A New Conspiracy Theory from the Mises Institute Crowd

Dear TRE,

I'm confused.

Are you slamming Prof. DiLorenzo for his argument or are you giving the Professor props for uncovering the Cato/Koch/Kirchick linkage to the newsletter?

What is your point? Because this claim has been impeached 20 years ago, evidenced by Ron Paul's constituency returning him to office for 10 terms, and his own verbal record supports the fact that these words are not his.

For some background for the surfers of Current; Cato Institute and Von Mises Institute have some bad blood between them. It boils down to a difference of ideology.

I found the following from this link of James Ostrowski.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/ostrowski/ostrowski37.html

"During the 1980 Presidential campaign, the libertarian movement began to split into two factions, the Rothbardians and Cato Institute faction led by Ed Crane and funded by the billionaire Koch family (The "Kochtopus"). The fissure is alive and well today, as evidenced by last year?s ignorant attack on LewRockwell.com by Virginia Postrel of Reason Magazine, a magazine which receives funding from the Koch family. As I see it, and saw it, the split is about whether libertarianism would be "hard-core" or watered down, grass roots or inside the beltway, decentralized or run by a few moneybags and their minions, principle versus principal. I was always a Rothbardian in spirit, even when I took a brief and disappointing detour into the Kochtopus in 1990 to try to start a national anti-drug war organization. For reasons never made entirely clear to me, the Kochtopus, after encouraging me to abandon my law practice to start Citizens Against Prohibition, abruptly dropped the project."

Mr. Ostrowski wrote those words on December 10, 2002.

Now for my disclosure.

I prefer the Mises Institute for my on going education on Liberty. In the past, around the year 2000, I learned about the problems with the federal income tax. I contacted Cato about what I was learning. I thought there would be sympathetic views held there and I found, to my disappointment, that Cato had no plans to agitate for liberty from the onerous, immoral tax on American labor.

I wandered since then continuing to study the Constitution and reading supreme court decisions in order to get insight into Liberty, the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Then in March of 2007, Ron Paul announces his run for the Republican presidential nomination. I was well informed of Dr. Paul. I was a frequent reader of his Texas Straight Talk column. (Maybe those concerned about his views on race might want to scan through Texas Straight Talk because I am pretty sure every word there has been written by Ron Paul. Let us know what you find.)

With Dr. Paul in the race, I searched for his books and I found them at Mises.org

Since then I frequent Von Mises.

To sum up, there's a squabble going on about ideology. Ron Paul is not the man the Cato people want to see succeed.

I am for Liberty. And I believe Ron Paul is the best chance we have for its restoration in this moment. If Cato has a better idea then they should put forward their candidate and let's hash out the ideology in the public square.

Otherwise, save the smear game for the collectivists. Because free men have no time for this nonsense.

Sincerely,
Michael Pannone