THE CASE FOR (AND AGAINST) RON PAUL

Let me begin with an oft-used quote from the British historian Lord Acton, circa 1887:
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

This is where the very theoretical and yet very real debate about Ron Paul begins:

From everything we know about politicians, Paul is genuinely an outlier. He does not seem consumed by power and ego. He consistent and sincere. He's not a gregarious alpha-male so he doesn't pretend to be. I doubt he cares whether anyone wants to have beer with him. He's certainly not your prototypical Republican Congressman from Texas. (I don't even think he watches football.) He is a bookish, plain-spoken man with ideals that used to fall within the mainstream of conservative thought but have since been pushed to the fringe.


Ron Paul's marginalization within the Republican party-- I will argue-- is a direct result of the "Reagan Revolution." Its vast popularity spawned these formerly-fringe, big-government movements like "social conservatism" and "neo-conservatism." (Let's not kid ourselves, anyone who advocates for anti-abortion legislation, marriage amendments to our constitution and a preemptively hawkish foreign policy, is ideologically predisposed to covet broader government influence and a bigger budget (or money printer) to enforce policy.) The rise to power took nearly a decade and fractured the party, but once its message found a top-down echo chamber with Fox News and talk radio, the once-extreme ideologies became mainstream conservatism.

Ron Paul never left the party. The party left him. But what's remarkably admirable about Ron Paul, is that he is unapologetic about being a Republican. He has never been compelled to run as an Independent, nor has he been persuaded to change his principles and policy positions, despite dwelling on an island of his own. Today's "conservative" taste-makers like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have as much contempt for Ron Paul as they do for "Reagan Democrats," which is the real reason Paul cannot gain traction in the GOP primary. And herein lies the problem with Reagan: Although he was arguably the most popular president of the last century, he was BOTH the greatest and most detrimental figure for the Republican party. With Regan's landslide victory in 1984, the GOP hit its ideological peak. After decades of marginalization, anti-populism was now popular. But, power quickly consolidated and the dogma rose to the top. This produced firebrand preachers like Jerry Fawell and Pat Robertson and rigid ideologues like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. More than anything, Reagan was the first true corporatist. He didn't just prefer supply-side economics and corporate personhood, it became his religion. Reagan was perhaps the greatest salesman of contemporary times. With a folksy wink and comely smile that reminded you of your grandfather, he convinced America that privatization was as American as baseball and jazz, and government was immoral and unnecessary. These three factions, corporatism, social conservatism and neo-conservatism (which don't always align) have dominated political discourse (in both parties) for the past thirty years. Social conservatism may be lasting difference between Democrats and Republicans.


Ron Paul is not a corporatist. Ron Paul is not a social conservative. Ron Paul is not a neocon.

It could be argued that having lifted regulations and tax burdens on businesses large and small, Ronald Reagan unleashed an economy that was previously weighed down by "too much government." Assuming this is true, we must factor in Lord Acton. At first, Reagan-economics effectively incentivized small-businesses and "opened up markets." Wealth was created and, most importantly at this point, still widely distributed. Although scores of casualties and critics emerged, the bottomline seemed to produce an effective working model for new democratic capitalism. The 1980s were reasonably prosperous. Starting with Kemp-Roth, we built a society where it became easier for people who sign the front of the paycheck. So, portions of our population decided to start their own small business, or grow their existing business, hire more employees and capture their piece of the "American Dream." Reagan fertilized the entrepreneurial spirit and more people became entrepreneurs. The market worked. Excess ensued. Not all of us can be shepherds. Yet we moved further in this trend, demonizing labor unions, eliminating our manufacturing industries and devaluing the importance of the "wage earner." We shifted to a service economy. Simultaneously, Republicans were drunk with power and popularity. Human nature took over. The people who warned about excess were swiftly marginalized.

Ron Paul warned of excess.

The Republican led congress continued with a wave of deregulation for Wall Street, giving rise to Private Equity and Hedge Funds (or what they're now calling "Enterprise Capitalism") and paving the way for junk bond trading, savings & loan scandals (see: Neil Bush ,The Keating Five and the collapse of Long Term Capital.)

Ironically, the GOP has been so purified since Reagan, that Reagan himself would no longer be welcome in the party. (It's really the same story with Jesus, but that's a whole other story...)

The times when Ron Paul seems most like a politician are when he is forced to talk reverently about Ronald Reagan. It is one of the few compromises he makes for remaining in the Grand Old Party. Paul is perhaps the only surviving Republican that realizes Reagan gave us a system of government that cannibalized itself within 15 years and turned into a massive, centralized organization, beholden to the Federal Reserve, corporate welfare and military decadence. George H. W. Bush (who lost to Reagan in the 1980 GOP primary) was the perhaps last of the Eisenhower Republicans, who still believed in balancing budgets and pulling back troops. The neocons hated Bush 41 for not fully occupying Iraq during the Gulf War that ended in 1991. But after losing the presidency to an inexperienced Democrat a year later, the neo-conservative movement consolidated power from within, uniting with social conservatives, gutting the base and eliminating dissenting opinion. They backed the previously marginalized Bush son whose name still had recognition from the Reagan era. Effectively, they turned George W. against his Old Man on policy, and when they defeated John McCain in the 2000 primary, it was over for the small-government conservative and the moderate Republican. To this day the party is still mostly controlled by neocons, corporatists and religious zealots and even the maverick John McCain couldn't beat 'em so he joined 'em. (His entire 2008 campaign was a sad jumble of disconnect. While it was clear McCain was engineered by people he didn't agree with, those same people were trying to sell us on the old concept of a "maverick.")

Ron Paul never changed.

By the late 90s, free-market capitalism was full-blown religion. One of its early converts was Texas Congressman Phil Graham. A former Democrat, Graham fell in love with Reaganomics and discovered his calling: deregulation. Graham (who once defeated Ron Paul in a 1984 congressional election) pioneered the repeal of Glass-Steagall in congress, which was a Bill originally signed in 1932. Essentially, it acted as a safe guard against runaway capitalism, instructing financial institutions that while it was perfectly acceptable to make a substantial profit, they must also operate as a public trust. 

The Republican Senate, led by Trent Lott, and the Republican House, led by Dick Armey, passed The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (co-sponsored by three Republicans) and it was signed into law by Democrat president William Jefferson Clinton in 1999. As a man of principle, Ron Paul joined the Democrats and voted "no" on Gramm-Leach-Bliley. The repeal of Glass-Steagall gave birth to the concept "too big to fail." (Phil Gramm was most recently John McCain's top economic adviser in the 2008 campaign and of course, urged McCain to support the Wall Street bailout.) Paul had the foresight to understand this would promote the type of excess that would leave tax payers on the hook for the bill. He was right. This happened nine years later.  

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Ron Paul is the only candidate in either party that addresses corporate entitlements. He is the only candidate in either party that illuminates the innate corruption of the unelected and privately controlled federal reserve bank. He is the only candidate in either party that decries the expansion of our "military industrial complex" (an old Eisenhower warning) and how our foreign policy adventurism has led to astronomical budget deficits. He is the only candidate in either party that articulates how our mind-boggling "tab" with China is reprehensible and potentially destabilizing. He is the only candidate in either party that speaks credibly about civil liberties and a smaller-government. He is the only candidate in either party that has remained ideologically consistent on virtually every issue throughout his career.


Anyone who discredits his core message must in turn accept that the system we have followed has worked and does not need reform. Anyone who marginalizes Ron Paul is concurrently propping up the failed zeitgeist of Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and now Barack Obama. Ron Paul and his supporters deserve our undivided attention and respect.


However, while I fully endorse Ron Paul's candidacy in the Republican field, and I encourage the permeation of his message to the masses, and I support many of his positions on civil liberties, foreign policy and the fed, I would not cast a ballot on his behalf. Here's why:

Unfettered libertarianism would not work any better in a society of 311,000,000 people, than fully fettered socialism. I am a capitalist. I am for mixed economies and a sensible balance of individualism AND collectivism. Globalization has shrunk the world; made it more complex, economically,demographically and technologically. Libertarianism calls for a little too much simplicity (and perhaps anarchy) than I am comfortable with. The ramifications of removing both sanctions and subsidies to other nations needs to be more thoroughly explored. The full withdrawal of troops around the world needs to be unpacked as cause-and-effect consequences emerge.

The overriding philosophy that unites all Republicans (including Paul) is "trickle down economics." In essence, we must continue to give the job creators tax breaks and allow them to create jobs and grow the economy. Following the philosophy, the federal government acts as an impediment to our economy and must stay out of it, and Business (or a collection of decentralized "individuals") must remain the one true engine. Therefore, ALL businesses must be encouraged AND legislatively incentivized to grow. While this happens, we must trust in free-market capitalism. The market will provide for society, because it is efficient and unbiased. This has been (roughly) the model we have followed since Reagan. We did not want the government to take care of us, so instead, we entrusted corporations with that responsibility. It did not take long for corporations to realize how much money could be made taking care of society. And then just as quickly, they realized how much more money could be made not taking care of society. With less government interference, and stripped down safeguards, we continued to buy the premise that "individual liberty, less regulation and lower taxes" ensures a better lifestyle for our citizenry, ignoring the inherent conflict: If business must grow, it must also cut costs, which often involves finding cheaper labor (sometimes overseas.) Managing the costs of its employee base (wages and benefits) is an area where corporations have consistently become leaner and more efficient. Are we better off? Since the repeal of Glass-Steagall, corporations are now fully integrated in our lives. Corporations set wages and benefits, control our healthcare, our insurance, our pensions and retirement... and they own the debt on everything from our mortgages and credit cards to our student loans and healthcare bills. A vast portion of our economy has been fully privatized and, after nearly three decades of this bipartisan experiment, it has definitively not produced the results our politicians have promised.  


After eliminating the way money is created by the central bank, which is indeed a radical departure from the policies of both parties, Paul would then double-down on trickle-down. Social programs would be gutted, as Paul would seek to cut all welfare, from corporate to social. Libertarianism sets the individual "free" and tells him he is now on his own. Obviously, this system works better for those with more means, or for those with access to land for development, or for those who are heavily armed, or for those can rely on private philanthropy to provide gaps in essentials like food stamps, unemployment subsidies and day-care programs. This would unintentionally augment poverty and it is an extremely dangerous experiment. In all societies, the existence of an underclass is a real consequence of human nature. Generally, the underclass is also the underpowered majority. (What we are now calling "the 99%".) In a libertarian utopia, the underclass is left to fend for themselves. Arguably, fending for oneself is a more productive value than relying on the government for provisions. The problem with this is that not everyone can pull themselves up by the bootstraps and rise through the ranks and capture the dream. Simple math would indicate that employees will always greatly outnumber employers. And we need a society that not only provides incentives for employers but protects the employee from sipping into poverty.

Ron Paul is ideologically opposed to the most essential social safe guards that have built and sustained our middle-class for the last 70 years: strong labor unions, the GI Bill, Medicare, Social Security... He speaks about our "culture of dependency" without acknowledging that it is because of "entitlement programs" like social security and medicare, that our elderly have managed to survive the excesses and market collapses of the past three decades.

On civil liberties, libertarianism would appear to be firmly in the corner of freedom: a decentralized government that favors states rights. This is misleading.


Here is Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (son of Ron) on his opposition to Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which became a Federal law that desegregated privately owned public spaces like restaurants, hotels and theaters. “I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners—I abhor racism. I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant,” Paul said, “but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership.”

That's a decentralized government nutshell. Sure, racism is bad business but who is the evil, corrupt federal government to tell a small business owner who he can or cannot admit into his establishment? This goes against everything every Civil Rights leader ever fought for. **And it should be noted that this point is being made on Dr. Martin Luther King Day, a federal holiday.


Furthermore, the idea of rolling things back to a time when people had less government influence, is flagrantly regressive, if not racist. It's the reason why southern Dixiecrats all became Republicans after 1964 and it is why the South remains a deep-red GOP stronghold to this day. Lyndon Johnson predicted this when he signed the Bill into law. Democrats lost the south, and social conservatism, as we now know it, was born. Republicans, under the guise of individual liberty, are supposed to be the party that protects the interests of those who do not want to be 'forced' into accepting others or subsidizing socioeconomic inequalities (which obviously spawns from our sordid history). But moving towards an anti-federalist society because we adamantly disagree with our monetary policy and the federal reserve system is a very slippery slope for Ron Paul supporters.

Everyone who advocates for a Ron Paul presidency needs to at least ask themselves if they agree with a potential shift back towards a segregated society and states rights. The Supreme Court, made up of nine unelected individuals who hold lifetime appointments, wield as much power from the judicial branch as any elected official, including the president. Ron Paul supporters need to ask themselves what a potential appointment would look like. They need to ask themselves if a strict Constructionist would be the right judge for our contemporary society and the modern world. 


None of this should be taken as an endorsement for Democrats or Barack Obama. Democrats could easily be the subject of another scathing rant. Still, the notion that the federal government is the big bad boogeyman; evil, corrupt, immoral ---attach your malevolent adjective--- this has been the playbook dating back to Lincoln or even Alexander Hamilton. Demonizing the government has never fallen out of favor, it just picks up different forms for different times and finds new salient talking points to make the case. Politicians (Republicans) have made lifelong careers bull-horning their anti-government philosophy. This is appealing. This gets them elected and then re-elected and they live off the very teet they vilify... and hardly anyone notices the hypocrisy. 

Speaking of hypocrisy, the Obama administration is a shining example of Lord Acton. The man moved masses in 2008 with charisma and platitudes, popularizing reform ("CHANGE") and idealism ("HOPE".) Then he took power and maintained the status-quo on everything from corporate welfare to the Bush Doctrine.

Ron Paul v. Barack Obama would give us the potential for real debate and ideological contrast. Obama won't be able to hide behind rhetoric because we have a full-term sampling of his presidency. Quite frankly, Paul is to the left of Obama on a whole host of issues, which is why his campaign has gained traction with younger voters. He's the only candidate in the race that would challenge Obama to act like a Democrat as opposed to a "Reagan Democrat." Unfortunately, the Republican party is still too cannibalized to nominate Ron Paul. What we must take away from Paul's candidacy is the appropriateness, legitimacy and urgency of his message. I fear that once the pundits get a hold of the narrative, after the dust settles and Paul returns to the Texas legislature, they will claim rise of Ron Paul was simply the party calling for more moderation. This is a mistake. Whatever we might think of Ron Paul, it is grossly inaccurate to call him a moderate, as none of his platforms call for moderation.  And yet, he falls outside the Lord Acton thesis. He does not pander to plutocrats. He does not change his positions to fit an election cycle. He is not fueled by ego or self-interest or special interest. He is an outlier and at the very least, he should be taken seriously.

@HebrewRational