Associate Editor Damon W. Root climbs into the ring to grapple with former Minnesota Gov. Jesse "The Body" Ventura.
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Comments to "New at Reason":
Plant Immigration RIghts Supporter | May 20, 2008, 12:06pm | #
"sneering nowadays that Minnesota's Libertarians "tend to want anarchy.""Good for them.
Plant Immigration RIghts Supporter | May 20, 2008, 12:09pm | #
"At a whopping 342 pages, Ventura simply doesn't believe that the government could have cobbled it together in those "first scary weeks" after the attacks. "Its almost as if somebody had it all ready to be unveiled," he writes, "but just had to wait for the right moment—a Reichstag fire, a Pearl Harbor type event, to make it a reality.""This may well be true but, even if they did, it does not prove the government knew about or perpetuated the 9/11 attacks. I do not think most government workers are smart enough to pull off something like 9/11. They can't get a job in the private sector so theydecided to work for the government.
Jamie Kelly | May 20, 2008, 12:12pm | #
Plant Immmigration:Oh fuck, please don't turn it into one of those type of threads. PLEASE.
Jamie Kelly | May 20, 2008, 12:15pm | #
I must say that I'm crushed Ventura has oozed into this type of creature. He was one of the few reasons I had hope for the American electorate. Now he's only helping to further discredit libertarianism.Damn you, Jesse. Damn you to hell.
Colin | May 20, 2008, 12:18pm | #
Even with conspiracymongering, I'd vote for him.Art-P.O.G. | May 20, 2008, 12:24pm | #
Here's a guy who was in Hollywood, pro wrestling and the Navy. All those things are fairly "political" in a manner of speaking. And yet the vicious politics surrounding public office were too much for him. I don't know what that says about his personality, about politics or what. Even though nearly half the things he says leave me scratching my head, he's still one of my favorite overachievers.Plant Immigration Rights Supporter | May 20, 2008, 12:25pm | #
Colin, I would sooner vote for a conspiracymonger than a statist. That said I am very skeptical about most conspiracy theories. Although, the TV show Firefly may have been canceled by Reevers high up in government who put pressure of Fox to replace it with "Mr. Personality".Pro Libertate | May 20, 2008, 12:26pm | #
Jamie,Then why did the tower collapse back and to the left? Back and to the left. Oswald clearly could not have destroyed the tower alone, since he was busy faking moon landings at the time.
Pro Libertate | May 20, 2008, 12:29pm | #
Back and to the left.Plant Immigration RIghts Supporter | May 20, 2008, 12:34pm | #
Sorry, that is spelled with an "a"http://www.universeguide.com/Organisation/Reavers.php
An Honest Question | May 20, 2008, 12:37pm | #
Is Damon W. Root any relation to Wayne Allan Root?fish | May 20, 2008, 12:39pm | #
As somebody who has....don't laugh....actually been mistaken for Ventura I'd just like to say....for the love of god, get a haircut!You're bad for my image!
Pro Libertate | May 20, 2008, 12:40pm | #
Back and to the left.Naga Sadow | May 20, 2008, 12:40pm | #
PL,You owe me a new laptop! I spewed my leftover sushi from last night all over it!
*flips off PL*
Pro Libertate | May 20, 2008, 12:43pm | #
Naga Sadow,I see. Which direction did your head move when you expelled the vomitus?
J sub D | May 20, 2008, 12:44pm | #
Then why did the tower collapse back and to the left? Back and to the left. Oswald clearly could not have destroyed the tower alone, since he was busy faking moon landings at the time.Hmmm. I never thought about it that way. It all sorta makes sense now.
HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO BLIND?!?!
Art-P.O.G. | May 20, 2008, 12:49pm | #
It's academic to state it at this point, but ProLibertate wins the thread.daveylee | May 20, 2008, 12:50pm | #
Fish beat me to it.Jesse, lose the Gary Busey Mugshot hairdoo already!
Gets harder to admit that I voted for him back in 1998 when he looks like that.
The funky beards would also make him look less like a panhandler if he'd just go back to shaving his head.
Naga Sadow | May 20, 2008, 1:00pm | #
I too want to talk smack about Ventura's hairdon'ts but I fear his wrath. He seems to get hung up on old grudges and questions.David Lee Roth | May 20, 2008, 1:03pm | #
A little more to the right...Pro Libertate | May 20, 2008, 1:07pm | #
As everyone can readily observe, Dr. Sadow has conducted a study proving that heads--and buildings, by extrapolation--always move back and to the left. PROOF!Plant Immigration Rights Supporter | May 20, 2008, 1:19pm | #
But it's the pelvic thrust that really drives you insane,Plant Immigration Rights Supporter | May 20, 2008, 1:21pm | #
In another dimension, with voyeuristic intentionWell-secluded, I see all
With a bit of a mind flip
You're there in the time slip
And nothing can ever be the same
LarryA | May 20, 2008, 1:21pm | #
Even with conspiracymongering, I'd vote for him.I'm sorry, I just don't see the attraction. I would never vote for Jesse Ventura unless all the other candidates were worse.
Oh, wait.
Nevermind.
UCrawford | May 20, 2008, 1:24pm | #
As everyone can readily observe, Dr. Sadow has conducted a study proving that heads--and buildings, by extrapolation--always move back and to the left. PROOF!Except when you travel below the equator, at which point heads and buildings go forward and to the right...like with the water going down the drain the wrong way.
Tbone | May 20, 2008, 1:24pm | #
Still, I wouldn't mind seeing Ventura run for president . . .We've already had eight years of a sociopath, let's skip paranoid delusion. Don't get me wrong, I like Jesse, but 9/11 truthers don't get to sit at the adult's table. Period.
Plant Immigration Rights Supporter | May 20, 2008, 1:28pm | #
Well I was walking down the street just a-having a thinkWhen a snake of a guy gave me an evil wink
He shook me up, he took me by surprise
He had a pickup truck and the devil's eyes.
He stared at me and I felt a change
Time meant nothing, never would again
Let's do the Time Warp again!
ChrisO | May 20, 2008, 1:42pm | #
Perhaps Ventura is on a mission to bring back the mullet from its well-deserved exile. Or, in his case, the "skullet".Full disclosure: I had a groovy mullet of my own...in 1991.
Jim Treacher | May 20, 2008, 2:50pm | #
Some very interesting audio of Ventura losing a debate to, of all people, Jim Norton from the Opie & Anthony Show here.NP | May 20, 2008, 3:51pm | #
Today," he writes in his new book, Don't Start the Revolution Without Me, "I view those media people as equivalent to pedophiles, because they attacked my children on multiple occasions."MU HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!
Man, I didn't think I'd make a comment here, but thanks for the laugh. I mean it.
A Merkin Idle | May 20, 2008, 4:42pm | #
Back and to the left.Wow, PL. That's exactly how I box the Jesuit!
R C Dean | May 20, 2008, 5:35pm | #
At a whopping 342 pages, Ventura simply doesn't believe that the government could have cobbled it together in those "first scary weeks" after the attacks.Two observations:
Government agencies frequently have contingency plans gathering dust that they can yank out in an emergency.
The PATRIOT Act [spit] was almost entirely a wish list that various government agencies had been shopping around for years. They were opportunistic, which is not the same thing as being conspiratorial.
lee brenn | May 20, 2008, 5:39pm | #
[Plus, he's no longer so quick to identify as a libertarian, sneering nowadays that Minnesota's Libertarians "tend to want anarchy." ]I am proudly at partial fault of this, though I certainly didn't start it.
The Winter Soldier | May 20, 2008, 5:41pm | #
Jesse's gone insane. Pair him up with Perot and it would be a dream ticket.Robert | May 20, 2008, 6:06pm | #
Still doesn't explain (and yes, I know there was a Reason piece purporting to attempt such) why he got so little in the way of results as governor, although it does seem he held down the rate of increase of expenditures.My attempt at explanation: His election wasn't taken by observers as any sort of mandate for libertarian ideas, only as a spasm of disgust with the status quo that got out the votes of the disaffected. That is, legislators and analysts thought he was elected by an inchoate anti vote and so didn't give credence to his policy ideas, figuring it would not benefit anyone else in the state to adopt them -- that the disaffected could not be marshalled reliably into votes for anyone lower down the political ladder. Therefore he didn't have legislative support.
Jaxon | May 20, 2008, 6:56pm | #
H,H,H,HIT PIECE!Craptacularly written , so many snipes in that "article", it puts the JFK assassination to shame.
Bush didn't carry out 9/11. His handlers did. The plan for a second Iraq invasion were already on the table prior to the attacks. As early as 1999.
B | May 20, 2008, 11:41pm | #
I'm curious, how much of your brain did you have to remove to be on Jesse's "level", 1/2 or all of it?IntheBox | May 21, 2008, 2:37am | #
For a magazine that prides itself on inquiry, this book "review" could have been tapped out by a copy runner at the Minneapolis Tribune (or whatever it's called) over lunch.I don't know whether Ventura's on to something or he's out in left field, but this article amounts to rattling off his ideas and sweeping them away with a simple, "he's obviously nuts."
Grade 5-level writing not worthy of Reason.
Casey Bowman | May 21, 2008, 4:15am | #
I was an active member of the Libertarian Party of Minnesota in the heady days of 1994 when the Republican Party listened to our message, which was a goal, given our small numbers. It was around that time when I first heard Jesse Ventura announce he was a libertarian on the radio. His colleagues Jason Lewis and Peter Thiele from KSTP came to our LP convention along with the Republican Party House Minority Leader Steve Swiggum, who had a T-shirt saying "Vote Republican" on the front and "or Libertarian" on the back, which he had worn at the Republican convention earlier that day (and which had gotten wet in Barbara Carlson's famous hot tub in which she interviewed politicians). We made our presence known by the revolutionary acts of simply asking pointed questions at town hall meetings on health care, for example, courageously confronting politicians by breaking taboos, speaking repeatedly about the Constitution and the Declaration. We also fostered friendly relationships with those politicians who listened to our message, as did Rep. Swiggum after we had presented him with a petition for term limits at his office. Curious he asked us to stay and talked with us for 45 minutes or so. I remember mentioning how the idea of term limits went back to James Harrington and his influential book "Oceana" in the 1600s. Later he and two other house members met with us and invited us to run as Republicans, an invitation we politely declined.Later in 1994 Jason Lewis visited with us at Gluek's Restaurant while we waited for the election results on Nov 8, when libertarian messages were predominant in political discussions and swept the Republicans into power. Interestingly Reform Party candidate Dean Barkley and his team joined us, too, there at Gluek's where he then saw the returns come in that qualified his party for major party status, which set the stage for Ventura's run 4 years later. The point I'm trying to make is that it was quite collegial across party boundaries.
Another point is that I have always been a strong advocate for the Constitution. Indeed I have written many times, "Liberty and anarchy are opposed." Where is there a market for due process? To my mind anarchy would lead to feudalism, which is more in line with a desire for old-world conservatism. Anyway I see myself as quite a principled advocate for liberty, for example in my advocacy for Hayek's denationalisation of money.
The other day at Jesse Ventura's book-signing at the Mall of America I handed him a copy of an article I had written in 1994 suggesting a form of election that would get us past the increasingly rigid two-party rule we suffer, by eliminating the problem of spoilers, allowing candidates to act as electors throwing their votes towards leading candidates after a general primary, leaving only two candidates in a mandatory run-off. I thought he'd be interested in this based on what he's said recently about the two parties and their hold on us. We chatted a bit, after he immediately repeated his view that libertarians are anarchists when he realized that my article had been published in The Minnesota Libertarian (State Fair issue, 1994).
I believe the Dallas Accord was silly, and I constantly am dealing with the confusion it wrought, along with the pledge, which should clearly allow for constitutionally limited taxation. I support Bob Barr and hope anarchists have nothing more to do with libertarian political activity. In the academic world, it's good to explore all ideas, but practically speaking when you're at a Ron Paul meetup and someone says that they can't wait for a private war, it can be a bit off-putting.
Minnesotan | May 21, 2008, 9:44am | #
He was actually a good governor and I'd vote for him for Senate. Showed the ability to learn about issues and change his mind when needed -- something other politicians rarely do.All right Jesse!!! Get the word out! Try to educate these people. Talk about how the buildings fell at free fall speed, perfectly vertically into their own footprint. There were only two airplanes and three buildings fell all exactly in the same manner.
I love the conspiracy nuts. They are always fun to listen to, but only for a few minutes. The problem is that they just won't shut up.
djp | May 24, 2008, 11:52pm | #
After listening to Jesse Ventura on various tv shows recently, I was telling my significant other that I agree with just about everything this guy says. Unfortunately, he started off on the 9/11 conspiracy theory on Hannity and Colmes.Still, despite this, he's still a lot more right than most of the talking heads on the tv.
Wendy | May 26, 2008, 12:45pm | #
With lines like these, I can't wait to read his book:"I view those media people as equivalent to pedophiles, because they attacked my children on multiple occasions."
Love the line, Jesse! Keep seeking TRUTH!