Stefan, I've never said "Ron Paul supporters consist mainly of 911 conspiracy theorists". What I said was:
BH) It’s fine with me if you want to change the subject to which party’s nominees embrace litmus-test conspiracy theories about the Fed, the Trilateral Commission, CFR, UN, New World Order, 9/11, JFK’s assassination, etc. All this obsessing about the Fed and fractional reserve banking is just an embarrassment to even the most radical libertarian academics—e.g. Bryan Caplan, David Friedman, etc. (BH
If you want to compare your "understanding of inflation" with mine, start at http://knowinghumans.net/2007/11/liberty-dollars-and-inflation-sense.html and then continue to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketliberal/msearch?query=%22cpi+lies%22. If you want to measure one's "understanding of inflation" by the depth of one's fear and loathing of the Fed and fractional reserve banking, then I'll gladly admit that you score higher than me and the radical libertarian academics I mentioned.
I agree that the federalism of Barr and Paul often sounds more like the CP than the LP. Many Libertarians (like me) favor federalism as a way to divide and conquer the nanny state, but Barr and Paul too often sound like they just want the legislating of morality (e.g. drugs and marriage) to be more decentralized and not on their conscience as federal legislators. Nearly every Libertarian would agree that Barr is not an optimal Libertarian, because nearly every Libertarian considers only himself to be the optimal Libertarian. The reason that Libertarians vote third party is not because they want to participate in a referendum on the current policy idiosyncrasies of the LP nominee du jour -- let alone on the nominee's past political record that he may or may not currently disavow. Most Libertarians vote third party because they want to be counted as favoring the ideas of the party they vote for. The bottom line here is that both Barr and Baldwin currently say they endorse their respective party platforms.
If you think Wayne Root has advocated anything that is a "gross violation" of the LP Platform, then I challenge you to quote what he said and then quote the part of the LP Platform that you think it grossly violates. None of his statements that you've talked about come even close -- especially the stuff about Obama's grades.
