While I completely and thoroughly agree regarding the double-standard (with a slight exception for Israel, due to the ongoing attempts by other groups to literally exterminate them all), the answer for this is not to have “white advocate” groups but to oppose all those other groups (which I do).

Racial groups are, in general, a very bad idea, white, black, or otherwise.

(I do admit to a bit of schadenfreud watching the PC-types when “white advocate” groups make such claims, though – sauce for the gander, eh? That’s about the nicest thing I can say about such groups, though.)

Only white expressions of unity and/or dissatisfaction are deemed “racist,” as Shelby Steele has noted. But amid all the hysteria over Ron Paul’s “racism” (never mind that for the millionth time, there never seems to be any hard evidence and/or definitions on this charge, the mere making of it being sufficient for most), nobody is asking the next-level question: are there legitimate white interests? If not, why not? If it is acceptable for blacks to want to vote for Obama on nothing more than his being (half) black, why is it not the moral equivalent for a white person to want to vote for a white candidate for the same reason? Or, if it is acceptable for Jews to want a homeland in Israel for reasons of religious/ethnic/cultural preservation, why is not permissible for white Americans to oppose open immigration from Third-World countries on precisely the same grounds? And so on.

But, observe the posts that will appear below. Few will address these questions directly. They will only caterwaul about racism.

For Joe at 1010: there are Austrian economics alternatives to the Mises Institute. Foundation for Economic Education for one and to a lesser degree the Institute for Humane Studies for another.

Most of Paul’s opponents are guilty of real moral transgressions with real consequences, including the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and many times that number of Iraqis.

Doesn’t it bother any of the critical thinkers here that that the alleged “racist” Paul is the one who opposes the killing of all those non-white Iraqis?

The connections of the Rockwell and the Mises Institute I’m now learning about are pretty disturbing, too.

I have to say, though, that I was first introduced to libertarianism by the Austrian school and, whether the MI represents the school well or not, most of my initial encounters with economics and libertarianism were through them. I even attended one of the weeklong lectureships there. I was eventually turned off by their enforced-orthodoxy anti-empirical version of libertarianism and economics, but I have to say that I don’t believe I ever encountered any neoconfederacy or racism in my extended, if not extensive, involvement with them, and I do owe them a debt, since it was through them that I discovered groups like Cato and people like Friedman. Even if they hate Cato and Friedman. =)

All this makes me sad, since I admired (and still admire) Paul, and admired (and still hate to dislike) the Mises Institute.
_ _ _ _ _ _

12:14: My God, if calling them “white advocates” doesn’t give away your sympathies, I don’t know what would.

But 1988 was before the World Wide Web was available, and I never saw any of those newsletters Ron Paul wrote for. His public image was “sanitized” in that election. I never heard anyone at the time talking about his racism – the issue his opponents brought up was that he wanted to legalize drugs. (I agree, prohibition doesn’t work as well as legalization & regulation)

In 2007 I have much more information about him & I realize he *is* a nutcase.
From what I’ve seen of his campaign, he’s hardly even libertarian anymore.

And I am saddened as I believe libertarianism is a necessary counterbalance to the growth of government and with people like Ron Paul as the public face of it, it will lose some credibility.

There are certainly white advocates who support Ron Paul, and what I glean as the reason is this: the war in Iraq is seen as a project designed for Israel’s security, not America’s, and prominent and powerful Jews here and abroad have been central in seeing it through. (It could, would and should be easy enough to oppose this on ‘mere’ patriotic grounds, without even a whiff of anti-Semitism. I am sure that there are both ‘philo-Semitic’ and ‘anti-Semitic’ persons who feel similarly about the war.)

Beyond the war, white advocates (surely part of the ‘creepy-nuts’ characters Mr. Frank refers to) likely see a “freedom” movement as good for them, because it would mean higher levels of freedom of association, for instance.

I know next to nothing (no pun intended) about the issue of a gold standard, getting rid of the Fed, and related issues.

But why Paul supporters’ objections the war are so wrong, Mr. Frank does not say. It seems to thrust the ethnic nature of all this yet further ahead that he cites a Levy, a Bernstein and a Horwitz as his allies in objection to Ron Paul as a libertarian luminary.

If Mr. Frank feels compelled to note that there are ideologically impure ethnic motivations behind some of Ron Paul’s supporters, it seems only fair to note the high likelihood that he has ethnic motivations himself.

I don’t expect that to happen in my lifetime, and not just bcause of Ron Paul: the Libertarian Party is full of crazies, and the concepts of libertarianism are at least as easily manipulated and abused as anything else.