A couple thoughts:

[hommedeterre]

I know I'll deserve some flack for not providing more/better evidence to the following.

1. Why does every point Ron Paul has to make come down to "property rights"? Libertarianism is annoying and I'm not seeing much evidence otherwise. It seems like he/his supporters love to counter arguments with, "Well, that's irrelevant. The world is black

Comments

i am lame and inevitably pro-establishment, it would seem

[rksdf]

Ron Paul is sort of refreshing to listen to on a very basic level, but I do think he would be terribly ineffective as a president. It's fun to get down and dirty in classical liberal theory and insist by the fiat of Locke or Mill that it all comes down to individual rights and life liberty and property and not doing harm to others, but when you try to wrap that thinking around modern problems, you end up with a sort of liberalism like what we've seen develop in the last century--i.e., a welfare state that is concerned at some level about not only people in other countries (e.g., through environmental controls and humanitarian relief) but about the future of humankind itself (like looking to sustainable practices and nuclear disarmament). [Or, I suppose, I should say, if you properly wrap classical liberal theory around modern problems, you get to what we have seen develop in the last hundred years; by saying that, I make a tad more explicit my otherwise implicit assertion that Ron Paul is getting it all wrong.]

And the more I think about all this stuff, the more pro-establishment I become. The most recent thing that made me think, "Gosh, I am just really very comfortable with our system and think it's really neat," was the income tax system when I took my individual income tax class last year. And we talked about alternatives (like a flat tax, or a consumption tax, or a pure wealth tax), but the more we dissected the alternatives, the more it became clear that they sucked.

As another example, it was the same way for me with mainstream generative linguistics. When I took syntax 1 and learned the minimalist program, I thought, 'This is bullshit. I want to do HPSG (head-driven phrase structure grammar) or LFG (lexical functional grammar)!' When I took LFG a year later, I realized that LFG was bullshit, and that there really was a reason the minimalist program was the mainstream generative theory of the day.

I don't know that I could reasonably extract a common theme from the bits and pieces above, but I'd like to force it and say that the more I learn the more I become aware that things are the way they are not just because that is how they are but because plenty of smart and able people have come before and have cobbled the system together. The system in theory could be better, because it's always clear there are problems, but theory leads us to un-reality and often impossible goals which would tend to undermine any potential for real progress, which would likely occur at a snail's pace.

I'm not one for choosing candidates on the basis of issues, either. It does come down to whether I think the person would be able to run the system effectively. But I understand that's not how everyone approaches it.

Happy February!

/B/

Re: i am lame and inevitably pro-establishment, it would seem

[hommedeterre]

I think that all makes sense with those before us cobbling together the systems. But I believe it's also important not to rest on our laurels and always explore and test other options.

I'm curious about the reasons you found the consumption tax would suck. It seems appealing to me, but I'm not informed enough.