In this video, using Ron Paul’s own words from his books and interviews, it is shown that Ron Paul’s goal is voluntaryism. He adopts limited-government positions and appeals to the U.S. Constitution as part of a long-term strategy for achieving a completely free society, absent any State.
Right, this might be well for us here, but i don’t think we should be outwardly promoting that as his position.
His “anarchism” might not appeal to the voters we need to elect him.
What do other people think of this? Is there a chance that widespread promotion of this video could undermine what Ron Paul is trying to do?
Graham, I think it’s highly likely that it would damage his campaign temporarily. But in all reality, he’s got to “come out of the closet” sometime, or else all he’s done is spawned a bunch of “We the People!” types, which is still antithetical to Paul’s ideal society. I have said in the past before that if he did come out as an an-cap that it would isolate a good porition of his fan base. But at the same time, if hangs onto it all the way to the grave, we’d probably wind up with fewer an-caps in total.
In addition to these clips, he was also at a debate in 2007 at FreedomFest with Doug Casey and said in the following speech after Casey said he was an anarchist that he would love to give Casey the VP nomination if nominated.
Whether or not Ron Paul should “come out of the closet” is a different question to the one I asked, though a very interesting one. My video shows he is already out of the closet to an extent; he is leaving glaring vacuums between his principles and his positions. I believe he is hoping that his supporters will pick up on the clues and take the principles to their full conclusion.
If Ron Paul is asked if he is an anarchist - yes or no - during a televised debate, how do you think he will answer? How do you hope he will answer?
I agree that it would damage his campaign short-term if he said yes, but I think it could well also do long-term damage to the voluntaryist movement. He is currently acting as a filter: he turns liberals / conservatives into constitutionalists, and some of them (the ones that follow his leads to LRC and LvMI) become voluntaryists by resolving their cognitive dissonance. If he “came out” he would be less effective at converting socialists to constitutionalists, and by extension, less effective at leading people to voluntaryism.
My mind is not made up on this. I would like to hear what others here think.
Wow, that’s great. Is it online?
It is a different question, but it’s kind of the same thing. If us anarchists spread the video around, it would functionally be the same thing as “outing” Ron Paul. So they are similar in that fashion. If he’s asked in a televised debate whether or not he is an anarchist, my guess is that he’d answer no and say he thinks the society with the least amount of coercion would be the best society, but that he believes a Constitutional government would the best means to achieve those ends.
Obviously I would hope he’d answer in the positive, but that would turn him into a laughingstock. If the people asking questions at these debates like Brit Hume, Chris Wallace, Chris Matthews, or Anderson Cooper did 5 seconds of research, they would discover that Ron Paul a) has all of these clips floating around on the Internet, b) is affiliated with the majority anarcho-capitalist Mises Institute, and c) alludes to a load of anarchist literature in Liberty Defined (such as the LvMI publication “Let’s Abolish Government,” a collection of essays by Spooner).
I agree that Ron Paul’s role is as an educator. He gets people interested in libertarianism and then turns people onto the Mises Institute. If you took a poll here on this message board, I’d bet that 50+% of the people first heard of this place through Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign. Changing somebody into a voluntaryist is a gradual thing and it’s something that’s probably easier to glide into rather than jump into. So I think you’re right. But there comes a point where you reach critical mass and Ron Paul has appealed to all of the people who are serious thinkers and at that point he can drop the anarchist bomb on his fans.
Oh, and the Paul/Casey thing. He obviously may have said that because Casey said some nice things about Ron in Part 4 (that he was the only decent human being running for the presidency that year), but Ron is an ideas-man and probably takes it that Casey is an ideological ally of his.
@4:50
@4:30
It is not incumbent on the libertarian to always proclaim his full “anarchist” position in whatever he writes; but it is incumbent upon him in no way to praise taxation or condone it; he should simply leave this perhaps glaring vacuum, and wait for the eager reader to begin to question and perhaps come to you for further enlightenment. - Murray Rothbard
Wtf did I just watch?
This is the video I should have made ages ago. Well, friggin, done. Taken all the choice quotes I’ve harped on about and made it into one production. Much respect!
Thanks Conza. I knew I could count on your support. 
Your work digging up quotes and clips inspired this video.
Thanks also to Wesker for the Liberty Defined quotes on security. I missed the one that you just posted as a youtube comment: “The government is incapable of doing what it’s suppose to do. A job like the provision of security is something best left to private institutions”. That’s even better than the ones I used!
Thanks to Nielsio for finding the Adam Kokesh interview.
I am considering a follow-up video, which will talk about the Rothbard-Rockwell-Paul strategy. If anybody would like to contribute, I have started a thread about this over at The Voluntary City.
I added this to your thread:
Ron Paul is also on the back of Mary Ruwart’s book Healing Our World in an Age of Agression:
Healing Our World bridges the gap between conservatives and liberals, Christians and New Agers, special interests and the common good, with practical solutions to our economic and societal woes. - Ron Paul
It is a book on Voluntaryism and Mary Ruwart is a Voluntaryist.
So here we have Ron Paul stating that the Voluntaryist solutions are practical for economic and social problems.
I’m still skeptical that Ron Paul is a ‘voluntarist.’ I watched the videos, I hear what he says but a part of me still thinks that he is reaching out for political points. He never says “Yes I’m a voluntarist and this is why I think these ideas work.” He just seems sympathetic to the philosophy. It is very much like how I feel about his presidency run. Would I like him to win? Sure but I have my own agenda.
“I like voluntarism. That’s what a free society is supposed to be all about.” - Ron Paul
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=diHLIFfZ4FQ
1:16
Nice find, thanks for sharing.
“Our lives and our liberties come outside of government. Government was not created to allow us to have liberty. If we’re going to have government, it should be limited, precisely to protect those liberties that are rightfully our own.” - Ron Paul
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psV6pOsW9YY
2:43
To believe in liberty is not to believe in any particular social and economic outcome. It is to trust the spontaneous order that emerges when the state does not intervene in human volition and human cooperation. It permits people to work out their problems for themselves, build lives for themselves, take risks and accept responsibility for the results, and make their own decisions. - Liberty Defined, XII
If the government is granted a monopoly on the use of force to achieve these goals, history shows that that power is always abused. Every single time. - Liberty Defined, XV
Hm… I found a big problem in Ron Paul being voluntaryist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aeg4lXicyEA&feature=player_embedded#t=7m37
You can argue it’s a popular slip (I do it myself sometimes), but…
If he is an Anarcho-Capitalist hypothetically, maybe he does not care much for the word anarchy, just as I do not. Hm…
Oh come on.