Those Newsletters

My esteemed colleague sends the following:

I’m not trying to prod you, seriously, but I don’t know if you’ve read these…

http://www.reason.com/news/show/124426.html
http://bidinotto.journalspace.com/?entryid=656

Well, Bidnotto’s been a Paul enemy from the start, so there’s no need to read that. The Reason piece is another matter.

I was really blindsided by this newsletter stuff. I didn’t start following the Mises Institute until 2004 or so, and I’ve never picked up on so much as a whiff of racism. On the contrary, the policies advocated by the organization would do much to reverse the plight of minorities in this country.

When Paul says he personally is not a racist, I can believe that. There are 20 years of congressional testimony, books and other non-ghostwritten writings without racist bent. The president of the Austin NAACP recently defended him publicly. Whether Rockwell or Blumert have recanted is anyone’s guess, but if Mitt Romney can change his mind on abortion, taxes, health care, etc in 6 months anything is possible.

Was the pandering-to-racists strategy craven? Absolutely. Many political strategies are (see Hillary Clinton circa 2008). Unless one is willing to denounce the American political process in general, where it's common practice to pander to all sorts of fringe groups with bizarre beliefs, it's hard to single out Ron Paul alone for criticism on this point. And while this does not excuse Paul's old newsletters, it's worth pointing out that this strategy as outlined by Rockwell, Rothbard and others has been defunct for over 10 years.

I think the bottom line is this: The folks at Cato, Reason, and many self-described libertarians across the blogosphere have little to show for their years of beltway libertarian “activism”. Today’s Federal Government is bigger, more intrusive and more aggressive than ever before. And now a libertarian politician comes along who is spreading the message and exposing these ideas to new audiences, and the established organizations feel threatened. Their relative influence is faltering, and they know it. In some ways, this fuss over the newsletters is little more than a turf war amongst egotistical libertarians, while real racist policies perpetuated by the federal government (i.e. drug war) continue indefinitely. As DiLorenzo put it on the Rockwell blog the other day, these guys are all competing for the title of the “prettiest and smartest libertarian in the world”.

It’s the same old story: libertarians spend so much time tearing each other down that the state keeps growing unencumbered. With endless welfare and warfare of every kind foisted upon us, with impending economic hardship and the slow destruction of the middle class, it's obvious that sticking our heads in the sand and clinging to the status quo (the current GOP strategy) is not going to be a recipe for political growth. In light of the broad coalition of facists, communists and socialists standing ready to provide government-sponsored "solutions" to crises, there is a need for a libertarian revival as never before.

While Cato, Reason and other beltway "libertarian" institutions may be real-world failures and while Ron Paul may be a messenger with serious flaws, I have to hope that the timelessness of the ideas can transcend party lines and petty squabbles and capture the imagination of people looking for a positive change of direction in this country. We should be thankful that the ideas are larger than any institution, any party and certainly any one man.

Update: more on the gap between beltway libertarians and what's going on with the Paul movement.