Hi Beau, thanks for the kind words! ) I mistrust the idea that Dr. Paul will support equal treatment under law if he becomes President of the U.S. (
It would be very interesting to see Paul's rhetoric confront certain realities, but I think his instincts are very libertarian. I wouldn't want to be back in Mississippi if Paul were president long enough to appoint a significant fraction of the the federal judiciary, but that science-fiction possibility is not how I decide whether to support Paul's campaign. If I had an elect-Ron-Paul button I'd push it, but if I had a permanently-enact-Ron-Paul's-platform button I'm not sure I'd push it. Supporting Ron Paul's message of limiting government to increase freedom is not the same thing as electing him, and electing him is nowhere near the same thing as enacting his programme. If supporting a candidate means being willing to push the permanently-enact-his-programme button, I'm not sure I'd even support myself, and I definitely wouldn't support anyone else I've ever heard of. :-) People need to calibrate their political activism according to not just how self-righteous it makes them feel but also according to its marginal impact on the real world. Supporting Paul's campaign seems extremely unlikely to cause a marginal increase in the incidence of unequal treatment under the law. If the ongoing impact on American politics from Paul's campaign were "see? homophobia sells", then I'd change my tune, but that's nowhere close to being a political reality. I judge that Miller trying to turn it into a reality is much more likely to hurt the freedom movement at the margin than to protect it. I don't mind him disagreeing with that judgment, but I do mind him using unsubstantiated personal attacks and undefended deliberate distortions in doing so. Ironically, the use of such tactics in movement infighting is more dangerous to the movement than Paul will ever be, but appreciating such ironies requires a certain capacity for introspection. ) When it comes to supporting a candidate for the presidency, I prefer Phillies over anyone else who's already in the race. ( Yes, he's the leading contender for my vote in Denver. I just wish he didn't seem so quick to label as corrupt anybody who doesn't agree with his strategic and tactical advice for the LP and the freedom movement. Long before I met Brian Miller, I coined the name Libertarian Disease for this diagnosis. "LD is a malady that attacks the central nervous system of LP members, and induces the speech center of the brain to emit statements saying that any political effort not aligned with what the sufferer thinks is our optimal strategy is evidence of willful sabotage of our cause." Of course, just as ALS is now popularly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, the name LD will after this week have no chance of competing against the name "Christine Smith Disease". (Aside to Tom Knapp: wow, if your ghost-writing for Kubby can help future opponents of his self-destruct in just a couple weeks in the same way that Smith did, then I'll back Kubby all the way to the Oval Office.) Brian Holtz blog: Knowing <http://knowinghumans.net/> Humans book: Human <http://humanknowledge.net/> Knowledge 2006-2008 LP <http://marketliberal.org/FixLP.html> PlatCom 2007-2009 <http://knowinghumans.net/search/label/LPCA> LPCA ExCom 2004-2008 for Congress, <http://marketliberal.org/> CA14 (Silicon Valley) <http://humanknowledge.net/>
