What they really mean, of course, is that Ron Paul defies political categories and takes positions outside the continuum from Hillary Clinton to Mitt Romney, and people whose minds have been formed in the ideological prison camps we call public schools cannot abide unapproved opinions. Tax me 35% or tax me 40%, but don’t raise the possibility that taxation itself may be a moral issue rather than just a matter of numbers. Either bomb or starve that poor country, but don’t tell me there might be a third option. The Fed should loosen or the Fed should tighten, but don’t tell me our money supply doesn’t need to be supervised by a central planner.

Meanwhile, those who accuse Ron Paul of being “crazy” hold a whole slew of positions that I think qualify as crazy, but the word crazy isn’t employed to refer to them because those positions happen to be politically mainstream.

Read Glenn Greenwald on the bipartisan, Orwellian phenomenon of calling people “crazy” because they step outside the three-inch area the establishment has set out for us to occupy.