Not clicking on the link.
Post a couple of relevant passages or let the thread die.
Government propaganda organ is organing.
The libertarian faithful — antitax activists and war protesters, John Birch Society members and a smattering of “truthers” who suspect the government’s hand in the 2001 terrorist attacks — gathered last September, eager to see the rising star of their movement.
But not long after the applause died down, Mr. Paul was out the door. He skipped an address by his father, former Representative Ron Paul, as well as closing remarks by his own former Senate aide, an ex-radio host who had once celebrated Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and extolled white pride.
Some scholars affiliated with the Mises Institute have combined dark biblical prophecy with apocalyptic warnings that the nation is plunging toward economic collapse and cultural ruin. Others have championed the Confederacy. One economist, while faulting slavery because it was involuntary, suggested in an interview that the daily life of the enslaved was “not so bad — you pick cotton and sing songs.”
He has renounced many of the isolationist tenets central to libertarianism, backed away from his longstanding objections to parts of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and teamed with members of the Black Congressional Caucus in calling for an easing of drug-sentencing laws. He recently unveiled a plan for investment in distressed inner cities.
At 5-foot-7 or so, he will sometimes step in front of a lectern, lest he disappear behind the microphone as he talks about the evils of taxation or a Big Brother “surveillance state.”
Rand Paul’s difficulty separating himself from harder-edge libertarianism was brought home last summer. The Washington Free Beacon, a website tied to hawkish conservatives, reported that one of his Senate aides, Jack Hunter, had a long trail of provocative statements — some made when he was a radio host calling himself “the Southern Avenger.”
A leader of the Charleston, S.C., chapter of the secessionist League of the South, Mr. Hunter had praised John Wilkes Booth. For two weeks, Mr. Paul stood by him amid news media attention, but finally let him go.
Mr. Rothbard applauded the “right-wing populism” of David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan member who ran for governor of Louisiana, and ridiculed “multiculturalists,” lesbians and “the entire panoply of feminism, egalitarianism.” Some of these ideas found their way into Ron Paul newsletters that became an issue during his campaigns.
Several current Mises fellows and associates are regulars on the Ron Paul speaking circuit and affiliated with his home-schooling curriculum or foreign policy institute. Thomas E. Woods Jr. was a co-author of “Who Killed the Constitution?,” which denounced the Supreme Court decision desegregating schools, Brown v. Board of Education, as “a dizzying display of judicial imperialism.”
Walter Block, an economics professor at Loyola University in New Orleans who described slavery as “not so bad,” is also highly critical of the Civil Rights Act. “Woolworth’s had lunchroom counters, and no blacks were allowed,” he said in a telephone interview. “Did they have a right to do that? Yes, they did. No one is compelled to associate with people against their will.”
Mr. Paul went on “Infowars.com,” the program of the conspiracy-oriented, libertarian-leaning radio host Alex Jones.
At Mr. Jones’s urging, Mr. Paul promised to resist any overtures from the so-called Bilderberg Group — more than 100 movers and shakers in politics, industry and finance who meet each year for informal discussion. Mr. Jones claims the group is conspiring to create a unitary “world order.” Mr. Paul also warned against the creation of a North American Union, modeled on the European Union.
In a meeting with the editorial board of The Louisville Courier-Journal, Mr. Paul revisited the perceived sins of the Civil Rights Act. Next came a 20-minute grilling by Rachel Maddow, the MSNBC host, in which he tried to explain how the libertarian principle of voluntary association entitled businesses, but not the government, to practice bigotry.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page, assailing him for defending Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified documents about the agency’s spying, said he was unsuitable as commander in chief. “As president, Mr. Paul couldn’t behave like some A.C.L.U. legal gadfly,” the editorial said.
