Category Archives: Strategies For Advancing Liberty

Memo To Ron Paul: Come Clean For Your Own Sake, And The Sake Of Liberty

Jacob Sullum has an article up at Reason telling Ron Paul what he needs to do about the newsletter story:

If I thought Ron Paul might be president in 2009, I’d have to admit that his newsletter negligence raises questions about his judgment and about the people he’d choose to advise him. But since the value of the Paul campaign lies in promoting the libertarian ideals of limited government, individual freedom, and tolerance, the real problem is that the newsletters contradict this message.

On CNN Paul emphasized that racist libertarian is an oxymoron, since libertarians judge people as individuals. He should follow through on that point by identifying the author(s) of the race-baiting material and repudiating not just the sentiments it represents but the poisonous, self-defeating strategy of building an anti-collectivist movement on group hatred.

Sullum’s article follows up on the excellent analysis that David Weigel and Julian Sanchez posted earlier today, which my co-contributor UCrawford wrote about earlier today.

And Sullum is absolutely correct.

At this point, the newsletter story is not going to have any impact on the campaign mostly because the campaign is going nowhere, but it will have an impact on how the general public perceives the cause for liberty. The sad truth of the matter is that the cause has not been helped by some of the events that have surrounded the campaign — the association with Stormfront, appearing repeatedly on Alex Jones’s radio program, and supporters who have acted boorishly to put it mildly — creating the, false, impression that libertarian ideas are racist and intolerant would only make the situation worse.

Ron Paul And Libertarian Orthodoxy

There’s been much discussion here in the days since the Paul newsletter story broke about the extent to which some Ron Paul supporters seem to have the view that calling oneself a libertarian obligates you to support the Paul campaign.

Apropos of that discussion, I was recently clued into this “Open Letter To Libertarians” written by Walter Block and posted on Lew Rockwell’s site:

In my view, the “Ron Paul question” constitutes a litmus test for libertarians. Simply put, the “Ron Paul question” consists of determining whether or not a person supports Dr. Paul. If so, as I see matters, he passes this test and can be constituted a libertarian; if not, his credentials are to that extent suspect.

I’ve read much of what Block has written over the years and generally thought of him as a reasonable person, but this one quote symbolizes for me what is wrong with the Rockwellian brand of libertarianism. Unless you support us, they say, you’re not a real libertarian.

And it seems to be an orthodoxy that the campaign’s supporters picked up on, as I noted in this comment:

Over the past year, I have posted about Ron Paul because the campaign was an important issue for libertarians. I’ve praised where I thought he deserved prasie and criticized him where I thought he deserved criticism.

And when I criticized, I got attacked — mostly, not so much for my ideas but because I dared to attack St. Ron. This caused me to become more and more skeptical about this campaign and whether it will amount to anything in the struggle for liberty.

But I was still rooting for him, because people were talking about libertarian ideas on CNN, FOX, and elsewhere.

At one point I had even written a post that I intended to publish on my personal blog formally endorsing his candidacy. Then in December the Stormfront story started coming out, and I held back. Frankly, after this latest fiasco, I am glad that I did. Last week, I finally deleted the draft of that post.

You might disagree with my opinion, but it is mine. And I think the worst thing that has come out of this campaign has been the assertion by some that if you don’t support Ron Paul, you’re not a “real” libertarian.

And how are the high priests reaction ? Almost like nothing happened:

There is, I suspect, little joy in Auburn right now. That the crew at LRC is responding to these events in much the same way that they’ve always mocked the Randroids for acting is telling. Hopefully that behavior is driven by genuine shock and confusion rather than by knowledge of their own culpability in what’s fast turning into a combination black eye, broken jaw and diagnosis of venereal disease for the libertarian movement.

We’ll be talking about this one for awhile, I think.

Ron Paul And The Future Of Libertarianism

I had a feeling that I’d be writing a post like this at some point, I just didn’t think it would be this soon or under these circumstances.

Now that we know the results in Iowa and, more importantly,  New Hampshire and now that the newsletter story has hit the mainstream media in a big way, the time has come to think about where libertarianism goes after Ron Paul, and whether the campaign itself has been a net plus or a net minus. I’ve got my own thoughts on the issue which I’ll probably post about next week, but for now I think its interesting to look at what others are saying.

First, Cato’s David Boaz has this up today:

Ron Paul isn’t running for president. He’s not going to be president, he’s not going to be the Republican nominee for president, and he never hoped to be. He got into the race to advance ideas—the ideas of peace, constitutional government, and freedom. Succeeding beyond his wildest dreams, he became the most visible so-called “libertarian” in America. And now he and his associates have slimed the noble cause of liberty and limited government.

Mutterings about the past mistakes of the New Republic or the ideological agenda of author James Kirchick are beside the point. Maybe Bob Woodward didn’t like Quakers; the corruption he uncovered in the Nixon administration was still a fact, and that’s all that mattered. Ron Paul’s most visible defenders have denounced Kirchick as a “pimply-faced youth”—so much for their previous enthusiasm about all the young people sleeping on floors for the Paul campaign—and a neoconservative. But they have not denied the facts he reported. Those words appeared in newsletters under his name. And, notably, they have not dared to defend or even quote the actual words that Kirchick reported. Even those who vociferously defend Ron Paul and viciously denounce Kirchick, perhaps even those who wrote the words originally, are apparently unwilling to quote and defend the actual words that appeared over Ron Paul’s signature.

Those words are not libertarian words. Maybe they reflect “paleoconservative” ideas, though they’re not the language of Burke or even Kirk. But libertarianism is a philosophy of individualism, tolerance, and liberty. As Ayn Rand wrote, “Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.” Making sweeping, bigoted claims about all blacks, all homosexuals, or any other group is indeed a crudely primitive collectivism.

Libertarians should make it clear that the people who wrote those things are not our comrades, not part of our movement, not part of the tradition of John Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and Robert Nozick. Shame on them.

Boaz does have a point here.

The author of those articles is by no means a libertarian, and if it does turn out that Lew Rockwell and his associates were the ones behind it, then I can’t say I’m surprised. I remember when Rockwell and Murray Rothbard first started advancing this thing called paleoconservatism — Rockwell wrote a long article on the subject in Liberty —  I was frankly stunned. It seemed like something that would come out of the mouth of a member of the John Birch Society, not the supposed intellectual heirs of Ludwig von Mises.

At least when it comes to issues like immigration and trade and the association with conspiracy theories — the North American Union theory for one, the 9/11 Truthers for another — one could make the argument that the Paul campaign was more paleoconservative than libertarian. Which is why it’s not surprising that Rockwell and his fellow bloggers are among Paul’s most vociferous supporters.

And, George Mason Law Professor Ilya Somin says this:

Ron Paul isn’t all bad. However, it is increasingly clear that association with his presidential candidacy does more harm than good to the cause of libertarianism, a point that I tried to make in my very first post about him. Not only is his candidacy turning out to be a flop politically, as I predicted. It also creates the risk of tarring libertarianism by associating it in the public mind with bigotry, conspiracy-mongering, and xenophobic hostility to free trade and immigration (though the latter, unfortunately, is actually quite popular even outside far-right circles).

And that’s why I kept harping on the issue of the less than savory supporters last year — libertarian ideas are foreign enough to most Americans, even the slightest suggestion that they are associated with racists and conspiracy theory kooks is going to make it that much harder to convince people that there is a solution to the problems our country faces, and that that solution is freedom.

The Ron Paul Newsletters: Naming Names

The Economist states openly what others have been saying privately since Tuesday:

While his statements sometimes leave the impression that Mr Paul simply licensed his name to people with whom he had little contact, there is much evidence to the contrary. The newsletters that appeared under his name were published by M&M Graphics and Advertising, a company run by Mr Paul’s longtime congressional campaign manager Mark Elam—which Mr Elam himself confirms. And according to numerous veterans of the libertarian movement, it was an open secret during the late-80s and early-90s who was ghostwriting the portions of Mr Paul’s newsletters not penned by the congressman himself: Lew Rockwell, founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and members of his staff, among them Jeffrey Tucker, now editorial vice president of the Institute.

Mr Rockwell denied authorship to Jamie Kirchick, the reporter whose New Republic article published earlier this week reignited controversy over the newsletters. But both Mr Rockwell (who attacked the New Republic article on his site) and Mr Tucker refused to discuss the matter with Democracy in America. (“Look at Mises.org,” Mr Tucker told me, “I’m willing to take any responsibility for anything up there, OK?”) According to Wirkman Virkkala, formerly the managing editor of the libertarian monthly Liberty, the racist and survivalist elements that appeared in the newsletter were part of a deliberate “paleolibertarian” strategy, “a last gasp effort to try class hatred after the miserable showing of Ron Paul’s 1988 presidential effort.” It is impossible now to prove individual authorship of any particular item in the newsletter, but it is equally impossible to believe that Mr Rockwell did not know of and approve what was going into the newsletter.

Rockwell, along with Murray Rothbard, went off on the “Paleolibertarian” journey in the early 1990s — to the point where they openly backed Pat Buchanan in 1996 and, quite honestly, adopted a good deal of Buchanan’s rhetoric. Obviously, Rockwell and others were using Ron Paul’s newsletters for their own agenda.

Why does this matter ? Well, here’s one reason:

This matters because, while Mr Paul may disavow the sentiments that were expressed under his name over the years, he has scarcely disavowed Mr Rockwell, who remains a friend and adviser. Mr Rockwell is one of the congressman’s most vigorous online boosters, accompanied him to an appearance on The Tonight Show, and often publishes Mr Paul’s writings on his Web site. Mr Paul now says the identity of his ghostwriter is of no importance. But if the person responsible for spreading venom under his name for many years remains a close associate, it suggests that Mr Paul is at least prepared to countenance pandering to racists, however respectable his own views. The candidate owes his supporters a far more complete explanation than he has thus far provided.

Pretty much the same thing I said yesterday.

Update: Over at Reason, Matt Welch has an interesting article contrasting what the Paul campaign is saying about the newsletters today and what was said back in 1996, when they became an issue in his Congressional campaign.

More On Ron Paul’s Mystery Author

As tarran noted yesterday, there is a lot to be concerned about in the racist content of the newsletters that were published under Ron Paul’s name for nearly twenty years. While it’s fairly clear that Paul didn’t write those articles, and I believe him when he says that the writings do not reflect his ideas, the question remains why they articles were published at all.

To answer that, I think, lies in the identity of the author of the articles, which has been the subject of some interesting blogging on a few libertarian sites today.

First, Timothy Virkalla says that this story has been an open secret in libertarian circles for years:

As a writer and editor working in the libertarian movement at the time of these “Ron Paul” newsletters, I have vague recollection of “common knowledge”: it was known who wrote these newsletters, and why. It was money for Ron. It was money for the writers. And it was a way of keeping Ron’s name in the minds of right wingers with money . . . future donors.

It was designed to be entertaining writing. Provocative. It flirted with racism, like Mencken’s did, and Mencken was indeed the model of the style. But these “Ron Paul” writings went further than Mencken’s usually did (at least for publication) along the lines of annoying the racially sensitive; and they sometimes did veer into outright racism.

I was embarrassed by the implied racial hatred, rather disgusted by the general level of hate regardlesss of race. I was also a bit shocked by the writing because the style was so obviously not Ron’s, and so obviously the product of the actual writers, with whom I had tangential relations

(…)

Most of us “old-time” libertarians have known about this sad period of Ron Paul’s career from the get-go. We know that it was a lapse on his part. But we who opposed it (and not all of us did) put much of the blame on the writers involved, not on Paul, who was, after all, juggling family, medicine, politics, and continued study of actual economics. That Paul didn’t realize what he was doing to his own moral stance is amazing. His style is one of earnest moralizing. That fits his character. The ugliness of this career move speaks a sad story.

(…)

Oh, so who wrote Ron Paul’s newsletter? I have only hearsay and memory to go on. But really, most of us in the libertarian “industry” just “knew” who. I have four names in mind, I think all contributed at one point or another. But maybe it was only a subset of those names, maybe it was just one or two. One of the names is pretty damn obvious. And one of the names is not obvious at all; the style was abandoned for better things, later on.

Like Rodney King, one might prefer we all just get along, move along, and forget about this sorry story. But it is worth exploring. Racism is still a live issue in America. And, apparently, in libertarianism.

And Wendy McElory calls on the author, who she says she knows personally, to come forward:

The identity of the author of the ‘objectionable’ material from past issues of Ron Paul’s Newsletter — material that is currently being used by major media to skewer Paul [see blog post below] — is an open secret within the circles in which I run. The news accounts refer to him merely as an “aide.” We call him by his first name.

(…)
I disagree on one point. The author can talk about it. He should talk about it. I will not ‘out’ the person in question on this blog although people are urging me to do so. One of them writes, After the way he’s treated the rest of us [ex-friends who criticize Paul], it might be worth taking him down a peg or two. I won’t…but neither will I pretend that I do not know the background of the matter. I appeal to the author to do the decent thing. Don’t let Ron Paul take the fall for your words and actions. Don’t further sully the libertarian movement by your silence. I know that — in writing this — I am severing all connection between us in the future and, frankly, I am sorry to do so. Nevertheless…so be it. Through our years of association, one thing I have never considered you to be is a coward.Please prove my assessment correct; please take responsibility.

My co-contributor, of course, called for the same thing yesterday.

A lot of this is internal libertarian squabbling, but it’s become a public issue now and it needs to be resolved. Voluntarily or involuntarily, the identity of the mystery author and his connections to Ron Paul need to come forward. And libertarians need to ask themselves why the philosophy of freedom is attracting racist troglodytes.

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