It’s Still Earlier Than You Think

Matt,

I think you have to show that time spent on the Paul campaign is actually counter productive to make your point.  I don’t see how your resource-constraint argument is up to the task you set for it.  Even if a primary election cycle runs a full year, that leaves three (or seven, if your candidate wins!) years to assist the IHS.   Effort expended on campaigns during the “hot” phase of the cycle  might well produce more results than the same effort expended on IHS during that time.    Many people have learned of libertarian ideas for the first time through political campaigns.  After they become aware, then the IHS can take over.

Of course, there are other ways to shape the intellectual climate than either the Paul campaign or the IHS.  But most people are not in a position to create such channels, and surely not every person who devotes energy to the “Paul channel” is suitable for the “IHS channel”.  In others words, “It’s all about freedom, man!”

“Friedrich Hayek once noted that socialism has never really been a mass movement of workers. To the extent that socialism has gained prominence, it is because of the support it receives from intellectuals.”

How nice that Hayek ‘noted’ that.  But I’m not sure why one should care what Hayek ‘noted’ about the history of working class movements.  Others might ‘note’ that socialist intellectuals have gained prominence… because of the support they received from mass movements of workers.  But then one would have to attribute agency to the working class, rather than casting them as the dupes of conniving elites, and pay attention to their thoughts, aspirations, and actions.  The Nights of Labor, The Making of the English Working Class, labor history more generally… perhaps more instructive on what mass movements of workers have been.

It is a funny Hayek article to reference when talking about the IHS, though.  Rather hard to tell where the intellectual ends and the scholar begins.  ” The point which is important for us, however, is that the scholar who becomes a university president, the scientist who takes charge of an institute or foundation, the scholar who becomes an editor or the active promoter of an organization serving a particular cause, all rapidly cease to be scholars or experts and  become intellectuals, solely in the light of certain fashionable general ideas. The number of such institutions which breed intellectuals and increase their number and powers grows every day. Almost all the “experts” in the mere technique of getting knowledge over are, with respect to the subject matter which they handle, intellectuals and not experts”But of course libertarian institutes and funds would never be involved in peddling certain fashionable ideas.  They’re experts, not intellectuals.

The Mises Institute created by Lew Rockwell is also a good place to educate yourself in libertarian principles.

http://mises.org/

The Daily Caller article was nice to read.  A good reality check for those caught up in the inertia of the Ron Paul campaign. Mr. Zwolinski is correct in believing change is slow. However, I do and will support Ron Paul just to let him spread the ideas of Libertarianism. Even if some of it skewed.  As the author says most of it will not stick.  I can attest to that being involved with many “Paulbots”.  But some of it does resonate.  I use this opportunity to develop long term relationships with people I would never have met to begin with.

I would also encourage any of you to look at the Republican Liberty Caucus.  This is an effort to grow libertarian views and influence within the GOP.  

Politics is war by other means. That said, Paul is the only candidate that would be spared the gallows if Nuremberg were held in 2016.