Justin Raimondo, Why the Beltway Libertarians Are Trying to Smear Ron Paul, is a good defense of the Paul newsletters and contains more good information on the nature of the smear campaign.
The hysteria that is energizing the campaign to smear Ron Paul and his supporters as “racist” is reaching a crescendo of viciousness, as the Beltway “libertarian” crowd revs up its motors for a righteous purge…Reason, of course, in it’s new incarnation as the official organ of the libertarian movement’s aging hipsters and would-be “cool kids,” vehemently opposes reaching out to middle and working class Americans: that is far too “square” for the black-leather-jacket-wearing Nick Gillespie, formerly associated with something called Suck magazine, and Matt Welch, who was an unknown quantity before getting the job at Reason…The decidedly “square” Dr. Paul—a ten-term Republican congressman from Texas, no less, and a pro-life country doctor of decidedly conservative social views—was and is anathema to Team Suck…
… [Radley] Balko laments that
“Unfortunately, the quotes pulled from these newsletters will for many only confirm those worst stereotypes of what he represents. The good ideas Paul represents then get sullied by association. The Ann Althouses of the world, for example, are now only more certain that opponents of federal anti-discrimination laws should have to prove that they aren’t racist before being taken seriously.”
It’s all about impressing Ms. Althouse, the notoriously dyspeptic and cranky lawyer-blogger-know-it-all…
….
Tags: blogs, libertarians, media, Ron Paul
Former Beltway Wonk 
January 18, 2008 at 10:32 pm |
http://volokh.com/posts/1200691657.shtml
Ilya is generally the worst of the Volokh contributors, but the title should be sufficient to tell you what he’s trying to prove:
“Ron Paul and the Political Strategy of Appealing to White Racial Resentment”
January 18, 2008 at 11:08 pm |
Ilya Somin (along with most of the other Volokh contributors) is, not too surprisingly, part of the Orange Line monoculture. In this case a prof at George Mason University and a sometime-writer for Reason.
January 19, 2008 at 8:57 am |
formerbeltwaywonk, many of the contributors to the GMU econ blog the Austrian Economists have defended Paul, even though they don’t support him as president (more for Roderick Long reasons than Virginia Postrel ones). At econlog Bryan Caplan (who is more tightly connected to GMU than co-blogger Arnold Kling) has had pretty much nothing but favorable things to say about Paul. Kling has not, but like many members of Volokh he has neocon leanings and supported the Iraq war, so that is not surprising. There is an exception at Volokh, Dave Kopel, who likes Paul despite their opposing views of the Iraq war.
January 19, 2008 at 10:44 pm |
tggp, the only defense I see on the Austrian Economists blogs since Jan. 8th is from Peter Boettke, and it’s much more a defense of Austrian economics than of Paul, who as you say he does not support. And there are the usual links to McCardle, Cato, etc. (i.e. other Orange Line “libertarian” blogs) that are found in almost every other OLL blog. Like a cult, they think only each others’ opinions matter, and so you find them primarily linking to each others’ works. A statistical analysis along these lines would be very revealing, but simply scanning these blogs and comparing their links to my “Orange Line” anti-blogroll is very revealing.
January 20, 2008 at 3:30 am |
Steve Horwitz was quite critical of Kirchick’s TNR piece, despite the fact that he had earlier decided he could not support Ron Paul.
So what if they link to those people? Is it not okay to charge Ron Paul with guilt by association but okay for TAE? The last time they linked to McArdle they were attacking her attack on Ron Paul’s monetary theories! By the same standard we should consider you part of the OLM because you link to them! Here’s TAE and CafeHayek linking to Barnett’s piece on libertarianism and war, I guess they must be pro-war!
January 20, 2008 at 9:35 pm |
Nothing funnier than 2 sides of an unpopular political movement trying to smear the hell out of each other… It’s kind of like the special olympics, whichever side comes out on top is still a far ways off from competing with the real parties.
January 21, 2008 at 12:23 am |
tggp: “So what if they link to those people?”
You are seriously missing the point. The facts I have observed that you do not refute are that they link very disproportionately to other Orange Line bloggers. This is strong evidence that my readers can observe of the very narrow Orange Line monculture that I have also witnessed firsthand. That they debate various issues, such as the war, is as irrelevant as the fact that the medieval Catholic Church had lively debate on various issues (e.g. on earth- vs. sun-centrism long before Copernicus and Galileo). It’s well understood in the culture that some positions are to be considered as “devil’s advocate” positions. And on some issues like the war on which the rest of D.C. itself disagrees, there is genuine division. But when push came to shove, as on New Hampshire primary day, the Orange Line are very dogmatic and very reflexive. They act according to the same habits, instincts, and deep beliefs — the ultra-statist instincts shared commonly among those who live and work in the Washington, DC metro area.
BTW, check out the “links”. My “Orange Line” section is an “anti-blogroll”. The whole point is to _not_ link to them — they link to each other plenty already — but rather to show that what at first site may appear to be a geographically diverse blogosphere is no such thing.
(I’m going to turn this comment into a blog post).
January 30, 2008 at 3:26 am |
[…] by teageegeepea under Uncategorized I’ve defended them against my fellow paleos here, here and other places but I don’t feel inclined to do so anymore. I didn’t hate Reason, but […]
May 9, 2008 at 6:32 pm |
Obagi Blue Peel…
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you….
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