is still keeping his powder dry for the more "important" contests of the future. You just wait and see.

Those efforts were for naught, however, after Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), and allied Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Kennedy and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) courageously took steps to filibuster the legislation.

Wyden is kind of a geek (not that I have much room to criticize on that front) but, more often than not, I find he picks the right side.

If true, that confirms my beliefs about Rockwell, Rothbard, and a lot of other "prominent libertarians". They're just old, angry white men who care very little about civil/individual rights, but just about the government taking their money.

It's a sad, sad story.

Lew Rockwell is a point of tension in the libertarian world. He has many admirable views and I do like a lot of his writing.

However, he the driver of the paleo-libertarian/paleo-conservative movement and his deep philosophical underpinnings for such a stance are not well-shared in the larger libertarian movement.

In fact, Cato/Reason and the Rockwell worlds splintered pretty harshly in the 80s.

Cato/Reason's approach is to affect policy and ideas in a more congenial manner that is more pragmatic and palatable to the larger public. The socio-cultural view is more urban, cosmopolitan and dare I say "liberal"(?).

Lew Rockwell, on the other hand believed in veering off that path and toward one that favored strict constitutuionalism, states rights, anarcho-captialism and the promotion of tradition. He felt the movement needed a passionate base and that there was one to be had among the disaffected and strict anti-state social traditionalists (of sorts). He calls it paleo-libertarianism. See his Wiki entry .

The idea is that an anarcho-captialist society needs social strength to fend off the decadence. He came to this conclusion as being a needed component of a stateless society.

I don't agree with that aspect.

He feels the Cato/Reason approach is watered down and too cozy with the idea of minarchism.

So Rockwell began to cater to this receptive paleo element in society to raise money for activism and campaigning. But it has its costs. And Paul and Lew are long time friends.

Long story short, this leaves Paul in no man's land. Many libertarians are aware of this matter and don't want the libertarian label to be associated with this flavor and some of its details. So Paul's get support from that target paleo elemet even though most of his support comes from a great many who look beyond this crap even though they don't approve because they know Paul isn't like that.

Meanwhile, many prominent Reason and Cato types along with the GMU based crowd remain quiet and tepidly neutral toward Paul because they like most of positions but don't like a certain few and certainly don't like the flavoring of libertarianism that comes with it. They fear their movement will get tarnished or misunderstood.

I can't say I blame them.

a fellow gnome!

I can't even dissect that wittily. It's pretty irredeemably awful.

edit: Fortunately there's hope: the comments are ripping him to shreds, and he hasn't responded to any of the (completely legit) complaints that he got the story completely, fantastically, jaw-droppingly wrong.

that in reality is rather pathetic :)

[edit] Bah, I guess from my rather brief examination of the facts I am a bit behind the curve. No big deal :)