Reflections  

After the surge — Early January saw Clinton and McCain win their respective party primaries in New Hampshire; but a more important development for some libertarians came a few days before those votes. The New Republic magazine published a major hit piece on Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul. The implication was that Paul is a bigot — racist, antigay, and antisemitic. The evidence was excerpts from a number of articles that appeared in several newsletters that Paul published or was otherwise involved with during the 1980s and early 1990s. The excerpts were selective, of course. But some of the quotations are troubling:

Order was only restored in L.A. [after the 1992 "Rodney King" riots] when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. . . .

. . . opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions. . . .

. . . I miss the closet . . . . Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities.

Not all of this was news. In October 2001, Paul told Texas Monthly magazine that he had not written the offending articles but acknowledged a "moral responsibility" for the barmy things published in his name. Still, The New Republic (despite several highly-publicized instances of fiction presented as fact in its pages) remains an influential publication in establishment media circles. So, the story may hurt Paul's candidacy.

Paul polled about 10% of votes in the New Hampshire GOP primary. That, combined with his early successes raising money, suggests that he could run a credible campaign through the GOP convention in a few months. For those of us interested in hearing a voice for principled limited government, that credibility is important.

Ron Paul isn't likely to win the nomination. But he could influence the debate on issues from the Iraq War to so-called health care "reform." And he could mark a trail for other libertarian candidates to follow in the GOP. If he's marginalized as a crackpot bigot, these good ends will be lost.

It's a reality of the libertarian movement that some crackpots have mingled in our midst. The same can be said of any political movement; oddballs are often drawn to the intensity that political discourse can generate.

Some of liberty's crackpots are conspiracy theorists. Their opposition to statism and establishment parties comes not from philosophical resolve but from neurotic fixations on chimeras like "the organized power of the gay lobby" and "mostly black welfare recipients" — language that the recent article sourced to Paul newsletters.

Classical liberalism is better than this. And Paul seems to realize it. His official response reads:

The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.

The rest of the spring will tell how much a closer scrutiny of past writings will affect Paul's candidacy. The best case will be that he brings the term "libertarian" a little closer to the political mainstream without tarnishing it. — Jim Walsh

Don't stop believing — Thirty seconds on Google at any time in the past several months would have revealed to any interested party the gist of James Kirchick's Jan. 8 TNR story. Posting it the day of the New Hampshire primaries was undoubtedly meant to do the most damage: it would hit before the Paul campaign explained this is an old, old story that won't die.

That the establishment feels threatened enough to attack Paul is a good sign. It means they take him seriously. Did they ever feel threatened enough to dig through Badnarik's past? Or Browne's? Only Liberty, the "inreach journal" of the libertarian movement, bothered to give those gentlemen a through investigation. They were Libertarian Party candidates, and Paul is not the LP candidate for 2008, but surely he is "the libertarian candidate."

Last year, a debate moderator asked Paul, "Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?" Paul had said no such thing, but he didn't even have the presence of mind to say "no" before pressing on with this point! Rudy Giuliani followed up: "That's an extraordinary statement . . . that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. . . . I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that." After a lot of applause from the audience, Paul simply continued to make his point. Not even a denial that "we invited 9/11"; he just didn't have enough ego caught up in it to bother. He was concerned with what was right for the country and would not be derailed.

The man is an open book. Ron Paul is, at best, a mediocre politician because he is honest to a fault. If he hated blacks, Jews, gays, and whoever else he's accused of hating, we would know it. It would slip out on stage at every public appearance.

Some awful things were written, and Ron Paul's name was on the newsletter. I doubt he personally penned the more vicious writings; I believe him when he says it was poor oversight of other writers, for which he accepts blame. That means he is a bad manager, and, perhaps, therefore unfit to be president. Fine; he's not going to be the next president. He's still the only candidate saying what libertarians want to be said, and doing it loudly, and doing it so that the mainstream press have to cover it. That's the best, and the only realistic reason to support him — and that's why he still deserves our support.

More representative of Paul's character than the things that appeared in old newsletters, I suspect, is something Tucker Carlson wrote — also in TNR — just a few weeks ago, after spending a couple of days with the Paul campaign:

On board the campaign's tiny chartered jet one night . . . Paul and his staff engaged in an unintentionally hilarious exchange about the cabin lights. The staff wanted to know whether Paul preferred the lights on or off. Not wanting to be bossy, Paul wouldn't say. Ultimately, the staff had to guess. It was a long three minutes.

This is the hateful, spiteful, antisemitic, gay-bashing monster Ron Paul. Well, okay. This laissez-fairy isn't scraping the Paul bumper sticker off his car anytime soon. — Patrick Quealy

Bring back the smoke-filled room — I don't watch reality shows and I haven't seen any of the presidential debates. But I repeat myself.

Listening to inside-the-beltway friends talk about the debates — apparently they watch them avidly — makes me think that the presidential campaigns are nothing more than reality shows for the intelligentsia. Perhaps because I live in one of the last states to hold a 2008 primary, I find it irrelevant: in all likelihood, the decisions will be made by the time I am given any nominal say in the process.

Even if I lived in New Hampshire or Michigan, I'd find this primary process bizarre. First of all, both political parties agree that Iowa has to go first — why? So that Archer-Daniels-Midland can be guaranteed its corn subsidies for another four years.

Then we have an extremely unpopular war, but most of the Republican candidates are trying to outhawk one another and most of the Democrats are afraid to speak out (or, in the cases of those in Congress, do anything) against it.

But I make the mistake of thinking issues count. Hillary turned around the New Hampshire election simply by shedding a couple of tears. Many said that Obama's speeches won their support by shivers up their spines when, as near as I can tell, the semantic content of his speeches is exactly nil. Ron Paul lost many votes because so many of his supporters are unsocialized geeks who, until now, hardly left their parents' basements.

I think we were better off in the days of back-room deals. Donors would save the millions spent on primary campaigns. Voters could concentrate on their daily lives rather than be subjected to empty rhetoric for at least two out of every four years. Congress could make decisions without polarizing every issue. And the outcomes probably would not be much different. The only thing we would lose would be the entertainment, and I'd be glad to give that up. — Randal O'Toole

Back to work — A loathsome story out of Greenburgh, N.Y., where the property taxes have risen so high that elderly widows on fixed incomes can no longer afford to pay the amounts due on the houses they own free and clear.

Now, the idea of a "property tax" has always rankled in me. Why should anyone have to pay for the continued privilege of owning something already paid for in full? It's renting one's own property from the government. And it's especially pernicious when such rents are demanded from those least able to pay. It's a situation tailor-made for some smug town politician to announce his compassionate plan to ease their tax burden, invariably by raising slightly the taxes on everyone else because God knows the budget isn't going to get cut.

Thus was I surprised to see Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner offer an equally smug but far more patronizing solution to the problem: put those widows to work! Says an article in the Lower Hudson Valley Journal-News (Dec. 31, 2007), "Under the plan, seniors could work in Town Hall and other municipal departments for $7 an hour, and earn up to $700." Feiner has appropriated $25,000 to give the program a trial sit. And besides, it's not like the elderly do anything in those houses their husbands worked for decades to buy; as the article points out, "the proposal may have beneficial side effects, including the structure that a part-time job can provide to those who may find the days of retirement too long to fill and too isolating to enjoy."

At this point in my life, I can't imagine what retirement would be like. Could it really be so bad that some would welcome working in a municipal department, just to fill the hours? If so, I swear I'm working till the maintenance crew hauls my carcass away from the desk over which I've keeled. — Andrew Ferguson

A long way down from Lincoln — President Bush is rightly challenged for his bumbling rhetoric and undiagrammable syntax. But worse could follow. Consider Hillary Clinton, responding to her defeat in Iowa by screeching like a Valley girl who's just seen a new pair of shoes: "I am SO ready for the rest of this campaign. And I am SO ready to lead." Lead me to the exit, Senator. — Stephen Cox

Rudy's "social liberalism" — Strangely, Rudy Giuliani maintains a reputation in some quarters as libertarian-friendly on the social issues — especially those related to "getting government out of the bedroom."

Perhaps this is true, to a limited extent, on abortion and gay marriage; but it's pretty thin gruel. Rudy's new receptiveness to a proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as only between a man and a woman has made it thinner still. Of course, Rudy has always been a zealous social authoritarian on the war on drugs and civil liberties.

The myth of Rudy's social liberalism became still more apparent at a speech he made at the Family Research Council. He pandered to the censors, boasting (according to JoinRudy.com) that his administration had chased the pornographers "out of Times Square and other public spaces. In 1987, there were 35 pornographic theaters and shops on just one stretch of 42nd Street. When I left office, there were zero. . . . This fight . . . extended throughout the city. We significantly reduced pornography throughout the city of New York." Wonderful. — David T. Beito

God in heaven! Can this be happening? — Mandatory seat-belt laws are about public health — and maybe some other things.

Consider a case from Washington state. In Everett, north of Seattle, a policewoman pulled over a car. She asked the names of everyone in the car, and when the guy in the back seat with a dog on his lap said his name was "Antoine Carver," she remembered him, and that his name was different. She wanted to search him, but she had to arrest him first — and for what?

She arrested him for the dog, which was a pit bull that by city ordinance was supposed to be in an enclosure. She also noted in a supplementary arrest report that he hadn't been wearing a seat belt.

She searched him and found cocaine, methadone, and $800 in cash. He was convicted of illegal possession with intent to deliver and sent to prison for five years.

The trial judge ruled that the arrest for the dog was not valid. The car was an enclosure, so the dog was OK. The judge also ruled that the false name was not a crime in itself; there had to be some other violation of law to make it so. And there was: the man had not buckled his seat belt. That, the judge said, made the false name a crime — thereby giving the officer cause to arrest and search him, thereby finding the contraband and sending him to prison for five years.

The man went to prison and his case went to the Washington supreme court. In October the court came down with its ruling on State v. Moore (his real name). The arrest was invalid, the court said, and his conviction was overturned. The reason was that the cop hadn't arrested him for the seat belt. She had arrested him for the dog, and that was the wrong reason. If she had arrested him for not buckling his seat belt, the court would have smiled upon her act, and the man's five-year sentence would have stood.

It's not just the public health. — Bruce Ramsey

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