re: NYT smears Rand Paul, LvMI, Rockwell, Rothbard, Spooner, Block as racists.

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And he has sometimes touched on themes far from the mainstream. He has cautioned in the past of a plan to create a North American Union with a single currency for the United States, Mexico and Canada, and a stealth United Nations campaign to confiscate civilian handguns. He has repeatedly referred to the “tyranny” of the federal government.

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Because one currency with Canada and Mexico is so mainstream.


That whole quote is whack.

I'm not equivocating at all: there's a difference between influence and having a lot of things in common and total discipleship, which seems to be your definition. Or maybe I'm reading you wrong.

I suppose it depends on how far you want to stretch "nothing in common." Do you think Rothbard and Mises have "nothing in common" with the left-wing anarchists of the 19th century? Seems to me Rand is distancing himself from those folks for political reasons, but he has a lot more in common with them intellectually than he does with, say, George H. W. Bush or Pat Buchanan.

And calling the very popular former president is sexual predator is more evidence this cartoon character is not ready for prime time.

He will never be president. No way, no how. He can't help putting his foot in his mouth. His ego and snarkyness block common sense. We see it with Ted Cruz as well. The two cannot and will not be tamed. And the irony is that's what their supporters love about them and that's what will prevent them from ever being president.

Reagan had charm. He had charisma. He was a nice guy. It came across in his debates. Cruz and Paul are the antiReagan when it comes to those qualities.

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No, it's not. The article simply states the fact that libertarianism is associated with some dubious ideological positions, including neo-confederate apologetics.

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And liberalism is associated with communism, right?

The article links Paul and Libertarianism to nuts who have wacko beliefs, but also happen to believe some of the Libertarian ideas. Would be no different than including references to Stalin and Mao in an Obama piece since they both believed in universal health care. Yes, some Libertarians are not mainstream philosophically, but some Democrats are communists. It was an attempt to paint Paul as a nutjob by association and VERY dishonest.

This is what one does when they cannot effectively debate the actual ideas. The media can't, so they will constantly bring up nutjobs who support him. This was never, of course, done when Obama was running.

Come on, it's not that complicated.

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Posse Comitatus Law of 1878

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This was really nothing but a political barter to elect Rutherford B. Hayes as president. "You remove these Yankee soldiers for the South, and we'll make you president, Mr. Hayes!"

Exactly. Obama had actual, long-term relationships with nutjobs like Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayres, Bernadette Dorehn, etc. Check out his mentor in Hawaii sometime, too.

That goes way past the ridiculous "connect the dots" game the NYT is playing.

Take the liberal media out of the equation, and both Cruz and Paul could wipe the floor with the likes of Hillary Clinton, Obama, etc. Unfortunately, you can't remove the liberal media from the equation. They will do everything they can to destroy these men. Obviously, they've already started.

PS - I love how some left-wingers profess such a fondness for dead conservatives. If Reagan was in the mix today, they would hate him, too.

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NYT smears Rand Paul, LvMI, Rockwell, Rothbard, Spooner, Block as racists.

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Smearing liberal Dem opponents is what they do.

Why are Rothbard, Spooner, Block, and Rockwell considered the "right"?

They are all Anarchists.

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So the article introduces Spooner by describing him accurately as an abolitionist who opposed the war against the South as unjust. What are you complaining about again?

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It's a crafty sentence that introduces Lysander Spooner to the reader in a way that fits the narrative of the article, which is filled with random connections that portray Paul and libertarianism negatively. Look at this:

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Some scholars affiliated with the Mises Institute have combined dark biblical prophecy with apocalyptic warnings that the nation is plunging toward economic collapse and cultural ruin. Others have championed the Confederacy. One economist, while faulting slavery because it was involuntary, suggested in an interview that the daily life of the enslaved was “not so bad — you pick cotton and sing songs.”

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Who are they talking about? It's just random bullshite that they put in there to create a certain narrative.

The majority of the description of Spooner is about his opposition to the Civil War:

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Lysander Spooner, a Massachusetts abolitionist who turned against the North in the Civil War, which he deplored as unjust aggression against the Confederacy.

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1 word about his opposition to slavery. It's not inaccurate, but I don't think it's a fair description. The craftsmanship of an intellectual ideologue.

How about this - Lysander Spooner, an individualist anarchist who authored The Unconstitutionality of Slavery in 1845, which argued that slavery violated natural law.

It's much more precise to associate Spooner with his own work, a pamphlet that he wrote more than 15 years before the Civil War, rather than a war that he opposed on principal. Also, look at how they open the paragraph:

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But tucked into Mr. Paul’s lengthy monologue — its 76,000 words would fill a 300-page manuscript — was another narrative, told in a sprinkling of obscure references.

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The article shifts from a positive tone to a But, as if he went off on some strange tangent by mentioning Spooner, an intensely moral, principled man ahead of his time.