Lee on Feb 18 2009 | Filed under: Around the Web
Happened into a alleging that Ronpaul is actually a “luciferian” member of the dastardly and super-secret Illuminati / Freemason / Roman Catholic / CFR world conspiracy. Many Ronpaulists of course support Paul because they believe him to be battling these fictional conspiracies and secret societies. Which schizophrenic delusion will prevail? Who cares. It’s enormously amusing to see all the same.
Sphere: Related ContentLee on Sep 11 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Libertarianism
What’s this? Bob Barr wanted Ronpaul as his veep? Take your eyes off the Libertarian Party for a minute and you miss a lot of foolishness. Our old friend Steve Newton fills us in on the amusing drama that ensued (Ronpaul said no BTW).
Now, I had been under the impression that Barr already had a vice presidential candidate and it turns out I was right. Evidently Barr sought to dump Wayne Allyn Root for Ronpaul, or Root dumped himself in honor of Ronpaul. Apparently Root had been controversial within the party for his support of the very uncontroversial war effort in Afghanistan.
Sometimes the LP can look like a bloody civil war in Lilliput, fought over possession of a discarded matchstick.
Alas, it also seems some Ronpaulists are now accusing Barr of being a Republican double agent, sent to destroy the Libertarian Party. As if Libertarians ever needed any assistance in doing that. Where Ronpaulists go paranoia follows though, and a faction within the LP has begun an effort to get the Libertarian National Committee to un-endorse its candidates for being clandestine conservative operatives.
So very LP.
Sphere: Related ContentLee on Aug 03 2008 | Filed under: Culture, Domestic Politics, Glenn Greenwald's Carnival of Fisking, Lee's Page, Uncategorized
(photo: companyink)
After writing about the Ronpaulist fear mongering of Jordan Page, and then reading Lance’s splendid post on the latest contheorist pandering of Glenn Greenwald, a common insight has reoccurred to me: the absurd amount of cognitive dissonance conditional to political paranoia.
This is something Christopher Hitchens explored quite adeptly last year at the “Four Horsemen” chat with his three fellow atheist luminaries, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris (, skip to 8:17). In a response to a point by Dennett, Hitchens argues that the stress of cognitive dissonance is the inevitable state deriving from belief in political unreality, and furthermore, that this condition exists and persists on purely survival grounds (seems true in miniature too).
I’d add that it’s the compartmentalism that political paranoia necessitates in an open society that is the most conspicuous betrayal of its essential cynicism. Something especially apparent when you run into it face to face.
(more…)
The View From the Bluff: Lance’s Economic and Finance Blog
Multinational Force-Iraq
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Marginal Revolution
Robby’s Last FM Journal
The Volokh Conspiracy
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