Ron (and Rand) Paul

[kopper]

Here's a great article on Ron Paul's illiberal libertarianism. Rand is the same. It's a couple years old, but obviously still relevant (from The Age of Abundance).

Illiberal Libertarians by Brink Lindsey

January 11th, 2008

I wasn’t a fan of Ron Paul to begin with. And Ron Paul’s crowd didn’t think much of me, either.

I hadn’t known about his old newsletters and their cesspool of racism and homophobia. But I didn’t need to know about them to know that I wanted nothing to do with Ron Paul’s brand of libertarianism.

Here’s why. I’m a libertarian because I’m a liberal. In other words, I support small-government, free-market policies because I believe they provide the institutional framework best suited to advancing the liberal values of individual autonomy, tolerance, and open-mindedness. Liberalism is my bottom line; libertarianism is a means to promoting that end.

Ron Paul, by contrast, is no liberal. Just look at his xenophobia, his sovereignty-obsessed nationalism, his fondness for conspiracy theories, his religious fundamentalism — here is someone with a crudely authoritarian worldview. The snarling bigotry of his newsletters is just the underside of this rotten log.

In the twentieth century, alas, American liberalism was heavily influenced by the socialist dream of supplanting markets with central planning and top-down control. That confusion begat confusion in response — namely, an antistatist movement heavily influenced by authoritarian resentment of liberal cultural values. Paul’s illiberal libertarianism is a particularly unattractive variant of this kind of “fusionism.”

With the collapse of socialism, however, American liberals have begun rediscovering the value of market competition. By my lights, many of them still have a long, long way to go. But encouraging that process — making the case that economic liberalization is of a piece with overall social liberalization — is the only way forward for those of us concerned about overweening state power. In this project, people whose values and habits of mind are deeply hostile to liberal modernity are not our allies.

[Ray Mangum]

He forgot to denounce Ron Paul's paranoid, racist, nativist, know-nothing opposition to the war in Iraq, his deeply anti-semitic opposition to our loss of civil liberties in the face of the new national security apparatus, or to link him to the fringe hate-mongers who agree with him about the WTO, the anarchists.

[Catfish Jones]

He was absolutely hilarious in Bruno though.

[BLACKCAT69]

Thanks for that. 

[Johnny Lurg]

Heh, he really made a fool of himself in Bruno.

[Lutz Vipinderwoman]

I want to politely and respectfully disagree completely with everything up there. As the popular smear campaign is losing it's validity, the libertarian platform goes completely against being a racist or a homophobe because it puts individuality first.  The reason why Ron Paul is contraversial is because of 2 things;

A. He wants to end the Federal Reserve (it's evidently not working for us). 

B. He against sending more money or troups to Israel and against a war on Iran.....BIG reason why the special interest group driven popular media are out to kill any interest in him and smear his name in the face of what he really believes:

Here's what black people, including the Austin President of the NCAAP have to say about Ron Paul:

http://www.therightperspective.org/2011/12/24/ron-paul-no-racist-na...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYZXDSoC9GY&feature=related

Now here's what the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has to say about American occupation in Israel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dqTLe66_hc4

Obama and Mitt Romney are two puppets fueled by these engines (in other words the same engine fueling popular media as well as the war in the middle east that so many Americans are getting sick of and are completely opposed to.  Contributor list:  Goldman-Sachs, Bank of America, JP MorganChase, CitiGroup, Morgan Stanley, etc.

Last but not least, Rand Paul was one of the few Senators to vote AGAINST the anti-constitutional NDAA.