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

[BlackTerrel]

First they laugh at you. Then they ignore you. Then they fight you. Then you win.

One of my favorite quotes.

 

[brandon]

Some background on the paleo/neo libertarian divide and why Reason/Cato/etc hates Ron Paul:


The Kochtopus vs. Murray N. Rothbard

 

[FrankRep]

DailyKos launches a vicious Racist smear attack on Ron Paul and the John Birch Society

Read:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=233288

 

[Imperial]

Umm, you guys do realize that Reason is not just a magazine with one solitary position on every issue, right? So like a senior editor like Brian Doherty will have a different opinion than Harsanyi, and Matt Welch (I think that is his name?) will have another opinion himself.

All in all, I like the open discourse Reason provides.

 

[gls]

Umm, you guys do realize that Reason is not just a magazine with one solitary position on every issue, right? So like a senior editor like Brian Doherty will have a different opinion than Harsanyi, and Matt Welch (I think that is his name?) will have another opinion himself.

All in all, I like the open discourse Reason provides.

You should trust them just as much as any other media outlet funded by a large politically connected corporation that benefits from the status-quo.

 

[purplechoe]

///

 

[bruce leeroy]

The racism argument always amuses me when it comes to Ron Paul. I'm a member of a website of a mainstream republican pundit; and as soon as Dr Paul's name is brought up the first things brought up are "truther", "anti-semite" and "racist". On the racist angle, its a rich irony, because a big portion of that site is pretty openly racist, referring to blacks in general as "ubangi's" and mexican-americans as "beaners" and when a black celeb acts a fool a "NGA" which they claim is an acronym for "no good A**hole" but Ive never seen that acronym used on whites or any other race of person who fits the description. In my humble opinion, most, if not all of the "ron paul is a racist" claptrap is projection on the part of those who are claiming it.

 

[speciallyblend]

You know with all the anti-Ron Paul bullshit coming out.. it seems like one thing is clear to me...

The establishment believes the 2012 presidential campaign has BEGUN...

so fuck it.. lets start now.

yep Ron Paul 2012, the only way the gop will see any money or a vote from me is Ron Paul 2012 after all the bs the failed big gov neo-con establishment has pulled!!

 

[Imperial]

You should trust them just as much as any other media outlet funded by a large politically connected corporation that benefits from the status-quo.

True. Every single media outlet is susceptible to bias.

 

[amy31416]

Shit. I guess I'm about done with Reason. Hypocritical asinine bastards.

 

[AParadigmShift]

All in all, I like the open discourse Reason provides.

Open discourse is fine, even welcomed.

Dreck is not.

 

[johnrocks]

Nick Gillespie gets more media attention, I wish he'd shit can this other idiot, I like Nick's article though.

http://reason.com/blog/2010/02/21/ron-paul-in-your-heart-you-kno

Ron Paul: In Your Straw Heart, You Know He's Right

Still, if the GOP is interested in actually doing something more glorious than its multi-year FUBAR when George W. Bush and the Republicans were fully in charge of the federal government, they'd do well to listen very closely to Dr. No. However rotten Obama and the Dems poll, the GOP should never think anyone believes them when they say they are the party of small government and, for god's sake, we're well past the sad-sack culture-war days of various Republican geniuses like Newt Gingrich (4 percent!) talk up flag-burning amendments (the First Amendment is not a suicide pact with square pieces of cloth made in China!)and English-only rules (because, seriously, how can you be a real American if you don't speak the mother tongue of Great Britain?). Ron Paul pulled well in the Republicans primaries and among the youth of America precisely because he offered something distinct from the sad sacks he was running against.

 

[The Deacon]

How to shutdown people calling Ron Paul a racist/anti-semite.

Peter Schiff,of course, is Jewish as well. Shove that into the idiots' faces, that he gets a ton of support in our movement.

But yeah, Reason is the standard Washington DC garbage, and posting the somewhat pro-Paul piece afterwards doesn't absolve it because that piece won't be spread nearly as much by establishment boot-lickers.

 

[schmeisser]

I'll continue to read Reason, but I've never been confused about the dominant strain of libertarianism over there. Ron is more of the Paleo version, and the Reason folks (on the whole) are more Beltway/Cosmo. The Reason group is not going to be considered "cool" by their progressive and statist DC friends if they love on Ron too much.

I don't mind some honest discussion about what real electoral chances are, the broader state of the R3volution, how do we use the energy for more pragmatic goals,etc. That being said:

Harsanyi's article wouldn't pass a 10th grade journalism class. It was shoddy work, strong on ad hominem, and weak on substance. No respectable publication should publish something that piss poorly written. It's a major black eye for Reason just based on editorial negligence.

 

[The Deacon]

Peter Schiff,of course, is Jewish as well. Shove that into the idiots' faces, that he gets a ton of support in our movement.

But yeah, Reason is the standard Washington DC garbage, and posting the somewhat pro-Paul piece afterwards doesn't absolve it because that piece won't be spread nearly as much by establishment boot-lickers.

Mentioning von Mises and Rothbard, plus support for Schiff, is usually enough "Ron Paul is anti-Semite" troll disinfectant. They shut up after that because they have nothing.

 

[AParadigmShift]

The Reason group is not going to be considered "cool" by their progressive and statist DC friends if they love on Ron too much.

Also, Ron Paul is tight with Lew Rockwell & Gang, a relationship which the statist Reasonistas no doubt, cannot stomach.

 

[iSamurai]

I just started reading Reason online, and thought it was OK. I like a lot of their videos. I was even pondering a subscription. I saw this article in my RSS reader and was like "this has got to be a typo or something, there's no way Reason would be running a smear on Ron Paul, a champion of Liberty, right?" Well, I was wrong.

First, there can be no argument that can be made that the article does not represent Reason. Though it was a syndicated peace, the fact that it is hosted on Reason and shows up in my Reason RSS feed means that it represents Reason in some way. Nowhere on the page does it say differently, or even mentions that it is a syndicated piece. Until I read the email exchanges, I had no idea.

Well, I am unsubscribing from the Reason RSS feeds, and there is no way in hell I'm paying for a subscription to their print mag. Until I see Reason explaining themselves PUBLICALLY and pulling the article, there is no way I'm taking anything they say seriously anymore. I feel sorry for the honest journalists there that this Harsanyi guy has made a bad name for. I'm writing some emails to express my disappointment.

 

[Andrew-Austin]

You know with all the anti-Ron Paul bullshit coming out.. it seems like one thing is clear to me...

The establishment believes the 2012 presidential campaign has BEGUN...

so fuck it.. lets start now.

I doubt it has anything to do with the 2012 Presidential race.

Its more about the battle of ideas, which is continuous unlike the electoral process.

Ron Paul's victory at CPAC has obviously brought him and his ideas more attention, thus he has moved more towards the "possible threat" category of those who disagree. They can't offer substance against Ron, so they take the dishonest bitch route of calling him a racist, etc.

 

[BamaFanNKy]

Whoa Whoa Whoa. Reason is not establishment. Some of you need to realize this is one man's view.

 

[Cowlesy]

I like a lot of what Nick Gillespie and the Reason Mag folks distribute. I know there is a whole history between Koch, Rothbard and the whole split from the Mises folks, etc etc, but I kind of ignore all the wonk-infighting. It is counterproductive.

I do question their editorial discretion in publishing what amounts to an unsubstantiated hit-piece, sinking to the level of the Jamie Kirchick hit-piece, about a Congressman who tirelessly fights for values that are shared with libertarians, if not libertarian ideas themselves.

Publishing a scathing, fact-based article is completely separate from publishing an unsubstantiated hit-piece. Given how much Ron Paul supporters were beat-up during the Presidential campaign, the Reason editors shouldn't be surprised if they receive a lot of heated and critical feedback.