Ron Paul needs to explain better

I'm afraid the Reason guys [Crap! They've got more than one important post or article on this: one, two, three, four. And that's not all, but the first one is the one I'm talking about.] are right about his response to the New Republic story.

It's terse.

I'm inclined to believe what he says, but I'm not the injured party. I'm afraid it looks like Paul isn't concerned about the injured parties. He needs to do a better job of explaining how the principles and policies he espouses preclude effective racism and homophobia. (Though, we don't pretend to be able to preclude the emotions. We would, however, allow racists and homophobes to find places where they wouldn't be bothered by people of the "wrong" color or sexual preference. What we don't--or wouldn't--allow is for the racists and homophobes to force anyone else into a ghetto.)

I trust Paul. His votes have matched his stated principles, and, for the most part, I agree with those principles. The couple that I don't are indeed matters of dispute among libertarians.

It's old news to me, btw. It's come up before during this campaign. I was a bit surprised to see it drop as quickly as it did. Apparently Paul's enemies either didn't really care at the time, or they had their flunkies stuff the info in their pockets for use later. Like during the New Hampshire Primary.

That shouldn't surprise me any - it's SOP for all political campaigns. That's not a conspiracy theory, it's just something I assume all campaigns do. And all campaigns should be prepared for.

Let's hear the great, inspiring speech, Ron.

Update: Virginia Postrel suggests that Lew Rockwell, president and founder of the Mises Institute, may have written these things. Murray Rothbard was around back then, was he okay with all this?

This is probably as much of an answer as you're going to get from Lew.

On the other hand, there was a lot of that kind of talk on the local talk-radio shows back then, too. I don't think Limbaugh did any of it--I was a passionate fan of his then--but there were plenty of others. In fact, let me admit it right now, libertarianism doesn't prevent anyone from hating anyone, it would just prevent them from harming anyone based on that hatred. I'm pretty sure Paul and Rockwell are all for the libertarian non-aggression principle: you may not initiate aggression against the person or property of another individual, nor may you delegate such aggression to any individual, group, organization or government.

They also fully support the First Amendment. All of it.

But those excerpts sure don't look like pure individualism to me--they look like that crudist form of collectivism: racism.

Update: Sheldon Richman weighs in. Thoughtfully, as usual.