I'm pretty sure Ron Paul would give up his position of power if he were the last person standing in the way of complete freedom. There have been few politicians (if any) more honest than he has been during his career. He's fighting the good fight in Washington, and we need to support him for that.
Give up what power exactly?
lol....
By voting for Dr Paul, I almost feel that I am legitimizing the socialist American state and I cannot see how minarchists such as Dr Paul can ever give up their power and allow a transition to a fully capitalist system.
It sounded like you were saying that Ron Paul would never transition to a capitalist system and that he's somehow a part of the socialist American state. If Ron Paul weren't in Washington to fight for capitalism, the system might be even more socialistic than it already is. I'm sure he'd rather be working as a physician still rather than having the stress of being the backbone of the conservative sect of Congress.
How do the people opposing transition propose people go from statist -> voluntaryist?
Is truth evolution of belief?
Not that only he read Block's books, but Walter Block is also his advicer. Ron Paul is Frederik Bastiat of our days:).
You mean an overeducated politician who is deluded enough to believe that popular government is workable and that gigantic tyrannical states can be salvaged?
your use of 'overeducated' has so distracted me from all else you have said that I just have to boggle.
overeducated ?
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
Someone who uses doctrines as a replacement for reason. The Pauline church and Bastiat both had delusions about being able to 'save' the government, based on some mix of populist and people's-state fallacies. A republic is even more difficult to 'rescue' than some petty despotism.
Ron Paul is not a republican any more than Hoppe is a monarchist... they are both anarcho-capitalist... but you will argue.... so...ok.
thanks for explaining overeducated.
"You mean an overeducated politician who is deluded enough to believe that popular government is workable and that gigantic tyrannical states can be salvaged?"
Back your claim up. Oh wait, you can't.
He's the lesser of two evils. A minarchist state is better than a socialist state.
Like Belial is better than Satan? I don't make deals with the devil, any of them.
Edmund Carlyle:I don't make deals with the devil, any of them.
It's easy to talk big on the internet.
It's just as easy not to propagandize for professional gangsters and their managers.
Not to disrespect, but he's done way more for libertarianism and anarchy than you have Carlyle.
Freedom has always been the only route to progress.
Not to disrespect, but he's done way more for libertarianism and anarchy then you have Carlyle.
The very point of my contention is that he has not. People just keep asserting he has. I say he's tainted it, misrepresented it, done absolutely nothing useful at his job, attracted unlibertarian factors and promoted anti-lbertarian ideas and attracted people to the useless and pernicious realm of political activism. He has deliberately bought votes with pork barrel schemes and diverted tax payer money into politically connected interests in his district.
I don't claim to have revolutionized social institutions, I don't even pretend to have made a marginal difference. What I reject is that a career politician ever has.
But he's been the path to it. Tell me how one cannot read Ayn Rand then progress to Rothbard. People tend to take small, not big steps to an ideology.
But he's been the path to it. Tell me how one cannot read Ayn Rand then progress to Rothbard. You have to take small, not big steps to an ideology.
Which is a peculiarly one sided analysis for someone with a presumptive interest in economics. Think about the costs: resources diverted from better sources, the perversion of the product itself (both in the public's view and ideologically) by association with political action and political figures and the infiltration of anti-libertarian types into libertarian institutions.
Furthermore, I was more radical than Rand when I was twelve years old. I think most 'baby step' paths lead to permanent immaturity; the people who are going to make it at all are usually able to take the straight source; and not wishy-washy middle of the road nonsense.
You also totally ignored every point I made, like every other member of the Pauline church I've talked to.
I can't believe I'm debating anarchists about whether a professional politician is a good face for libertarianism. Do they hand out crack when you sign up? Because I didn't get mine. Nothing gets through to you people, you just blatantly ignore experience, reason and principle.
Edmund Carlyle:The very point of my contention is that he has not. People just keep asserting he has. I say he's tainted it, misrepresented it, done absolutely nothing useful at his job, attracted unlibertarian factors and promoted anti-lbertarian ideas and attracted people to the useless and pernicious realm of political activism.
I'm not asserting. He brought myself and many other people here to anarchism.
Edmund Carlyle:I don't claim to have revolutionized social institutions, I don't even pretend to have made a marginal difference. What I reject is that a career politician ever has.
So basically your major contribution is that you are not Ron Paul. Well, bully for you.
Edmund Carlyle:the perversion of the product itself (both in the public's view and ideologically) by association with political action and political figures and the infiltration of anti-libertarian types into libertarian institutions.
Please study libertarian theory related to reputation.
Edmund Carlyle:Furthermore, I was more radical than Rand when I was twelve years old.
Rand is not Ron.
Edmund Carlyle:You also totally ignored every point I made, like every other member of the Pauline church I've talked to.
Flaming is unacceptable.
Edmund Carlyle:I can't believe I'm debating anarchists about whether a professional politician is a good face for libertarianism. Do they hand out crack when you sign up? Because I didn't get mine. Nothing gets through to you people, you just blatantly ignore experience, reason and principle.
This sort of discourse is unproductive. You're welcome to leave anytime if you're not capable of being tolerant of other's ideas without attacking them personally.
Wow, or I'll just not talk to you.
"It's just as easy not to propagandize for professional gangsters and their managers."
More strawmen. Are you trying to set the record for the most fallacies used in a thread? You're coming real close.
"I say"
All you have is baseless assertions created from your fantasy like view of the world. You've got nothing, which has been shown time and time again here. Keep lying to yourself though. You've failed to back your claims up - you don't even bother trying.
Nice dogma. You're just like the statists.
"What I reject is that a career politician ever has."
More of the same bs. Ron isn't a career politican, and even if he is - he's never claimed the crap you say he has. He's done the exact opposite.
What a joke. Go back to your cave.
A possible solution. Put him the last on the list, when all the politicians have been taken care of, then, could you go against Paul, and then should you hear him out and listen to what he would be able to say finally transparently without media preocupations.
Conza88:What a joke. Go back to your cave.
Conza, you're one of my good mates, but you need to clean this stuff up, as I don't want to have to clean it up for you.
'I can't believe I'm debating anarchists about whether a professional politician is a good face for libertarianism. Do they hand out crack when you sign up? Because I didn't get mine. Nothing gets through to you people, you just blatantly ignore experience, reason and principle.'
Not everyone has this Sorelian mentality toward political pundits.
'Men do not change, they unmask themselves' - Germaine de Stael
It's interesting how somebody's intellectual snobbery can drive them so far from practicality. I don't know how anyone who consciously enjoys freedom can dislike Ron.
I dislike him because he is a conservative politician with a very inconsistent track record as far as supporting personal liberty is concerned (especially when his social conservatism overrides his quasi-libertarianism), and libertarians have made an unassailable idol out of him. Most of the smarter libertarians stopped idolizing him long ago, and the rest just bury their head in the sand when he's critisized or twist their brains into knots trying to characterize him as an anarchist secret agent.
Someone PM me when an actual argument is put forth, as opposed to vague & baseless assertions.
'I dislike him because he is a conservative politician with a very inconsistent track record as far as supporting personal liberty is concerned (especially when his social conservatism overrides his quasi-libertarianism), and libertarians have made an unassailable idol out of him. Most of the smarter libertarians stopped idolizing him long ago, and the rest just bury their head in the sand when he's critisized or twist their brains into knots trying to characterize him as an anarchist secret agent.'
You dislike everybody hater!
Would Lew Rockwell vote for his good friend Ron Paul?
Being unadvisable and being unlibertarian are two entirely different things. - cporter
"Would Lew Rockwell vote for his good friend Ron Paul?"
Johnsson: Who would you support in the 2008 elections?
Rockwell: I would like to see elections for public office abolished, and that is particularly true for the presidency. The idea of the president was initially that some far-seeing, wise person would emerge from the aristocratic class who would sit atop the apparatus of the state and make sure that all things ran well. The founders were not stupid: they knew there was potential for abuse. So they made it possible to impeach the president if there was the slightest slip up. Unfortunately, this didn't work. It was like putting the chief inmates in charge of overseeing the conduct of the other inmates. The problem is that they all end up working together.
....
Johnsson: Would you vote for a libertarian in any election?
Rockwell: I don't vote. Why play along? Your vote doesn't count, unless the election is decided by one vote, and you have far more chance of being killed on the way to the polls than that happening. Besides, the vote is the sign and symbol of the democratic state. I abstain.
.....
Rothbard: "The second part of my answer is that I don't think that voting is really the question. I really don't care about whether people vote or not. To me the important thing is, who do you support."
......
Rockwell: Of course I'm cheering on Ron Paul because he is exposing the nature of the whole system. He is not running for president. He is running against the presidency as it is currently understood. Ultimately, however, I do not believe that politics offers a way out. What we need is a new consciousness concerning the idea of human liberty.
And that is partly what Ron is helping spotlight.
^I'm going to have to side with Mr. Rockwell.
"^I'm going to have to side with Mr. Rockwell."
And I'm going to have to ask, who is oppossing Rockwell?
People who vote for Ron Paul.
"People who vote for Ron Paul."
And yet that isn't the real issue, as pointed out by Rothbard. It is who you support. Lew Rockwell supports Ron Paul.
The curmudgeon in here doesn't.
I think Ron Paul probably is about as close as you can get to ancap and still be a politician who gets elected. He is on the national stage and getting people interested in libertarian/ancap ideas. Vote for him anyway.
That is the post that ispired my post.
"That is the post that ispired my post."
Ok, well it would have helped if you replied to it.
Btw, wasn't referring to you as the curmudgeon. That special title is for someone else for more deserving. :)
Anyway, back on topic. Just came across this - http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101205135003AAHeyB0 , and responded.
Most of the smarter libertarians stopped idolizing him long ago,
Do they also insist on putting the word "left" in front of the word libertarian? All I read is you find conservatives/ anti-leftism as aesthetically displeasing, which is fine I guess. As far as consitsitency is concerned all I read is "The Beatles were not as consistent in their rocking as the Stones, hence I like the Stones."
If you want to call some dipstick, LTV, anti-usury nut like Proudhon "not conservative" and "more consistent" that's fine too I guess. He has always been in with those "smarter" libertarians anyway right?
BTW are you more comfortable calling some left wing intellectual who wastes your tax dollars like Chomsky more consistent? Is his consistency more appealing to you than the inconsistency of Ron Paul?
Just because we do not agree with Ron Paul 100% doesnt mean that we cant support him... Anarcho-Capitalism is influenced by a lot of anarchists that hate capitalism...Ever think of that? Mises, Menger, and Bawerk supported the state, should we not support them because we do not agree 100%? Of course not, that is just dumb...
My Blog: http://www.anarchico.net/
Production is 'anarchistic' - Ludwig von Mises
"Mises...supported the state"
Except he didn't. He was a philosophical anarchist.
And:
AEN: Was Mises better than the classical liberals on the question of the state?
HOPPE: Mises thought it was necessary to have an institution that suppresses those people who cannot behave appropriately in society, people who are a danger because they steal and murder. He calls this institution government.
But he has a unique idea of how government should work. To check its power, every group and every individual, if possible, must have the right to secede from the territory of the state. He called this the right of self determination, not of nations as the League of Nations said, but of villages, districts, and groups of any size. In Liberalism and Nation, State, and Economy, he elevates secession to a central principle of classical liberalism. If it were possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, he says, it would have to be done. Thus the democratic state becomes, for Mises, a voluntary organization.
AEN: Yet you have been a strong critic of democracy.
HOPPE: Yes, as that term is usually understood. But under Mises’s unique definition of democracy, the term means self rule or self government in its most literal sense. All organizations in society, including government, should be the result of voluntary interactions.
In a sense you can say that Mises was a near anarchist. If he stopped short of affirming the right of individual secession, it was only because of what he regarded as technical grounds. In modern democracy, we exalt the method of majority rule as the means of electing the rulers of a compulsory monopoly of taxation.
Mises frequently made an analogy between voting and the marketplace. But he was quite aware that voting in the marketplace means voting with your own property. The weight of your vote is in accord with your value productivity. In the political arena, you do not vote with your property; you vote concerning the property of everyone, including your own. People do not have votes according to their value productivity.
AEN: Yet Mises attacks anarchism in no uncertain terms.
HOPPE: His targets here are left-utopians. He attacks their theory that man is good enough not to need an organized defense against the enemies of civilization. But this is not what the private-property anarchist believes. Of course, murderers and thieves exist. There needs to be an institution that keeps these people at bay. Mises calls this institution government, while people who want no state at all point out that all essential defensive services can be better performed by firms in the market. We can call these firms government if we want to. – http://mises.org/journals/aen/aen18_1_1.asp
Also – http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/hoppeintro.pdf , pg 9
“Rothbard’s anarchism was not the sort of anarchism that his teacher and mentor Mises had rejected as hopelessly naive, of course. “The anarchists,” Mises had written…”