Three reasons why I’m not interested in Ron Paul

1. He is a long-time regular columnist at the anarcho-libertarian, anti-American website lewrockwell.com. For backup for this characterization of lewrockwell.com, see “How paleo-libertarianism has become left-wing anti-Americanism,” in which a VFR reader sums up the case against Rockwell. See lewrockwell.com’s hate campaign against Abraham Lincoln. See Rockwell’s comments on the Bill Moyer program. See William Lind at lewrockwell.com, giving advice to Hamas. For further background on the paleo-libertarian mindset, see the Mother of all VFR debates about (and with) the Paleolibertarians/Neo-Confederates.

2. Paul uses the anti-American former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer as his foreign policy advisor. Even Canadian leftist Ken Hechtman agrees with me that Scheuer is a bad actor. He once wrote at VFR: “I don’t entirely trust Michael Scheuer either. What you see as anti-American schadenfreude, I see as disgruntled-bureaucrat-cover-your-ass. It’s this constant tone of ‘I predicted this and this and this at the time and you didn’t listen to me and now the sky is going to fall and you’re going to deserve it.’”

3. While I’ve seen various statements by Paul on foreign policy and the Constitution with which I agree, I’ve also seen various statements by him that smack of the cheap anti-Americanism of the anti-war right, so similar to the anti-Americanism of the anti-war left. I don’t have any quotes at the moment to back up that statement. It’s an impression I’ve gathered of him over years, which, as I’ve said, made me lose any interest in him.

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“Albert Nock” writes:

I didn’t know Michael Scheuer was anti-American. He was head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit and tried to serve his country by going after the man. Sure, he’s critical of our policies, but so are you. He definitely seems like a better foreign policy advisor than Norman Podhoretz, Frank Gaffney or Samantha Powers.

LA replies:

Are you famliar with the idea of Schadenfreude? It means delight in another person’s misfortune. Every time Scheuer opens his mouth, it is to express delight at putting America down. That is not a critic. That is an anti-American. Some people are incapable of seeing the difference.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 21, 2007 11:28 AM | Send