Yes, I’ve heard this argument before, and my opinion is it’s ridiculous. It sounds like the same kind of arguments leftists make in favor of their crappy policies under the premise that “well, things will be so much worse without them”…as in, we should accept and actually promote things that harm us because “the alternative would be worse”.
It’s almost as if some libertarians are so used to being on the “con” side of every issue, and taking contrarian positions on virtually everything everyone talks about, that they have a need (or at least an inclination) to argue with and dump on everything. And they’re so used to this that they have to find a way to do it with everyone…even other libertarians. And of course the easiest way to do that is for these people to join the mainstream statists and attack people for supporting Ron Paul (ironically using a lot of the same tactics).
Whether it’s because they care so much about maintaining their “fringe” status and being able to complain and argue with everyone, that they would (at least subconsciously) wish for liberty to not catch on, or because they simply have fallen into the emo game of being against anything that’s remotely popular, I can’t know for sure. But my guess is there’s plenty of both, and more. I spoke on this mutliple times here, as there are (or at least were) plenty of these people in this very forum. (Coincidentally the post linked below was in response to someone asking how they were supposed to support Ron Paul.)
It’s almost a personality type.
As for the crash and recovery, someone started a thread about that just last week…