Last night Ron Paul made one of his frequent appearances on The Independents, giving newsworthy comments about the rancher standoff in Nevada and his own showdown with the Internal Revenue Service over donor disclosures.

Then at the 7:22 mark of the video below, Kmele Foster asked Paul to comment on an essay that the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity published—actually reprinted, so there was proactive choice here—stating the following:

The conclusion is increasingly difficult to avoid that elements of the US government blew up three New York skyscrapers in order to destroy Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah and to launch the US on the neoconservatives agenda of US world hegemony.

Here's the video of Paul's response; a transcript of the exchange follows:

FOSTER: Dr. Paul one last question: Last week, actually on the 10th, at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity website, a gentleman named Paul Craig Roberts wrote about 9/11 and suggested that the United States government was somehow complicit in that attack. I know in the past you've spoken out forcefully, and criticized folks who have spun such conspiracy theories. He actually did this on your website. Do you have anything to say about that, sir? PAUL: Well, it's just that people should have a right to express their viewpoints. If you read 99 percent of the article it was a fantastic article. But that doesn't mean that— FOSTER: Yeah, but that one percent is pretty nasty stuff, Dr. Paul. PAUL: Yeah, I know, but that doesn't mean that I endorse what he says, obviously! So I think that's a little bit overkill with political correctness. People know my position, I've stated [it] on national television enough times. But Paul Craig Roberts has some very good views on war and civil liberties, and he shouldn't be excluded because he takes this particular position. But that wasn't the thrust of the article. So I think that, to me, the people who overly criticize something like that probably are the ones who have the problem, because— FOSTER: No. PAUL: —I think most people realize exactly what my position is. And I think the government—see, the other reason [for] the confusion is, I don't believe in government commissions. I don't believe government commissions ever get to the bottom of anything, whether it's an assassination committee, or a, you know, any type of commission they set up. They're set up to cover the government, to protect the government, and to make sure nobody's guilty of anything.

Some thoughts from me below the jump.

First, and most pedantic, the Truther section of Roberts' essay wasn't one percent, it was more like 30. Here are 492 words of a 1508-word piece Paul described as "fantastic." I will bold some highlights:

The most serious blow of all is the dawning realization everywhere that Washington's crackpot conspiracy theory of 9/11 is false. Large numbers of independent experts as well as more than one hundred first responders have contradicted every aspect of Washington's absurd conspiracy theory. No aware person believes that a few Saudi Arabians, who could not fly airplanes, operating without help from any intelligence agency, outwitted the entire National Security State, not only all 16 US intelligence agencies but also all intelligence agencies of NATO and Israel as well. Nothing worked on 9/11. Airport security failed four times in one hour, more failures in one hour than have occurred during the other 116,232 hours of the 21st century combined. For the first time in history the US Air Force could not get interceptor fighters off the ground and into the sky. For the first time in history Air Traffic Control lost airliners for up to one hour and did not report it. For the first time in history low temperature, short-lived, fires on a few floors caused massive steel structures to weaken and collapse. For the first time in history 3 skyscrapers fell at essentially free fall acceleration without the benefit of controlled demolition removing resistance from below. Two-thirds of Americans fell for this crackpot story. The left-wing fell for it, because they saw the story as the oppressed striking back at America's evil empire. The right-wing fell for the story, because they saw it as the demonized Muslims striking out at American goodness. President George W. Bush expressed the right-wing view very well: "They hate us for our freedom and democracy." But no one else believed it, least of all the Italians. Italians had been informed some years previously about government false flag events when their President revealed the truth about secret Operation Gladio. Operation Gladio was an operation run by the CIA and Italian intelligence during the second half of the 20th century to set off bombs that would kill European women and children in order to blame communists and, thereby, erode support for European communist parties. Italians were among the first to make video presentations challenging Washington's crackpot story of 9/11. The ultimate of this challenge is the 1 hour and 45 minute film, "Zero." You can watch it here. Zero was produced as a film investigating 9/11 by the Italian company Telemaco. Many prominent people appear in the film along with independent experts. Together, they disprove every assertion made by the US government regarding its explanation of 9/11. The film was shown to the European parliament. It is impossible for anyone who watches this film to believe one word of the official explanation of 9/11. The conclusion is increasingly difficult to avoid that elements of the US government blew up three New York skyscrapers in order to destroy Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah and to launch the US on the neoconservatives agenda of US world hegemony.

Paul's answer to Kmele Foster, I think, was illuminating in a bunch of ways about Paul, about certain tensions within libertarianism, and tensions within any comparatively marginal group that has spent decades tilting at windmills. Basically, once you elevate the importance of a single issue, and a single belief system about that issue, high enough, you are faced with the choice of what to do with people who align with you on the question at hand but veer elsewhere into beliefs that most people in polite society would find crazy, offensive, or both. One tactical option is to question polite society in the first place.

Ron Paul elevates opposition to war, and opposition to U.S. empire, higher than any value. (Opposition to the Federal Reserve, and also to government encroachment on civil liberties, also rank up there.) Align with those values, and you're in. (Key quote: "Paul Craig Roberts has some very good views on war and civil liberties, and he shouldn't be excluded because he takes this particular position.")

Criticize the "particular position," though, and you can quickly become suspect. (Key quote: "I think that's a little bit overkill with political correctness….[T]he people who overly criticize something like that probably are the ones who have the problem.")

You can be consistently anti-intervention while still finding 9/11 conspiracy-mongering (or any number of other pathologies occasionally indulged in by critics of U.S. imperialism) grotesque. Just as you can still be a trenchant and massively influential critic of U.S. foreign policy while tolerating (and promoting) people with bizarre beliefs. It's a clash of approaches, and explains as much about the various divides within libertarianism as anything else.