jsteele wrote:Because Paul accepts that the government has a role in policing and defending the state, he is actually a libertarian rather than an anarchist. But, you are correct that his resort to name-calling suggests an inability to provide a rational counter-argument.

You're right, of course. But your standards are a bit stricter than Paul's in calling Warren a socialist. And by his standards, I still maintain that he is a flaming anarchist.

The real socialists are the piggy bankers who greedily took all the taxpayer-funded TARP money they could. I don't oppose TARP completely, as something had to be done to put liquidity into the finacial system, but the banks simply used the government money to double down on proprietary trading and other investments rather than extending credit to small business and invididuals.

The bankers are the ones who want to socialize risk but privatize the profits.

Because Paul accepts that the government has a role in policing and defending the state, he is actually a libertarian rather than an anarchist. But, you are correct that his resort to name-calling suggests an inability to provide a rational counter-argument.

The word "socialist" is thrown around a lot, but I thought Ron Paul was more careful than that in his economic analysis. Yet here is what he said on national television in response to a question about Elizabeth Warren's comments that nobody gets rich without use of government roads, police, etc.:

ABC News' Terry Moran asked Paul why Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren was wrong in her comments. "Because she's a socialist," said the libertarian-leaning House member. He added, "her whole argument is absolutely wrong" because "governments are always destructive in the creation of wealth," according to The Hill. When pressed on whether public education was socialist, Paul said, "When the state runs things, that's a socialist thing." He added, "I preach home schooling and private schooling and competition."

It seems to me that if one is labeling, his statement is more anarchist than hers is socialist. He is not only name-calling, but using that name-calling as a substitute for an argument: She's wrong because she's a socialist, and she's wrong about the roads because my dogma says government is always harmful.