12 Responses to But He Once Bought a Can of Vienna Sausages

  1. Anon73 June 27, 2012 at 5:13 pm #

    I’m not surprised, the last interview I saw with him he seemed pretty dull but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was exactly… this explains it.

    In other news a lawyer confirms that Stand Your Ground laws do not create a bubble that follows you wherever you go:

    “The law is not designed to create this bubble that you can carry with you everywhere you go,” said Drumheller, a former prosecutor now practicing criminal defense in Houston. “The jury’s verdict is a cautionary statement on the limits of this defense.”

    http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/texas-stand-ground-shooter-headed-prison-210731482.html

  2. Justin June 27, 2012 at 10:32 pm #

    I second not being surprised. I saw him do an interview on Red Eye talking about a role for government to play in food safety and what not. He came across as someone who didn’t really understand some basic principles about libertarianism but was a politician who described himself as socially liberal fiscally conservative types.

    • Roderick June 27, 2012 at 10:51 pm #

      Well, I’m willing to believe he’s in the libertarian quadrant of the Nolan chart. It’s a big quadrant. But it seems to me that the LP candidate should be more, not less, libertarian than the most libertarian Republican candidate.

      • Justin Blanchard June 28, 2012 at 10:15 am #

        I agree you could still categorize him as a libertarian but if you are trying to be a spokesman for libertarianism it just seems he should have a better understanding of the principles. I admit I haven’t seen a lot of Gary but every time I do hear him speak there seems to be something a off with his positions. And i think Gary’s deviates in more areas than just in the economic and political spectrums which are large spectrums. It seems to me the only positions he holds that are remotely good are the abortion and general private life type issues. That leaves a whole lot of wrong but I could be wrong and may need to give him more of a chance.

      • TomG June 28, 2012 at 6:54 pm #

        I don’t mean to imply that you aren’t aware of this, but the main reason Gary Johnson is the LP candidate is the total shunning he got in the Republican party during the early primary months. He has been a Republican (albeit a very libertarian-sympathetic one) for his whole life. So, being surprised that he is not quite as libertarian as Ron Paul doesn’t make too much sense to me.
        It was definitely noticeable that the media tended to never bring him up back then, even when they mentioned Huntsman. Almost like they didn’t want to offer the viewers a real alternative to their narrative for the Republican primary.
        (I mean, didn’t he have more experience as governor than Palin and Romney put together? Plus the construction company he started…contrast THAT with the “Bain vulture” narrative we see all the time now.)

        • Roderick June 28, 2012 at 7:21 pm #

          being surprised that he is not quite as libertarian as Ron Paul

          Oh, I’m not surprised. The previous LP candidate was even worse.

  3. Jason June 28, 2012 at 3:15 am #

    “But it seems to me that the LP candidate should be more, not less, libertarian than the most libertarian Republican candidate.”

    I actually completely agree with you about Paul being considerably “more libertarian” than Johnson, but I’m interested to hear your particular reasoning for this judgment. Paul’s deviations are primarily on abortion and immigration, whereas Johnson’s are on economic issues and the details of foreign policy. In your “A Question for Critics of Ron Paul’s Critics” posts where you discussed Paul’s 08 campaign with Walter Block, you indicated that you thought the abortion deviation in particular was “in the same moral ballpark” as ones regarding foreign policy.

    Now, on basically that basis, I’ve heard plenty of left-libertarians insist that Johnson is “more libertarian” than Paul because of differences on abortion and immigration. I don’t think that they’re right, but I’m curious in hearing why you’d you disagree with them.

    • Roderick June 28, 2012 at 1:55 pm #

      I guess I’d want to say that how bad a deviation is and how unlibertarian a deviation is are different questions. So for example, I think banning abortion is a much worse wrong than regulating food safety; but Paul’s grounds for banning abortion appeal to a libertarian principle, albeit grossly misapplied IMHO, while Johnson’s grounds for regulating food safety presumably don’t.

      As I’ve written previously:

      it’s by no means obvious that every version of libertarianism is preferable to every version of non-libertarianism. (Is Leonard Peikoff’s pro-mass-murder version of libertarianism, for example, really preferable to, say, Jon-Stewart-style liberalism?)

      • Justin Blanchard June 28, 2012 at 3:18 pm #

        Yes but when describing for example food safety he doesn’t couch it in libertarian principles. you are correct its not that bad an issue but being unable to defend a liberty position or defending it with unlibertarian arguments means he doesn’t understand the principles in the first place. Its like Bush saying i have to brake the free market to save the free market. So Gary is saying freedom is good in a lot of areas but not food safety. This mean he doesn’t understand what freedom or liberty is or entails in the first place. And this line of reasoning can lead someone to implement all manner of crazy policies because they don’t understand the principles in the first place.

        • Justin Blanchard June 28, 2012 at 3:21 pm #

          how many times can i say “in the first place” in a single blog post? over/under anyone?

        • Roderick June 28, 2012 at 7:24 pm #

          Yes, that’s why I said that Johnson had the less libertarian position while Paul had the worse position.

  4. Anon73 June 28, 2012 at 3:08 pm #

    Now that you’ve brought up the issue, Stewart has had both Paul and Johnson on his show and clearly doesn’t shy away from exposing hypocrisy in both parties. What is “Jon Stewart liberalism” and what are the most libertarian aspects?

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