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Ron Paul is not just doing well at fundraising on this, his second run at the Presidency. He is raising enough to be a contender. I Just received this information from their campaign:
We are closing in on three important fundraising milestones for the fourth quarter:
– During the third quarter, Fred Thompson raised $9,750,821 to be used during the primary election cycle.
– Not counting money that he loaned to his own campaign, Mitt Romney raised $9,896,719.
– Rudy Giuliani finished with $10,258,019.
Ron Paul is currently at $9,708,791 for the fourth quarter.
We are within reach of passing Fred Thompson today! Will you help us storm past these fundraising totals over a month sooner than they did?
Please make your most generous donation: www.ronpaul2008.com/donate
And don’t forget to watch the live counter on our website as we meet these marks!?
I must admit I never in my wildest dreams expected the Ron Paul campaign to do this well. Do I dare to believe we really will have a libertarian still in the running come the Republican convention?
Ramesh Ponnuru scoffs at the notion that Ron Paul’s tilt at the White House has, supposedly, encouraged an upswelling of libertarian sentiment in parts of the Republican Party. My rough guess is that he has had a bit of a positive effect and has raised a lot of money over the internet, pretty fast. Some people try to dismiss Paul as a kook but their dismissals seem to amount to little more than smears of half-understood points, such as his championing of gold-backed money (I am not convinced the dollar should be tied to gold but it is not nearly as daft, when you think about it, as the idea that the world’s largest economy can be run by a Federal Reserve bank by an army of economic gods). Despite my own differences with his strict non-interventionist foreign policy, which, pace some libertarians, is not necessarily a logical outcome of the non-initiation of force principle in the face of major foreign threats, Paul is a breath of fresh air. He is no Ronald Reagan or even Barry Goldwater in terms of his name recognition factor or charisma – I bet hardly anyone in Britain outside a small group of political anoraks has heard of him, but his profile is pretty impressive.
Ponnuru points to Ron Paul’s own stance on abortion to prove that he is not quite the darling of the libertarian movement that some might claim. Rubbish: if Ponnuru has read any libertarian authors thoroughly, he would notice that libertarians can and do differ quite a bit on the issue. The issue of how one goes from the axiom of the right to life to the vexed question of when life begins is a difficult one, and I am not sure I am clear myself on this one. Ron Paul is against federal, ie, tax funds for abortion clinics. But that does not make him anti-abortion, it makes him anti-spending, at least on this issue.
Paul Marks has argued on this blog elsewhere that Ron Paul’s record on spending is not spotless – it is hard to think of any politician who is – but I think he is generally a positive influence on American politics.
The prospect of such a man in Britain’s Conservative Party reaching any sort of senior position at present is, of course, nil.
I long ago endorsed Ron Paul despite strong disagreements with his foreign policy. Now, with Iraq looking more and more like less and less of an issue for the next election, that disagreement is fading in importance.
Meanwhile my distaste for ‘security measures’ taken in the name of ‘defense of the homeland’ has reached a point of utter disgust. On the issues which matter to me there is probably not the light of day between a Clinton or a Guliani Presidency. Neither is likely to ask for congress to kill off ‘Real Id’. Neither is likely to put Presidential authority behind removal of even some of the more obnoxious sections of the un-Patriot Act or any of the other wildly misnamed acts of Congress.
Over my many years as a libertarian I have come to feel like someone alone in the wilderness. People who believe as I do simply do not get elected. I assumed that a Ron Paul run for the Republican Party slot would be the same, with the very positive upside that he would gain more publicity for the ideas of liberty and individualism than decades of efforts by thousands of dedicated libertarians.
I am beginning to wonder if I might have been wrong. I was rather pleasantly surprised to read that Ron is picking up more money and attention on the web than any other Republican hopeful. While this does not translate into as much attention off web as I would like to see, it is nonetheless a surprise. Ron is still very definitely in this race and it is beginning to look like he will still be in it come the Republican convention.
I would really look forward to that happening. I have not bothered to watch convention coverage in many years because the people running did not even vaguely represent me.
I could rub my hands with glee at Just imagining the horror in the eyes of media and politicos alike if someone were to stand on the podium at that convention and not just mouth words about Liberty and Individualism… but really mean them!
Republican Presidential Candidate Ron Paul seems to have attracted a lot of attention with his big fund-raising day, although Mark Steyn says that although he now has money his poll rating is still very low. If you don’t know what he looks and sounds like, watch him being interviewed by Jay Leno.
The most interesting thing I have encountered about Ron Paul is this, from Jonathan Wilde:
On the heels of the big fundraising day, I’ve noticed that a lot of people I know are declaring themselves Ron Paul supporters. Many of them are not just not libertarian. If anything, they’re big government advocates. They justify their support with vague statements like, “He’s shifting the landscape” or “The system needs to be shaken up”. I don’t think they have any idea what Paul actually stands for.
Maybe they will learn. I have long thought thought a way for libertarianism to spread will be when people get that it is a different sort of mischief they can make to the usual kind. This was surely the appeal of Marxism, while it had appeal. Now, the world is still full of Marxists but they keep quiet about it, and wrap it up as other things, like Greenery. Where’s the mischief in that? That won’t shake up the system. That is the system. But libertarianism is a kind of mischief making that dares to speak its name, and if done, would cause serious embarrassment to thousands of politicians and lobbyists and subsidy guzzlers.
Of course, much of Paul’s appeal is that he is mounting a non-left attack on US military involvement abroad. But if many are backing him because of that, they may also become acquainted with the notion that maybe seriously cutting back big government is something that a decent man could genuinely want to do. Paul wants to cut government spending on foreign wars, and rather than blowing what is ‘saved’ on schools and hospitals and other foolishnesses, he says: let the citizens keep their money.
I presume that Ron Paul has lots of domestic personal policy positions concerning how to get there from here, so to speak, as any serious political candidate must. I do know, because he said this to Leno, that he wants to phase out welfare addiction very gradually, rather than just cold turkey it, for example. But that makes sense (‘cold turkeying’ it might also make sense, I think, but what do I know?)
Talk about the American off-year elections has been dominated by the Gubernatorial elections (victory for the Republicans in Mississippi – against a trial lawyer, victory for the Democrats in Kentucky – against an ‘ethically challenged’ Republican Governor) and by the onward march of the Democrats in the Washington D.C. suburbs of northern Virginia. And, of course, by the defeat of the voucher plan in Utah by the unions.
However, there is a another side to these elections – tax and spend is clearly not favoured by the voters.
For example, voters in Oregon voted down an increase in the cigarette tax in spite of the money being for more children’s health welfare. And voters in New Jersey voted down a proposal to borrow money for stem cell research. Children’s health welfare, and stem cell research – two poster issues for the left and they were defeated. And defeated in ‘Blue States’.
Also an election in the heartland of the United States caught my eye… the tax-and-spend Mayor Bart Peterson was defeated in Indianapolis by the almost unknown Republican Greg Ballard – in spite of Mr Peterson outspending Mr Ballard’s campaign some thirty to one (thanks to donations from politically connected business enterprises and so on) and the support of the usual suspects (the media and academia).
Message to Republicans:
If you really do oppose tax-and-spend (rather than just pretend to, whilst carrying on in your normal corrupt way) you can actually win in 2008.
The campaign to become Mayor of London must be taking its toll. Boris Johnson writes today that the interests of the US and the rest of the world would be best served if Hillary Clinton reaches the White House. His reasoning is thin at best. Perhaps the real problem is that America, even though it is such a vast nation, has only been able to produce Presidential candidates of such dreadful quality as this lot (I am afraid that applies partly even to Ron Paul, for whom I have a lot of sympathy).
Insofar as the Americans are now winning in Iraq, as they do now seem to be, this is, first, because Al Qaeda have shot themselves in their stupid murderous feet by being stupid and murderous, and pissing off the Iraqi people; and second, because the Americans switched strategies, from (the way I hear it): sitting in nice big armed camps doing nothing except maybe training a few Iraqis to do the nasty stuff, to: getting out there themselves and doing it, thereby giving the Iraqi people something to get behind and to switch to, once they had worked out what ghastly shits AQ really are.
The first bit is very interesting, but this posting is about the second bit. Instapundit linked yesterday to this, and I particular like the first comment. Here, with its grammar and spelling cleaned up a little, it is:
The Democrats missed a great opportunity. Bush would not have changed strategy if the Dems did not win as big as they did. They could have said it was them that made Bush change to a successful strategy.
Over the summer I reread one of my favourite books of the century so far, How The West Has Won: Carnage and Culture From Salamis to Vietnam by Victor Davis Hanson (which was published in October 2001). In this, Hanson makes much of the Western habit of what he calls “civilian audit” of military affairs. Armchair complaining and grilling of often quite successful generals for often rather minor failures in the course of what often eventually turn into major victories. Sidelining Patton for winning some battles but then slapping a soldier. Denouncing Douglas Haig forever for winning too nastily on the Western Front. Votes of Confidence in the Commons during the dark days of World War 2. Most recently, General Petraeus being grilled on TV. That kind of thing.
Above all, there are the journalists, wandering around the battlefield being horrified and sending photos back of people who died during disasters, or during victories, thereby making those look like disasters also (which they were for the people who died.)
Unlike many with similar loyalties to his, who describe all this as a Western weakness, Hanson sees it as a major Western strength. Yes it is messy, and yes it is often monstrously unjust. Yes, it often results in serious mistakes and failures, especially in the short run. Yes the questions put to returning generals and presiding politicians are often crass, stupid and trivial. But the effect of all this post-mortemising and second-guessing and media grandstanding and general bitching and grumbling is to keep the West’s military leaders on their metal in a way that simply does not happen in non-Western cultures.
It must really concentrate the mind of a general to know that there are literally millions of people back home who are just waiting for him to screw up, so they can crow: we told you so.
It also results in Western armies filled with people who know quite well what the plan is and what the score is, having just spent the last few hours, days, weeks or even years arguing about it all. Western armies invariably contain barrack room lawyers and grumblers, to say nothing of people who sincerely believe that they could do better than their own commanders and who say so, courtesy of those interfering journalists.
Central to the whole idea of the West is that you get better decisions, and better (because so much better informed) implementation of those decisions by the lower ranks, if lots of people argue like hell about these decisions first, during, and then again afterwards. In fact if you argue about them all the time.
Take Iraq now. The narrative that is now gaining strength goes as follows: Iraq invaded for dubious reasons, but successfully. Peace lost because no plan to win it. Two or three years of chaos and mayhem. Change of strategy. Now war may be being won. Maybe this story has not quite reached the MSM, but I believe that it soon will, if only because of bloggers like this guy and this guy.
Strangely, Hanson has, during this particular war, been one of the most vocal complainers about the complainers, so to speak. He has gone on and on about how suspect are the motives of the complainers and how ignorant they seem to be of what war is necessarily like and how bad it would be if the West lost this particular war. Yet is not the way this story may now be playing out yet further evidence of the important contribution made by anti-Western kneejerk anti-warriors to the good conduct of Western wars by the West’s warriors? What these people want to do is stop the war by making the warriors give up and lose it. But what they often achieve instead is to bully the warriors into doing better, and winning. They are, so to speak, an important part of the learning experience. Hanson returns again and again to how the West often loses the early battles, but ends up winning the war.
Under heavy political pressure, President Bush switched in Iraq from a failing Plan A to what now looks as if it could be a successful Plan B. Would this switch have happened without all the pressure? Maybe, but it is surely reasonable to doubt it. The next commenter after the one quoted above says that it is still not too late for the Dems to do a switch of their own, and to start claiming that had it not been for them and all their grumbling, the switch by Bush from failure to success would never have happened. If and when they do start talking like that, they will surely have a point.
(Patrick Crozier and I recently discussed VDH in this podcast, more about which here.)
I was going to write the following comment on a blog article written back in 2005 by a US Muslim political activist who is calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution:
I would like to thank you for writing this article.
Having a Muslim political activist call for American civilians to be disarmed in their own country is just about the best politically supercharged endorsement for civilian gun ownership I can imagine. If the NRA was paying you to write this, it was money well spent (that is just rhetorical of course, I am sure they did not and you probably actually believe what you are saying). Please, keep writing more along this line!
But I decided not to. There is a well known axiom: “Never interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake”
I hope he is still writing such articles.
I first wrote this article intending it to be a comment on this thread at the Volokh Conspiracy. It grew so big and wandered ‘through every room in the house’, straying away from the specific topic so I decided not to inflict it on them. Instead, Samizdatistas are the lucky beneficiaries. Seriously, I presume most of you will skip it. That is fine. Here is the amendment as it appears in the US Constitution.
Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
In reading the Federalist Papers it appears obvious, at least to me, that ‘the militia’ and ‘a well regulated militia’ are two entirely different things. Hamilton clearly describes in #29 a great deal of commitment and training required to “acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia” [my underscore] and speculates that for “the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens” it “would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss”.
In #46 Madison calculates the number of “a militia” at 1/8 of the entire population.
The highest number to which, … a standing army can be carried … does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; … This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence.”
Clearly Hamilton’s “well-regulated militia” and Madison’s “militia” are entirely different and together with the title of the New York statute that Eugene Volokh cites,”An Act for Settling and Regulating the Militia …”, suggests that the degree of regulation of the militia was a continuous scale.
The prize for the most stupid comment of the debate goes to Senator John McCain for saying that he wished “interest rates were zero”. Senator McCain also said that he did not understand monetary policy, so he could just have been joking, but as he has previously expressed admiration for Alan ‘Credit Bubble’ Greenspan I can not be sure. Senator McCain also had problems hearing some of the questions – although no one else had a problem with this.
Ron Paul gave a good explanation of the bad effects of the expansion of the money supply by the Federal Reserve system. This explanation was clearly wasted on John McCain, who suggested in total seriousness that Ron Paul read Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’ – which is absurd as Ron Paul has indeed read this book, and moreover because it showed that Senator McCain had misunderstood Congressman Paul to mean that the rich are rich because the poor are poor – when what Ron Paul was saying was that one of the bad effects of an expansion in the credit-money supply is that it tends to help rich people at the expense of the poor (which is not the same thing at all).
However, Congressman Paul did rather spoil things by waving his arms about and by the way his voice goes up and down for no reason. Still this is a matter of style – other people may like the Congressman’s style. What is not a matter of style was Ron Paul’s failure to mention Social Security or any of the ‘entitlement programs’. He even implied, constantly, that most Federal government spending goes to the ‘military industrial complex’ when most such spending has not in fact gone to the military since the 1960’s.
And whatever one may think of the present military campaigns, a claim that they are being fought to benefit the ‘military industrial complex’ merchants-of-death is absurd (even if one ignores the point that a lot of stuff is imported these days anyway).
Of course most of the other candidates did not talk much about the Welfare State either. They made ritual attacks on “domestic spending” but that was about it.
Tom Tancredo did make the point that most Federal government spending goes to the entitlement programs (those unconstitutional things that have been growing like cancers for decades), but he mostly twisted every question into an immigration question (for example to attack John McCain). I know that Congressman Tancredo is upset that there are sometimes no immigration questions in these debates – but twisting more than one question into an immigration question is not acceptable.
Fred Thompson said that the present entitlement programs were unsustainable in the long run and suggested (as first steps) people being allowed to use some of the Social Security tax to set up private investments, and that government benefits should be indexed to prices (not to wages). But he did not say much more than that. Senator Thompson also had the most stupid question of the debate directed at him (by some MSNBC moron whose name I did not catch) “who is the Prime Minister of Canada?” – “Harper” came the reply, but what was the point of the exchange?
Duncan Hunter gave me the impression, as he always does, of a good soldier who somehow found himself in the House of Representatives. He would be ideal man to be in a dangerous situation with, in that he would know what to do – and is also honourable (so he would not just save himself – indeed he would lay down his life to help the poor sap with him). However, his political policies (protectionism and so on) would have terrible results.
Senator Brownback was big on “family values” and being “pro life” (a not so veiled attacks on Rudy G.), but he also said he was in favour of an “optional flat tax” – so he did remember he was in a debate about economic policy.
Mike Huckabee, the Governor from Arksansas, told various folksy stories, which as usually did not seem to mean anything. But he also repeated that he was in favour of getting rid of the income tax. The Governor also said he would not have vetoed the SCHIP expansion. I suppose he squares the circle of no income tax and wild Federal government spending by supporting a sky-is-the-limit Federal sales tax.
Rudy G. did fairly well defending free trade and pointing out the tax cuts he made as Mayor of New City city. He also stressed his faith in technology and what human beings could do if freed from high taxes and regulations. However, he was rather vague in dealing with what government spending he would cut.
I am uncertain as to what Governor Mitt Romney said as I was distracted by the big neon sign saying “this man is dishonest slime” that I see over his head whenever he starts speaking. This may well be unfair to Governor Romney, who may be a very nice man in private life, but it is the impression I have of his public performances.
Who’d’a thought we’d see two shout-outs to King Canute in as many days in the health care arena? Yet there he is, popping up again in Business Week in the service of opposing more government intervention in health care.
According to legend, King Canute of Denmark facetiously tried to stop the rising tide by simply raising his hand and commanding the waters to roll back. The tide, of course, kept rising. Yet policymakers throughout history have followed Canute’s lead. From Hillary Clinton and John Edwards to Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger, politicians across the spectrum have tried or vowed to solve America’s health-care woes by enacting an individual mandate – a law requiring every adult to purchase health insurance. Despite its bipartisan support, the individual mandate is bad policy, a vain attempt to command a better result while doing nothing to achieve it.
An excellent discussion of the folly of individual mandates follows. Of some interest is the way the estimate of the size of the problem meshes with that made below.
According to an Urban Institute study released in 2003, uncompensated care for the uninsured constitutes less than 3% of all health expenditures. Even if the individual mandate works exactly as planned, that’s the effective upper boundary on the mandate’s impact.
If you do the math, I think you will find that Mark Steyn’s number of the poor uninsured comes out to about 3% of the population.
More importantly, Whitman points out the major flaws in the individual mandate proposal – it would not work (people will still refuse to buy health insurance), and it will make the problem worse by driving costs even higher.
Even now, every state has a list of benefits that any health-insurance policy must cover – from contraception to psychotherapy to chiropractic to hair transplants. All states together have created nearly 1,900 mandated benefits. Of course, more generous benefits make insurance more expensive. A 2007 study estimates existing mandates boost premiums by more than 20%.
If interest groups have found it worthwhile to lobby 50 state legislatures for laws affecting only voluntarily purchased insurance policies, they will surely redouble their efforts to affect the contents of a federally mandated insurance plan. Consequently, even more people will find themselves unable to afford insurance. Others will buy insurance, but only via public subsidies. Isn’t that just what the doctor didn’t order?
His prescription for incremental policy reform strikes me as being pretty sound, as the fundamental shift that needs to be made in health care insurance is away from first dollar coverage, low deductibles and copays, etc. and toward catastrophic insurance. First dollar coverage has proven to distort if not destroy any semblance of financial responsibility on both sides of the health care transaction, and is one of the primary drivers of high costs. Catastrophic coverage fulfils the true function of insurance – protection against risks you can not afford – without creating the disastrously misaligned incentives that our current system has.
Our theme for today comes from George W Bush: “Freedom is the desire of every human heart.”
Whether or not freedom is the desire of every heart, I think it is abundantly clear that most people are indifferent or hostile to their neighbor’s freedom, which is why a mere democracy, unencumbered by principles of limited government, is assured of devolving into some sort of Total State in short order. But the inimitable Mr. Steyn is not content with observing that most people think of freedom as “fine for me, but not for thee.” No, he has in mind the apparent eagerness of so many to give up their own freedom.
A year ago, I wrote that, “The story of the western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government ‘security,’ large numbers of people vote to dump freedom — the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, seat belts and a ton of other stuff.”
This is what makes being a small-government libertarian so frustrating. Our patron saint should be King Canute, for it often seems like we are standing on the shore, trying to stop the tide. The reply to Mr. Steyn, if it is not couched in shallow democratism (“we are just giving the people what they want”) is usually couched in terms that imply that freedom is not possible, or at least can not be enjoyed, without material security provided by the State. This inversion of real freedom (the freedom of self-ownership) was perhaps best catechized by FDR, the man most responsible for freeing demagogic democracy from the strictures of the constitutional republic, as “freedom from want.”
FDR’s heir is Hillary Clinton, and she is pushing (again) for nationalized health care in America. The battlecry this time is that there are “45 million uninsured” (or whatever spurious number is trotted out).
My first response is “so what?” Anyone in America can get health care simply by walking into the nearest hospital, as all hospitals are required to give an exam and emergency treatment regardless of ability to pay.
But, as always, one should not let the factual assertions of the advocates of the Total State go unexamined. Mr. Steyn continues:
So, out of 45 million uninsured Americans, nine million aren’t American, nine million are insured, 18 million are young and healthy. And the rest of these poor helpless waifs trapped in Uninsured Hell waiting for Hillary to rescue them are, in fact, wealthier than the general population. According to the Census Bureau’s August 2006 report on “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage,” 37% of those without health insurance – that’s 17 million people – come from households earning more than $50,000. Nineteen percent – 8.7 million people – of those downtrodden paupers crushed by the brutal inequities of capitalism come from households earning more than $75,000.
In other words, if they fall off the roof, they can write a check. Indeed, the so-called “explosion” of the uninsured has been driven almost entirely by wealthy households opting out of health insurance. In the decade after 1995 — i.e., since the last round of coercive health reform — the proportion of the uninsured earning less than 25,000 has fallen by 20% and the proportion earning more than 75 grand has increased by 155%. The story of the last decade is that the poor are getting sucked into the maw of “coverage” and the rich are fleeing it.
At a conference on health law last week, I predicted (only half in jest) that Hillary would be signing the bill nationalizing health care at the beginning of her second term. The more I think about it, the more likely it seems. The tide of the Total State never sleeps.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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