that road before. I challenge anybody to find ONE SINGLE RACIST OR ANTI-SEMITIC COMMENT EVER from Ron Paul. Saying he is responsible for what others have said is simply ridiculous. Thinking that he is racist or anti-semitic shows that David does not even begin to understand what the man is all about.
Ron Paul not a serious thinker? Really? Compared to who? I challenge you to find ONE OTHER REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE who even comes close to his intellect. He is extremely well read and has authored several books on economics and politics. The assertion that they are "silly books" is an off-hand and totally unsupported remark. (Speaking of name calling...)
OK, I've wasted enough time here.
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*Sigh*, here we go again, yet another anti-Ron Paul piece using the same old "arguments". I'm sure glad I ended my Reason subscription two years ago...
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I expect nothing less from a jew author.
Let me guess. You hate Paul because he doesn't want to give money to israel anymore. Guess what, we give more to the countries around israel than to israel itself.
go jew elsewhere
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This must be some kind of a record. Almost 600 comments before a Paultarded anti-Semite shows up.
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Mustve gotten kicked from Freeperland
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You mean someone posing as a "Paultarded anti-Semite".
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This.
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Yep that's a troll straight up.
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*sigh*
For the millionth time... it's not the man, it's the message.
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Lonewhacko, oh Lonewhacko where are you? We need you to save this thread.
It appears saying something or anything negative about Ron Paul is greater than any agitated frozen dairy confection when it comes to bringing the
craziespitchfork wielding citizenry to the yard. -
No shhhh! We have been LoneWacko free for at least a month now. Dont jinx it or we will be hearing him parroting Buchanan talking points again.
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Man. I didn't read any comments, but I do what to be part of the 600+ comments.
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It is because of people like David Harsanyi that have hijacked the word "libertarian" that I no longer claim to be one. God knows I would never want anyone to confuse my political leanings with the like of this hack.
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It's unbelievable that this is published at Reason, and not because it dissents against Ron Paul; but because where it isn't mere slander, it is lacks both "reason" and thoughtful "libertarianism" which "Reason" magazine claims to profess.
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Just when my scotch bottle thought it was safe....
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I have seen Nick Gillespie on Fox News a few times and was interested in what he was saying so I decided to check out Reason.com and subscribe to Reason Magazine. As a new comer to libertarian ideas I do not understand the in house fighting. I was hoping to find a place to learn and grow and instead all I find is baseless character assassination on Ron Paul and some type of intellectually elite snobbery/rivalry? Yes I was introduced to libertarian ideas through Ron Paul. I was hoping to learn more but maybe this isn't the place.
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http://reason.com/archives/201.....lpocalypse
Try that.
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Bad link.
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If you are serious, and have basic understanding of economics then try:
http://mises.org/
or
http://www.lewrockwell.com/
or
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/
also:
http://freedomwatchonfox.com/
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Thanks for calling us intellectually elite....that is awesome. Our snobbery and rivalry is a thing of joy to the regulars. One thing I can say about reason is that even with the threaded comments, the characters on this message board are fun to talk with/argue with/learn from/rival with. The world is wierd and most of us have trouble finding people willing to discuss the topics that interest us. We are able to do that here....while "working". Sure it sucks when another hatchet job from Reason comes out and we are left to debate why this happened...but if you come back in a couple years you might like it.
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Ah, the envy! Unlike Reason and similar beltway lib outfits, Dr. Paul has been selfless and extremely effective advocate for the cause of liberty and peace. I won't forget how this rag said didly about the neocon destruction of the Constitution during the Bush years. I recommend Reason focus strictly on the drug issue, and leave the rest to the adults.
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You sir can stand to take a crash course in logic or philosophy. You can't expect any reasonable person to dissociate himself with Ron Paul because you think his books are "silly" (even though their theses aren't fringe or radical in academia), or because his newsletters, allegedly, were filled with racist remarks. Perhaps if you quoted some of his newsletters you'd have a stronger case. Alas, you were too lazy to do that when you compiled this case against Paul.
Good day sir.
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As a former member of the LP, let me say just 3 words that made me retract my support for them... 'BOB F'ING BARR!' There's a real life-time libertarian for you. You can now add Reason to the list of pretentious pieces of crap right along with the LP. If you have an actual problem something that he has said or done, that would be fine, but to lash out at him because he doesnt want to carry your card or run as your candidate is grade-school-baby shit. His monetary policy and view on the America's place in the world are right in line with the Reason, unless they like inflation and endless foreign aid and needless wars. This man is probably the only politician to vote with the constitution EVERY time in generations...stop knocking him because he's not in your little circle of friends.
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Looks like David Harsanyi is the one who lacks serious thinking.
Lets see:
- get rid of the FED
- go back to sound money
- get rid of the income tax
- stop nationalization of auto/healthcare/insurance etc..
- bring troops home and stop the wars
- restore privacy/freedom to the individual
- etc, etc, etc ...yeah those ideas are worthless.
What kind of fluff article is this? Get rid of this guy Reason ...
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Paul has his fault, this article just doesn't point it out. This reminds me of the former Bush speechwriter column that appeared in the globe a week ago. Just ranting no substance.