I know it prob doesn't look good that like my first 2 posts both feature this guy, but this was just too good.
So this is like really long, so I don't bother you if you don't feel like watching the whole thing, but you just might want to if you have some time to kill. I find this whole thing to be one of the most fascinating things I've seen.
So like Whittle's like a typical neocon-lite kind of guy...the flavor of big "R" Republican who prefers to call himself and everyone who agrees with him "conservative". And my first post was the video of him making a plea for us to vote for his Paul Ryan. (Since there's too many undeniable issues with the actual candidate, he liked to focus on the "budget hawk" guy. In fact I'm pretty sure he made an entire video about it after Ryan was named the running mate. It was like we were all supposed to fall in love with Romney because he picked the budget guy.)
Anyway, I was especially curious to watch the reactions of all the hard line Republican guys (maybe it's shadenfrude or something, I don't know). So when I see a video from this guy that's 90 minutes long, titled "A New Beginning...", I figured I was gonna get exactly what I was looking for!
And in a way, I kind of did. I knew this guy would be really affected, but i totally didn't see which direction he was gonna take it...
So it starts off kind of predictable "I'm not gonna waste any time whining, blah blah blah". Then he states his assessment of the situation...basically that the problem is, 50% of the country is without virtue. Kinda rubbed me the wrong way, but I guess if you tweak your definition of "virtue" I can kinda see what he's saying. (Although I love the hypocrisy when he's talking about the virtueless hedonists who go around promoting drugs and homosexual activity...and then right away comes back and tries to be like "I have no problem with homosexuals!", right after he literally just said they were essentially bad people.)
Anyway, then he starts talking about what he thinks we should do about it. Right away he's like "I'm not talking about revolution or going Galt, I'm not even talking about civil disobedience. We FOLLOW THE LETTER OF THE LAW." And I'm like, "way to go asshole. You go right ahead and turn Harriet Tubman in to the proper authorities."
And then it starts to get crazy.
He starts getting into his plan. He describes "parallel structures". And when he starts going into it, you realize he's basically talking about libertopia...privatized, voluntary-everything. He starts sounding like Seasteading Institute but without the moving out to sea. His plan is: if we could just get enough people to pool their resources (the model he describes is a recurring monthly payment into a 501c3), we could essentially pay for whatever we wanted.
It's like, he's almost getting it. It's so remarkable...it's like the re-election of Obama just shook him to the core and he's detaching.
But then it gets even weirder. The first example he gives is private space flight. This part you gotta listen to. The whole thing starts at 27:10. You just gotta watch it. I can't say I've ever seen anyone who could articulately string two sentences together and considered them crazy. Like actually insane. But that's exactly what I started to think as this guy went on. I was like "holy crap, this man has actually gone insane."
For the best example of this, check out 35:00-37:09. That has to be the most insane 2 minutes I think I've ever seen where the person was actually talking intelligibly. If you watch nothing else, just watch that segment if for nohting more than the shock value.
But as if that werent enough, RIGHT AFTER that, he goes right into making the most sense, and relating the most to us that he ever has. 37:13-41:00, he more or less becomes a voluntarist. It's the strangest thing.
And he goes on to basically talk even more good stuff (of course mixed with some confused and not-quote voluntarist stuff) throughout the rest of the video.
It gets really serious at 53:54. That's another part you gotta see. This guy has been seriously shocked to the core. I don't know if I've ever seen such a hard core neocon Republican flip so fast. Literally (literally) overnight.
I seriously. Just watch. It's literally watching a necon become almost a full voluntarist right before your eyes.
This man is so ready to join our team. He's essentially beating on our door. I mean, listen to him come up with ideas that libertarians have already been working on for years. At 1:17:34 he starts to invent the FSP. It's almost comical. The guy's been so immersed in his neocon world for so long, and been so busy calling libertarians hippie kooks or whatever, that he literally has no notions at all of the fact that essentially all of these things he thinks he's coming up with are already underway, and have been for a long time.
Someone needs to send him a copy of Chaos Theory or something. Is there like a single definitive book or set of books for just nudging someone in the right direction?
In this case it wouldn't even be like pushing someone over the tipping point...this guy is already gone...it's more like just correcting his course a little. Giving him a little clearer direction.
This Romney loss may be even better than we imagined.
Oh my god you were right about the 35 to 37 minutes. OMFG that's gold, It's a crying shame that I just put up my new sig today because that's a quote that f***ing sig worthy if ever there was one!
"There's bigger things in life than getting killed"
Oh my god! XD
Wowwwwwwwwwwww. He's totally, bang-your-head-against-a-walll, eat-your-own-dung, prance-around-like-Napolean, drool-on-yourself, batshit crazy.
Clayton -
lol that was really funny, but I can't watch the rest.
That's what kills me! He sounds so insane at some points...but then at others he sounds a lot like a voluntarist. Doesn't exactly reflect well for us. There's enough people calling us crazy as it is. The last thing we need is some guy who is literally driven insane by the Obama re-election and ends up dreaming up a bunch of ideas that turn out to be basically voluntarism.
"Doesn't exactly reflect well for us."
Huh? When Neo-nazis endorsed Ron Paul did that reflect badly on Ron Paul? You do understand how attribution works, right?
Clayton:"Doesn't exactly reflect well for us." Huh? When Neo-nazis endorsed Ron Paul did that reflect badly on Ron Paul?
Huh? When Neo-nazis endorsed Ron Paul did that reflect badly on Ron Paul?
You tell me...
"Ron Paul was recently photographed with Don Black, director of the white nationalist Web site Stormfront, and his son, Derick. Paul has has been endorsed by several extremist groups, and has said that while he disowns them, he won't disavow their support."
--http://www.buzzfeed.com/pajaroentertainmentltd/photo-of-ron-paul-palling-around-with-neo-nazis-31ii
"ask yourself why the Klan holds rallies for Paul and neo-Nazis are drawn to him? All by accident?"
--http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2828637/posts
"The Paul campaign declined to comment on why he is accepting donations from people the candidate says he disagrees with. The contributions represent an ongoing Paul tie to right-wing extremism -- one that could be severed simply by sending back the checks."
--http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/27/ron-paul-white-supremacists_n_1305509.html
"Ron Paul’s neo-Nazi ties, Romney alliance exposed"
--http://peoplesworld.org/ron-paul-s-neo-nazi-ties-romney-alliance-exposed/
"Paul keeps donation from white supremacist"
--http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22331091/ns/politics-decision_08/t/paul-keeps-donation-white-supremacist/
"OPINION: Ron Paul Is A White Supremacist"
--http://newsone.com/444922/opinion-ron-paul-is-a-white-supremacist/
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/the_ron_paul_campaign_and_its.html
(just look at the sheer length of that last one.)
You do understand how attribution works, right?
You do understand how public opinion works, right?
His video on NDAA was great at least:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgrktRgjBXk
Prime,
Why does it matter whether or not Ron Paul is the most ardent racist who ever lived?
Also
@Prime: So you're linking to HuffPo to show that the "general public" had a negative reaction to Ron Paul on the basis of the decision of neo-Nazis to support him?
This is the rule: It matters who you support. It doesn't matter who chooses to support you. Hitler believed 2+2=4... does that reflect badly on mathematicians? Even the stupid sheeple public understand this.
Maybe I'm losing it a little bit myself, but I actually found the parts of this that I watched to be motivational.
We are you guys trying to make an enemy of Bill Whittle? I didn't find his "insane rantings" to be so very insane at all. He's talking about the rebirth of an ethos of heroism, completely voluntary of course. He's not a neocon either, he just happens to toe the party line on republican foreign policy but he's not out there waving pamphlets of bomb-strapped muslims in your face.
@ Clayton - you were being sarcastic right?
This is what we were talking about in the other thread with Obama winning the election being the best case scenario. Republicans are getting 'radicalized' or drifting away from the state. Aside from Bill Whittle not being a party-line libertarian, what exactly is the problem here?
The Anarch is to the Anarchist what the Monarch is to the Monarchist. -Ernst Jünger
Holy rainbow-colored pony shit!
@Prime: Neo-Nazis liking Ron Paul's positions that have nothing to do with race is evidence that Neo-Nazis are pretty cool, not that Ron Paul is bad.
a) Whittle is generally annoying, even just in his demeanor. I hate that fake furtive crap.
b) Whittle is hard-right; like any Bush-era neocon, he does lip-service to small government.
c) In his last video on election day, he was pathetically begging libertarians/anti-statists to go out and vote for Romney. It was really sad and lame. And it shows where his true loyalties lie: Republican Party, 100% right-down-the-line.
Neo-Nazis are pretty cool
Actually, I've known a couple in my time and they're just generally reactionary, egotistical assholes who sincerely believe that being white somehow makes them superior to other non-white races.
Neodoxy:Why does it matter whether or not Ron Paul is the most ardent racist who ever lived?
Is this a real question? You honestly need someone to explain why an openly racist person would never gain public favor? Do you honestly not understand why the enemies of Ron Paul worked so hard to associate him with racists and racist comments?
Clayton:So you're linking to HuffPo to show that the "general public" had a negative reaction to Ron Paul on the basis of the decision of neo-Nazis to support him?
Well, that was one of many links illustrating the negative tone surrounding it. A large part of the proof of the point is in the fact that those articles exist in the first place. If it's really so meaningless to people, why exactly is it so easy to find so many sources focusing on it?
Clayton:This is the rule: It matters who you support. It doesn't matter who chooses to support you. Hitler believed 2+2=4... does that reflect badly on mathematicians? Even the stupid sheeple public understand this.
I think you're making presumptions about the general public that are a stretch, to say the least.
Milton Friedman had to explain to the current President of Iceland that gravity works the same regardless of whether the country you're in is a dictatorship or republic.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3D7JXggLOY#t=37m3s
And it sounds like you're suggesting that someone accepting the political and monetary support of, and/or pal-ing around with white supremicists (or, in Neodoxy's case, actually being one) makes essentially no difference to the general public. I honestly don't see how you could be a functioning human being with eyes and ears, and possibly even begin to think such a thing.
and/or pal-ing around with white supremicists
Cite or GTFO.
"Is this a real question? You honestly need someone to explain why an openly racist person would never gain public favor? Do you honestly not understand why the enemies of Ron Paul worked so hard to associate him with racists and racist comments?"
I was asking in terms of why it should affect why one would support him in terms of policy prescription, not in terms of whether or not it would affect his political career.
@Clayton:
Is Ron Paul being friendly with white supremicists not what was to be taken from the piece in the very first link in the list I gave you in that list? The entire article was nothing more than "hey look, here's ron paul taking a picture with the director of a white supremicist group and his white supremecist son. Ron Paul is getting endorsed all over the place by extremists and racists, and he doesn't disavow their support. Don't look at us, we're just supplying facts. You draw your own conclusions. The end."
I never said he was actually friends with these people, my whole point is that any sort of association obviously does matter to plenty of people, and this idea that "Even the stupid sheeple public understand" logic and their opinion of someone isn't negatively affected by him not only gaining but accepting the support of self-identified racists, is just crazy.
I mean, I don't know who you associate with, but it can't be much average general public. At the very least I would guess your real life interactions are either quite few, or largely made up of pretty highly educated people, or both. Outside of actual Ron Paul supporters, the view of Ron Paul is "kooky crazy old backwater uncle Ron from Texas with his old man racist anti-semite tendencies and racists associations/supporters. He's crazy because x,y,z. The news and everyone else told me so."
What's even crazier is that you openly acknowledge and use the term "stupid sheeple public", and yet allege that a mass of stupid sheep actually have and put in practice the intellectual capacity to say "just because this one guy happens to appeal to and gain the support of a bunch of white supremicists and extremists, and he put his own name on racists comments, and accepts money from various racist groups, and doesn't disavow their support...that doesn't mean he's a racist or that I should in any way have even the slgihtest negative opinon of him because of any of this whatsoever..."
I mean really?
Neodoxy:I was asking in terms of why it should affect why one would support him in terms of policy prescription, not in terms of whether or not it would affect his political career.
I though we was talking about overall public opinion. That was the whole point. I said it doesn't look good when your ideas are already called crazy as it is, and then actual clinically crazy people come up with essentially the same ideas. Clayton challenged this idea (surprisingly enough) and suggested that "even the stupid sheeple public" don't end up with any negative opinions of anyone just because he is supported by racists or people that are commonly aggreed on as "bad."
This whole thing started cuz I made a comment about overall public opinion (which is usually based on little more than how things "look"). If all you were asking was why someone being racists should affect why one would support him in terms of policy prescription, then I'm not sure what made you even ask.
But to answer your question, obviously it shouldn't matter. But people shouldn't be murdered either. I was kinda talking in terms of what actually happens, ya know what I mean?
I never said he was actually friends with these people
Pal.
As for the picture with the white supremacist, Ron Paul specifically disavowed any association with him and told reporters that he takes photos with hundreds of people per day and he cannot control who walks up to him and in no way would he endorse or want to be associated with white supremacy or any kind of racial superiority. I don't have the cite, look it up for yourself.
The point is that I was following the news when they were trying to hype this up. It flopped then. Do you think that no left-wing extremists attend Obama rallies? Now that he's President, they might have the resources to screen each and every person who gets to shake hands with the President or appear in a photo (but I doubt that), but this certainly wasn't the case during his campaign.
Ever heard of Jeremy Wright? Bill Ayers? I assure you, they're both real, friendly, snuggly, warm and fuzzy, love-filled people. Unlike Obama, Ron Paul has not ever associated himself with extremists. And like Obama or any other political candidate, he can't control who walks up to him, shakes his hand or snaps a photo with him.
And I stand by the assertion that the stupid sheeple understand it. They understand it because the news agencies don't propagandize this issue. And they don't propagandize this issue because all their pet candidates attract extremists like flies on shit. That's why all the links you've provided are from the amateur and junior news punditry... the pros know better than to mess with this issue.
The definition of "pal"? Jeez. Should I have said "I never said he was <i>actually</i> friends with these people"? Would that have helped? It sounds like you think I'm on the side of the people writing all those articles. Obviously they're smear pieces, meant to give as negative of an impression as possible. But that's my whole point. Your entire claim is that the idea of having and accepting the support of these people doesn't matter even to "stupid sheeple public". And I'm saying based on everything I've heard the general public (i.e. anyone not supporting ron paul) say, it obviously does matter, and it does affect their opinion. And those articles illustrate that obviously those in the media believe the general public would be influenced by such information as well...otherwise why would they waste their time composing and publishing it?
What's your point? That the media downplays and ignores Obama's extremist associations? I thought that was kind of in the "no-shit" category a long time ago?
The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/us/politics/ron-paul-disowns-extremists-views-but-doesnt-disavow-the-support.html?pagewanted=all
The Los Angeles Times:
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2011/12/ron-paul-learns-what-happens-candidates-embrace-religious-extremists.html
MSNBC:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22331091/ns/politics-decision_08/t/paul-keeps-donation-white-supremacist/
Yahoo News:
http://news.yahoo.com/white-supremacists-rally-around-ron-pauls-newsletter-scandal-211335526.html
Slate.com:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2011/12/26/ron_paul_and_extremism_discover_it_again_for_the_first_time.html
New York Magazine:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/01/how-ron-pauls-libertarianism-supports-racism.html
...You were saying?
Perhaps you could take the time to look at the "amateur and junior news punditry" and notice that they're largely in the business citing larger news sources...and then look at the sources they cite.
And if you'd really like to have some fun, go ahead and suggest that people viewing him personally as a racist doesn't matter either (as it seemed Neodoxy did). I'll be happy to post link after link from "pro" sources going on and on about some newsletters you probably heard of, and the whole issue of being an anti-semite being pretty important to a lot of people. Unless of course you're now going to tell the front page of NYT isn't "pro" or mainstream media...in which case, I'd love to learn what is.
The definition of "pal"? Jeez. Should I have said "I never said he was <i>actually</i> friends with these people"? Would that have helped?
You stated RP was "paling around" with racists. Status: False. You've provided no evidence to support your false claim.
It sounds like you think I'm on the side of the people writing all those articles. Obviously they're smear pieces, meant to give as negative of an impression as possible. But that's my whole point. Your entire claim is that the idea of having and accepting the support of these people doesn't matter even to "stupid sheeple public". And I'm saying based on everything I've heard the general public (i.e. anyone not supporting ron paul) say, it obviously does matter, and it does affect their opinion. And those articles illustrate that obviously those in the media believe the general public would be influenced by such information as well...otherwise why would they waste their time composing and publishing it?
Then where was the backlash? How come Paul's numbers didn't go down in the slightest after this? How come they weren't able to follow through and really expose the true "KKK roots" of Ron Paul? Moneybomb after moneybomb kept rolling in and Ron Paul is more popular now than ever before. If this is a solid strategy to discredit someone's reputation, it sure as hell hasn't worked in this case.
Let me go back to my original point. If Politician Bob says "I support white supremacists"... that's news, bad news for Bob. If white supremacists say "we support Politican Bob", that might or might not be news ... if Politician Bob says "I have no idea who the hell these people are" that's the end of it. As for Ron Paul's choice not to "send back the check", a) he already noted that the money would be better used in the hands of his campaign promoting liberty than back in the hands of white supremacists promoting hatred and b) the mainstreamer political campaigns really would rather keep the lid on this can of worms... they receive lots of extremist dough on the DL.
And the crux of the issue is this: Ron Paul is in fact no extremist and, thus, does not attract extremists (except, perhaps, some very confused ones). So the mainstream politicians don't want the the news agencies doing a side-by-side comparison of the campaign contributions from extremists. Because they'll come out with mud on their face, big time. It's a news story that got squashed quickly.
And "your point" is that the MSM is writing smear pieces against RP? What sort of point is that? That the state-operated media apparatus would do everything in its power to try to smear a constitutionalist, minarchist, roll-back-the-Federal gov't, Old Right conservative is obvious. Of course they'll smear him. The question is: did it stick?? Look at the date distribution on the news links. That story came and went in a hurry and when it left the headlines, it was like it had never been there. Ron Paul continued running strong in the primaries for several more months and his fundraising ability was never hindered in the slightest.
some newsletters
They would have used the newsletters to take him down were he to have won the primary (not that that was ever even a real possibility... just speaking hypothetically here). But the newsletters are a completely different issue in terms of political impact. They would have made hay out of that from morning till evening, irrespective of the facts of the matter. They only dropped the issue because they felt that the probability of a Paul nomination was too low to worry about.