Politics

Candidates for Truth!

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Pastor Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party's candidate for president, snagged his nomination in part because of his connections and friendship to Ron Paul, and his promise to carry on the rEVOLution. That makes it all the more disturbing when we see video of Baldwin indulging in 9/11 kookery. In this video, he first makes clear that he doesn't trust the conclusions of the Warren Commission, then speculates about the Twin Towers. (How this squares with his first post-9/11 theory, that God punished us by sending the attackers, is a mystery to me.)

I don't know whether there was any kind of an inside apparatus involved in this or not… If there's duplicity involved in some kind of conspiracy, then let's find out who it is and prosecute whoever's involved.

Is it possible to spend too much time discussing this stuff? Sure. It's a fringe movement. But it's a fringe movement that has the potential to discredit Libertarians the way that the hobgoblins of the Birchers—water flouridation, etc—discredited the old right. At the LP Convention, I winced as all but three candidates partipated in a Truther debate. I winced again when I heard one delegation caucusing before the fourth presidential ballot, with every delegate given the chance to make the case for his/her candidate, and the Ruwart supporting delegate argued that only her candidate would investigate 9/11 Truth. I can't think of anything worse for libertarians than gibbering conspiracy theorists taking it upon themselves to speak for us.

UPDATE: Mind you, I don't think the Baldwin campaign will be dull. His coalition of Hal Lindsay social-cons and Alex Jones prison-warriors has been a long time coming. The universe Baldwin moves around in is fascinating. To wit, here's the schedule of the Alex Jones episode on which Jones endorsed Baldwin:

Alex welcomes Jesse Ventura, Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association member Bill Grumbine, Aaron Zelman of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party, and Bilderberg researcher and journalist Jim Tucker.

And Baldwin re-re-re-aborted the career of Alan Keyes, for which all free men must be thankful.