Antiwar.com: Neocons and Obamaites Unite Against Rand Paul - Justin Raimondo

Lol, calm down. I was using a little bit of hyperbole. Let's not start a fight over semantics. One of those people is dead btw. And I rank them all equally far away from being a neocon in truth. Sounds like you give too much credence to Rand's rhetoric. So do many others so you aren't alone, but you guys should have started to realize it's all a show. He is an AnCap on par with Rothbard in his heart. You will see eventually.

Fair enough. I don't even think Ron is an ancap, but he's close. He's almost on the boundary line between statism and anairchism. Which is pretty much where I'm at. If anarcho-capitalism is the quickest way to liberty, I'll take it. If minarchism is the quickest, I'll take it. If limited government constitutitonalism is the quickest, I'll take it, though I'll always fight to make it smaller.

Rand isn't even close by contrast. Granted, I still like Rand. I don't think he IS a neocon. But he's not a pure noninterventionist either. Ron Paul, Raimonado, and Rothbard (Yeah, I know Rothbard is dead) all are/were.
It doesn't matter if he's flat out wrong half the time. It's like AJ, half of what he puts out is hyperbole, innuendo, and just factual untruths. It makes it too hard to separate the crap from the good stuff, and it prohibits any ounce of credibility.

No, Rand is not an interventionist. Where do people get these lies from? :confused:

Rand's mouth?
 
Rhetoric is not the same as law. And, he voted against major sanctions, while simply voting to hurt their central bank. That's NOT interventionsim :rolleyes:

He either believes in what he says or he's lying. Take your pick, but I'm not buying the "secret Trojan horse" ploy. I'll give him props for the filibuster but you can't have it both ways by praising him when he does something right but apologize for something he does wrong.

And in regards to sanctions, if the federal government is acting to weaken Iran's central bank, how are they not intervening in Iran's affairs? You cannot make up definitions just to suit your argument.
 
If only the article hadn't made me remember Lawrence O'Donnell's face. Please make it go away..

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So, screw off Justin, but post Levin and Beck articles. Check.

Mark Levin has never said a bad word about Rand despite being an asshole to Ron. Mark Levin also has about 8 million listeners who lean GOP so it's worth monitoring his output for a wider sense of how the "project" is going. He's also pretty unique in terms of using his platform to call out GOP "leaders" who most hosts are silent about.

Raimondo has a few thousand twitter followers and some fans on here. Irrelevant. And he's been extremely rude to Rand for like 3 years.
 
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Justin is too fickle to be taken seriously by anyone anymore which is a shame because when he's right, he's REALLY REALLY right. However when he's wrong, it's really bad.

Actually it's Raimondo's consistency that's been the "problem" for his critics. He doesn't give Rand a pass just because of who Rand is. I pointed out before, but perhaps you missed it, how people like Raimondo criticizing Rand when he played the "let's please the teocons" game was actually good for Rand and Raimondo. It was good for Rand in that it caused people like Beck to jump further to Rand's defense. And it was good for Raimondo because if he didn't criticize Rand, next time he wanted to attack Bachmann or Santorum on certain things, his critics would be able to say "Well Rand said such and such and you gave him a pass." Those who attack Raimondo for being critical of Rand when Rand was sounding like a teocon are playing checkers, not chess.
 
Actually it's Raimondo's consistency that's been the "problem" for his critics. He doesn't give Rand a pass just because of who Rand is. I pointed out before, but perhaps you missed it, how people like Raimondo criticizing Rand when he played the "let's please the teocons" game was actually good for Rand and Raimondo. It was good for Rand in that it caused people like Beck to jump further to Rand's defense. And it was good for Raimondo because if he didn't criticize Rand, next time he wanted to attack Bachmann or Santorum on certain things, his critics would be able to say "Well Rand said such and such and you gave him a pass." Those who attack Raimondo for being critical of Rand when Rand was sounding like a teocon are playing checkers, not chess.

Where Raimondo lost it is when he started questioning Rand's integrity as opposed to criticizing him on logical grounds. However, he should be commended for returning to the fold.
 
Exactly. Doesn't mean he's a neocon warmongerer, but he is an interventionist.

I think he's prgamatic as opposed to being an isolationist or a belligerent warmonger. I think that's what many would desire from a president in analyzing unique foreign policy issues.
 
Rhetoric is not the same as law. And, he voted against major sanctions, while simply voting to hurt their central bank. That's NOT interventionsim :rolleyes:

I like Rand. The more you talk, spin and lie, the worse it makes Rand look.

Perhaps you should stop talking or someone may have the sense to show various campaigns that you seek to mooch off of the effects of your "grassroots activism."
 
Where Raimondo lost it is when he started questioning Rand's integrity as opposed to criticizing him on logical grounds. However, he should be commended for returning to the fold.

It was a legit question and it helped Rand. It was legit in that everyone believed Rand was being dishonest about something, but some of us (me especially) were hoping that it was teocons being snookered. Seriously, Rand went from saying "a nuclear armed Iran is not a threat" and "I guess you can just release them" (if we close Gitmo) to voting for a form of sanctions against Iran (and yeah I'm well aware of Matt's "It was just against the central bank" spin and Matt could be right on that) and "If they (Gitmo detainees) were tried in civilian court their testimony from torture might not be allowed and that would be a problem" and "If someone attends a radical speech he should be arrested or deported." Let's be honest with ourselves. If this was anybody but Rand, how many of us would have given him the benefit of the doubt?

And it helped Rand because, again, it caused people like Beck to rally behind him. That rally wasn't wouldn't have been as strong if it was just a "Well we disagree with some of his policies but we're 100% behind him" attack. To pull of what Rand pulled off he needed to draw cover fire. As I explained in another thread, when certain groups where hiding Jews in World War II, they would sometimes beat up allies to keep the Nazis from figuring out who's side who was on. I doubt Justin was acting from that level per se, but Rand had to know that certain actions would draw strong criticism from allies. That criticism helped him with his "teocon" credentials. Look at how some here (FrankRep) were freaking out about how Rand's ultimate vote for Hagel would hurt him? Look at how that vote didn't hurt Rand? Glenn Beck couldn't throw Rand under the bus for voting for Hagel after attacking libertarians for attacking Rand for initially voting against Hagel. Maybe this was all "one big accident", but it worked out well. Those still complaining about how various players played their roles just don't get it.
 
Collins definitely lost this thread.

you simply shouldn't try to defend immoral votes on the grounds of political efficacy
 
whatever.. the real front is at the forefront of grassroots merger of the progressive left and the ex-neocon of the right at this moment spurred into act by the rand paul standoff, while you libertarians are still bickering 'what can be more bona-fide libertarian than what rand paul did since elected'. talk about missing the action. i admire people's beliefs in this movement but in terms of talents and smarts and priority there's just no match.. when progressives and ex-neocons turn around expect all the thunder to be stolen and witness what true grassroots creativity is.. you will be sorely outmatched. keep bickering on who's more libertarian than whom. even raimondo might have caught the wind change and dropped this garbage immediately, more likely than a change of heart
 
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Collins definitely lost this thread.

you simply shouldn't try to defend immoral votes on the grounds of political efficacy

I think the movement loses ground when we look for "winners and losers" within the movement. Some folks are still made at Tom Woods for criticizing Benton and the campaign, even though Ron Paul his brought Woods back on to spearhead the educational campaign. Some folks are still mad at Jesse Benton for working for Mitch McConnel, even though that may have paid off with McConnel choosing to "#StandWithRand". Some folks are still made at Justin Raimondo because they can't get past Raimondo's criticism's of Rand, and just ignore the fact that Raimondo's past criticisms makes his current support of Rand that more potent. Some folks are still mad at AJ, even though Ron Paul's been back on his show. Someday we will learn that our primary enemies are outside the liberty movement. Hopefully that will happen before 2016.
 
Justin is too fickle to be taken seriously by anyone anymore which is a shame because when he's right, he's REALLY REALLY right. However when he's wrong, it's really bad.

Raimondo criticized Rand Paul for sounding entirely too much like people from the other party. He seemed to think that anyone who sounds that partisan, and is from the 'other side', is beyond salvage and cannot change. But, you know, at least Raimondo has enough sense to allow people from the 'other side' to change for the better. In a world where the powers that be depend upon our petty differences over inconsequential things to keep us divided and conquered, such flexibility and the ability to keep a mind open just enough to admit further evidence is admirable.

What's your excuse? You like us being divided and conquered? Because this 'once a liberal, either always a liberal or a flip flopper' stuff sure helps them screw us over.

Without the Decoder Ring, it's impossible to tell what Rand really means it when he says "an attack on Israel will be treated as an attack on the U.S."

Well, let's see. Last time the U.S. was attacked, it kicked two completely unrelated nations' asses with no appreciable amount of help from anyone whatsoever required except for the rather mandatory use of some neighborhood airfields.

I can see Israel attacking the right nation, instead of two of the wrong ones. But otherwise, I expect pretty much the same from them. They wouldn't need our help and I feel fairly sure they'd ask us to butt out.

It doesn't matter if he's flat out wrong half the time. It's like AJ, half of what he puts out is hyperbole, innuendo, and just factual untruths. It makes it too hard to separate the crap from the good stuff, and it prohibits any ounce of credibility.

Oh? And would you care to get specific with these charges? Or would you prefer to maintain this level of ignorance? One would think that you'd have learned by now that if you want to maintain a silly attitude around here, you should keep it a secret.

In any case, Rand is about to be beseiged by tools posing as journalists from both sides of the 'aisle', even the ones like Krauthammer who now have to contradict the snot out of their previous statements about him and their knee-jerk reactions to the filibuster. If you're trying to ingratiate yourself to Rand Paul, you're not helping yourself by criticizing those who are honest enough to say nice things about him.

No, Rand is not an interventionist. Where do people get these lies from? :confused:

Huh. 'An attack on Israel would be treated as an attack on the U.S.' doesn't sound even remotely interventionalist to you? What would sound interventionalist to you? Is he not interventionalist until he orders an IRS office set up within their borders?
 
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