The first is a cranky congressman from Texas named Ron Paul who won’t disown a third-party spoiler candidacy. The second problem is the Ron Paul vote, which as we’ll see has little to do with Ron Paul.

The congressman named Ron Paul has served in the House off and on since the 1970s to no discernible effect. Every four years he runs for president, tapping into a vestigial base of Newsletter Libertarians, whose support qualifies him for the debates.

Let no one deny that swimming eternally amid the rightward waves of American politics is an ever-present school of fish that would solve Washington’s spending problem mainly with cuts in the defense budget (ending foreign “entanglements”), set a place at the nuclear table for Iran (“Who are they going to bomb?”), cut Israel loose, cut the Federal Reserve loose, and legalize many currently controlled substances.

The Ron Paul vote is a separate matter. In June, polling put the familiar Mr. Paul at about 5.5% for the Iowa caucus and 8% nationally. That would be his normal ceiling. Suddenly, Ron Paul is the Iowa front-runner at over 22.5% and is up to 12% nationally. Why?

In July the Republican protest vote fixed on Michele Bachmann, who materialized in the No. 2 spot. In September it became the Perry vote, cresting at 31%. He couldn’t debate, so in October it became the Cain vote. When he collapsed, the “left for dead” Gingrich candidacy miraculously rose to 35%. With Newt carpet-bombed and again left for dead, the GOP protest vote mounted its last pony, the Ron Paul campaign.

Associated PressRepublican presidential candidate, Rep. Ron Paul. (more…)

Ron Paul’s supporters are sure of one thing: Their candidate has always been consistent—a point Dr. Paul himself has been making with increasing frequency. It’s a thought that comes up with a certain inevitability now in those roundtables on the Republican field. One cable commentator genially instructed us last Friday, “You have to give Paul credit for sticking to his beliefs.”

He was speaking, it’s hardly necessary to say, of a man who holds some noteworthy views in a candidate for the presidency of the United States. One who is the best-known of our homegrown propagandists for our chief enemies in the world. One who has made himself a leading spokesman for, and recycler of, the long and familiar litany of charges that point to the United States as a leading agent of evil and injustice, the militarist victimizer of millions who want only to live in peace.

Getty ImagesGOP presidential contender Ron Paul

Hear Dr. Paul on the subject of the 9/11 terror attacks—an event, he assures his audiences, that took place only because of U.S. aggression and military actions. True, we’ve heard the assertions before. But rarely have we heard in any American political figure such exclusive concern for, and appreciation of, the motives of those who attacked us—and so resounding a silence about the suffering of those thousands that the perpetrators of 9/11 set out so deliberately to kill. (more…)

In 1989, the Yale Law Review created a stir with an article by a self-described liberal calling the Second Amendment “an embarrassment, like the drunken uncle who shows up at the family reunion.” Liberals ignore it, the author wrote, but “they would never be so cavalier with an amendment they like.”

For most of its history, the Supreme Court also viewed the Second Amendment like that embarrassing uncle, avoiding cases that would force it to rule on the central question: Is the right “to keep and bear arms” an individual right or one that applies only to “a well-regulated militia”? In June 2008, the Supreme Court finally gave an answer—the shunned Second Amendment does indeed apply to individuals, just like its more popular cousins in the Bill of Rights.

In “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America,” Adam Winkler tells the remarkable story of the rag-tag group of libertarian lawyers who challenged nearly a century of lower-court precedent to bring a clear-cut Second Amendment case to the Supreme Court. This is an engaging and provocative legal drama about the six-year courtroom journey of District of Columbia v. Heller and a fascinating survey of the misunderstood history of guns and gun control in America.

Mr. Winkler shows that the right to keep and bear arms is “one of the oldest and most firmly established rights in America”—and one that predates the Second Amendment. The colonists, after all, didn’t like it when George III banned all exports of firearms to the colonies. At the time, owning a gun wasn’t just a right; it was a requirement for anybody who could be called into militia service.

But gun rights in America almost never meant no gun laws. In fact, Mr. Winkler says, “gun control is as much a part of the history of guns in America as the Second Amendment.” That was true even in the Wild West. Frontier towns had strict gun-control laws, many requiring newcomers to check their guns at the city limits. Leaving aside drunk and disorderly conduct, no arrest was more common in the frontier towns like Tombstone and Deadwood than an arrest for illegally carrying concealed weapons. It was Sheriff Wyatt Earp’s effort to enforce Ordinance No. 9—”To Provide against the Carrying of Deadly Weapons”—that led to the shootout at the OK Corral.

Let me start this article by saying this: I confess from the start that this is a very, very passionate issue for me.  I am not a fan of Ron Paul, and I respond with passion and sometimes vitriol at times when I am confronted with Paulites (my term for those who are devout Ron Paul supporters).  I freely admit that I have an axe to grind here, but I deny that my agenda is a result of irrational or unhealthy dislike.  In fact, I am going to argue that it is all that I like about Ron Paul that has made me so passionately opposed to him.

I am writing this article for one of two categories of Ron Paul supporters: The well-meaning folks who appreciate Ron Paul’s rhetoric regarding freedom and limited government.  The other category of Ron Paul supporters, those who are consciously self-aware in their belief that America is a bad guy military bully, and needs to sit idly by in an isolationist sense as a matter of foreign policy, are not the target of this article.  I disagree with them with every ounce of of breath in my body, but I have no hope that I might be able to persuade them.  The latter group is aware of the things I am going to say in this article, and they do not care.  I am hopeful that the former group will feel that the facts I present in this piece are new information, and warrant a change in their perspective.

I am an advocate of the freedom movement in this country.  I believe, with Ron Paul, that the United States federal government has morphed into an eggregious behemoth, violating their own Constitutional jurisdiction on a daily basis.  I believe that the federal government was created by the people, for the people, and that if we do not reign in their size and jurisdiction, it will one day represent the end of the Republic (fortunately, I have every confidence that we will be successful in that endeavor, incrementally).  I have spent the last fifteen years studying economics and finance, and believe that Ron Paul has some wise things to say on the subject of a strong U.S. dollar.  I am not a pure Austrian economist, as Paul is, but I was heavily influenced by many of their leaders when I first became obsessed with the subject, and believe there is a lot to be learned from Von Mises and some of the early Austrian economists.

But my love of freedom economics and my desire for a limited, Constitutionally constrained federal government has not caused me to jump on the Ron Paul bandwagon.  In fact, and this is the most important line I will write in this article, it is my deep appreciation for where Ron Paul is right that has caused me to so emphatically reject him where he is wrong. Put differently, Ron Paul is his own worst enemy, and because I care so much for the freedom movement, I believe Ron Paul and his more extremist followers are doing irreparable harm to that very cause in our country.  How could I possibly jump on that bandwagon?

I want to start my indictment of Ron Paul where I will surely end it: With the linking of Ron Paul to the American fanatical lunatic, Lew Rockwell.  It is dangerous ground when one seeks to take down a person by simply associating him with someone else.  As we all know, it is actually a logical fallacy of the first order.  But Ron Paul is not merely “associated” with Lew Rockwell; he is Lew Rockwell.  And he makes no attempt to deny this or cover it up. (more…)

Times are tough for state-funded colleges like Florida State University. After four years of budget trimming, FSU now faces an additional $19 million in cuts and a $40 million deficit. So it’s an inopportune moment to raise a stink over private donations of $1.5 million made three years ago.

But that’s just what two FSU professors—Ray Bellamy of the College of Medicine and Kent Miller, professor emeritus of psychology—did earlier this month in an op-ed in the Tallahassee Democrat, arguing that the donations are “seriously damaging to academic freedom.” The piece set off a firestorm of warring newspaper editorials, blog posts and online petitions.

What’s the beef? Like many large private gifts, the $1.5 million to FSU was given to endow programs in a designated subject specified by the donors. The professors’ problem in this case is the subject, the strings attached, and, most important, who the donors are. (more…)