Ron Paul on CNN at 7EST tonite (5/16)

[Borodog]

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Ok, it is not the secession itself that I am saying is immoral. The subsequent founding of another state is what was immoral. Again, if the secessionists dissolved the government entirely, I would have no problem with it.

Your analogy of the gym membership is flawed because the secessionists never asked the citizens of their own state whether they wanted to continue to be a part of the state. Following your analogy, they voluntarily withdrew from the gym, but then forced people to join what they believed to be a better gym.

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Why are you trying so hard to avoid conceding a simple point? This is so far afield of your original claim as to be almost totally unrelated.

Under the theory of government that the state governments were operating on at the time, they *were* the legitimate, duly elected government of their respective states, and they believed that they had every right to rescind participation in the Union and form a different one; that is what they believed their constituents put them there for. Furthermore, they believed they had the duty to, as their states were being plundered, as they had been for decades, by tarrif policies set by northern majorities in the Congress.

This is completely separate from the issue of whether or not it would have been better not to form another union at all.

[goodsamaritan]

I'm not even sure what you want me to concede.

If you want me to concede that the states had a right to secede under the US constitution, then fine. I never claimed otherwise. I think you are talking about rights and I am talking about Rights with a capital R.

[pvn]

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I am amused by all the libertarians and anarchists fawning over Ron Paul given his stance on immigration:

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He is wrong on immigration. I have no problem admitting that, and I said so to my friends when discussing Paul. Dead wrong on one issue. He's right on just about everything else though. This makes him a lot closer to my views than any other D or R I ever read about, Goldwater included.

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This is a common tactic from poor debaters. If you're picking between a limited number of choices, and you pick one that doesn't meet some particular criteria, you must be some sort of hypocrite, even if the other choices are objectively much, much worse given your personal preferences.

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There are a lot of people in this forum do the exact same thing: ie criticizing others for saying that the democrats or republicans are the lesser of two evils.

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True. But, in context, you can see the difference.

Mr. Bickford is pointing out that Ron Paul doesn't meet Libertarian criteria X. He ignores that all of the other candidates fail to meet more criteria than Mr. Paul.

OTOH, "criticizing others for saying that the democrats or republicans are the lesser of two evils" is not self-contradictory when the person doing the criticizing is not advocating *either* party, and in fact may be advocating not participating in the charade at all.

[pvn]

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I'm not even sure what you want me to concede.

If you want me to concede that the states had a right to secede under the US constitution, then fine. I never claimed otherwise. I think you are talking about rights and I am talking about Rights with a capital R.

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Let's go with that. Even though the southern states had no Capital R Right to secede, the Union had no Capital R Right to prevent them from leaving. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Borodog]

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I'm not even sure what you want me to concede.

If you want me to concede that the states had a right to secede under the US constitution, then fine. I never claimed otherwise. I think you are talking about rights and I am talking about Rights with a capital R.

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Your original point was that libertarians who post on the forum are "republicanesque" bigots, and then you claimed that the reason that the Confederate states seceded was so that "they" (whoever they are) could continue to own slaves. The first was an insult, the second was wrong, was shown to be wrong, and you keep spinning ever further afield to avoid conceding this simple point.

[Borodog]

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I am amused by all the libertarians and anarchists fawning over Ron Paul given his stance on immigration:

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He is wrong on immigration. I have no problem admitting that, and I said so to my friends when discussing Paul. Dead wrong on one issue. He's right on just about everything else though. This makes him a lot closer to my views than any other D or R I ever read about, Goldwater included.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a common tactic from poor debaters. If you're picking between a limited number of choices, and you pick one that doesn't meet some particular criteria, you must be some sort of hypocrite, even if the other choices are objectively much, much worse given your personal preferences.

[/ QUOTE ]

There are a lot of people in this forum do the exact same thing: ie criticizing others for saying that the democrats or republicans are the lesser of two evils.

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True. But, in context, you can see the difference.

Mr. Bickford is pointing out that Ron Paul doesn't meet Libertarian criteria X. He ignores that all of the other candidates fail to meet more criteria than Mr. Paul.

OTOH, "criticizing others for saying that the democrats or republicans are the lesser of two evils" is not self-contradictory when the person doing the criticizing is not advocating *either* party, and in fact may be advocating not participating in the charade at all.

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Bingo.

[NeBlis]

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I'm not even sure what you want me to concede.

If you want me to concede that the states had a right to secede under the US constitution, then fine. I never claimed otherwise. I think you are talking about rights and I am talking about Rights with a capital R.

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Well ... Since it is a fact that secession was a right that states (or any group) have. And it is a fact that the confederates did not secede over slavery. And the fact that slavery was legal and accepted throughout the union. And that it is a fact that the emancipation proclamation was nothing more that a political ploy

He probably wants you to concede that the civil war was fought over Union aggression and imperialism NOT slavery.

[nietzreznor]

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Aren't open borders a HUGE part of the libertarian and anarchist philosophies? So how are you guys able to look past such a major flaw (from a libertarian perspective) in his platform? You guys write off all democrats as evil because of their stances on taxes no matter how much they agree with you on other issues such as civil liberties and immigration. Yet Paul is a total immigration hawk, and he is not subject to the same disdain. Suspicious indeed.

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1. Not all libertarians or even ACists are in favor of open borders (e.g., Hans-Hermann Hoppe is anti-immigration iirc), so it certainly isn't a 'make or break' issue for libertarianism.

2. I happen to think the anti-immigration people, libertarian or otherwise, are dead wrong. That said, I'm not sure why this one particular issue should determine whether or not Paul ought to be the candidate of choice for anarchists/libertarians. It seems to me that there are LOTS of important issues--immigration, taxes, currency, civil liberties, Iraq War, to name a few--and that libertarians should vote for whomever takes the most libertarian stance on such issues as a whole.
So, if the issue were really one of me agreeing with Democrats about everything except that they taxed too much, and agreeing with Paul about everything except immigration, your argument might have some merit. But most Democrats, like most Republicans, are in favor of big government of some sort; I disagree with most mainstream Dems/Reps on far too many issues to really consider voting for one over someone like Paul, with whom I agree with on 90%+ of issues.

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I think it has something to do with the R next to his name. My theory is that a lot of libertarians are really closet Republicans, but are afraid to admit it.

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Considering Republicans are the bigger warhawks, and that they barely still pretend to be for small government, I think you will find less and less support from libertarians.

[nietzreznor]

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Yeah the Union was bad too and allowed slavery in some parts, but what about the fact that the Confederacy's primary reason for seceding was so that THEY COULD CONTINUE OWNING HUMAN BEINGS AS PROPERTY.

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The problem is that now two separate issues are being conflated: slavery, and the right of secession. Sometimes libertarians do make the mistake of going easy on the South because the support their right of secession, but I don't think we make this mistake any more often than others make the mistake of looking down on secession because, in this one historical instance, it was used with bad intentions.

The fact is, I think it's quite easy to both abhor slavery (since other people aren't your property) and favor secession (libertarians support the right of secession down to the individual, which is another way of saying that 'other people aren't your property').

[nietzreznor]

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I think racists hicks and anarchists just happen to share a strong strain of anti-federalism, so they often sound alike. Racist hicks dislike federalism because the federal government has more or less dismantled local government sponsored racism in the South; anarchists are anti-federalist because they don't like big government. If anything, I'd claim bigots have co-opted more benign sounding anti-federalist positions as a 'legitimate' cover for their racism, because their real agendas are rather untenable in contemporary America. "Uncle Sam can't tell me what to do!" is a bit more acceptable than "my state should be able to disallow black men from marrying white women".

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I think this is pretty much correct, and a good reason why anarchists and libertarians must be careful who they ally with.