Good arguments for not supporting Paul, from writers I respect

26) The medium is the message

The Distributed Republic

by Micha Ghertner

"The best an intellectually rigorous libertarian can say about the Ron

Paul movement is that it's a great form of advertising. No one

seriously believes Paul will win the nomination; the most we can hope

for is that the campaign will awaken the dormant love of liberty in

many who would have otherwise continued living a life of apathy in the

campaign's absence. While I no longer actively support the Libertarian

Party, and long ago ceased deluding myself into thinking it will ever

achieve electoral success, I do owe a considerable debt to the LP for

awakening my own personal interest in liberty. (Thank Zeus it didn't

all begin with Rand for me; I can only imagine the sort of nutcase I

might have become if it did.) If Paul's campaign manages to do the

same for others like me, so much the better, and I hope it succeeds in

this limited way." (11/28/07)

http://tinyurl.com/2kh6k4

27) Progressive libertarianism and the problems with Ron Paul

Liberty and Power

by Steven Horwitz

"First, let me say I consider myself a very staunch libertarian, and I

have been for more than 25 years. I worked on the Ed Clark campaign in

1980 as a cherub-faced 16 year old. As I've argued here before, I

consider myself a libertarian of the left in the senses that 1) I

believe that libertarian policies will better achieve most of the aims

of the left than will their own preferred policies and 2) libertarians

should be joining forces with the left on cultural issues, e.g.

feminism and gender issues. Even if we don't agree with them that more

state intervention is the way to address the problems, we should be

more willing to recognize the problems and talk about both policy and

cultural solutions to them. It will then come as no surprise that I'm

a Paul skeptic." (11/28/07)

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/45044.html