Could Ron Paul actually win the nomination?
The race for the Republican Presidential nominee in the USA is getting interesting. Last Tuesday the good people of Iowa voted for their favourite Republican, with no clear outcome. Willard “Mitt” Romney won the popular vote by eight over Rick “please don’t google my surname” Santorum, but the actual allocation of delegates is unknown since Iowa uses a complex caucus system that no normal person understands. The only certain consequence from the Iowa vote is that Michele Bachmann has dropped out, leaving six serious contenders.
While all of the remaining candidates have an interesting story to tell, it is the rise of Ron Paul and a growing libertarian voting block that has the biggest long-term consequences. When I wrote about Ron Paul for “the drum” a month ago he was still being largely ignored by the mainstream media (MSM) despite consistent good polling and fund-raising. That is slowly changing. Given that Paul came 3rd in Iowa (with 21% of the vote), is currently polling 2nd in the next voting state of New Hampshire (~20%), and is the only candidate other than Romney with money and campaign infrastructure around the country, some people have started paying attention.
Defending death threats
I believe in free speech. I mean — I really believe in free speech.
That doesn’t just mean that I support Andrew Bolt’s right to say whatever he likes about aboriginals, irrespective of who gets offended. And it doesn’t just mean that I oppose all censorship, such as the banning of Mein Kampf in some European countries. It also means I oppose defamation laws, and I believe you should be allowed to say anything about anybody, whether true or false, for whatever reason. It even means I believe that tobacco companies should be free to advertise.
I believe attempts to limit speech “for the public good” will mostly do more harm than good, and that messy and imperfect freedom is better than neat and tidy (but even more imperfect) government control.
Today I was discussing another of the controversial areas of free speech. Yesterday, that crazy old kook of the blogosphere grumpy-Graeme Bird wrote an eloquent rant aimed at me, where he said:
“He must die. John Humphreys must die so that this country can live. He has betrayed this country too many times and he must no longer live … This is too important a subject to let John Humphreys live. Where does the lying end. I’m convinced that it only ends when John Humphreys is cold and stiff … HE MUST DIE, FOR THE LYING TO END. AND THIS IS A LIFE OR DEATH MATTER … I am accusing Humphreys of being a knowing traitor … SO MY NEW CLAIM IS THAT HUMPHREYS WILL NEVER STOP LYING. THAT HE WILL NEVER BE A SAFE PAIR OF HANDS. THAT HE WILL ALWAYS BE A TRAITOR. WHILE HE YET LIVES.”
My first death threat. Now I know that I’m important. A few friends have suggested I take it seriously, and one kindly offered to call his federal police friend who would call Graeme… but I nixed that idea. For his part, Graeme says that it is not a death threat because he doesn’t plan on doing any killing himself. That’s good to hear. But another friend pointed out that the above sentiments might still be considered incitement to violence… which got me thinking about free speech.
Who is Ron Paul?
In November next year, Barack Obama will go up against a Republican candidate for the Presidency of the United States, and defacto leader of planet earth. But before then, the Grand Old Party (GOP) of the Republicans will need to pick their candidate, which involves an eight month marathon of rolling mini-elections in 55 States and territories (including Guam and American Samoa) starting in Iowa on 3 January 2012.
While sane people have been ignoring the political circus, election junkies have been closely watching the long campaign as various candidates have come and gone. At the beginning of the year the pundits pontificated as a string of potential candidates — Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour, and Mike Huckabee — all opted out of the race. Tim Pawlenty said “yes” then “no”. Tease.
And so when debate season rolled around, the field had been narrowed to a rag-tag bunch of about a dozen, with the most prominent being the millionaire Mormon ex-Governor of Massachusetts — Mitt Romney. From the start, Romney has consistently been 1st or 2nd in national polls among GOP voters with about 20-30% support, and he has been seen as the frontrunner due to his decent polling, wealthy friends, establishment support, and high media profile. The race has then been seen as a contest between Romney and “anti-Romney”, a mythical creature who has so far taken four human forms — Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and now Newt Gingrich. Cain has since dropped out of the race.
(Sadly, the self-described vampire Jonathon Sharkey has also dropped out… and the “rent-is-too-damn-high” candidate Jimmy McMillan has failed to get into the early primaries.)
Liechtenstein
There is a country in Europe with a federal income tax rate of 1.2% and free trade, recognition of same-sex unions and yet no anti-discrimination legislation, people can own handguns for self-defence, welfare is done at a local level, their leader believes the State should just concentrate on the rule of law and foreign affairs, citizens can veto any piece of legislation with a referendum, local autonomy is so extensive that a local community (about 3000 people) have the freedom to vote themselves independent at any time, there is no standing army, they refuse to join the EU, and have a GDP/person of $134,392. Welcome to the Principality of Liechtenstein — libertarian wonderland.
Farmers, miners & private property rights
The debate about mining on agricultural land has long frustrated me. While one side argues to help the “farmers” and the other side wants to help the “miners” it seems everybody has abandoned the most obvious solution — clear allocation of private property rights. As nobel prize winner Ronald Coase explained, conflicts over resources can be solved by allocating private property rights and then allowing trade so that the resources end up going where they are most valuable.
So my suggested approach to the mining/farming debate has been to strengthen the private property rights of farmers so that they have the “right to say no” regarding access to their land. Miners can then deal directly with farm-owners to come to mutually beneficial deals regarding access. Unfortunately, this approach has been ignored by both sides of politics. Until now.
A delayed response
My carbon tax article in “the drum” in June sparked a lot of debate, with many people angry at my article and a few people saying some nice things. Most of the negative responses were quite dumb and don’t deserve a response, and it seemed that many didn’t read (or at least, didn’t understand) the article before they declared it wrong. But there was a response by “James512″ (20 June 2011, 12:39pm) which deserve a response. I’m going to go back to an old-style blogging technique and “fisk” his comment:
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