Posted on 01/22/2015 3:57:45 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Ron Paul is feeling some blowback of his own. He was roundly criticized — notably by a number of high-profile libertarians normally inclined to sympathize with many of the views he has helped to popularize — for arguing that the Charlie Hebdo murders were the result of “blowback,” i.e., that French jihadists murdered the staff of a satirical magazine in Paris infamous for its cartoons of Islamic figures in retaliation for U.S. and French foreign policy, rather than in retaliation for the contents of the publication. His argument is absurd on its face — the editors of Charlie Hebdo are not what you would call major players in the foreign-policy world — but Paul rushed to his own defense, which is for him an increasingly lonely task. “Those who do not understand blowback made the ridiculous claim that I was excusing the attack or even blaming the victims,” he wrote.
Is that claim actually ridiculous?
Perhaps Ron Paul should read more of the work published by the Ron Paul Institute, an organization to which he has, if I am not misinformed, some meaningful formal connection. In an article on Wednesday bearing the headline “France Under the Influence” — no points for guessing whose influence — Diana Johnstone did precisely that: blame the victims. “The Charlie Hebdo humorists were a bit like irresponsible children playing with matches who burned the house down,” she wrote. “Or perhaps several houses.” That is not ambiguous. If Ron Paul rejects these ideas, why is he publishing them?
It gets worse: Johnstone suggested that certain nefarious forces — Jews prominent among them — might have intended to provoke such an attack. (Do read the whole ugly illiterate mess of an article in case you think I’m taking her words unfairly out of context.)...........
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Paraphrasing a FReeper tag-line:
“Why don’t God-hating anti-religionists ever sue Muslims?”
Ron Paul quit the Congress ( did not stand for re-election) under Reagan because he thought Reagan’s policy of putting Pershing missiles in Europe would provoke the Soviets. We know how that worked out.
Rand believes exactly the same things as Ron, he just masks it better in public.
The family is nuts and gives Libertarians a bad name.
“Rand believes exactly the same things as Ron, he just masks it better in public.”
What concerns many of us is this may very well be the case. Maybe not everything, but the underlying assumptions are the same.
He says the same things that Ron does, he just says them in a different way so he can deny it later if needed.
“The family is nuts and gives Libertarians a bad name.”
On foreign policy and immigration policy, Libertarians didn’t need their help in acquiring a bad name.
This article is interesting. Not because of the article so much: its an obvious hatchetjob. What’s interesting is that National Review, as the kneepad journal of record for the gop-e, is spending copious amounts of space telling us what they consider to be a threat. Libertarians of all things.
Very illuminating.
Perhaps they are overcome by autocephalophilia.... An undue attachment to their own heads.
Or perhaps they just fall silent, prudently, when the jihadists put the anti-religionists' ignorance and prejudice on public display.
I suspect you are correct
Of course being an evil war mongering ultra squishy RINO Neo-Con moderate, I’ve got problems with out Libertarian brothers and sisters when it comes to foreign policy....particularly the Paul brand.
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