2,4,6,8, With Whom Do We Associate?
David Weigel | January 15, 2008, 4:56pm
From that
Will Wilkinson post that Kerry Howley links:
Insofar as Ron Paul’s racist newsletters propped up and encouraged racist norms, he has actually helped cultivate a cultural climate hostile to the prospects of “the blacks”, whether or not he would end the drug war in the miraculous event of his presidency.
I would agree with this if the newsletters were Ron Paul's final contribution to the discourse or an end unto themselves. They were not. In large part they were a vehicle to raise money, build a national donor list, and make a Paul political comeback possible. And that's what they did. This is the toughest part of the story for me to deal with: if it wasn't for the Ron Paul Investment Letter and the Ron Paul Political Report, Paul wouldn't have raised so much money in 1996 and
Greg Laughlin, a fairly typical southern Democrat-turned Republican, would be the congressman from Texas's 10th district.
What's the value been of having Ron Paul in Congress? I'm sure you could argue that policy papers and research and training from the Reason-Cato-IHS "Kochtopus" has done more to move libertarian ideas from the ether into practice than having a lone libertarian vote in the House. You could argue that Paul's career has been a net negative for libertarians, although I don't think Wilkinson is going there. Personally I like having Paul in the House, was thrilled when he entered the race (thinking he'd raise around $1 million and get a few votes in New Hampshire then pack it up), and am pleased that the next generations of libertarian-minded legislator—the John Campbells and Jeff Flakes—are pragmatic and removed from the old Rothbard mud-wrestling matches.
One thing, though. Neither of those guys, and none of the mainstream libertarain think tanks, have drawn more than 100,000 people to donate money or inspired thousands of people to camp out in snowy primary states, going door to door talking about libertarian ideas. Paul's done that, and he was able to do that, in part, because of hateful right-wing populist bigotry that grew his fundraising lists.
UPDATE: Fluffy, from the comments:
[T]he race war stuff in the newsletter was Rockwell's way of attempting to reach out to survivalists and militia members, who had overlapping issue affinity with a portion of libertarianism. How exactly would that "actually" worsen the cultural climate for minorities? Wouldn't the target for the material have already, you know, been racist?
I thought about this but it's awfully hard to prove. Maybe there were militiamen with Jesse Jackson dartboards who got the newsletters, found out about Hayek, and had "eureka" moments. Or maybe there were mainstream, Wilkinsonian libertarians who pored over this stuff about the "coming race war" and snagged copies of the Turner Diaries. We have no idea.
Mr. Blather | January 15, 2008, 7:27pm | #
--Neither of those guys, and none of the mainstream libertarain think tanks, have drawn more than 100,000 people to donate money or inspired thousands of people to camp out in snowy primary states, going door to door talking about libertarian ideas. Paul's done that, and he was able to do that, in part, because of hateful right-wing populist bigotry that grew his fundraising lists.--
Ummm, this is just wrong. Paul's fundraising has had almost NOTHING to do with his fundraising lists. I personally donated based solely on his opposition to the war and quixotic desire to return us to some semblance of constitutional law. I'd never received even an email from the Paul Campaign before that.
It's been interesting to watch this election from Japan. The Democrats/liberals express support for Ron Paul's opposition to the war, but in the end they'd rather watch thousands of people die than give up a single handout. They don't seem to realize that a Democratic president would escalate the war and then use it as an excuse to stop even more handouts. (I'd love to give you universal healthcare, but we have to end this endless war first...)
Reason, CATO et al, who finally outed themselves as nominal libertarians at best, would rather watch people die in Iraq than appear to support beliefs they consider to be out of the mainstream. The worst hit jobs I've seen on Ron Paul over these newsletters have all come from so-called libertarian sites.
The Republicans long ago (7 years-ish) became Democrats and chose to start nation building wars, increase the size and invasiveness of government and drive the country bankrupt by dropping the notion of "pay as you go" and leaving out the "tax" part of "tax and spend".
But, hey, Ron Paul wrote, or didn't write but supported some occasionally racist newsletters a decade or so ago. Let's get rid of him and send even more Mexican- and African-Americans off to war to die. That's not racist at all.
Jay | January 15, 2008, 10:51pm | #
How can one not think of conspiracy theories having just observed an improbably simultaneous media attack on Ron Paul the day of the New Hampshire primary? A remarkably successful attack that made him plunge from 14% in the polls to an 8% actual vote? After weeks where we heard little about Paul from the mass media and beltway “libertarian” bloggers? TNR from the left, Fox News and talk radio from the right, and piling on from beltway “libertarians” who made a point of loudly repeating the TNR smears and dumping Ron Paul on the day of the primary. Your eyes and ears did not deceive you, all this happened. It is not the result of a criminal conspiracy, but if one uses “conspiracy” as a metaphor for social networks and economic incentives, there is a strong sense in which conspiracy theories accurately, if metaphorically, explain what happened.
The reality behind the conspiratorial metaphor is the social networking between denizens of the Beltway, who sport a wide variety of political labels but are, relative to the rest of the country, a monoculture. I lived there. I went to these parties. These denizens range from the journalists who report the mass media news to various think tank and university scholars at the Cato Institute, George Mason University, and so on. They study Ayn Rand, then marry Andrea Mitchell and testify against tax cuts. Vast amounts of federal money, that stuff that is taken out of your paycheck with such automatic ease, flow into the Beltway area. Directly and indirectly, almost every person who lives in or near the Beltway depends on the very income tax that Ron Paul declared he would abolish — with no replacement!
Many of these paycheck vampires call themselves “libertarians” and inspire us with their libertarian rhetoric to support them with our attention, our blog hits, and our tuition money as well as the tax money that already funds them or their friends. But at the first sign of political incorrectness, all these below-the-Beltway “libertarians” have dumped Ron Paul like yesterday’s garbage. Now they can rest easy that they will still be invited to the parties thrown by their lobbyist and government employee and contractor friends, who for a second or two got worried by all those Google searches that Ron Paul might have some influence, resulting in some of them losing their jobs (end the income tax with no replacement?! The guy is obvioiusly a kook, and we don’t invite the supporters of kooks to our parties!). Now everybody around the Beltway can go back to partying at the taxpayer’s expense. All the money will keep flowing in, hooray!
The lesson millions of young libertarians have now learned from our mass media and our beltway “libertarians”? Libertarian electioneering is futile. Voting is futile. Democracy is futile. It’s hip to be “libertarian.” But anybody who actually wants liberty is a kook, as can be proven by their association with kooks. Beltway wonks posing as “libertarians” are happy to write things to inflame your hopes for liberty that they don’t really mean. Then they make sure that we elect the politicians their friends want — the ones that will enslave your future to pay for full social security for Baby Boomers. The ones that will send you off to foreign lands to kill and die. Not only the journalists who hang out with the government bureaucrats and lobbyists, and not only the politicians who talk sweet while they drain your paycheck and kill your fellow human beings, but even the beltway “libertarians” are happy to let a whole new generation of libertarians go down the tubes in order to keep their Beltway friends happy.
http://formerbeltwaywonk.wordpress.com/2008/01/15/january-8-2008/
