Why the Repulblican Party Should Be Very, Very Afraid

This is why we fight.... Last night, John Spivey and I got to speak briefly at the first Ron Paul/Campaign For Liberty meetup since the 2012 Republican convention in Tampa. 

At the Tampa convention, Ron Paul's supporters were declared losers in voice votes that they obviously won.  Some of their state delegations weren't seated.  The Republican Party made it very, very clear that the Paul supporters weren't welcome.  Hell, they actually want the government to spend less money !!   

Note to readers in the UK and elsewhere.... Congressman Ron Paul (now retired) was a libertarian with a small l.  He championed all of the same values as the Libertarian party, but usually chose to remain a Republican.  Republicans have been in power longer, have more money, and are on the winning side of the "wasted vote" fallacy. 

(The wasted vote fallacy goes like this.... "I can't possibly vote for the Libertarian candidate.  If I don't vote for the Republican, the Democrat will win.")

There is a growing Liberty movement within the Republican Party.  Unfortunately, it is aligned with the champions of bloated military budgets, gay/lesbian hatred, corporate subsidies, import quotas, the drug war, and the Noah's Ark preservation society. 

Ron Paul lost his bid to be the Republican nominee for president in 2012 because of the blatant dishonesty of the Republican convention process, and perhaps because the majority of the delegates were drunk enough to nominate the godfather of ObamaCare, Mitt Romney. 

Back to what happened at the meeting....

After listening to Jeremy (the group leader) describe a horrifying Republican party convention where Ron Paul delegates and supporters were intentionally kidnapped and driven around Tampa for 3 hours by treacherous bus drivers who had no intention of taking them to the convention site, plus hundreds of incidents of parliamentary skullduggery, and thugs separating delegates from their groups, plus blatant disregard for the will of the delegation,  I got my chance to address the group.
 
I told them what their philosophical, economic, and political brothers in the Libertarian party had been up to.  I thanked them for working so hard for liberty.  And then I couldn't help myself.... I asked the group if any of them STILL voted for Mitt Romney, despite being treated like Zoo Dirt by the Republican Party.
 
Only two men raised their hands.  (I suspect that those two masochists enjoy having their wives spank them with hairbrushes, being made to clean the toilet with their toothbrushes, all while being told that they've been naughty, naughty, naughty.) 

Then someone asked how many people voted for the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson. 
2/3rds of the people in the room raised their hands.
Some of these people were delegates to the Republican state convention and national convention! 

Rand Paul (Dr. Ron Paul's son) will not be the Republican nominee for president in 2016.  The Republicans would nominate a cocker spaniel before they would nominate a small-government chip from the Ron Paul block.  Someone like Chris Christie or Paul Ryan will get the nod. 

And once again, THE Libertarian party will be waiting for the Republican Liberty Movement voters with open arms, along with promises that they won't be kidnapped and driven around Tampa for three hours. 
 
We're on the winning side.  Gary Johnson for president, 2016. 

 

John Donatich, Yale University Press, The Jewel Of Medina, and the whimper of whipped dogs.

About a year ago, Random House pulled the plug on a novel about the prophet Mohammed and his child bride.
When time permits, please compare the Weasel Words in this old press release about "The Jewel Of Medina" by Sherry Jones, and John Donatich's whimpering in yesterday's NYT about "The Cartoons That Shook The World", a Yale University Press book about the cartoons published in Denmark that won't be published in Yale's book about the cartoons. (See previous post.)

After sending out advance editions of the novel THE JEWEL OF MEDINA, we received in response, from credible and unrelated sources, cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment.
We felt an obligation to take these concerns very seriously. We consulted with security experts as well as with scholars of Islam, whom we asked to review the book and offer their assessments of potential reactions.

I'll bet you dollars against donuts that the security experts and "scholars of Islam" in the Jewel Of Medina controversy overlap with the security experts and schoolmarms that John Donatich allowed to squash the Danish cartoon book.
These people are authoritative, yet anonymous.

We stand firmly by our responsibility to support our authors and the free discussion of ideas, even those that may be construed as offensive by some.

No, you don't. You didn't. You can't say that any more. You really can't. The point of publishing something like this is to offer another point of view, change people's minds, provoke a discussion, and possibly offend people. You caved in. You didn't support your authors and the free discussion of ideas. Notice the Weasel Words "may", "construed", and "some".

However, a publisher must weigh that responsibility against others that it also bears, and in this instance we decided, after much deliberation, to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel. The author and Ballantine subsequently agreed to terminate the agreement, with the understanding that the author would be free to publish elsewhere, if she so chose.

- The Random House Publishing Group

So who are these people that can tell Yale and Random House what to censor? Who elected them? Do they even exist? If you look at the article on the cartoon book, you'll see that they only way to learn what they said is by promising not to tell anyone.

Amazing.