Reason Mag Contributor Harsanyi: Ron Paul not a Serious Thinker and is Racist!

Just sent to me:

Dear Matt,

Thanks for the note. I, too, was no big fan of this piece, and I've spent most of this week on various media outlets talking up what a promising thing it was that Ron Paul won the CPAC straw poll.

Our syndicated columnists (Harsanyi, Steve Chapman, John Stossel) occasionally write stuff that don't reflect broad staff sentiment. For instance, Brian Doherty wrote about Ron Paul just today, coming to a rather different conclusion: [url]http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/24/the-paulpocalypse[/URL]. There is no perfect formula in all of this, and we are taking this opportunity to review how we do things with the syndicated guys.

Best,
Matt Welch
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Thank god I don't have a subscription to Reason Magazine (although I once did), as it saves me the trouble of cancelling it.
 
Matt Collins said:
Just sent to me:
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Send him back an email saying something along the lines of "Slander doesn't have a place in discourse".

If I had a subscription, It would be cancelled now.

I was considering getting one, but no longer.
 
I don't get why you guys lump everyone in these organizations together when one person disagrees with you. CATO didn't endorse Thompson and Reason doesn't hate Ron Paul. It's individual people within the organizations. Just because every single person in an organization isn't riding Ron Paul's dick doesn't make the organization worthless. There's plenty of Paul supporters at both CATO and Reason.
 
Follow the money. The owners of 'Reason' are extremely wealthy oil plutocrats who are top donors to the Republican establishment. They have every incentive to see the continuation of the status-quo that has served them so well. Don't be a sucker; Koch and co. are huge advocates of war and corporatism and could care less about the little people hurt by it.

If you want a libertarian periodical not controlled by corporate interests, subscribe to http://www.republicmagazine.com/
 
I am (was) a paid subscriber

Here is our exchange (sorry for formatting issues, I didn't want to break up long lines of text)



Eric wrote:
http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/24/the-ron-paul-delusion

How hard is it to hire people that actually understand what they
are writing about?

Take this: Is the GOP about to transform into the party of the gold
standard?

That is not a position Ron Paul advocates. His position is to get
the government out of the money business and let currency compete.
Hell, the Fed can still have their little shill game even. The only
difference is one - we can't be taxed for taking their phony money and
converting it into something tangible that retains value, and two
the courts honor contracts. If I contract to be reimbursed in
something other then fed paper, then that contract needs to be upheld.

See, how hard is that. No gold standard as this ridiculous straw
man advocates.

Reason is being completely unreasonable in dealing with these issues.
Perhaps because the author doesn't have the capacity for deep thought?

------------------------------------------------


From: Matt Welch [mailto:[email protected]]
Dear Eric,

Thanks for the note. I, too, was no big fan of that column.

To answer your question literally, Harsanyi doesn't work for us;
he's a syndicated columnist whose stuff we run. The people who work
for us tend to have a different take on Paul, and a different
understanding about monetary policy. Here's Senior Editor Brian Doherty today on Paul:
http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/24/the-paulpocalypse

And here he is on the movement to audit the Federal Reserve:
http://reason.com/archives/2009/10/27/fed-up

Best,
Matt



--------------------------------------------------------


Eric wrote:

Well Matt, I think the media pretty well saturates us with "the other take". Why does Reason feel the need to carry the MSM water in the first place?

That is the million dollar question - and one that Reason is going to have to account for.


-------------------------------------------------------




From: Matt Welch [mailto:[email protected]]
Eric,

I would describe it less as carrying MSM water, and more as giving
voice to people in the libertarian big tent who have different
opinions about key issues. There's no perfect formula for this, and
your reaction contributes to it.

Best,
Matt

-----------------------------------------------------




Eric wrote:

My reaction is to stop reading anything you produce though.

I know how it typically works. Hit pieces drive up readership. Fox lives by that business model. And it works too. Most people fall for the game. I don't. If I want to read what the nitwits are thinking, I'll read a fox blog or something. If I can't expect Reason to publish reasonably well thought out articles, then what purpose do you actually serve in the market place? None is the only answer I can come up with.



--------------------------------------------------------

From: Matt Welch [mailto:[email protected]]



Well, that's not how it "works" in this case -- this wasn't some
scheme to cook up hits, but a shoveled-in syndicated column that
happened to be controversial among some of our readers. When we
premeditate our pieces in general, and on Paul specifically, the results look more like this:

http://reason.com/archives/2003/12/01/35-heroes-of-freedom
http://reason.com/archives/2008/01/03/scenes-from-the-ron-paul-revol
http://reason.com/archives/2009/10/27/fed-up

I don't intend to separate you from your anger (or even to disagree
with it), but Harsanyi's column is not at all representative of what we do.

Matt

-----------------------------------------------------------

Eric wrote:
No, it is not a representation of what you do, which makes this article all the more troubling. I don't waste my sending Time Magazine my critiques of what they publish for good reason!

If 99% of what you produce is well thought out, it means the 1% that is not based on facts and logic carries more clout than it deserves. Reason carrying a syndicated columnist that fails to provide any substance to his critics gives his weak arguments more respect for simply being published in a respected source.

If reason is going to be part of the problem, then it's good we know sooner I guess. If your goal is to be palatable for a big tent, then I'm going to stop wasting my time filtering through what you publish. We get enough of the big tent garbage as it stands.



Eric,


----------------------------------------------------------------

From: Matt Welch [mailto:[email protected]]

It's not about being "palatable for a big tent" (though we've always aimed at a larger audience than self-described libertarians), but what I meant rather is that Harsanyi's viewpoint is one shared by at least some portion of our core audience. Whether his execution on that viewpoint rises to the level is a conversation we're having right now.

Best,
Matt


-------------------------------------------------

Eric wrote:

So a portion of your core audience enjoys hit pieces with no substance behind them? I don't believe this to be true, nor do I see any need to have an internal discussion to renounce that drivel. It was a poor decision to publish it and should be immediately stated as such.

Furthermore, Reason should not in any way financially assist any author prone to writing such sophomoric nonsense.

That you are unwilling to take these actions speaks volumes.

With that said, I believe this communication has reached its ultimate conclusion. Your business model is bad and I don't wish to benefit it any longer.
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jtm845 said:
I don't get why you guys lump everyone in these organizations together when one person disagrees with you. CATO didn't endorse Thompson and Reason doesn't hate Ron Paul. It's individual people within the organizations. Just because every single person in an organization isn't riding Ron Paul's dick doesn't make the organization worthless. There's plenty of Paul supporters at both CATO and Reason.
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You're right, CATO and Reason aren't worthless. They are much much worse than worthless organizations that promote war and corportism under the auspices of libertarianism.
 
It's some conciliation that the comments after the article are blistering of Harsanyi's undisguised hit piece.

That guy's an ass, and then some.
 
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/51686.html

Another Reason Hit on Ron Paul
Posted by Bill Anderson on February 24, 2010 12:23 PM

Pavlov’s dogs salivated at the ringing of a bell, and some people at Reason.com foam at the mouth whenever Ron Paul receives any favorable publicity. The latest hit job from there comes from David Harsanyi with “The Ron Paul Delusion.”

Yes, read through this article and you will find that Ron Paul is a racist and anti-semite. (Funny, I have known him for nearly 30 years and had no idea he had this secret life as a closet Klansman. Guess that Harsanyi must really be wired into something that has slipped by Rep. Paul’s friends and constituents.)

Furthermore, Harsanyi gives us gems like this:

Paul isn’t a traditional conservative. His obsession with long-decided monetary policy and isolationism are not his only half-baked crusades. Paul’s newsletters of the ’80s and ’90s were filled with anti-Semitic and racist rants, proving his slumming in the ugliest corners of conspiracyland today is no mistake.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Paul is that thousands of intellectually curious young people will have read his silly books, including End the Fed, as serious manifestoes. Though you wouldn’t know it by listening to Paul or reading his words, libertarians do have genuine ideas that conservatives might embrace.

How is wanting sound money “half-baked”? When the Fed can come up with more than a trillion dollars created from thin air to finance these bailouts, there is no problem with that? There are no economic consequences from the Fed’s actions? Who is being half-baked around here?

Two years ago, Reason tried to paint Rep. Paul as a ranting racist, one step short of a Klansman, and a person whose economic ideas make Lyndon LaRouche look to be our savior. There was no call for this, none at all. This was just another hit job from people who apparently are not going to be happy until all of us are tatooed from head to foot like Dennis Rodman.
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http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/51699.html

Reason to Ron Paul: Drop Dead
Posted by Thomas Woods on February 24, 2010 01:59 PM

Bill, my favorite line in that dumb-guy hit piece is this: “His obsession with long-decided monetary policy and isolationism are not his only half-baked crusades.” So a libertarian is evidently supposed to think like this: since the establishment tells us it’s just swell to have a monopoly central bank, and that to think otherwise would place one outside the mainstream (and we can’t have that; surely we don’t want to be outside that glorious continuum from Mitch McConnell to Hillary Clinton), the matter is thus “long decided” and closed for discussion. The establishment has spoken; the matter is closed.

This, of course, would mean Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, F.A. Hayek, and other free-market economists — that is, the kind we libertarians tend to like — were all stupidheads. Didn’t they know these issues are “long decided”? Curse you, David Harsanyi, for not having been born sooner, that you might have urged the crazy men who developed (and won the Nobel Prize for) Austrian business cycle theory to quit wasting their time. Central banking causes no discoordination after all, the Denver Post columnist would have us believe. Next time, Dave, it might be better to make an argument. Some of us may need something more substantial than your ex cathedra pronouncement.

The “isolationism” remark, straight out of traditional commie agitprop, is too stupid to reply to. I’d point out that Ron Paul is adapting to the present day the traditional classical liberal foreign policy of Richard Cobden, but I suspect Harsanyi’s exhaustive studies have yielded him no acquaintance with Cobden.

Invariably, the comments section to such an article criticizes Ron Paul supporters on the grounds that they unthinkingly support him and cannot brook criticism. The truth is that we can’t stand idiotic, dumb-guy criticism, from a supposedly libertarian source, that condemns Dr. Paul for holding what are traditional, long-standing libertarian views.
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http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/51743.html

That Hit Piece in Reason…
Posted by Lew Rockwell on February 24, 2010 02:30 PM

…Is pure, unadulterated envy,” writes Marc Davis. “Here is a magazine that pretends to some libertarian ideas. But the revolution was started not by them, but by a groundswell lead by the likes of Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, and Tom Woods. Reason is, and will be, insignificant in this revolution and that is more than they can take. Keep the banner high, my friend!!”
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http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/51755.html

re: [T]Reason to Ron Paul: Drop Dead
Posted by Thomas DiLorenzo on February 24, 2010 02:45 PM

The funniest line in that [T]Reason magazine article is where the dumbo nobody writer calls David Boaz a “serious libertarian” as opposed to Ron Paul, who he says is not serious. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,! David who?!
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