Bob Conely isn't exactly a libertarian...

[Jeremy]

I just watched the first 20 minutes of the debates.... (so far)

SC people here should still support him obviously... he's closer than anyone else running for Senate I'm sure, but no more of this "why won't Ron Paul endorse him?"

[Highland]

is he more like a blue dog democrat?

[Jeremy]

idk (not entirely sure what that is), but he's a protectionist

[Highland]

I think he follows Ron Paul philosophy because he tried to get a RP campaigner to work for him.

[Jeremy]

I think he follows Ron Paul philosophy because he tried to get a RP campaigner to work for him.

Uh.... I'm pretty sure he supported RP before he ran...

[Brassmouth]

Does it matter? If he supports any kind of protectionist policies he doesn't belong here.

I agree with the OP. The people of SC should still elect him, but he's not a "Ron Paul Democrat."

[MRoCkEd]

he's more of a Chuck Baldwin democrat

Bj Lawson, however, is a right-libertarian ron paul republican

[Mini-Me]

he's more of a Chuck Baldwin democrat

Bj Lawson, however, is a right-libertarian ron paul republican

I agree with you here...although I'd say that Conley doesn't give me the religious heebie-jeebies quite so much as Baldwin. Maybe that's just a psychological thing on my part though, because Baldwin's associating himself with the Constitution Party.

[nobody's_hero]

Will someone please explain what exactly protectionism is?

I don't like government regulation, and I don't think we should resort to the outright banning foreign imports (or levying prohibitive tariffs), but why do things turn hostile the moment someone suggests we shouldn't be getting tangled up in all these multi-lateral trade agreements?

[RCA]

Here we go again, splitting hairs. Remember, it's either vote for the establishment candidate or vote for the non-establishment candidate. Why is this concept so hard to grasp? I'd much rather vote for Dennis Kucinich or Cindy Sheehan than an establishment shill.

[Kludge]

Here we go again, splitting hairs. Remember, it's either vote for the establishment candidate or vote for the non-establishment candidate. Why is this concept so hard to grasp? I'd much rather vote for Dennis Kucinich or Cindy Sheehan than an establishment shill.

The OP never argued against that and specifically mentioned your point.

[scandinaviany3]

I just watched the first 20 minutes of the debates.... (so far)

SC people here should still support him obviously... he's closer than anyone else running for Senate I'm sure, but no more of this "why won't Ron Paul endorse him?"

probably a good thing given the bad press libertarians have got.

He seems to be carving out his own ron paul and chuck baldwin space out for himself...more the merrier as long as we start kicking out those really bad neo cons like lindsey graham

[surf]

he wants US out of Nafta and other "unfair" trade agreements. i'm not so certain that he really sounded protectionist - perhaps for South Carolina but not so much nationally.

edit: besides, he wants to audit the fed.

[Jeremy]

he wants US out of Nafta and other "unfair" trade agreements. i'm not so certain that he really sounded protectionist - perhaps for South Carolina but not so much nationally.

edit: besides, he wants to audit the fed.

he was talking about how we have to keep our jobs here

then he said we need more regulation in wall street? at the same time as saying the government should stop meddling... what does he mean???

[Kludge]

he was talking about how we have to keep our jobs here

then he said we need more regulation in wall street? at the same time as saying the government should stop meddling... what does he mean???

I do know that he'll combat the economic tyranny of C O M M U N I S T China!

[Spirit of '76]

Does it matter? If he supports any kind of protectionist policies he doesn't belong here."

Just out of curiosity, who made you the arbiter of who "belongs here"?

[angelatc]

Does it matter? If he supports any kind of protectionist policies he doesn't belong here.

I agree with the OP. The people of SC should still elect him, but he's not a "Ron Paul Democrat."

Bullshit. I'm a protectionist. Free trade is a unicorn.

[angelatc]

Will someone please explain what exactly protectionism is?

I don't like government regulation, and I don't think we should resort to the outright banning foreign imports (or levying prohibitive tariffs), but why do things turn hostile the moment someone suggests we shouldn't be getting tangled up in all these multi-lateral trade agreements?


Depends on who you ask. Libertarians are free traders, who want no tariffs and borders.

Protectionism means giving your home country an advantage by restricting imports, either by an outright ban, or a tariff.

Conley was right - our workers can't compete with workers who make .06 per hour.

[NightOwl]

Here we go again, splitting hairs. Remember, it's either vote for the establishment candidate or vote for the non-establishment candidate. Why is this concept so hard to grasp? I'd much rather vote for Dennis Kucinich or Cindy Sheehan than an establishment shill.

100% right. If some people want to run the purity test, go right ahead, but the rest of us will follow the trail blazed by Murray Rothbard, who supported antiwar, anti-establishment candidates down the line. No, he's unsound on trade, but he's anti-warfare state, anti-welfare state, and anti-Fed. That makes him better than 99.9% of all candidates for any office in all of American history.

[No1ButPaul08]

Will someone please explain what exactly protectionism is?

I don't like government regulation, and I don't think we should resort to the outright banning foreign imports (or levying prohibitive tariffs), but why do things turn hostile the moment someone suggests we shouldn't be getting tangled up in all these multi-lateral trade agreements?

Protectionism is the use of tariffs or blocking trade to manage the economy and collect taxes. Things turn hostile, because anyone who understands simple Austrian Economics, like Ron Paul, realizes that protectionism stunts economic growth most of the time in favor of special interests. Furthermore, IMO, anyone who doesn't understand Austrian Economics, doesn't understand economics.


Depends on who you ask. Libertarians are free traders, who want no tariffs and borders.

Protectionism means giving your home country an advantage by restricting imports, either by an outright ban, or a tariff.

Conley was right - our workers can't compete with workers who make .06 per hour.

Higher prices is an advantage?

[RP4EVER]

Ya know....if you look at history; our biggest economic boom was under one of the higher tarriffs.........it was when that particular tarriff was cut that the Great Depression happened.

What are the results of free trade with countries whos people make .06 an hour?

[Kludge]

Ya know....if you look at history; our biggest economic boom was under one of the higher tarriffs.........it was when that particular tarriff was cut that the Great Depression happened.

What are the results of free trade with countries whos people make .06 an hour?

If you look at history, the Federal Reserve's inflation created the most rapid economic growth in America's history -- we're paying for it now though.

[angelatc]

Ya know....if you look at history; our biggest economic boom was under one of the higher tarriffs.........it was when that particular tarriff was cut that the Great Depression happened.

What are the results of free trade with countries whos people make .06 an hour?

Apparently it is phone service from India, cars from Japan, appliances from Mexico and food from China.

Free trade is an admirable goal, but it's suicide to insist it is feasible, much less beneficial to the American economy in today's world.

[literatim]

Ya know....if you look at history; our biggest economic boom was under one of the higher tarriffs.........it was when that particular tarriff was cut that the Great Depression happened.

What are the results of free trade with countries whos people make .06 an hour?

Correlation /= causation

[angelatc]

Correlation /= causation

Uh, yeah, that totally convinces me. Not.


The Isolationist Myth
by Patrick J. Buchanan
December 3, 1994

High among the falsehoods is that 'free trade' made America prosperous and protectionism always made her poor...
Poor Smoot and Hawley. They get it every time. During the closing hours of GATT debate, their names were everywhere: Reed Smoot and Willis Hawley, architects of that dreadful, ruinous tariff bill of 1931.

Smoot-Hawley, it was said, deepened -- if it did not cause -- the depression. Smoot-Hawley proved the folly of using tariffs to protect America. Smoot-Hawley made the case, forever, for free trade. GATT opponents were isolationists and protectionists in the Smoot-Hawley tradition. It was their forebears who made the world safe for fascism and laid the groundwork for WWII.

This is part and parcel of The Great Myth of the 20th century: That withdrawal of America's armies from Europe after World War I, our refusal to ratify the Versailles peace treaty and our isolationism and protectionism in the '20s and '30s, made the world safe for fascism, Hitler and World War II. We Americans bear responsibility for those horrors. We are guilty! Therefore, we owe mankind reparations and must never again shirk our duties to the world.

This myth is the greatest of the "Blame America First" slanders. It is endlessly exploited, here and abroad, by men whose dreams have always been to leech out America's reservoirs of blood and treasure for their own global ambitions.

But The Great Myth is a great lie

Fascism and Bolshevism -- Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler -- did not result from American isolationism. They were the results of European stupidity and bloody-minded idiot-interventionism. World War I, the monstrous bloodbath which destroyed four empires -- Russian, German, Austrian, and Ottoman -- and brought Lenin to power in 1917, was Europe's doing, not America's.

As for the Versailles treaty, which split a defeated Germany in Two and left millions of German-speaking peoples cut off from their homelands, isolated in France, Italy, Poland, Czechoslovakia, that was the doing of British and French "statesmen." Woodrow Wilson may have gone along, but it was not he who scheduled WWII -- with the vindictive, wicked peace of WWI.

That the U.S. should have joined the League of Nations and used its power to police this squalid treaty is absurd. For Versailles did not rest on Wilson's "Fourteen Points," the principles of peace that had won Berlin's agreement to an armistice.

Versailles trampled all over them. It denied German-speaking peoples all over Europe the right of self-determination they had been promised if Germany and Austria laid down their arms. The only way the Western allies won German acceptance of their dictatorial, Carthaginian peace, was with a British-led Starvation Blockade of 1919, itself a moral atrocity and violation of Wilson's Fourteen Points.

Mussolini, the first of the fascists, came to power in 1922. (Perhaps Il Duce marched on Rome to protest the Fordney-McCumber tariff.) And perhaps Hitler's Munich Beer Hall putsch in 1923, where he tried to seize power in Bavaria, was pulled off in anticipation of Smoot-Hawley?

Dismemberment of Germany at Versailles, the imposition of impossible reparation demands, which post-Kaiser Germany was forced to accept, discredited Weimar democracy and created the misery and thirst for revenge -- not some U.S. tariff.

But didn't Smoot-Hawley cause the Depression? Again, myth. The 1929 collapse on Wall Street triggered the Great Depression. The failure of thousands of banks, wiping out a third of America's savings, caused the Depression to last until WWII, long after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs had been rolled back.

Americans today are being indoctrinated in false history. And high among the falsehoods is that "free trade" with foreign nations made America prosperous, and protectionism always made her poor. This is the catechism of the One Worlders, but it is politically correct history -- not truth.

All four presidents on Mt. Rushmore were protectionists. The greatest era of industrial expansion in America, where our workers saw the greatest rise in their standard of living was from 1860-1914, when America protected her industries and jobs behind a tariff wall. During that half century, U.S. exports rose 700 percent, while imports rose only 500 percent! By 1914, U.S. workers were earning 50 percent more that Brits, and more than twice what Germans and Frenchmen made.

No nation has ever risen to pre-eminence through free trade. Britain before 1848, America and Germany from 1865 to 1914, Japan from 1950 on, all practiced protectionism.

Now, the indices of national decline are all around us: endless huge trade deficits, falling wages, urban and social decay. But that decline will not be reversed until Americans cease to think of themselves as global citizens, with global duties, and start thinking again of their own country.

Smoot and Hawley aren't responsible for America's decline. Rather, it is those who make constant sport of them, and who need to be driven from power, if America is to reclaim the lost dream.

[Knightskye]

He does talk about policing Wall Street.

But I could tolerate having him in the Senate. Especially if Graham won't be there.

Conley supports auditing the Fed.

[angelatc]

Protectionism is the use of tariffs or blocking trade to manage the economy and collect taxes. Things turn hostile, because anyone who understands simple Austrian Economics, like Ron Paul, realizes that protectionism stunts economic growth most of the time in favor of special interests. Furthermore, IMO, anyone who doesn't understand Austrian Economics, doesn't understand economics.


Higher prices is an advantage?

Dumping and Collusion are advantages?

[jyakulis]

i have no problem with protectionism. why should we pay 20 percent tariffs on goods to a country then let them ship their junk here for free.

and you don't need a 1000 page document to have free trade. fuck nafta.

[RonPaulMania]

Here we go again, splitting hairs. Remember, it's either vote for the establishment candidate or vote for the non-establishment candidate. Why is this concept so hard to grasp? I'd much rather vote for Dennis Kucinich or Cindy Sheehan than an establishment shill.

You know I have a problem with what you said. You make way too much sense on a board filled with people who want the perfect candidate according to their likes and dislikes. People who make too much sense shouldn't be posting this blather, instead we need a reason find why you are a sold out compromiser.

[/sarcasm off]

In other words I completely agree with you.

[The_Orlonater]

Uh, yeah, that totally convinces me. Not.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard125.html