thank you

Yawn.

Talk about “moral panics” …”

steve, this is fair — up to a point. Tastes may vary, but i think calling 1980s era new york ‘rapetown’ is funny, and calling barbara jordan a ‘half-educated race victimologist’ is fair-play. but saying that MLK ‘seduced underage girls and boys’ sounds more like a deranged allegation than a joke. and what about all the conspiratoid trilateral commission black helicopter nuttery? i mean, for god’s sakes, the newsletter was called the ron paul SURVIVAL report! doesn’t this play into the making-bombs-in-the-outhouse image most libertarians want to avoid?

I do want to make clear that I thought the earlier nastiness to which you referred was extremely unhelpful and inappropriate, but I’m not inclined to treat the behavior of others as a standard for my own. And the reason I offered for objecting to the investigative article had nothing whatsoever to do with “infighting,” and everything to do with considering the most productive use of one’s limited resources. I also offered a take on the issue of libertarianism being associated with racism, and how best to deal with it.

But I can understand a bit of crankiness at this point.

I don’t want to get in the middle of this unfortunate spat. I believe it would be better for us to move on, try to be effective personal spokespeople for libertarianism, and cease attacking others. If libertarianism is being associated in the minds of some with racism, the only effective solution is for non-racists to promote libertarianism as actively as possible. Neither condemning nor disassociating from others is a particularly useful strategy (indeed, if I had to cease friendships and associations with anyone who didn’t live up to my personal moral code, I would have to cut off contact with every person in the world, myself included). In any event, we’re all no more than six links away from Kevin Bacon, Osama bin Laden, and Dick Cheney.

It is not sufficient justification to attack Paul or Paul’s friends that the attacks be true. It is also an editorial determination as to how to use limited resources. I really doubt that investigating these newsletters is at all the best way to promote libertarian values, regardless of the final conclusions drawn.

My own modest contribution to this debate was posted somewhere (http://hnn.us/comments/117837.html). While it is hardly the last word on the subject, I wish it could be, as there are so many more useful things we could all be doing with our time to advance libertarianism.

For my part, I intend to continue reading the output of Reason, CATO, lewrockwell.com, and antiwar.com. As Rodney King (yes, that Rodney King) once said, “Can we all get along?”