GOP Primary Megathread!

[Admiral Yi]

No surprise there.

No surprise you're not surprised.

[Capetan Mihali]

I thought it was weak sauce.

I thought it was cogent, even if it is basically 2 points.  The first one seems solid: why are we any more ready for zero taxation than for unrestricted immigration?  Though I guess RP hedges in both quotes, the first is expressed positively (work towards) and the other negatively (not nearly ready for).  The second point really just goes to the grand Anglo-American philosophical debate about where property rights come from and how to justify the ownership private property that emerged through theft/slavery/etc and family accumulation rather than Lockean acorn harvesting, and how to reconcile the coercion inherent in any scheme of property rights with an ideal of personal liberty.  Not really that specific to RP, but I think the basic criticism is that his libertarianism doesn't grapple with the difficult questions that make it a worthwhile political philosophy.

[Tamas]

Whoever lifts work visa requirements in the States will get my vote after I obtain citizenship. A sadly overlooked fact that would surely rock the status quo of American politics.

[Capetan Mihali]

Whoever lifts work visa requirements in the States will get my vote after I obtain citizenship. A sadly overlooked fact that would surely rock the status quo of American politics.

I think it would definitely turn at least a few of us into single-issue voters.   

[Tamas]

Whoever lifts work visa requirements in the States will get my vote after I obtain citizenship. A sadly overlooked fact that would surely rock the status quo of American politics.

I think it would definitely turn at least a few of us into single-issue voters.   

Of course my comment was tongue-in-cheek, but I AM puzzled by the mechanics of immigration in the States.

In particular, given my limited look at it, it appears to be extremely full of hypocrisy.
You let countless masses of illegal mexicans in because they cheaply do the shitty work the citizens just feel too good for. Thereby you destabilize your own society and economy, and ensure that your unskilled poor citizens get less access to employment.
All the while, the routes to gain entrance to your country as a legal, skilled contributor to your economy remain extremely rough, pretty much impossible to anyone but a select few.
Which is fine, I guess you have enough skilled unemployeds already. But doesn't it just betray and ban the very thing which gave your country the unprecented growth it had in it's past?

[MadImmortalMan]

We prefer to keep our immigrants in the underclass so we can exploit them. If we let in too many smart people they might figure us out and begin competing with us.

[DGuller]

We prefer to keep our immigrants in the underclass so we can exploit them. If we let in too many smart people they might figure us out and begin competing with us.

[Ideologue]

Whoever lifts work visa requirements in the States will get my vote after I obtain citizenship. A sadly overlooked fact that would surely rock the status quo of American politics.

Sorry.  We're full.

Which is fine, I guess you have enough skilled unemployeds already. But doesn't it just betray and ban the very thing which gave your country the unprecented growth it had in it's past?

Relying on imported labor while natives propsered is un-American?  I don't think you'd pass the citizenship test.

[Sheilbh]

Even if Paul wins Iowa he won't get far. A long way to go and he won't find much traction elsewhere. I think he's slipped in the Iowa polls, last I saw today, not sure as that may have been a national poll.

I think he could win in New Hampshire.  He's already polling in the 20s - Romney's in the 40s - with momentum I don't think it'd be out of the question that they'd vote for the libertarian candidate. 

If that were to happen all bets are off.  It's difficult to see South Carolina voting for either Romney or Paul so that would probably be the battleground to become the 'anyone but' candidate.

[grumbler]

Wow that was a good article.

As logic or sense, though, it was awful.  The author engages in far more intellectual dishonesty than he accuses Ron Paul of.  Paul talks about ideals, and acknowledges when they have problems in the real world, and Wilkerson argues that "Paul develops a keen sensitivity to complicated questions of feasibility, hemming and hawing his way to a convoluted compromise that would continue to affirm the systematic violation of the individual rights of foreigners who would like to live and work in America, and those of Americans who would like to live and work with them."  Even paul acknowledges that rights are not absolute, and yet Wilkerson ignores this and chastises him for something he never said.

Wilkerson claims to "agree wholeheartedly" with Paul's assertion that "Justly acquired property is privately owned by individuals and voluntary groups, and this ownership cannot be arbitrarily voided by governments."  Wilkerson then engages in his own "hemming and hawing his way to a convoluted compromise" by arguing that we simply don't know "exactly what "justly acquired property" amounts to in a country built in no small part by slave labor on land stolen from indigenous people!"  Wilkerson "wholeheartedly" endorses a principal which he then completely trashes.

Wilkerson claims that Paul "would have us believe that the enormous gains over the past several decades in racial and gender equality, the dramatic rise of mixed-race marriages, and the happy detente in the gender wars have all occurred despite recent attempts to rectify centuries of legal oppression through law" (my bold)  This is a classic strawman.  Paul never said any such thing as far as I can tell, and Wilkerson makes no attempt whatever to show that he did. 

Wilkerson is more on-target when he notes that "What good are taxes anyway when, as Paul argues, "[t]he only people who benefit are the bureaucrats, and the special interest recipients of government spending programs"? Recipients like poor kids who go to public schools."  He could have written a whole article about that, and left out the intellectually dishonest arguments, and had a very solid piece.  Pity he chose to simply be as ideologically rigid as the guy he is chastising for his ideological rigidity.

[Capetan Mihali]

Wow that was a good article.

Wilkerson "wholeheartedly" endorses a principal which he then completely trashes.]

  You corrected for Yi's error from earlier today.  Balance has been restored to the universe.

[Admiral Yi]

I thought it was cogent, even if it is basically 2 points.  The first one seems solid: why are we any more ready for zero taxation than for unrestricted immigration?  Though I guess RP hedges in both quotes, the first is expressed positively (work towards) and the other negatively (not nearly ready for).  The second point really just goes to the grand Anglo-American philosophical debate about where property rights come from and how to justify the ownership private property that emerged through theft/slavery/etc and family accumulation rather than Lockean acorn harvesting, and how to reconcile the coercion inherent in any scheme of property rights with an ideal of personal liberty.  Not really that specific to RP, but I think the basic criticism is that his libertarianism doesn't grapple with the difficult questions that make it a worthwhile political philosophy.

I read more than two points.

He argues that support for low taxes and opposition to unlimited immigration is an internal inconsitency.  Yet I've never heard Paul or any other self-proclaimed libertarian argue in favor of completely unlimited freedom, including the freedom to murder or rape. 

He argues that property rights are undermined by questions of provenance and tenure.  That's fine as far as it goes, but it demonstrates his lack of understanding of the "property" in property rights.  It's not just real estate, like the author seems to believe.  It also includes the fruits of ones labors, i.e. income.  Principally income, since the context of Paul's comments is a discussion of federal taxation, of income.

He argues that Paul's opposition to civil rights legislation is based on racism.  Go ahead and make that argument if you want to, but it's a bait and switch from the thesis he claims he's presening.

In the part about improvements in the lives of minorities, he seems to be lumping together the parts of the Civil Rights Act that protected voting rights and such with those that prohibited discrimination in private business.  I think Goldwater objected to the second and not the first; I assume Paul does as well.  It would certainly be bizarre if a self-proclaimed libertarian were opposed to the right to vote for certain people.

[Ideologue]

Why even have an interstate commerce clause if you're not gonna use it?

[Capetan Mihali]

He argues that support for low taxes and opposition to unlimited immigration is an internal inconsitency.  Yet I've never heard Paul or any other self-proclaimed libertarian argue in favor of completely unlimited freedom, including the freedom to murder or rape. 

I read the inconsistency as being that Paul endorses the idea that "All peaceful voluntary economic and social associations are permitted..." and that in an ideal libertarian world, borders would be "blurred," but that he pursues the tax issue unequivocally while hemming and hawing about immigration.  Again, it doesn't seem to be a true inconsistency, but I think the author is aiming at the difference in rhetoric, which fits in with his bigger point that Paul is mainly concerned with the big money part of libertarianism, rather than the other radical parts that he supposedly endorses.

I don't know why the problems of where private property comes would be read as limited to real property in the piece, or in general.  Institutional capital and family wealth come from somewhere, and the fruits of one's labor are always derived from interactions with both, so the it seems like the same basic problem is there, however you end up resolving it.

The civil rights stuff does seem more incoherent.  Going off what grumbler said, I think RP might say that the benefits to minorities came from these reforms, rather than in spite of them as the author asserts he would say, but that the reforms were unethical anyways, and maybe that minorities would have benefited more/differently under some kind of libertarian scheme.

[Razgovory]

So Grumbler, what is your opinion of Paul and his ideology?  You made arguments but never really shown your cards.  What's your angle?