Tom Cotton at Harvard: Hated Libertarians, Praised Bill Clinton

Daily Caller ^ | 08/01/2013 | Charles C. Johnson

[Viennacon]

Didn’t Breitbart write an article kind of debunking this.

[OddLane]

Huckabee on steroids.

[OddLane]

Not much of a debunking if you ask me.

[GeronL]

Charles Johnson. heh

Why is it a big deal that he didn’t like libertarians? A lot of conservatives don’t.

[Viennacon]

Well, he’s better than Pryor. He’ll have my support.

[House Atreides]

It’s called sowing FUD-—fear, uncertainty and doubt. Expect to be up to your neck, and maybe your nose, in the FUD they will be spreading about a variety of conservative candidates. If they can get conservatives taking shots against one another, those shots won’t be going in the direction of the GOPe RINO candidates such as Lindsey Graham and the Democrats such as Pryor.

[Impala64ssa]

“If we changed the age limit, we would not get a libertarian paradise,” he wrote. “We would only get countless teenage alcoholics, even more than we have now.”
In all fairness, I've heard the late Harry Browne and most other Libertarians stress in no uncertain terms that they do NOT support allowing minors access to alcohol, tobacco, or drug use.

[man_in_tx]

Not encouraging, but.... I was a liberal Democrat in my college days, as well.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks.

[cdcdawg]

“Still another reason (to be libertarian) is selfishness: since you are fortunate and successful, you are likely to want to hoard that fortune and success.”

Wow, how is that different from a liberal? It sounds like he would like to “spread things around a little”. It was a long time ago, but it’s not good. Maybe he was trying to ingratiate himself with the other folks there. Still better than Pryor.

[dadfly]

thanks for this post.

i fancy i can get a peek into a young man’s character from this early writing. i see a young/sharp/honest mind forming. good prose. clean. well organized/reasoned. bodes well for us. i hope he hasn’t changed much. just a bit less idealism and a bit more wise

funny, by contrast, i haven’t seen anything of obama’s student writing at the same place. and this is after 5 years as president. funny indeed.

[nathanbedford]

If Cotton had advocated that the city of Cambridge, the state of Massachusetts, or the federal government banned smoking, I would be concerned. It did nothing of the kind, here is what he advocated:

Harvard should not allow smoking anywhere on its property.” (emphasis supplied)

If one wants to argue that Harvard assumes the role of a quasi public institution because of its federal and state subsidies and privileged tax benefits, that is certainly a respectable intellectual position. But hardly one which disqualifies a Republican running against a Democrat. One can certainly take the position that the rights of private property, even Harvard's, trump a visitor's right to smoke. Many on these threads have argued that the business owner or property owner should have superior rights to regulate smoking as it chooses over the power of the state to ban smoking.

As to his endorsement of the Clintons, he has evidently recanted this nonsense written when he was young. Note: Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama both wrote a lot of nonsense when they were young and I do not excuse them because of their age. So, cotton should be held some account but he should also be credited for recanting and, to my knowledge, neither Hillary nor Michelle have gotten any smarter.

I have no problem with the state limiting the sale of alcohol to minors.

Paleo conservatives ought to be encouraged, not discouraged, by cottons statements as quoted because it is clear that he will not confine his conservatism to a Wall Street Journal myopia which limits conservatism to opposing spending and taxes. These remarks suggest that Cotton, if elected, would be active on social issues, a tendency which should please paleos.

[montag813]

So he thought Clinton was a great campaigner. Uh...DUH. The rest of it seems to be a religious-borne puritanism which he may well have outgrown. In any case, a shitload better than Mark Pryor or even the phony Huckabee.

[CaspersGh0sts]

And I voted for Al Gore. Oops. Kids in college are still learning who they are. Their brains aren’t developed, and frankly, they haven’t lived. They go off to study abroad, and suddenly their whole word view changes for some reason.

I did all of that.

And then I grew, I found out who I was, and I became principled.

Show me what the guy has done over the past 10-years. I couldn’t care less what college looked like.

[des]

Oh, hell, he hates smoke. BFD. This man is war-hardened and rational. He probably still hates smoke.

[des]

Reagan Democrat here.

[Lancey Howard]

"It is nice to think that you are responsible for all the good fortune and success you achieve,” he wrote. ”Another is naivete, for you are surely naive if you believe the immediately preceding proposition. Still another reason is selfishness: since you are fortunate and successful, you are likely to want to hoard that fortune and success."

The guy sounds like your typical Democrat communist. He may as well have said, "You didn't build that!"

[cynwoody]

OK. So he was jerk in college.

The operational question is, is he the best candidate on the radar to knock a Donk out of the Senate?

If the answer is yes, then send him a check. If no, then yuck up the Daily Caller.

[jocon307]

“The rest of it seems to be a religious-borne puritanism which he may well have outgrown.”

Yes, it certainly does have puritanical overtones. I’d like to know more about what his views are now, because the one thing we don’t need any more of are nannies.