First Principles

Yesterday, my in-laws were harassed by a crazy Ron Paul phone banker. My father-in-law called the local paper, which gave a pretty nice summation in their political blog:

Tom Gilb, a Reno Republican, said he received an automated solicitation phone call from the Paul campaign. Not being a Paul supporter, Gilb said he pushed ‘1’ to speak to a live person. He asked that person to take his name off of their call list. The phone banker responded that it wasn’t possible to take him off the list. Gilb said he became a bit sarcastic at that point and accused Paul of being deaf. The two got into a shouting match, with the phone banker demanding an apology and Gilb becoming more irate. Gilb finally hung up the phone. But it didn’t end there.

“He called me back,” Gilb said. “Not once, but 25 times!”

According to Gilb, the phonebanker kept demanding an apology. Apparently the phone stopped ringing at some point. Gilb said he complained to the Secretary of State and was told: “Yes, the Paul people are very aggressive.”

“I said, you have no idea,” Gilb said.

While that was going on, the in-laws called my wife and I from a cell to report the bizarreness of it all. It went on for at least an hour, which competed mightily for my attention away from the American Idol premiere. I kept telling them to have the idiot caller, who identified himself as Ben Mason, call me. I’m kind of sad he didn’t.

And here I thought that libertarians believed in the sanctity of the home…

It’s not the first evidence of the thuggishness of some of Ron Paul’s supporters, though. His campaign is notorious for spamming online polls and using illegal network hacking techniques in order to boost their online buzz. White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis love him, and Paul seems to have nothing against taking their money, even when it’s brought to his attention. In New Hampshire, his supporters formed a mob that went after Sean Hannity:

And then, of course, are the racist, conspiracy-theory “newsletters” published under Paul’s name that are either examples of his “philosophical differences,” written by a ghost writer unknown to him for decades while he raked in just under a million bucks a year from its distribution, or “do not represent what I believe or what I have ever believed.”

None of this, of course, is conservative. Conservatives ignore racial stereotypes in favor of a focus on the individual. Conservatives know that the anarchy of street mobs is the fastest way to the tyranny of a police state. Conservatives know that once a man asks you to stop calling his home, that request should be respected. (Mr. Mason told my father-in-law that he “didn’t have to” take him off of his call list, and wouldn’t.)

Ron Paul is wrong on a great many things, most notably his interpretation of the Constitution (details in subsequent posts). But I think the worst part about his (fortunately dead-ender) candidacy is his supporters, the most active of which seem to think that Libertarianism is either a return to the Old Confederacy or a descent into anarchy. It’s a shame that this drowns out the serious and important discussion of limited government and economic liberty, but then, Ron Paul and his supporters have no one to blame but themselves.