There are a lot of things about libertarianism that I like. Ron Paul seems to go way beyond the ideals of libertarianism, however, and begins to morph into a strange mix of David Duke racism and Pat Buchanan isolationism.

As James Kirchick's article on Paulism points out, it's easy to find things that one has in common with Ron Paul. Whether it be aversion to the IRS or perhaps one who feels that the war on drugs, poverty, etc., have done less to conquor them then to expand the role of government, there is often logic in true libertarianism.

However, as with any ideology, one can misprioritize lofty ideals for common sense. Here's an example.

Thomas E. Woods Jr., a member of the institute's senior faculty, is a founder of the League of the South, a secessionist group, and the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History , a pro-Confederate, revisionist tract published in 2004. Paul enthusiastically blurbed Woods's book, saying that it "heroically rescues real history from the politically correct memory hole." Thomas DiLorenzo, another senior faculty member and author of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, refers to the Civil War as the "War for Southern Independence" and attacks "Lincoln cultists"; Paul endorsed the book on MSNBC last month in a debate over whether the Civil War was necessary (Paul thinks it was not).

In April 1995, the institute hosted a conference on secession at which Paul spoke; previewing the event, [Paul advisor Lew] Rockwell wrote to supporters, "We'll explore what causes [secession] and how to promote it." Paul's newsletters have themselves repeatedly expressed sympathy for the general concept of secession. In 1992, for instance, the Survival Report argued that "the right of secession should be ingrained in a free society" and that "there is nothing wrong with loosely banding together small units of government. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, we too should consider it."
As you're reading it you wonder that if Paul can't back the American Civil War would there ever be any just war for his brand of government? That answer is obvious.

The act of secession took the lives of more Americans than in any war before or since. And people want to vote for a guy who's political advisors have it on their agenda?

Labels: foreign policy, Ron Paul, US Civil War

As historian Michael Oren observes in "Power, Faith and Fantasy," his history of America's 230-year involvement in the Middle East, as early as the 1790s "many Americans had grown dismayed with the country's Middle East policy of admonishing the [Barbary] pirates while simultaneously coddling them with bribes." It was precisely out of a desire to "trade with everybody" that the early American republic was forced to build a navy, and then to go to war, to defend its commercial interests, a pattern that held true in World War I and the Persian Gulf "Tanker War" of the 1980s.

These details of history pose a problem not just to Dr. [Ron] Paul's views of the Middle East, but to the intellectual architecture of libertarianism itself. Liberal societies are built on the belief in (and defense of) individual rights, but also on the overawing power of government to transform natural rights into civil ones. In the same way, trade between nations is only possible in the absence of robbers, pirates and other rogues. Whose job is it to get rid of them?

-- Bret Stephens

Labels: foreign policy, free markets, Ron Paul

[Wall Street Journal] The Paul campaign has also drawn support from antigovernment fringe groups and 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Since mid-September, a large "Ron Paul for President" banner has flashed at the bottom of white-supremacist Internet forum Stormfront.org. "Really, we haven't seen a candidate like Ron Paul in some time. The closest would have been Pat Buchanan" in 2000, says Don Black of West Palm Beach, Fla., the group's founder and a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, who donated $500 to Mr. Paul's campaign.

The Paul campaign has a hands-off approach when it comes to supporters' activities and political backgrounds. While grateful for the money, aides insist they aren't responsible for what supporters do online. "We don't know who a lot of these people are," says Jesse Benton, a campaign spokesman.

Mr. Benton declined to make Dr. Paul available to comment. "Sometimes, Ron Paul supporters get a little overpassionate and maybe a little more shrill than what some might like," Mr. Benton says. "For the most part, our supporters are polite and mannerly." He has his own conspiracy theory: Some other candidates' supporters may be masquerading as Ron Paul supporters to hurt his campaign.
That's an interesting theory. Here's another: Neo-Nazis, 9-11 "Truthers" and other such nutball fanatics are indeed supporting Ron Paul.

There's a lot of things I like about libertarians, and at a different time I might be inclined to vote for one, but I've got a real problem with the Paul campaign legitimately deriding the expansion of pork barrel politics while accepting money from anyone - and clearly ANYONE. That's the epitome of hypocrisy, and totally irresponsible.

Those who live in glass houses...

Labels: 9-11, antiwar loonies, Moonbats, Ron Paul