Everyone Wants to Beat Up Libertarians: Podcast

On today's show, Reason's editors discuss the attack on Rand Paul, the Texas mass shooting, and the election results.

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Everyone Wants to Beat Up Libertarians: Podcast

After Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was assaulted by his neighbor while mowing the lawn, a surprising number of commentators have implied that he probably had it coming. In today's podcast, Reason's Matt Welch, Nick Gillespie, and Katherine Mangu-Ward discuss the ire some mainstream pundits have for libertarians.

They also talk about what Tuesday's Democratic sweep means for Trump, Donna Brazile's tell-all book about Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, and the debate over background checks following Sunday's mass shooting in Texas.

Relevant links from the show:

• Matt Welch in Reason: "Rand Paul Getting Attacked is What's Wrong with Libertarianism. Wait, What?"
• Nick Gillespie and Katherine Mangu-Ward in Reason: Capitalism debate with Jacobin
• Gaby Galvin and Casey Leins in U.S. News: "The Most Important Results of 2017 Elections, Explained"
• Scott Shackford in Reason: "Virginia Voters Toss Homophobic Lawmaker in Favor of Transgender Heavy Metal Rocker"
• Benjamin Hart in New York magazine: "Donna Brazile Says She Considered Replacing Hillary Clinton with Joe Biden in 2016"
• Jacob Sullum in Reason: "Murderers Slip Through the Screen"

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Comments

[loveconstitution1789]

When the lefties can't beat 'em, they join in the beatings.

[jogibew]

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[Calidissident]

WTF I love victim blaming now?

[Juice]

They're asking for it by wearing such revealing ideology.

[Juice]

It teaches good behavior.

[CE]

What are the gulags and camps for if not to imprison dissenters?

[loveconstitution1789]

For re-education and you cannot re-educate Libertarians.

Libertarians are too cock sure about their positions.

[Incomprehensible Bitching]

Libertarians are the absolute worst.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

But we're having a moment.

[SQRLSY One]

As fro me, I am going to go and have me a bowel moment, and create me a Donald Trump...

If the Donald Trump is large enough, I may have to spank it, and put it in diapers!

[loveconstitution1789]

If its a bloody BM, are you going to call it a Hillary like Bill Clinton does?

[Enjoy Every Sandwich]

Well, if they outnumber them at least 10 to 1, or can jump them from behind like Paul's assailant did.

[Tony]

Violence is always bad, but there is a bit of humor, to me, in how Rand Paul, live-and-let-live property rights absolutist, can't even manage not to piss people off who live next door. Boy Libertopia will be so great.

[creech]

Yeah, Rand should be put on some sort of registry list and not allowed to live within 1,000 feet of any woke being.

[Tony]

If he wants to live like a slob he should move to a shit neighborhood. Or are effects on property values another externality that you guys ignore?

[jacob]

Do you have any sources that state Rand was doing something that tanked the property values in his neighborhood? The sociopath that assaulted him doesn't count, sorry.

Thanks in advance!

[Tony]

No, I'm neither endorsing any behavior nor relying on reliable sources.

[MarkLastname]

So you're just making shit up then. IOW, the progressive MO.

[Brandybuck]

In Tony's world it's okay to assault someone for being a slob...

[BestUsedCarSales]

Even under your own belief system this has no holding. If he didn't break a law, then what do you care? Do you believe that violence is a proper response in general to things you dislike? If he did break a law, why didn't Boucher go and call him on that. Vigilantism is not a good thing to have.

What the fuck do you want? If your idea of government control "Anything that I dislike at this moment will be handled by the law"?

[Tony]

I said violence is never the answer. Now why don't you pose the same question to the many people here who probably totally sincerely think all leftists should be murdered?

[BestUsedCarSales]

I have before. It's silly. But you're also talking about the difference between commenting on theoretical thing which is mostly people just going over the top, and an actual assault.

[DesigNate]

The only person here who has seriously advocated for their political opponents to be executed is you Tony.

We will never forget that you said it either.

[Brother Kyfho]

Because, you miserable Marxist, leftists by definition advocate the violence of the state to accomplish all of their goals.

It's just self-defense.

[Rufus The Monocled]

And yet, he was cutting his own grass. Slobs don't exactly do that.

But keep progging along Tony in your little dream world of illiberalism.

[Unlabelable MJGreen]

One man attacks another man unprovoked, and Tony assumes the victim is the asshole in the situation.

[Nuwanda]

That's not what he said at all.

He was attempting a pithy commentary on his Wild West perception of libertarianism.

[loveconstitution1789]

Compared the Stalinesque perception of progressivism.

[DesigNate]

You actually believe the line of bullshit from the defense attorney?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Anything to keep from admitting this was another unhinged leftist taking political violence into his own hands, huh Tony?

[Brian]

Your point would make a lot more sense of rand Paul I've been the one doing the tackling.

We kinda know there are lots of people out there who just can't "live and let live" and throw tantrums.

A lot of people learn in preschool that you can't always get what you want, dude, and people who throw hissy fits usually need a slap in the face, not having their grievances elevated to the level of military and law-enforcement.

[MarkLastname]

Haha, I gotta say, I love this line of reasoning from leftists: "you libertarians are delusional, it will never work because we leftists will ruin it by assaulting you."

Humorous indeed.

[loveconstitution1789]

As Progressivism starts to fade and Libertarians returns to popularity, the lefties will get more desperate and they will want to ruin the move toward freedom and hurt those driving that move.

[Qsl]

To be far, libertarians on the whole are a bunch of smug sumbitches. Reading (and enjoying) Atlas Shrugged doesn't make you a Master of the Universe.

The other part is libertarians tend to show up the rhetoric of left as being shallow. It was rather eye-opening when the war protest quietly disappeared when Obama was elected, and things have gotten progressively (heh) worse since then.

The large portion of liberal values are no longer supported by the left, and even hardcore leftist are distancing themselves from the progressives.

Meanwhile libertarians are poking holes and laughing at ideological trap the left has worked themselves into. You can't claim to be for the poor from you million dollar homes on the coast. You can't claim to be for free speech while enforcing speech codes. You can't claim prejudice against Muslims while mocking the Religious Right. And you certainly can't be green and compost on your own property if your HOA sez no.

If you've already lost the battle of words, violence is the only response.

[Brother Kyfho]

TBF, we don't know if Dr Paul was or was not in compliance with the HOA bylaws. It's pure speculation at this point.

[BestUsedCarSales]

And my point is it is irrelevant to the assault at hand anyway.

If he was violating his HOA, there are processes to deal with that. Boucher should have gone to the HOA.

If he was not violating the HOA, what issue was there? Even if you're an absolute statist it sounds like your issue is with the state at that point for not passing the rules you want.

[Deven]

To be far, libertarians on the whole are a bunch of smug sumbitches.

I get that a lot. I simply tell them I'll stop being smug if they can prove me wrong on any topic, their choice.

[loveconstitution1789]

"smug sumbitches" is lefty code for hating that Libertarians want more freedom and less government.

[9thGateKeeper]

Using the same insane leftlogic, BLM and antifa also have it coming to them - from the front - with lead...

[dunce]

An overly broad charge, conservatives are pretty much nonviolent. It is liberals that are the assailants in every recent case i have heard of unless you want to count the fellow who shot the latest church shooter and the shooter as libertarian. No, the KKK is not a right wing organization and never was.

[Tony]

As a liberal I will freely admit to violent weirdos on our fringes, but you have to take the racist nationalist nutjobs. They are the extreme right by definition.

[Brother Kyfho]

Sorry, we reject ALL forms of coercive collectivism. That's your (prog-tard) wheelhouse.

[Rufus The Monocled]

You're not liberal.

As noted above.

You're a progressive. That makes you illiberal.

[MarkLastname]

There is no intrinsic defininition of any political ideology. You can call yourself a Guelph and define Guelphism to mean whatever you want, and that's what it means in as much as it means anything. So Any debate about who is or is t a true liberal or socialist or Guelph boils down to a semantic debate between two sides with differing definitions of two words for which no definition is inherently more or less true than any other.

[Deven]

"Liber" from Latin is a word that is well over 2000 years old, name of the god of freedom, the divine personification of liberty. His festival Liberalia was associated with free speech rights and rights of coming of age.

Fun fact, his symbol was the phallus. Libertarians are dicks!

[BestUsedCarSales]

This is another one of those things where right/left means a couple of different things in political contexts. We're arguing about moving goals.

[vek]

Punch a Nazi, punch a Republican, punch a libertarian... It's all the same thing right? That's where the left has been heading for awhile. They really do think anyone who doesn't tow the line 100% is Literally Hitler, and as such it's fine to silence, assault, and (next step!) kill them.

[loveconstitution1789]

Dressed in a suit and joined by attorney Matthew Baker, Rene Boucher pleaded not guilty to a charge of fourth-degree misdemeanor assault.

Sources told NBC News that the dispute began when Paul was attacked from behind while mowing his lawn while wearing headphones. Baker told NBC News Thursday of the assault "It's not about politics" and "It's a messy yard." He said issues between the two men have been going on for a "long time."

Possible feuds over the property line, landscaping and politics have been floated as a possible motivation in the incident. Baker said that in the neighborhood people are "meticulous" about the appearance of their home "and without disparaging our senator, he's not as meticulous as everybody else might be out there."

Doug Stafford, senior adviser to Paul, in a statement issued Thursday said "As to reports of a longstanding dispute with the attacker, the Pauls have had no conversations with him in many years."

[Ghatanathoah]

I think the reason progressives hate libertarians so much is that libertarians actually follow the moral rules everyone, including progs, claims to believe in. They just apply the same rules against theft and murder to the government that everyone else applies to the government. That makes them frustrating to argue with.

There are two ways for a progessive to argue with a libertarian. The principled way is to adopt some form of utilitarianism and argue that standard moral rules are just "rules of thumb" that it is okay to break when it serves the greater good, and then argue that the government usually serves the greater good. (This is debatable of course, there are lots of utilitarian libertarians who agree with serving the greater good, but think the government doesn't do that)

The second, sleazy way is to argue that the government somehow isn't blatantly breaking moral rules. This is where you get progs who claim that every time you fart you enter into an implicit social contract to pay taxes.

Of course, most progs pick the sleazy route. And since the sleazy route is logically incoherent, they get mad at libertarians for pointing this out and want to punch them.

[Leslie the Bard]

The Libertarian Party picked up enough votes last election that the media began paying serious attention to them. This must have gotten the Democrats worried, enough to start a media-campaign against Libertarians. I've noticed elsewhere that gun-control advocates are blaming "libertarians" for the NRA forming the Institute for Legislative Action and getting seriously involved in defending gun rights, even though that happened decades before the LP was ever founded.