Push Pauling

Well, Justin Raimondo is, as usual, especially cogent. I'm not sure that Ron Paul, even un-smeared, signifies anything about a broader "libertarian movement," but that's one small quibble. Justin's insight into the character of the Nick Gillespie crowd is dead on. The brief section where he discusses homophobia and homosexuality through the lens of his own queer heterodoxy is especially good and matches my own view on the poverty of that particular charge against Paul. Having whittled down the supposedly racist and homophobic rantings of the notorious newsletters to a few lines written by others, Justin makes a compelling case that Paul is being criticized by self-proclaimed libertarians for his failure to embrace state solutions to social ills: He rejects the Civil Rights Act, ergo he must hate blacks. He somewhere says that AIDS cannot be discussed properly because of its political baggage, a case made previously by no less a leftist than Susan Sontag, not to mention Randy Shilts (as Justin himself notes), and this renders him a Jerry Falwell.

I don't support Ron Paul--nor anyone--for President. Dennis Perrin summarizes that position perfectly well. He says things about abortion and immigration that do smack of the kind of moral statism that I most despise, although many of those comments are tempered by caveats to the effect that these issues are not, in fact, within the purview of the federal government as Paul understands it. That said, the sound of a lot of cossetted Washington hangers-on howling because Ron Paul fails to represent Urban Hipster Libertarianism is thoroughly disgusting. I say that as a faggot urban hipster, too. It reeks of favor-currying and aspirations to acceptability. It stinks of Sistah Soujah. It represents the triangulating rhetoric of go-along moderation that defines our entire class of imperial courtiers. "Court jesters and would-be reformers" in-fucking-deed.