# It will take the libertarian movement a long time to live down the Paul campaign **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [February 13, 2012, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-will-take-the-libertarian-movement-a-long-time-to-live-down-the-paul-campaign/612715 "2012-02-13T16:09:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Linden\_Arden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/53a042/32.png) [@Linden\_Arden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linden_Arden)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2012, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-will-take-the-libertarian-movement-a-long-time-to-live-down-the-paul-campaign/612715/81 "2012-02-15T02:10:26Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Campaigning against the Federal Reserve is most definitely populist. I guess Andrew Jackson wasn’t a populist either? lol This is correct (sadly). Alan Grayson and Bernie Sanders among progressives attack the Federal Reserve. They may not want to end it but they know many on the left wrongly associate the Fed with “bankster” conspiracy theories they help feed. Ron Paul is just plain nuts concerning the Fed. Check out his big Fed meeting as the new Chair of Monetary Policy last summer. He was embarrassed by the Fed reps in that meeting. Other committee members walked out halfway through it. But the Fed stirs the nuts up no doubt. ---
**Author:** ![Untoward\_Parable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/51bf81/32.png) [@Untoward\_Parable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Untoward_Parable)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2012, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-will-take-the-libertarian-movement-a-long-time-to-live-down-the-paul-campaign/612715/82 "2012-02-15T02:24:28Z")
You could find just as unsettling snippets about any of the republican candidates, Ron Paul is just the one that the party establishment and their funders are scared of the most. Not saying I love the guy, but after radically corporatist elitist president after radically corporatist elitist president I’ll take Paul in a second. He would mostly have a bully pulpit in any case as congress would block most everything he’d try to do, which is better for us than them doing stuff with an equally corrupt counterpart in the ignoble oval. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2012, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-will-take-the-libertarian-movement-a-long-time-to-live-down-the-paul-campaign/612715/83 "2012-02-15T03:49:53Z")
> [@Linden\_Arden](#): > > Alan Grayson and Bernie Sanders among progressives attack the Federal Reserve. They may not want to end it but they know many on the left wrongly associate the Fed with “bankster” conspiracy theories they help feed. Well, AFAIK [they just want the Fed **audited.**](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Transparency_Act_of_2009) A bit more Congressional oversight, that’s all, no new gold-standard monetary system or private-bank monetary systems or state-bank monetary systems or whatever would replace the Fed if it were abolished. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2012, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-will-take-the-libertarian-movement-a-long-time-to-live-down-the-paul-campaign/612715/84 "2012-02-15T03:53:18Z")
> [@Untoward\_Parable](#): > > Not saying I love the guy, but after radically corporatist elitist president after radically corporatist elitist president I’ll take Paul in a second. But, Paul is a radically corporatist elitist. In effect, anyway. You think they’re not salivating on boardroom carpets and rubbing their naughty bits under the conference table whenever they imagine the . . . opportunities . . . under a Paul Administration? ---
**Author:** ![Untoward\_Parable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/51bf81/32.png) [@Untoward\_Parable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Untoward_Parable)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2012, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-will-take-the-libertarian-movement-a-long-time-to-live-down-the-paul-campaign/612715/85 "2012-02-15T04:35:17Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But, Paul is a radically corporatist elitist. In effect, anyway. You think they’re not salivating on boardroom carpets and rubbing their naughty bits under the conference table whenever they imagine the . . . opportunities . . . under a Paul Administration? Not for currently structured corporations, it could lead there again with his ideas but it would cut the current giants down first. I have no illusions that the Libertarian fantasy actually enacted wouldn’t be a Mad Max hellscape, but Paul wouldn’t be able to do that anyway. What Paul would do is use his position to expose more fully corporate welfare, nonsensical exploitable complications in the tax code. He would reduce our military escapades, appoint people to federal jobs that were qualified, transparency ect. Maybe not as far as all hell but a ton more than any of these other goons. Guy actually has principles he sticks to, it’s why he’s easy to attack. He would actually rock the boat before being poisoned, and that could lead to something better. Anyone else you send and the noose just gets tighter and the smoke thicker. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-will-take-the-libertarian-movement-a-long-time-to-live-down-the-paul-campaign/612715/86 "2012-02-19T22:15:01Z")
> [@Untoward\_Parable](#): > > Not for currently structured corporations, it could lead there again with his ideas but it would cut the current giants down first. 😕 How is anything Paul plans going to downsize big corporations?! ---
**Author:** ![Bookkeeper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bookkeeper/32/281_2.png) [@Bookkeeper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bookkeeper)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-will-take-the-libertarian-movement-a-long-time-to-live-down-the-paul-campaign/612715/87 "2012-02-20T01:10:38Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > What libertarian would point to government subsidized railroad barons as a libertarian success story? James J. Hill and the Great [Northern Railroad](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S.)) is a libertarian success story. > > The above example illustrates how a privately funded railroad could have emerged. Instead, a lot of the railroads were inefficiently constructed. [QUOTE=WikiPedia] On September 18, 1889, Hill changed the name of the Minneapolis and St. Cloud Railway (a railroad which existed primarily on paper, but **which held very extensive land grants** throughout the Midwest and Pacific Northwest) to the Great Northern Railway. [/QUOTE] (Bolding added) Looks pretty government subsidized to me. The land grants may have been given before Hill took over and reorganized the railway, but the Great Northern still benefited from them. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-will-take-the-libertarian-movement-a-long-time-to-live-down-the-paul-campaign/612715/88 "2012-02-20T01:16:59Z")
> [@Bookkeeper](#): > > (Bolding added) Looks pretty government subsidized to me. The land grants may have been given before Hill took over and reorganized the railway, but the Great Northern still benefited from them. And, once again: Government subsidy is not socialism. Industrial policy is not socialism. Even [_dirigisme_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirigisme) (something America could **really** use a lot more of) is not socialism. None of this is **libertarian,** either, of course; but most government economic policies are neither libertarian nor socialist. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-will-take-the-libertarian-movement-a-long-time-to-live-down-the-paul-campaign/612715/89 "2012-02-20T02:08:29Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > All stupid movements are scary. At least they scare me. > > It’s fascinating to go back and see how much of libertarianism was a direct reaction to Marxism. Even before the horrors of the Soviet Union, libertarian thinkers were responding to Marxism by assuming that all government intervention would eventually become absolute. > > Communism is not Marxism, no matter how much people want to merge them today. Marx has many sensible things to say about his contemporary world, economy, and society. They were mostly irrelevant by the 20th century, which is why Communism was never Marxism and Communism never got any traction in an America that had moved on and developed its own counters to those triggers. Socialism is neither, and most American leftist movements should be called socialist rather than communist. > > I won’t defend anything about Communism. Never have. I’m irredeemably small-d democrat. But it’s intriguing that in its long history nobody has ever decided to fight and die for Libertarianism. Libertarianism as a separate movement is fairly recent. I’m not sure in fact even “Libertarianism” really exists outside of the United States. However many libertarian ideas are basically classical liberal ideas which men across have fought and died for since at least the days of the Levellers in England. > [@Askance](#): > > Wah?!? Are you really saying he and his positions are [now] defined by those of his support base? Does he not have his own positions, which would (logically) only then have attracted a support base? That is to say, his extremism must have come before extremists got attracted to it. Yes? No? No I’m not saying he’s defined by his support base,. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-will-take-the-libertarian-movement-a-long-time-to-live-down-the-paul-campaign/612715/90 "2012-02-20T04:04:33Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > However many libertarian ideas are basically classical liberal ideas which men across have fought and died for since at least the days of the Levellers in England. Fuck **that** shit! Go with the [Diggers!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diggers)😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-will-take-the-libertarian-movement-a-long-time-to-live-down-the-paul-campaign/612715.md?page=4)