Reason notices the Esquire story on Ron Paul

[sailingaway]

http://reason.com/blog/2011/04/22/esquire-gives-ron-paul-some-gu?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reason%2FHitandRun+%28Reason+ Online+-+Hit+%26+Run+Blog%29

A lot of it is just quotes from the article which is in a different thread (although it says the print version is longer than the on line version.) But it has some commentary, including this:


Though Esquire has loved Ron Paul for a long time, in the end the story concludes, rather sadly, that despite his bright and spiritual political idealism, that a Ron Paul world would alas be one with lots of folk starving in the streets. (That's what libertarianism is all about: the philosophy of street starvation, good and hard. This is a widely believed bit of American lore, despite "keeping the poor from starving" being about the least of actual government's concerns.)

[Indy Vidual]

TReason is still around? Say Hi to the Koch Bros.

[sailingaway]

TReason is still around? Say Hi to the Koch Bros.

I don't get closer to them than the internet, I assure you.

[S.Shorland]

Well,I think it's a very two-faced article! It lauds him and then says his ideas would have made America smaller and poorer.

[Carehn]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait....
Did i miss something! I always thought Reason was Farley good.

[AlexMerced]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait....
Did i miss something! I always thought Reason was Farley good.

Some people are extremely die hard, so they criticize organizations like CATO and Reason for not being perfect, I think they are pretty darn good, are working on spreading the ideals of Liberty even if we don't always agree 100% with everything written, and don't deserve the same kind of scorn we use for Neo-Liberal and Neo-Conservative Statist rags.

[TheeJoeGlass]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait....
Did i miss something! I always thought Reason was Farley good.

Anything linked to the new boogey bears must be feared. The Kochs are no worse than Soros, or the other rich people that own us.

[sailingaway]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait....
Did i miss something! I always thought Reason was Farley good.

They slip in really nasty stuff about Ron as if it had legitimate basis, at the most key moments, and because they are 'the libertarian paper' they are assumed to know best. Then they pretend they are unbiased, but there has long been a basic Ron Paul/Kochtopus divide. For example, while the Kochs seem more reconciled to Rand now that he is lending his name to the right to work stuff, etc., as a knee jerk reaction in his primary, they donated to the great libertarian freedom fighter, AIG backed Trey Grayson. Oh yeah, and they like banks, the Fed and internationalism (the Kochs, that is, who fund Reason and Cato). There is CROSS OVER with Ron, but they are their own kind of corporatist, sort of like Club for Growth is better than the Chamber of Commerce, but still its own kind of corporatist.

Some writers are better than others, though.

[cubical]

Libertarianism would make people poorer and would put people starving out on the streets??? Since when? I feel like we are dealing with children who plug their ears and go la la la la la.

[sailingaway]

Libertarianism would make people poorer and would put people starving out on the streets??? Since when? I feel like we are dealing with children who plug their ears and go la la la la la.

Yeah, but to be fair, before Johnson's Great Society, the '50s are widely remembered for the hordes of people starving in the streets.

[Bossobass]

Yeah, we Americans hate our fellow citizens starving in the streets.

We much prefer to round them up and send them to someone else's streets to take a bunch of foreign citizens down before they're blown to bits on foreign streets.

The article follows the CIA guidelines to a tee. Say some good stuff, then finish with ideological assassination. That appeases RP fans because this is another article in an endless series that "isn't bad", but it causes the noob to conclude "grandpa's old fashioned ideas are insane".

Bosso

[acptulsa]

Yeah, we Americans hate our fellow citizens starving in the streets.

We much prefer to round them up and send them to someone else's streets to take a bunch of foreign citizens down before they're blown to bits on foreign streets.

The article follows the CIA guidelines to a tee. Say some good stuff, then finish with ideological assassination. That appeases RP fans because this is another article in an endless series that "isn't bad", but it causes the noob to conclude "grandpa's old fashioned ideas are insane".

Bosso

Completely fair and utterly unbalanced. Stroke, stroke, stroke, stab.

Libertarian is all about starvation in the streets. Pure insanity. Libertarianism is all about state governments can feed more hungry people than the federal government becasue there's less corruption and waste, county governments can feed more than state governments for the same reason, and charity can feed more than county government for the same reason.

Which makes 'Reason' more than unreasonable. It makes them baldfaced liars. Excuse me if I don't favor that travesty with a hit. Unless, of course... I presume they censor the responses they get?

[Lucille]

Doherty, who blogged that piece, is one of the reason good guys.

[acptulsa]

Doherty, who blogged that piece, is one of the reason good guys.

Reason enough to take a zero-hits-for-you-guys attitude about the whole place, for me.

[Eric21ND]

Capitalist societies don't have mass starvation in the streets, the more authoritarian and socialist the society the more liklihood for turning a blind eye to their citizens starving, sometimes resulting in millions of deaths.

[iamse7en]

Reason isn't even truly libertarian. They're really just fiscally conservative and socially liberal. They make the same arguments as and sound like liberals on social issues and conservatives on fiscal issues. It's a totally different feel when you read/listen to true libertarians, Austro-libertarians. Plus, they support a central bank a softer form of global interventionism.

[acptulsa]

Reason isn't even truly libertarian. They're really just fiscally conservative and socially liberal. They make the same arguments as and sound like liberals on social issues and conservatives on fiscal issues.

Hm? Isn't that pretty much libertarianism in a nutshell?


It's a totally different feel when you read/listen to true libertarians, Austro-libertarians. Plus, they support a central bank a softer form of global interventionism.

Ah, neocons posing behind a thin veil of libertarianism. Gotcha.

[KurtBoyer25L]

The bottom line is that "pure" Libertarians must cooperate with lots of different types of people to get Ron elected President. Reason will be friendlier to us than most. Follow the Pauls' example and try focusing on the positive & winning people over.

My comment seems to have "closed" the blog thread, not sure if that's good or not.

[Lucille]

Ilana Mercer blogs (http://barelyablog.com/?p=37243) the Esquire piece (and takes the opportunity to slam the beltway libertarians by linking to one of her old pieces. Heh.).


John H. Richardson of Esquire Magazine has a great line about the Republicans’ hollow commitment to constitutional principles: “Once Obama became president, the hymen of their small-government ideals spontaneously regenerated.” Richardson follows with a fabulous piece about Ron Paul:
[...]
The feature about Ron Paul is well-worth reading. (While you’re at it, here’s a defense of Representative Paul (http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=50), one of many, written during the heyday of the attacks against him launched by Beltway libertarians.)