I was reading this article on Raw Story about how the Occupy people did their stupid “mic check” thing to Ron Paul, the guy who’s more anti-bailout than they are. I couldn’t help glancing at the comments, and I saw the usual we’d-be-dead-without-Joe-Biden line. A commenter listed all the things Ron Paul would abolish, as if these things are self-evidently good, or that a government bureau with a nice-sounding name necessarily lives up to that name, etc. So I banged out a very quick reply:

So many fallacies here. Antitrust was a scam from day one. From day one. It has hobbled rather than enhanced competition. Want to deny that? Make my day.

OSHA? Workplace injuries and fatalities were already falling, and faster, before OSHA even existed, so without even having to go into further detail, that one is overblown.

Minimum wage is a way for the powerful to price the vulnerable out of the system. Track black unemployment against the minimum wage since 1950. The correlation is eerie.

Ron Paul has no problem with organized labor. He is opposed to the initiation of violence. And he opposes exclusive representation, but so what? So do all advanced Western countries, with the exception of the U.S. and Canada.

He favors strict liability for polluters, which is much more severe than wimpy “regulation.”

The Department of Agriculture. Oooh! Where would we be without the maze of subsidies and hackery there? Hey, everyone, eat 8 servings of grain a day!

The Department of Education! Oh, no! Repeal THAT? You mean with all the great results it’s had? We’re too stupid to run our own schools! Save us, Barack and Mitt! Save us from ourselves! Educate us from Washington! Protect us from ourselves!

Incidentally, when the Department of Education was established in 1979 (remember how terrible education was before 1979, btw? A nation of illiterates we were! — yes, that’s sarcasm), both the New York Times and the Washington Post opposed it, along with the American Federation of Teachers. More entrants in the vast right-wing conspiracy, no doubt.

I could go on — believe me, I could — but you get the idea. You have bought the propaganda line hook, line, and sinker. I will never persuade you. But I might make someone else wonder if there may be another side to the story apart from “you’d all be dead without your wise overlords” after all.