Carl Milsted is off his rocker here. Not to mention, neither qualified nor worthy of respect and trust to justify his conclusions to me and to everyone else regarding Bob Barr.

I was generally correct about my citing of Barr’s fundraising practices. But, even if I were “off by 70 K,” so what? Even if Barr did receive over $400 K or $500 K, so what? How is that impressive in the grand scheme of things? It’s not. Not by a long shot.

Not only that, it’s not even in the neighborhood of $40 million that the Barr Campaign promised its campaign supporters and the LP members. It won’t even reach the neighborhood of $10 million that some of the insiders think it could touch.

On top of that, the Barr Campaign isn’t brewing the fiery passion, interest, and love for its candidate that the Ron Paul for President Campaign generated for its candidate. Sure, Barr is getting some media coverage, but so what? Ron Paul got FAR more media interest in his campaign than Barr’s been getting, and Paul appeared on “Real Time with Bill Maher” twice. Has Barr ever done that for his campaign? (Well, he did appear on “Real Time” once a few years ago, but only as a conservative panelist before he joined the LP; thus, that doesn’t count.)

Paul generated the kind of campaign that Ronald Reagan could never create. The same isn’t said for Barr.

Praising Jesse Helms’ accomplishments does not imply endorsement of every one of his qualities. It is good taste to focus on a person’s good qualities when doing obituaries and funerals.

No, it’s not. Not especially when that person happens to be the late Senator Jesse Helms. If it were just a letter to the family expressing the campaign’s condolences, that would be one thing. But it’s another when it’s a press release extoling the “life and work of Jesse Helms,” particularly when that life and work involves bigoted and racist policies, such as Helms’ support for Jim Crow in the 1960s when he was a Democrat then. Where were the Republicans then when that crap was going on if they “opposed” slavery or even racial segregation of the South? Why didn’t they speak out against Helms for his racist and prejudiced work against African Americans in the U.S.?

All of these actions are authoritarian and statist by nature, and it’s a damn shame that Barr would praise the “life and work” of Jesse Helms that should be rejected.

The last thing libertarians should be viewed as is racist and bigoted towards minorities. That’s a conservative mentality. It’s vile and diabolical.

It’s not a surprise that Barr doesn’t feel this way, yet it is still repugnant nonetheless.

This is nowhere near as bad as the Ron Paul newsletter scandal. It’s not as bad as Harry Browne’s 2000 ads featuring blowing up buildings and disposing of babies.

The difference between Paul and Barr on their respective controversies is that Paul denounced the racism that was espoused in the newsletters, and Jim Kirchick, a Rudy Giuliani crony, was using the New Republic as a tool to write a hit piece to smear Paul regarding the newsletters. While I do have a problem with the way Paul handled the newsletter controversy, it’s nothing compared to the open support for Jesse Helms that Barr made in his press release.

That’s what makes him a racist sympathizer. Your ad hominem was a cheap shot, Milsted.

But that’s typical of a racist, bigoted Republicrat such as yourself.

As for Harry Browne, he never said anything racist or even sexist. In his “The Great Libertarian Offer” video, he showed that the IRS could be demolished and that the baby should be thrown out of the bathtub, even if it’s Rosemary’s Baby.

And he was right. There was nothing racist, violent, or anti-children in his ads.

You’re full of shit when you make these arguments, Milsted.

Go jump off a bridge. You’d be doing the libertarian movement a favor.

Bob Barr is on track to get the level of coverage of Nader at his height. This is unprecedented for the LP. While his background is conservative, he is focusing his rhetoric on civil liberties.

Yeah, right. And I’m Ghenghis Khan reincarnated.

Barr is a racist sympathizer. He will be viewed that way by many African Americans whether he intended for that to happen or not. Either way, it’s his fault.

For Christ’s sake, he needs to take responsibility for that claptrap. Isn’t that what Libertarians supposedly believe in? Taking personal responsibility? When will that ever happen? How will that happen too? I doubt that will even be an issue to Bob Barr, but many of us and many Americans will take that seriously.

While he is polling above 5 percent in many states, that in no way guarantees that he will get beyond 1 percent of the vote. And even if he did get beyond 1 percent of the vote (which I doubt he’ll get, but hey, I hope he proves me wrong), that meager percentage won’t get him anywhere elected to the White House and Wayne Allyn Root elected to the Vice Presidency.

It’s July 11 now and it’s a sure bet that Obama will get the White House. Any claim that Barr will get double digits on Election Day should be disbelieved, not to mention ignored.

SVD is wrong. Obviously libertarians should advocate libertarianism at every level. However, libertarians should NOT advocate using the federal government’s guns to push libertarianism at lower levels of government. That is literally the stupidest thing I can imagine.

I see no conflict with a libertarian constitutionalist view that seeks to hold the feds in line with the Constitution AND restrict them from doing things they’re actually authorized to do, too.

And while I want libertarianism for Michigan and every state, who am I to tell the people of Alabama how they should live? Let them do their own thing. That is consistent with constitutionalism, unless they want to declare something other than gold or silver legal tender or regulate trade or movement between the states or deny their citizens a republican form of government. And if they want to do that, let them leave the voluntary union peacefully!

The problem with constitutionalism is that it tends to reinforce the illusion that government can be effectively limited. In reality, limited government is like limited malignant cancer. You have to cut out all of it, or it will grow right back, likely worse than before.

Limiting government by any type of constitution is kind of like treating bacteria with antibiotics; sometimes effective, but creating resistant superbacteria in the long run.

If it sounds like I’m suggesting that (coercive monopoly) government is similar to malignant cancer or parasitic bacterium by its nature, that is because I am.

The other problem with constitutionalism is that it is isufficient. Certainly, I agree that it is more important to limit power at the federal level and above.

But it is ALSO important to fight tyranny at the state and local levels. States right rhetoric obscures this fact, often intentionally so. Libertarians who limit their discussion of tyranny to the federal level and above should be called out on it every time – especially by those who (correctly, IMO) view turning to the federal government, or the UN, for help in resisting local and state tyranny as being counterproductive.

If we don’t say it, who will? And if we forego using the feds to resist state tyranny, it becomes doubly important we do it ourselves.

At LFV, Steve VanDyke (“Liberty mix coming soon – For reals!) says the LP platform should be replaced with the US Constitution. Utterly wrong and foolish, but a common and growing strain of thought among self-described libertarians, enabling an obscuring and glossing over of differences between libertarians and dixiecrat/theocon refugees from the NSGOP.

Such refugees being highly counterproductive to the LP recruiting from the left and thus becoming a serious party (see my last comment).

Great way to call out states rights constitutionalists to see where they stand on state level tyranny: Congress is DC’s legislature. Ask what policy they desire or would allow on sex, drugs, gambling, etc., for the district.

For instance, I asked this through GE to Chuck Baldwin. He answered that he wants Congress to continue to be DC’s legislature, but not what policies he would advocate or countenance.

I’d like to ask Bob Barr too, but he really doesn’t want to answer.

1. Conservatism is “a paradigm of essences toward which the phenomenology of the world is in continuing approximation.” It “stands athwart the tracks of history yelling ’stop!’” When Social Security was new, conservatives hated it and fought like hell to stop it. By the time it was old enough to buy a beer, conservatives’ talking points were on how to “preserve” it — because conservatism is about freezing existence into an existing, familiar, comfortable frame of reference and KEEPING IT THERE.

Exactly! I have been beating my head against a wall trying to get Libertarians to realize this for this entire decade.

All I have for my trouble is one hell of a headache, and a party dead set to move to a reich wing dead end.

I haven’t left the Libertarian Party, but it’s sure doing a great job of leaving me.

At this point, sunk costs is all that is holding me – never a wise strategy, so I don’t know how much longer I will succumb. Of course, as a life member, I don’t have to make a choice – I can just stop putting so much energy into it, and if at some point I discover that I am wrong and the LP is coming to its senses after all, I can become more active again.

I’m just tired of rolling a rock uphill and having it roll back endlessly. Someone else can go do that now.

I think I’m going to go for multiple party memberships simultaeously.

Yes, the Constitution’s authoring was nothing short of a coup by a centralist cabal, led by Madison, Hamilton, and Washington. Its intent and effect was to give the central government more power. HOWEVER, in selling it to the states, the framers pitched it as a document that would strictly limit federal power (expanding it beyond the Articles but only to a “necessary” degree).

The ratifiers were men of the states. The understanding with which they ratified the Constitution is what’s important, not the secret intent of Madison, Hamilton, and Washington.

Never said you were a liberal. I said you accept a liberal interpretation of the Constitution. I was going to put a in parenthesis but I wasn’t sure that would work. No offense intended.

The debates on the 14th would be the logical place to look for original intent — and if you have a look at those debates, you’ll find that both the amendment’s supporters and opponents clearly and irrefutably ascribed to it the exact meaning (“incorporation”) that you reject as an invention of the courts.

As far as the Constitution being intended only to “limit” the federal government, nothing could be further from the truth. It dramatically expanded the power of the federal government beyond the power said government had under the Articles of Confederation, and it was specifically intended to do exactly that by its framers.

If basing my understanding of the Constitution on verifiable fact rather than convenient fantasy makes me a “liberal,” so be it.

My assertion is NOT weak. The above would have more validity than the 14th amendment. It was NOT ratified, even under coercion, and even if it were (it wasn’t!) it doesn’t mean what courts have subsequently — 50 years and more later — said it means.

The 14th does act as a bar to the actions of individual states, and I am of the same opinion that William O. Douglas was: that there should be a full substantiation of the minimal Federal Rights to act as a bar to the actions of the individual states. The 14th Amendment was enacted to solve what was perceived to be a Constitutional flaw, which allowed individual states to engage in tyrannical practises, after the Civil War.

Originalism has a valid place in Constitutional arguments, but it cannot just forget about interceding amendments. They hold precedent over the original text, whether one agrees with them or not.

The Badnarik General Election campaign actually raised more money than the Harry Browne 2000 general election campaign. There was a day when this happened, and it was a fundraising incentive.

Browne raised another million-plus to get the nomination. Details are in my book Funding Liberty http://3mpub.com/phillies .

I think the problem libertarians have with the Constitution is that they’ve been indoctrinated in the liberal “constitutional law” viewpoint. The REAL Constitution was chartered by the states, not the people, and limits the central government, not the people or the states (except for a few very precise cases for the latter).

“Badnarik got more votes than David Bergland (1984) or Andre Marrou (1992). He performed in the same neighborhood as Ron Paul (1988) and Harry Browne (2000), for a fraction of the campaign cost.”

True in terms of raw vote totals, but only roughly equivalent with Browne in 2000 as far as % of votes cast. Still, he did better than Bergland and Marrou (‘84 and ‘92 respectively).

“Purity” can be tricky to define, but I think it’s fairly obvious that Badnarik was less “pure” than Browne or Bergland. Badnarik was definitely more in the “Ron Paul conservative” vein.

True enough, Mr. Badnarik emphasized his “constitutional class” and the constitution as the cornerstone of his presidential campaign, but in personal conversations that I had with himmy impression of him is that he is philosophically more radical than the “constitutional” viewpoint.

Badnarik got more votes than David Bergland (1984) or Andre Marrou (1992). He performed in the same neighborhood as Ron Paul (1988) and Harry Browne (2000), for a fraction of the campaign cost.

“Purity” can be tricky to define, but I think it’s fairly obvious that Badnarik was less “pure” than Browne or Bergland. Badnarik was definitely more in the “Ron Paul conservative” vein.