http://infowars.net/articles/december2007/031207NAU.htm

Because Cato as a non-profit think tank cannot endorse candidates. So they can only criticize candidates on specific issues.

5) If any of my fellows have an agenda to torpedo Ron Paul or land jobs at Cato, they are playing their cards close to their chest.

Is this to say that destroying RP might land one a job at Cato? I’ve noticed that Cato has passed on every opportunity to positively mention a candidate that seems to roughly fall in line with their vision of the country as it should be. Do you know of anything going on with the Cato Institute?

The best was the NAU question

If the NAU is a conspiracy theory made up, then why did CNN feel it was important enough to bring up in a presidential election?

There interest is the status quo, and being good little boot licking establishment hacks

1) This is not an anarchist site. The only anarchist contributor is moi (although I have my suspicions about Brad).

2) This is not a libertarian site. Most of the contributors are not libertarian and never have claimed to be libertarian.

3) The website is intended to be a debating society where people discuss things related to the American experiment in self-government.

4) The only common viewpoint among all the contributors is that we all seem to have a fondness for Robert Heinlein, which also explains the predominance of former and current U.S. service members amongst the contributors.

5) If any of my fellows have an agenda to torpedo Ron Paul or land jobs at Cato, they are playing their cards close to their chest.

6) There is no sitewide agenda. It is not uncommon for contributors to publicly take positions in opposition to each other.

7) Nothing is more laughable than the idea that we’re OK with the status quo.

8) Nor is there uniform hostility to Ron Paul. All of us respect what he accomplished. Most of us disagree with Ron Paul about one thing or another. Some love him on immigration and hate him on foreign policy. Others love him on foreign policy and hate him on immigration. The points of agreement are not interesting, and the points of disagreement are. So that what gets written.

None of this is secret, and we have never misrepresented ourselves. I don’t how you came to be so badly misled, but it wasn’t because we were trying to trick you.

An anarchist site? LMAO, what a joke. The posters here are obviously ok with the status quo. This place is more like a site for wannabe establishment bootlickers, maybe if they’re lucky and earn their Establishment Libertarian stripes they can go off to STATO.

Got to agree with Brad…Paul gets booed by the GOP “faithful” when he brings up Iraq, not when he talks about removing our forces from South Korea, or Germany, or any number of other places. Guiliani’s doing well because he is pushing to stay in Iraq. You’ve got your assessment completely backwards.

Here’s a quick, admittedly unscientific metric for what upsets the Republican base about Ron Paul. When does he get booed in these debates?

Hint: it’s not when he talks about bases in Germany or North American Unions.

I don’t think its being anti-Iraq War per se that is upsetting the Republican base when it comes to Ron Paul, it’s when he goes beyond that and talks about bringing the troops home from everywhere that I think he turns off most mainstream Republicans.

I’ve met plenty of Republicans who know that Iraq was a mistake and that we need to get out of there as soon as possible. That doesn’t mean that they agree it’s time for a fundamental change in American foreign policy.

By the way, the 50th anniversary being celebrated is that of the Treaty of Rome and the EEC, which was pretty explicit in its goal of creating peace through trade and a limited form of supranational government. Also, the European Parliament has been around for a good 30 years.

But ask yourself this- are the EU countries better or worse off now than they were before the EU? Has it helped or hurt peace within the EU countries? Are they politically more or less stable (keep in mind- the French have now been on the same Republic for 50 years!)? Are people in Ireland and the UK better or worse off since they entered the EU? Sure, they’ve had to give up a degree of sovereignty, but I still fail to see why a supra-national government is inherently less trustworthy than a national government.

We tend to forget that in some ways the US government was originally a supra-national government, yet it has been the most successful form of government in history, and on the whole we are still an extraordinarily free people. The worst hiccups that have occured have for the most part been at the hands of the state governments or thanks to a blatant twisting of the constitution in the Roosevelt era. Not to say we don’t have to be concerned about our freedoms- just that we’ve done a pretty good job of keeping them so far, and have eventually restored lost freedoms most of the time. If we theoretically joined in an NAU with Canada and Mexico, I fail to see how that would be materially different (given our existing form of federalism) from adding two new, very large states.

The America First comment is basically something that pissed me off personally. It’s a stupid remark, and indicates to me just where his foreign policy is coming from.

Well, if it’s just a personal quibble, then say so, don’t frame it as “this sinks his chances of being taken seriously as a Republican contender”, which is exactly how you phrased it.

I have no idea why you consider the notion of putting America first as an organizing concept of foreign policy to be stupid or offensive. It’s a pretty basic value statement, not some kind of “code” for a specific agenda. The alternative is we should put other country’s welfares first. Is that more inline with your thinking? I hardly think that’s what you mean, but again, that’s what you’re saying. Paul’s point was pretty simple, having to do specifically with Iraq. You’re not just making a leap to read it as a conscious endorsement of “America First”, you’re making several. That’s you going out of your way to read into a pretty simple and bland statement about priorities to be some kind of coded message. I mean, come on, the man can’t use the words “America” and “first” together without you giving him shit for it?

What I think hurt him more in the mind of thinking Republicans his is response to the question about the non-existent North American Union and the fictional “Nafta Superhighway.”

I, personally, agree with you there that it’s a stupid issue, but again, you’re taking your personal pet peeve and transferring it onto the Republican voting public. You think most Republican voters characteristically knee-jerk against that kind of statement? I’d say it’s a pretty safe statement on Ron’s part, in terms of political gain. Voting Republicans, believe it or not, don’t tend to share your point of view. These are the people for whom “New World Order” was a major, enthusiastic issue in the early 90s, people for whom hatred for the United Nations (which I still don’t understand either) is a reflex, and people for whom a distrust of multilateral organizations continues to be a major component of GOP thought. You’re fooling yourself if you think anybody but pretty much you were sitting there seeing red flags raised with that remark.

Come on, you can’t honestly tell me you think Ron Paul did well last night, can you ?

I think he did fine, as far as it goes. What most people will remember him for is the exchange with McCain—which Ron, I think, got the better of.

At this point, though, what hurts him—what gets him booed—has absolutely nothing to do with your personal quibbles, and usually just revolves around him being anti-war and socially liberally. It’s not like a huge swath of Republican voters are giving him a look and passing because of a comment on the North American fucking union.

I’ve been a doubter from the beginning, not because of the candidate but because I didn’t think that a radical small-government message would prove popular among most Republicans.

So far, it would seem, I am right.

He’s done far, far better than either you or I imagined he would at the beginning. If you’re being smug because you presciently predicted that Ron Paul wouldn’t win the nomination and turned out to be right, please get in line to accept your medal with EVERY OTHER POLITICAL COMMENTATOR ON EARTH.

If your metric of success is simply whether he wins the nomination, of course you’re right.

My argument is, and always has been, that he need not win the nomination to be a success. And, so far, I’m right on that score. He’ll probably end up, when it’s all said and done, with 10% of the Republican vote in a very crowded field of a lot of top tier candidates. If you would have told me that would be the case six months ago, I would have thought you were crazy.

Ron Paul has ALREADY surpassed expectations. Mine, and yours.