Osamanomics

Ezra Klein reads bin Laden and is amused that he says

"There are no taxes in Islam, but rather there is a limited Zakaat [alms] totaling 2.5 percent." So he's a mixture of flat taxer and anti-imperialist. Sounds like someone else we've got. So I'm just saying: A bin Laden/Ron Paul ticket would really liven up this race.

Tongue in cheek, obviously, but let's get this straight. Here's bin Laden's context for his awesome 2.5 percent flat tax.

As you liberated yourselves before from the slavery of monks, kings, and feudalism, you should liberate yourselves from the deception, shackles, and attition of the capitalist system… the capitalist system seeks to turn the entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations under the label of "globalization" in order to protect democracy.

[T]he reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes; and the abject poverty and tragic hunger in Africa; all of this is but one side of the grim face of this global system.

So it is imperative that you free yourselves from all of that and search for an alternative, upright methodology in which it is no the business of any class of humaniy to lay down its own laws to its own advantage at the expsense of the other classes as is the case with you.

So… not a libertarian. When bin Laden takes over (and I blame you, Justin Logan and Chuck Hagel) he will abolish capitalism and bring all of us into some kind of nebulous socialism. Bin Laden's a dumb rich kid, so it'll probably be close to Michael Albert's Parecon.

And scrapping the Constitution to replace it with, well, anything is the least Paul-like gesture you could imagine.