Good post. I agree. When talking to people about Paul, I often find myself cornered into defending the fact that "he's really not as crazy has he sounds."

And that gets frustrating. And what's even more frustrating is how completely the GOP has abandoned the core principles that make me support Paul -- very simple ideas such as that less government is better; local government is better than national government for difficult questions; It's not the government's job to protect people from themselves, etc.

Good Post Zach.

Like Phil, I find myself clarifying Dr. Paul to people. I feel like I am on the inside as a libertarian and can explain what I think a Paul administration would really do. I am also able to temper his stances with the unlikelihood that Congress is suddenly going to become libertarian also.

We are the minority (as you also blog about today). And people really do think we are weird for having principles. For me it is not the different policies that people might support that bothers me. It is that so many people who live in the country founded on principles don't have any.

Finally, could you clarify one point. You are not denying that the perfect is the enemy of the good, right? Only lamenting that libertarians are generally unbending people who only accept the perfect and thus deny the good? (A trait my wife often points out I have.)

Here's the problem: I grant that it is possible for someone to defend a large portion of Paul's views without being at all crazy. But the evidence on the whole is that Ron Paul himself is not such a person, and the portion of his views that really are pretty much indefensible are an important part of the evidence here.

Philosopher, I've never seen Paul make a factual claim that sounded "crazy." Generally, when he's actually asked questions about his positions, he talks about them the way a libertarian would, and not as a conspiracy theorist would.

Recently you made a post attempting to box Paul in with conspiracy theorists on the NAFTA highway. I'd be curious to see if Paul actually buys the theories about the highway, and if so, what evidence he has seen to support those theories. His web site certainly doesn't go into detail about it, other than mentioning it.

Other than that example, I think a lot of things people say Ron Paul believes are actually mischaracterizations. At least that's what comes out when the man is actually asked directly about his beliefs -- for example, about 9/11.

I don't know why you don't think that the delusional stuff about the _nonexistent_ NAFTA Superhighway & the _nonexistent_ conspiracy (of "powerful special interests", of course) to merge the US, Canada, and Mexico into one "North American Union" country, is enough to count as pretty fruitcakey on a question of fact. No details can save him here -- he's just completely wrong at the most general level, and in a way that is prominently featured on the top "issue" link on his campaign site.

His economics is also, by the standards of an absolutely vast majority of the discipline, somewhere in the general neighborhood of the labor theory of value in its being ungrounded in reality. Again, a matter of fact about which his views are not particularly reality-based.

Philosopher,

I think that Paul's goldbug leanings can be easily overlooked for the fact that he will do what he says.

Unlike nearly every other politician in Washington, Paul actually does what he says he will do. Many times, Paul does what he says he will do to the detriment of his own interests. He has a proven and unarguable track record on that.

This lack of rent-seeking behaviour is what interests me in him the most, the rest of his positions are irrelevant because I believe he will engage in honest discourse to see his agenda done.

I'll probably vote for Paul whenever I see him on the ballot, but he IS a fruitcake and I most assuredly am not a libertarian.

But when this country completes its path to leftwing totalitarian dictatorship, I'm going to blame libertarians first and foremost. You try to discuss ideas for reducing the size and scope of government re health care, or schools, or anything -- trying to come up with some compromise to mostly let market forces do their work, more so than we have now -- and Joe Libertarian is going to say, "nope, can't have that. government shouldn't be involved, period." So these lazy asses cop out on dealing with the difficult issues and leave the field to the leftwing totalitarians. (Republicans are too stupid and lazy, so there's no help from them.)

I've had the impression that Ron Paul is a little more sensible than the usual libertarian, though, and at least has his feet on planet earth on some points.

"the rest of his positions are irrelevant because I believe he will engage in honest discourse to see his agenda done." Um... wha? This is only a good thing IF YOU AGREE WITH HIS AGENDA. In which case, the sanity or in- of that agenda is a rather important question, I would think!

Principles are a good thing to know that a politician has when they point generally in the direction you like, because they serve as a kind of commitment mechanism towards that direction. But they should be treated as a decidedly _bad_ thing when they point in a direction you don't like, for _exactly_ the same reason.

I believe that GWB is a man of principles. The problem is, his principles are _awful_, and his inflexibility and determination in pursuing those principles has been a pretty much unmitigated disaster for the country.

Philosopher, if there's no NAFTA highway, and no conspiracy to merge north america, then Ron Paul won't have any trouble putting an end to them. So I'm really not worried about the fact that he may misunderstand them.

As for Paul's fascination with the federal reserve; he's the only presidential candidate with even the slightest hint of actual economic theory to his policies. So even if you disagree with his theories, at least he isn't completely ignoring economic theory, like the other candidates.

For example, Paul's anti-immigration stance isn't based on xenophobia, or some messed-up idea that we can shelter American worker's from competition by locking the borders. He recognizes that the real problem with immigration is the massive entitlement system we have, that gets overloaded with an influx of poor immigrants. His ultimate goal is to open the borders -- but only after getting rid of entitlements.

It's that kind of economic thinking that makes me trust him more than the other candidates. Sure, he might be wrong on the facts, but he's got the basic concepts of supply & demand, and the free market down pat. He recognizes the futility of the drug war and massive federal regulation of business.

If he thinks there are conspiracies out there that don't exist, the good news is, he's not going to make whole new arms of goverment to deal with the non-existant conspiracies.

So my money is on Paul even if he's totally wrong about all kinds of facts -- just because he's got the right attitude about dealing with problems. So even if the problems he believes are there really don't exist, it's not going to hurt us one bit, because he won't spend a bunch of taxpayer money, or take away freedoms, to fight those problems, whether or not they exist.

"Ron Paul: too unmoored from reality to raise your taxes?" That's the best the GOP can offer us today? Yikes.

Would some Paul supporter out there less profoundly confused than Phil like to take a stab at explaining to the rest of us why it's not evidence of fruitcakiness on Paul's part that he is (inter alia) pushing a delusional conspiracy theory on his campaign website?

Then there's this: "...he's the only presidential candidate with even the slightest hint of actual economic theory to his policies." Er, no. This is simply & spectactularly false. If you like real economics of a generally progressive flavor, then you can look to Obama's campaigns, with folks like Goolsbee on staff; if you're basically a fiscal responsibility centrist and free-trader not looking to shake up the economic state of affairs too much, then Richardson and (yes) Clinton should look good to you; if you're a (non-insane) supply-sider, then Romney should be your guy, with serious economics dudes like Mankiw and Hubbard on offer. Plenty of _actual_ economics know-how are on offer on a number of campaigns. Ron Paul's is not one of them.

You didn't answer my question on the other thread, philosopher, regarding how Paul is "pushing" conspiracy theories. I think that's a mischaracterization so you can dismiss him. Show me how Ron Paul "pushes" a conspiracy theory (as opposed to simply referring to facts you claim are inaccurate).

Shrill dismissals of Paul -- "he's nuts! certifiable! pushes conspiracy theories!" just confirm for the Paul suporters that the opposition really has nothign to offer to actually match Paul's principled stand against taxes and big government. They just have to call him crazy.

It's so easy to call someone crazy by selectively quoting them like you do with Paul. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. It's the standard, silly sterotype trick that politicians pull with each other when nothing else distinguishes them -- see, e.g. all the baiting between the indistinguishable democrats and republicans right now.

Paul actually offers something different. He speaks to a need for less government and more freedom that the other politicians are too chickenshit/selfish to address. So of course they call him crazy; otherwise they'd have to admit that none of them really want more freedom or less government.

I didn't answer the question, because it's a patently silly question. On the top "issue" link on his website, he talks about the plans for the NAFTA Superhighway and a grand conspiracy to do away with the US government. He is representing his opposing these plans as one of his key issues. He is thus, by any reasonable or even unreasonable standard, pushing the story that there are such plans. And, moreover, there are in fact no such plans. If you think that there are such grand conspiracies, then by all means feel free to try to argue for that claim; you'll find zero credible evidence for it out there, but I suspect that that won't stop you from believing it. Believing things without any real evidence for them is, after all, a fairly defining character trait of both Dr. Paul and a great many of his supporters.

Not necessarily fruitcakey, but maybe just standard politician not-quite-being-straight-with-the-truth, but Ron Paul's got some screwy numbers:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/?hpid=news-col-blog-viewall
(h/t Andrew Sullivan)

philosopher, so just how crazy do you think Paul is? Merely eccentric or downright dangerous? I agree that he ought not give credence to the NAU stuff, but it's a far cry from the X-Files or the Protocols. They are more like rumors. It appears that Paul can be soberly called 1) misinformed and 2) paranoid; the latter may be some cause for concern. I think this is a much more measured criticism than calling him a fruitcake. And as I mentioned, there are worse things to believe, like the proposition that we can cure terrorism by doubling Gitmo.

I think he's not so much crazy in any clinical sense, as a classic crank. Let's call it an epistemological rather than a psychological disorder. But the evidence-free disposition of crankhood makes him a _very_ inappropriate person to want to follow up on the 8 years of the different flavor of evidence-free "deciderness" that we've been suffering under.

"I think this is a much more measured criticism than calling him a fruitcake." But the fruitcake charge is the _consequence_ of those criticisms. It's not a separate issue.

Look, I don't blame anyone for liking the sound of a lot of his principles. (And I certainly don't blame thinking conservatives for being profoundly disappointed in the electoral offerings they have to choose from this time around.) But it's only in someone's real choices -- the proposed policies, and displayed priorities, the tactical & strategic decisions -- that we can see what those principles really mean for them. Viewed in that light, Paul comes out to be merely the least-awful of a spectacularly bad crop of GOP candidates -- though do note that I am agreeing, as I have throughout, with the last part of your comment to the effect that he's much less problematic than the likes of Giuliani or, say, Tancredo. (I still think Huckabee may warrant closer attention, though.) Unlike most of the GOP hopefuls, Paul is actually substantively right on some of the biggest issues. But he'd still make a terrible, terrible president, and his crank-like character as manifested in his public record is a significant part of the problem.