Freedomain Radio

But, he's running for president...  Who cares if the new tyrannical warlord is a nice guy who believes in personal freedom and limited government.  The president isn't the king.  His personal views don't effect the office, not in a meaningful way.  What has Ron Paul done to dismantle the apparatus of the government while he's been in congress?  I submit that Ron Paul could be the most moral politician on Earth.  That, in no way, changes the nightmare government that exists.  How about this?  Do you remember Senator Obama?  I do.  I read his books, all of them.  That man was an idealist, who believed in a peaceful and prosperous society.  Not 2 weeks ago, President Obama was on the television trying to scare my grandmother, so he could take more money from the American people to fund a growing welfare state  It isn't the man that occupies the office, it's the office that possesses the man.  My only guess is that the view from inside the presidency is so different than the view from the outside, it alters the office holder's entire understanding of reality.  If you truly believe that Ron Paul is a good man, which I do, the best thing you can do for him is vote for someone else.  Don't let that nice, old gynecologist be corrupted by the insane perspective that only the president has.

  I've voted Libertarian for years, not this time.  I'm going to not vote.  I refuse to further legitimize the system by tacitly endorsing corrupt practices, like mob rule.  If I don't vote, I didn't consent.  By the logic of the Declaration of Independence, "Just powers derived from the consent of the governed.", I rob the government of some fraction of it's legitimacy.  Equally, it is my intention to make the process of collecting my taxes as difficult as is legally possible.  I'm going to make typos, send extra paperwork, and just be disagreeable.  I only need to increase the cost of getting my taxes beyond the actual revenue they generate.  If I have to pay $1000, I'll keep IRS customer service on the phone for a hundred hours.  When I pay taxes on my business, I'm going to send them the unabridged transaction record, for the year.  I can afford to send them 100lbs of paper.  Can they afford to sort it out?

Exactly. He must have a very low opinion of the minds of men, if he can actually say stuff like "politicians don't matter", and then expect that his listeners aren't going to notice THAT HE IS ONE.

Arius:

But, he's running for president...  Who cares if the new tyrannical warlord is a nice guy who believes in personal freedom and limited government.  The president isn't the king.  His personal views don't effect the office, not in a meaningful way.  What has Ron Paul done to dismantle the apparatus of the government while he's been in congress?  I submit that Ron Paul could be the most moral politician on Earth.  That, in no way, changes the nightmare government that exists.  How about this?  Do you remember Senator Obama?  I do.  I read his books, all of them.  That man was an idealist, who believed in a peaceful and prosperous society.  Not 2 weeks ago, President Obama was on the television trying to scare my grandmother, so he could take more money from the American people to fund a growing welfare state  It isn't the man that occupies the office, it's the office that possesses the man.  My only guess is that the view from inside the presidency is so different than the view from the outside, it alters the office holder's entire understanding of reality.  If you truly believe that Ron Paul is a good man, which I do, the best thing you can do for him is vote for someone else.  Don't let that nice, old gynecologist be corrupted by the insane perspective that only the president has.

  I've voted Libertarian for years, not this time.  I'm going to not vote.  I refuse to further legitimize the system by tacitly endorsing corrupt practices, like mob rule.  If I don't vote, I didn't consent.  By the logic of the Declaration of Independence, "Just powers derived from the consent of the governed.", I rob the government of some fraction of it's legitimacy.  Equally, it is my intention to make the process of collecting my taxes as difficult as is legally possible.  I'm going to make typos, send extra paperwork, and just be disagreeable.  I only need to increase the cost of getting my taxes beyond the actual revenue they generate.  If I have to pay $1000, I'll keep IRS customer service on the phone for a hundred hours.  When I pay taxes on my business, I'm going to send them the unabridged transaction record, for the year.  I can afford to send them 100lbs of paper.  Can they afford to sort it out?

Ron Paul is an educator and spreader of ideas first and congressman second.  His goal is a voluntary society, and he has chosen the path of becoming a congressman and running for President as a way of educating people and spreading his message of liberty and peace.  He has been doing this his whole life, and now we are seeing the fruits of his work.  And they are incredible!  Ron Paul has sparked a desire for liberty among many millions of liberals and conservatives.  Most of them become Constitutionalists, or just want less government.  A fraction of these millions (which is still a huge number) become voluntaryists, by thinking through what Ron Paul is saying, taking his principles ("taxation is theft") to their full conclusions.  Ron Paul wants his followers to discover voluntaryism; he leaves clues everywhere as my video shows, and constantly plugs Austrian economics and the Mises Institute. 

Yes, your vote is worthless in terms of trying to directly influence the political system, and Ron Paul knows full well that he cannot shrink the state from the inside.  His goal is education and the spreading of ideas.  He introduces bills like Audit The Fed NOT because he thinks it will pass, or that it will change anything in the government, but because it educates people.  Who knew what the Fed was 10 years ago?  Now one of our enemy the State's greatest source of power - the ability to create money and force acceptance of it - is being talked about finally, and the legitimacy of the State is collapsing in light of what people have learned.  They were alerted to the issue by Ron Paul, the guy who talks about peace and liberty on TV.

It doesn't so much matter whether or not you vote for Ron Paul as it does if you support him.  Recommend him to your Statist friends and see if they become interested in him.  You just might start them off on an intellectual journey of discovery which will end with them becoming voluntaryists.  Voting only matters because the truth is that people pay more attention to candidates if they are more popular, and this they judge by the results of votes and polls.  It is also important for getting mainstream publicity and getting invited to debates.  These are great for alerting apathetic and Statist people that libertarianism is out there, and it just might appeal to them. 

For this reason, I say vote Ron Paul.  While I'd love the State to lose legitimacy, not voting does not have this effect, because a principled non-vote cannot be distinguished from an apathetic non-vote.  Lower voter turnout is not a sign that people consider the State illegitimate; it is a sign that they don't care who's voted in.  Voting in no way means you are consenting or endorsing the State; a slave begging for better treatment from his master is in no way consenting to the slavery or endorsing it.

GregG:

Exactly. He must have a very low opinion of the minds of men, if he can actually say stuff like "politicians don't matter", and then expect that his listeners aren't going to notice THAT HE IS ONE.

Quite the contrary.  Ron Paul is hoping his followers pick up on that obvious hypocrisy!  He has great confidence in the minds of men; he trusts that we will find our way to voluntaryism, once desire for liberty has been sparked within us.

Quoting a professional liar is not a convincing rhetorical strategy.

How many latinos do you think have dismissed libertarianism because they heard Paul support the violence of immigration law, against their friends and families?

I cannot imagine that I would have seen the virtue of libertarian ideas, even as the one presenting them spoke to a deep and pressing need for threatening my mother, my father, and my people.

Graham Wright:

Ron Paul is an educator and spreader of ideas first and congressman second.  His goal is a voluntary society, and he has chosen the path of becoming a congressman and running for President as a way of educating people and spreading his message of liberty and peace.  He has been doing this his whole life, and now we are seeing the fruits of his work.  And they are incredible!  Ron Paul has sparked a desire for liberty among many millions of liberals and conservatives.  Most of them become Constitutionalists, or just want less government.  A fraction of these millions (which is still a huge number) become voluntaryists, by thinking through what Ron Paul is saying, taking his principles ("taxation is theft") to their full conclusions.  Ron Paul wants his followers to discover voluntaryism; he leaves clues everywhere as my video shows, and constantly plugs Austrian economics and the Mises Institute. 

Yes, your vote is worthless in terms of trying to directly influence the political system, and Ron Paul knows full well that he cannot shrink the state from the inside.  His goal is education and the spreading of ideas.  He introduces bills like Audit The Fed NOT because he thinks it will pass, or that it will change anything in the government, but because it educates people.  Who knew what the Fed was 10 years ago?  Now one of our enemy the State's greatest source of power - the ability to create money and force acceptance of it - is being talked about finally, and the legitimacy of the State is collapsing in light of what people have learned.  They were alerted to the issue by Ron Paul, the guy who talks about peace and liberty on TV.

It doesn't so much matter whether or not you vote for Ron Paul as it does if you support him.  Recommend him to your Statist friends and see if they become interested in him.  You just might start them off on an intellectual journey of discovery which will end with them becoming voluntaryists.  Voting only matters because the truth is that people pay more attention to candidates if they are more popular, and this they judge by the results of votes and polls.  It is also important for getting mainstream publicity and getting invited to debates.  These are great for alerting apathetic and Statist people that libertarianism is out there, and it just might appeal to them. 

For this reason, I say vote Ron Paul.  While I'd love the State to lose legitimacy, not voting does not have this effect, because a principled non-vote cannot be distinguished from an apathetic non-vote.  Lower voter turnout is not a sign that people consider the State illegitimate; it is a sign that they don't care who's voted in.  Voting in no way means you are consenting or endorsing the State; a slave begging for better treatment from his master is in no way consenting to the slavery or endorsing it.

  I'm just a little confused about this reasoning.  I'll need your help to understand this. It seems that you're saying that Ron Paul's real accomplishment is in increasing awareness of voluntaryism and the problem of the FED.  Suppose that's true, why is he running for the office of president?  The president is not, historically, an office that hands out wisdom or education.  Nor is the office of the president especially peaceful.  Equally bizarre, there have been more than $5 million in campaign contributions for Ron Paul.  Has he lied about his objectives to get funding?  He's running a presidential campaign, not an educational campaign.  He could use his fund-raising skills to begin an aggressive campaign against the government, as easily as running for the office of president.  Ads are priced based on length and placement, not content. So, what is his actual objective?

  I'm not seeing the collapse of the state.  If anything, it's larger and more powerful now than ever before.  Ten years of educating have just made people mad.  What action does Ron Paul propose?  Watch this; I propose that each person in America calculate their personal income taxes 3 months in advance and give to charity or lose in the stock market a sum equal to their tax liability.  That's what an active proposal of a solution looks like.  What has Ron Paul proposed, what has he really proposed.  He says "End the Fed".  That doesn't take the power to print money away from the state.  It also doesn't eliminate the central economic planning.  What, exactly, is ending the Fed supposed to accomplish?  He says "Politicians are the problem", but he is one.  He talks about immigration and removing the benefits to doing so illegally.  Think about it, immigrants come to America because the process is incentivised.  There are a number of "social safety nets" for immigrants to fall on.  Many of those exist at the state level.  Does he propose that the president can tell states what to do?  Ron Paul, to me, sounds like the Zietgiest people.  He proposes that there are only 1 or 2 real problems (the Fed and empire) and all other problems stem from those.  The Fed is an excuse to spend without thought.  Drop the Fed and the power falls to the congress.  As long as the state controls the money, they will be able to fund wars by devaluing it.  Adam Smith called it 200 years ago.  What was true then is true now.  Thinking that there is only a 1 or 2 problems is utopian.

  I still think my objection to the office of the president holds.  The office corrupts the man.  I think that Ron Paul is a good guy, and I know that, if he became the president, it would be a matter of months before he had soldiers in the streets.  Eliminating the state involves a large degree of human suffering.  All those state-sponsored individuals will be left to fend for themselves.  Stef did a great bit about eliminating the post office.  There's a lot of truth in that, though.  My grandmother is 96.  She was ready to get on a Greyhound bus and go to Washington to throw stones at the white house, if her social security check didn't come.  She's not a crazy person, she was promised something and she wants what she's owed.  That's how the state gets you, they promise things they can only deliver through theft and deceit.  To me, Ron Paul is promising something he can never deliver because the sound of the promise galvanizes people to action. Slavery, wrapped in the language of freedom, is no freedom at all.

Eric Starnes:

Quoting a professional liar is not a convincing rhetorical strategy.

Can you elaborate?

Lowe:

How many latinos do you think have dismissed libertarianism because they heard Paul support the violence of immigration law, against their friends and families?

I cannot imagine that I would have seen the virtue of libertarian ideas, even as the one presenting them spoke to a deep and pressing need for threatening my mother, my father, and my people.

I don't know.  I suppose that would have to be weighed up against the number of people who would have dismissed him if he opposed immigration law.  I believe many conservatives who became Constitutionalists (and then maybe Voluntaryists) because of Ron Paul would have dismissed him at the start if he was in favor of free immigration / forced integration.

Arius:

I'm just a little confused about this reasoning.  I'll need your help to understand this.

Happy to answer your questions as best I can.

Arius:

It seems that you're saying that Ron Paul's real accomplishment is in increasing awareness of voluntaryism and the problem of the FED.  Suppose that's true, why is he running for the office of president? 

The Fed is just an example of a major ethical violation committed by the State that Ron Paul has increased awareness about.  He's running for the office of the president because its a way of getting publicity and injecting real issues into debates, supporting liberty.  He doesn't care about winning.  He's trying to win, because if he did become President, it would be a fantastic platform for reaching millions more people. 

Arius:

The president is not, historically, an office that hands out wisdom or education.  Nor is the office of the president especially peaceful. 

Two remarkable understatements!

Arius:

Equally bizarre, there have been more than $5 million in campaign contributions for Ron Paul.  Has he lied about his objectives to get funding?  He's running a presidential campaign, not an educational campaign.  He could use his fund-raising skills to begin an aggressive campaign against the government, as easily as running for the office of president.  Ads are priced based on length and placement, not content. So, what is his actual objective?

Well publicity is not just about ads.  Think of the televised debates.  When he's on stage at the debates, the media can't stop his message of peace and liberty reaching millions of people.  These kinds of opportunities would not be available to him without his nominal presidential campaign.  The presidential campaign is a means to an end, which is to educate people and spark yearnings for liberty within them.  These are Ron Paul's goals, and the presidential campaign is just a small part of it. 

Arius:

  I'm not seeing the collapse of the state.  If anything, it's larger and more powerful now than ever before. Ten years of educating have just made people mad.

Well, it's difficult to slow the growth of Leviathan.  I agree its larger now, but would it have grown even faster if there hadn't been a shift (minor though it has been) in favor of liberty in the public consiousness since 2007?  I don't know.  But it's a long game.  Take the long view.  The modern machinations of enslavement, control, indoctrination and propaganda took decades or centuries to develop to their current scale.  The academic arguments for Voluntaryism were only really developed in the 1960s and 1970s and at that time, all the libertarians in the world could fit inside Murray Rothbard's house.  Now there are Voluntaryists all over the world.  The numbers are small but growing fast, and with the rise in communications technology they could soon starting growing exponentially as people begin to learn the truth about the State and about the world.

By the way, your last sentence made me think of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMBZDwf9dok

Arius:

What action does Ron Paul propose?  Watch this; I propose that each person in America calculate their personal income taxes 3 months in advance and give to charity or lose in the stock market a sum equal to their tax liability.  That's what an active proposal of a solution looks like. 

I'm all for peaceful actions that make it harder for the government to loot us. 

Arius:

What has Ron Paul proposed, what has he really proposed.  He says "End the Fed".  That doesn't take the power to print money away from the state.  It also doesn't eliminate the central economic planning.  What, exactly, is ending the Fed supposed to accomplish? 

Well "End the Fed" is really shorthand for end the government monopoly of the money supply and allow a free market in money production.  That would eliminate the central economic planning, or at least a major part of it.  Not being able to print money would take away a lot of the government's power.  But Ron Paul hasn't introduced the bill because he thinks it will pass, or that if it does pass any good will come of it.  He knows the State won't allow that to happen.  He's introduced the bill so that people might become aware that there is a major issue here. 

Arius:

He says "Politicians are the problem", but he is one. 

See my response to Greg about this.

Arius:

He talks about immigration and removing the benefits to doing so illegally.  Think about it, immigrants come to America because the process is incentivised.  There are a number of "social safety nets" for immigrants to fall on.  Many of those exist at the state level.  Does he propose that the president can tell states what to do? 

Immigration is a complex issue.  Put yourself in Ron Paul's shoes, and I assume I am right about what his goal and his strategy are... do you support immigration laws or oppose them?  Obviously with no State it's a non-issue.  So the question is somewhat artificial from the beginning, from the Voluntaryist perspective. 

Given that we have States and their purpose is ostensibly to provide security, is it unethical to restrict people entering the country, or is it unethical to subject Americans to living alongside people they might not wish to?  On this, Walter Block takes the position that any State border control is unethical.  Hans Hoppe takes the view that allowing free immigration amounts to forced integration, and therefore a free immigration policy is a dereliction of the State's ostensible duty to provide security. 

Ron Paul takes the latter view.  For strategic reasons as discussed, for a mainstream audience he adopts the minarchist position that the State should provide security, and he sees border control as a part of providing security.  Enforcing immigration laws is not unlibertarian; under libertarianism it's a non-issue, and the "most libertarian" solution to immigration, given the constraint that the State exists, is not clear cut.

Arius:

Ron Paul, to me, sounds like the Zietgiest people.  He proposes that there are only 1 or 2 real problems (the Fed and empire) and all other problems stem from those. 

Better that people know about those two issues than not.  He doesn't believe those are the root of the problem, no.  They are two of the worst symptoms.

Arius:

  I still think my objection to the office of the president holds.  The office corrupts the man.  I think that Ron Paul is a good guy, and I know that, if he became the president, it would be a matter of months before he had soldiers in the streets.  Eliminating the state involves a large degree of human suffering.  All those state-sponsored individuals will be left to fend for themselves.  Stef did a great bit about eliminating the post office.  There's a lot of truth in that, though.  My grandmother is 96.  She was ready to get on a Greyhound bus and go to Washington to throw stones at the white house, if her social security check didn't come.  She's not a crazy person, she was promised something and she wants what she's owed.  That's how the state gets you, they promise things they can only deliver through theft and deceit.  To me, Ron Paul is promising something he can never deliver because the sound of the promise galvanizes people to action. Slavery, wrapped in the language of freedom, is no freedom at all.

Yes, eliminating the state is going to be hard, involve suffering, and it could get messy.  But the state will be responsible for that suffering, not the people trying to eliminate the state.  The suffering that will occur under states if they are around for another few hundred years is far greater than the suffering of those in our time that may occur while the state is being eliminated.

Graham Wright:

Lowe:

How many latinos do you think have dismissed libertarianism because they heard Paul support the violence of immigration law, against their friends and families?

I cannot imagine that I would have seen the virtue of libertarian ideas, even as the one presenting them spoke to a deep and pressing need for threatening my mother, my father, and my people.

I don't know.  I suppose that would have to be weighed up against the number of people who would have dismissed him if he opposed immigration law.  I believe many conservatives who became Constitutionalists (and then maybe Voluntaryists) because of Ron Paul would have dismissed him at the start if he was in favor of free immigration / forced integration.

So, you are saying that, in order to attract people to libertarian principles, one thing to do is espouse the opposite of libertarian principles, i.e. the initiation of force against others, if only in one area of political discourse.  One does this in the hope that eventually, somehow, all or some of those who only accepted you because of your support for violence, will figure out you weren't serious about that part, or at least that you were mistaken.

 I will ignore the question of whether that strategy can work, which I doubt.

Assuming it does work to some extent, how effectively does it work, compared with the alternative?  There are two options.

-Support RP, and thus enhance the public perception that libertarianism approves of violence against Latino immigrants, and thus tend to dissuade any Latino from considering libertarianism.

-Don't support RP, and thus enhance the public perception that libertarianism condemns violence against Latino immigrants, and thus tend to dissuade any supporter of anti-immigrant violence from considering libertarianism.

Who do you think is generally a better candidate for accepting libertarian principles?  Latinos, or people who already support the opposite of libertarian principles, in one area of political discourse?

Lowe, that's not what I'm saying.  See my response to Arius above.  The "most libertarian" policy with respect to immigration, given the constraint that the State exists, is not clear cut.  There are libertarian arguments for as well as against immigration laws.  

Read Hans-Hermann Hoppe's argument for immigration laws, which Ron Paul has adopted, here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/hermann-hoppe1.html

Initiating force against people is the opposite of libertarian principles.  This is not changed by circumstances such as whether a state is already present, or whether the people suffering the initiation have statistically high levels of criminality, or may endanger the security of our property.

Any claim the second and third circumstances are relevant would be deeply ironic given the state, the entity enforcing these border controls, is the largest criminal organization and the greatest threat to private property.  But even if the state were a true boon to our security in this respect, its service would still irrelevant to the question of whether anti-immigrant violence accords with libertarian principles.  The NAP is not conditional on whether would-be victims have a higher chance of being or becoming criminals.

Nor does the NAP come with an addendum, "Unless there is already a state, in which case ignore this and do the opposite."

GregG:

Exactly. He must have a very low opinion of the minds of men, if he can actually say stuff like "politicians don't matter", and then expect that his listeners aren't going to notice THAT HE IS ONE.

Yup.

"I am against shooting you in the chest if you disobey me.  Therefore, I want you to delegate the right to shoot you in the chest to me."

Sounds about right.  Actions contradict words.  Disregard words, acquire actions.