As I remarked over at Weigel’s post: “Justin Raimondo releases plenty of venom to attack Reason for remarks like this one. I can’t see why such effort is worth it. Figures in the media and the academy who are content to discuss Ron Paul exclusively in terms of his alleged hatred and bigotry are typical and unremarkable. Why should I be any more upset because a crowd of self-identified “libertarians” belongs to the same team of cowards? Weigel is horrified that Paul might have allowed some unflattering remarks about ethnic minorities into his newsletter. That’s enough to delegitimize Paul in his eyes, no matter how noble Paul appears to be otherwise; no matter how urgently a movement like Paul’s obviously is needed; no matter how empty the field is of actual alternatives; no matter how vulgar and chaotic our political disorder becomes. So let Weigel go to hell with the rest of the establishmentarian priesthood. I won’t blink or lose any sleep.”

Justin,

Ron Paul said he didn’t write those letters. Defend that rather than the actual letters. Also, Paul’s chief-of-staff stated it was Lew Rockwell (at least as the editor-in-chief). I have others who believe the same thing, seeing that Lew was getting a salary for it.

But, I agree with you. I am no fan of Reason and I find it annoying that every time they mention him they mention the newsletters and how he divides cause of his supporters who are “racist” and “conspiracy theorist”. Can’t they just be happy?

Well, I am, that’s for sure. I’m glad to be a product of the RPR and hopefully thousands like me change the direction of this country for the better.

Well, Lew will be posting even more of your columns over at LRC, which is a fairly new pheomena coinciding with your first defense of him.

I can remember the old days when you had to beg to get posted at LRC during fund raising weeks.

I’ts very irresponsible of Reason to be focusing on this bs when our country is going down the tubes. 

the reference to reverend wright is telling.  they are more interested in swiftboat style attacks and have totally lost sight of the goals of libertarianism. 

the pundit bubble is going to pop and soon.  if reason really wants to sink with the hardball, oreilly factor ship more power to them.  we have bigger fish to fry, namely fighting the welfare warfare state.  us old racist curmudgeons

Libertarianism until recently understood that equality and liberty are in an inherently adversarial relationship.  Yet Reason’s crew accepts or ignores the various way claims of equality have expanded the federal government, whether the Civil Rights Act of 65, Voting Rights, affirmative action, federal educational spending, etc.  Their problem is that they all allow liberals to define respectability, and they have no awareness that if we’re to have a libertarian state, we probably need an austere and self-regulating culture.

The politically correct libertines at Reason have never been able to come to terms with the fact that the libertarian movement is mostly populated by white male Christians who want Leviathan off their backs and out of their lives. They’ve tried to reinvent it as a hipster-liberal, cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, neo-hippie movement. That dim-witted demographic is already cornered by the Dems, and so Reason has given up and joined them. And Ron Paul is way too white male Christian for libertarian poseurs working for the Democrats. “Reason” is a joke.

Reason’s going after Ron Paul (even while claiming to support him overall) reminds me of the bitter wars between Stalinists and Trotskyites during the 1930’s.  It seems that the closer groups are in their overall viewpoints, the more a desire for absolute correctness will lead them to fight over comparatively small differences.

If I have to choose between being a paleocon or being a libertarian, it’s this kind of thing from Reason that makes me feel much closer to the paleocon community than to any of the phony libertarians.

The fact that Ron Paul is at #1 on Amazon and soaring up the NYT bestseller list is itself a testimony to the irrelevance of Reason.  Funny to watch them complain that the book has kind words for two institutions that happen to be unowned by the Billionaire. Meanwhile, normal people are congratulating Ron and thrilled that the message is getting out there.

Hey Reason: NO ONE CARES.

Sorry if I get worked up about this, but I still take immense satisfaction at how little—as in zero—effect their full-blown attack on me years ago wound up affecting me.  I’ve had rather a successful career since then.

Instead of spending time reading Ron’s new book, they might write another article about how Dennis Rodman’s flamboyance contributes to liberty.  Or something.

> Hey Reason: NO ONE CARES.

Well, not quite.  If no one cared, or if Reason were really so irrelevant, Justin (and Lew and Tom D.) wouldn’t have bothered responding (which, btw, would have been my preferred response).

That’s really been my problem with the paleo crew.  I agree that such efforts by the Reason gang are ridiculous, I really do.  But why dignify (or legitimize) them with a response?  Take the high road and let them fade into obscurity.

AND- yeah they are really fading in to obscurity, especially today with Ron Pauls book only at #1

AND - there is a problem with that, in this mass-media driven world.  You cannot take a high road any longer; you ignore repeated falsehoods at your own peril - cf what happened to Ron over those stupid (and hardly “racist") newsletters.  All you have to do is watch how some jerk posts up some inane garbage and it gets repeated across 11M websites in 30 minutes… and drug up again like clockwork every month until it becomes the gospel-goddamn-truth.

The internet is the spice of our little Dune, both a great thing and a very bad thing (I guess like all really useful tools).  But the time for appearing above it all is long gone.  The masses do not have the attention span for it.  So, either strike when the iron is hot, or suffer the consequences later (over and over).

Bret, I see your point of view, but I still don’t agree.  It comes back to basic supply and demand for me.  Will there always be a market for mindless drivel on the internet?  Sure.  There is nothing you can do about that (and nothing that should be done about that anyway).  People will believe what they want to believe.  But I think your mistake is assuming that the market will always be significant.

When we “strike when the iron is hot” to defend ourselves, we increase the demand (both now, and in the future) for more such drivel.  It’s self-defeating.  How many people went to Reason after reading about this on LRC or here?  And how many will go back, just to check the comments, or to continue an argument?  And then how many will go back next week, to see what absurd things they’re writing then?  All that is ad revenue for Reason, and justification for their donors to keep mailing those checks.

Ignore their nonsense (and them), and their “commentary” will still get out, sure.  And many will believe that it’s fact.  But in an ever-expanding internet, their market share will grow smaller and smaller, and eventually they won’t matter in the slightest…

When I was new to the libertarian movement I was thrilled to find Reason magazine, a magazine supposedly devoted to Free Minds and Free markets. Over time, I began to find that Reason was more interested in making government work, then getting rid of it.

Reason’s legacy will be privatized prisons and privatized war. Friends of liberty need to look elsewhere.

I remember that some of the college “libertarian parties” I attended (frequented by Reason types) would contain conversations along the lines:

- “Pot should be legalized”

- “Do we really need stop signs?”

- “Yea, pot should be legalized.”

- “Yea, think about it.  All the things you can do with hemp.  We’d never have rope shortages again.”

- “Yea, I heard that they developed a car that runs on hemp but the Bushes bought the patent to it to keep us dependent on oil.”

- “I wonder if you could build a car that runs on rope....”

lewrockwell.com daily covers important issues like the war, the economy, and the erosion of civil rights.  Most of the time Reason reads like a libertarian version of the National Enquirer ("Small town bans wedgies!” “Motley Crue condemned for porno act!").

I have to agree with Weigel on one thing: LRC is nothing more than a stream of angry ad hominem screeds. I love LvMI, but when its scholars get to posting on LRC they become bitter spewers of bile. DiLorenzo seems incapable of spelling Reason with the letter ‘T’, for example.

I think it’s an example of road rage in the internet highway. I know Lew is a nice friendly guy because I’ve met him. But get him behind the wheel of a blog and he starts flipping everyone the bird.

I do not agree “LRC is nothing more than a stream of angry ad hominem screeds.” There’s plenty of sound analysis on the site, even if the tone gets snarky and confrontational sometimes.  Also, I think you meant “DiLorenzo seems incapable of spelling Reason *without* the letter ‘T’,” but I’m sure I’ve seen him do it in a fit of civility.

Great as always Justin.  You of all people would know what was going on with Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard at the time of those newsletters - considering you were a close colleague of both during the time of Triple R.

In the end, Reason cannot stand that the most influential libertarians were culturally conservative.  Though Reason tries to ignore it, there is a ‘reason’ why LewRockwell.com is the most popular libertarian site on the web.

Absolutely pathetic piece by Weigel indeed. They probably feel bad as Paul has correctly not referred to them.

What is needed is new truly libertarian publishing company with an excellent website and possibly a monthly magazine (can start two or three-monthly) and online TV that will be leading reason in every way
and contribute to their demise and offer ex-reason subscribers an exciting new possibility. Something with the word “Liberty” (or the Latin form thereof) could be possible. (I noticed the domain liberty.net is available to be bought). The magazine/company can also combine with libertarians internationally, in Western Europe, ME, SA Asia etc. and local versions could be produced and make it a truly international phenomenon, that is financially profitable. Certain few good contributers to reason
(whose voices are silenced and really pro-Paul) could also be attracted as contributing editors to the new company/website.

So I just figured it out. If it wasn’t Lew, it had to be Rothbard that wrote all that stuff for RP. I think it fits Murray’s writing style and he always liked to write under pen names.

Thanks to Lew Rockwell for pointing out that there really is a true libertarian magazine called “Liberty”.  He talks about it on his page today:
“Liberty is the embodiment of this fighting spirit. It has independence. It has integrity. It is written and edited on a human scale, without the feel of propaganda. This magazine will remind you of why you fell in love with ideas, and libertarian ideas in particular.” Read the entire article here:  http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/get-liberty.html

sidney- would you have told him to stop writing in that style?  murray rothbard?  as the money poured in?

I’m wondering how some of you folks who are so down on Reason feel about some of the
contributors at Cato. I note that Ivan Eland and Charles Pena are no longer there
replaced by warmonger types like Brink Lindsey. Oh I don’t think Cato’s marginal
sellout compares to Reason’s, and Cato certainly does still produce some good material
but nothing like they used to 3 or 4 years ago.

Reason is a magazine of children for children. It might as well be written in crayon.

Cato lost me for good after 9/11 when David Boaz and others published their opinion that the federal gummint had to go blow stuff up Right Now! 

It was then I realized they were another DC lobby type group, not libertarians.

<i>sidney- would you have told him to stop writing in that style?  murray rothbard?  as the money poured in?/i>

Money or no money, I have always looked forward to every word Rothbard wrote. As Raimondo has pointed out, I don’t think there was anything racist in what was written. 

I only wish he were here today to comment on the nuttiness.

If you’ve got evidence that Reason lost a lot of subscriptions due to the newsletter issue, provide it. If comments about Ron Paul on the internet were really indicative about anything in the real world, he’d be the leading candidate for President.

It’s not true there was no split among Ron Paul supporters. Gene Callahan (a Lew Rockwell contributor) found the whole thing quite disturbing.

Could someone link to where David Boaz advocated blowing stuff up? I knew Brink Lindsay was pro-war, but I didn’t know that about Boaz.

This all discourages me. It reminds me of the BIG SCHISM that practically destroyed the LP shortly after the Ed Clark’s phenomenal showing in the 1980 election. Why can’t we have a big tent? I’m a Rothbardian anarchist but anyone who advances the cause of liberty is fine with me. Why do we always have to quarrel over such childish crap? Back in the those turbulent 1980’s, a great Libertarian (I think it was Karl Hess, Sr.) had buttons made which are once again totally appropriate. - “THOU SHALT FIGHT THE STATE, NOT EACH OTHER.”

It *is* discouraging, VaughnT.  The problem lies in the fact libertarians disagree about which issues are and aren’t open to disagreement.  I’m a Rothbardian anarchist, too, but I can live with anti-abortion and controlled-immigration libertarians.  I can’t live with pro-Iraq War libertarians.

The “reasonoids” remind me of a “libertarian” I once knew who would justify acts of extreme assholishness with cherry-picked Ayn Rand quotes.

TGGP,

There is no Cato conspiracy, it is all in the heads of the Rockwell groupies.

Ed Crane in an interview in January of this year said,

“I guess I’d vote for Ron Paul, because he’s for the market and against the war.”

http://www.examiner.com/a-1189653~Power_Profile__Ed_Crane.html

I don’t have a link, it might take me all day to try to find it online, but in their newsletter to supporters, in Boaz’s regular column, shortly after 9/11 he gave FedGov his blessing to cast about looking for terriss to blow u[ in response. In one sense, that made him no different than 99% of the country, but in a more important sense, it didn’t make him much of a libertarian when Americans really needed to hear how the government encouraged the attack with their overseas meddling then utterly failed to protect the WTC.

Sorry, but I stopped being impressed with the Beltwaytarians after that.