Rise of the Ron Paul Republican

The GOP doesn’t have a Ron Paul problem 

it has a libertarian problem.

Image Source: RonPaul.com

When the GOP lost Congress in 2006 and weren’t able to install a Republican as president in 2008, overshadowed by the “historic election,” it was back to the drawing board for the party of Lincoln.  But it was in March of 2007, just after the 110^th Congress was sworn in, that Ron Paul began to break ground on a permanent home for the libertarian ideals he had been espousing for over 30 years. 

            Libertarianism, while having been traditionally an esoteric subject, began to manifest as a movement in 1971 in response to Vietnam, its voracious appetite for blood and treasure and a burgeoning welfare state both of which contributed to the abandonment of the gold standard.  (It was President Nixon’s decision to rely wholly on the Federal Reserve for our nation’s monetary policy that spurred Ron Paul into office in the first place.)  

To proto-libertarians, drawn from conservatives, independents, blue dog democrats, the progressivism of the left and the conservativism of the right were merely two features of the same problem – big government happily placating, if not, openly catering to corporate interests.  Between the platforms of war and welfare libertarians established their political beachhead in the “Party of Principle” - the Libertarian Party.

In 1978 the libertarian Cato Institute was founded in Northern California and provided needed conceptual ammunition to the fledgling movement.  By that time the “free minds and free markets” of Reason Magazine was in its 8^th year of regular publication and busy popularizing economic superstars like F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Murray Rothbard.  If necessity is truly the mother of invention, the malaise of the 1970s was midwife to the birth of libertarianism. From then on the intellectual-political infrastructure necessary to broadcast and mobilize the ideas of individual liberty grew exponentially.

By 1975 even Ronald Reagan seemed to be equally enamored with the prospects of libertarianism.  This from Reason Magazine:

“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism [emphasis added].  I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals -- if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”

After reading this it should be no surprise why Ron Paul was one of the first to endorse Ronald Reagan for president.  A president who, contrary to revisionist conservatives, didn't always please the hard line neoconservatives.

By the time of Reagan’s rise, however, it wasn’t the libertarians who were to capitalize on the backlash against stagflation and the "new normal" Cater attempted to impose on America, but the Grand Old Party.  Albeit the corruption and tepidity under Nixon and Ford left the party beleaguered and exhausted it was still a dependable and well-financed machine by 1980. 

While Ronald Reagan assumed the ethos of libertarianism and attempted to graft it onto the Grand Old Party some of it stuck, but much of it didn’t.  Reagan too, while previously extolling libertarian virtue fell short of achieving a fundamental restoration of our republic.  The Reagan Revolution was, as many political movements are (think Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street) co-opted by the old guard - the establishment - whom shepherded new energies into old interests. 

From 1980 to 1992 and three Republican administrations the government still grew, foreign intervention persisted even after the demise of the Soviet Union, no departments were cut, and debt increased.  Some of the sound economic decisions bore fruit, which staved off disaster, spurred needed innovation and restored some of America’s confidence, but the course of government expansion was fundamentally unaltered.

The GOP received a second chance in 2000, but after Bush’s restrained foreign policy promises were abandoned and the ill-defined War on Terror began, much of the same occurred under his eight years as had occurred under Bill Clinton. Bush federalized more of the American education system, passed a colossal unfunded prescription drug entitlement program, endorsed massive militarism, sponsored the curtailment of civil liberties and oversaw the unprecedented bailouts of 2007.  All of these decisions echoed the encroachments and profligacy of former Democrats and Republicans alike, hence the Tea Party movement.

Conservativism is not a misnomer as Reagan put it, conservativism is legitimately its own brand and uses a similar tool to progressivism in order to impress its social goals here and abroad - the state.  But unlike progressivism, libertarianism is, as conservativism is, now and for the foreseeable future a part of the "right" and therefore part of the Republican Party.   

Many who call themselves conservatives or conservative independents are in fact libertarians they just don’t know it yet, but they will.  For years libertarians lived in the political backwaters and were never really taken seriously, but since 2008 and the ideological bankruptcy of the GOP they've been called in again as they were in the Reagan Revolution to breath new life into a failing ideology, but this time they're not going away.

Ron Paul has carved out a home for libertarians under the GOP’s famous Big Tent.  After years of proffering an austere voting record, sometimes referred to as academic or impractical, Ron Paul is a living breathing example of constitutional fortitude.  Dr. No, as he is often called will probably be known most for what he stood against than what he stood for, but amidst a government which has for the last 100 years, stood for too much, done too much and grown too large Ron Paul's brand of politics is welcomed.

             The year 2012 bears witness to the rise of the Ron Paul Republican.  From now on those who raise his once lonely banner will have a platform from which to run for office. The libertarian wing is now open for business and will continue to siphon off voters from the Democrats and return disgruntled independents to a still hemorrhaging GOP.  

             There is now a fundable and dependable political machine waiting to propel libertarians wherever they need to go.  Win or lose the nomination libertarians are here to stay – the Ron Paul revolution has just begun.

Values Voters and Ron Paul

Jack Kerwick, PH.D.
The New American
October 12th, 2011

*EDITORS NOTE*

I have uncharacteristically included the last portion of the article.  It best drives at the ambivalence of social conservatives to libertarianism.  If these conservatives emancipate themselves from a pointless culture war and the destructive war on terror a real restoration of our republic may be close at hand.


On the News: Ron Paul wins Values Voters Straw Poll, Leaves Cain in the Dust

"...Finally, that Paul appealed to the majority of “values voters” participating in their “summit’s” straw poll just might be due to the growing recognition that his ideas are not only constitutional, but they are as well Christian. The importance of this insight can’t be overstated. 

The Santorums and Bennetts of our generation have long promoted the idea that the federal government must be enlisted in the service of “Judeo-Christian” morality. They may very well believe this. However, in appealing to “values voters” — the vast majority of whom are Christians — Paul invites his supporters to revisit a feature of their tradition, an idea rooted in the teaching of Christ to which the rise of the dominance of our federal government and the utopian politics with which this has been coupled have all but blinded them.        

This is the idea that the realms of politics and religion — “Caesar” and God, or as Augustine put it, “the City of Man” and “the City of God” — though they may and often do overlap, are nevertheless mutually distinct. Those who would conflate the two aren’t just fools; they are blasphemers. With those few simple words — “Give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” — Jesus opened an unbridgeable chasm between Christianity, on the one hand, and utopian politics on the other. Indeed, from the apostle Paul to Augustine and throughout even the medieval period, for the duration of their pre-modern history, Christians knew this well. However, the emergence of centralized governments and the unprecedented power over which they acquired a monopoly forced this old Christian concept to the periphery. 

Perhaps Paul’s victory at the Values Voters Summit signals its resurrection."


Read this article in its entirety at TheNewAmerican.com.

Debt Wars: Why Defense Cuts Are Essential

Topher Morrison
PurpleSerf.com

Massive defense cuts are necessary to any honest GOP plan to reduce the debt.  The American people clearly bought "fiscal responsibility" from the Tea Party and its candidates, we are waiting for delivery.

"War is just one more big government program."

- Joseph Sobran

We have never spent more money on American defense than we do now.  Estimates range anywhere from a conservative $739 billion (calculating Department of Defense spending only) to 1.415 trillion dollars, which calculates much of the country's defense mechanism (FBI counterterrorism, Homeland Security, etc.) including interest on their debt - the cost of freedom.

Source: Winslow T. Wheeler, Director Straus Military Reform Project, Center for Defense Information

What are we defending against?  Is it worth the changes in our culture since 9/11?  Our current World Wide War on Terror is aimed ostensibly against yet another ideology, but instead of Communism we are faced with Islamic fundamentalism.  As evidenced by the Cold War, ideas "good" or "bad" are notoriously difficult to combat with big defense budgets and military stratagem.  In fact, it was one American president, his unparalleled naiveté, gullibility, and his "great blunder", which lead to not only Hitler, the rise of the Soviet Union, and WWII, but also to the fractionalized and tumultuous Middle East we know today. 

President Woodrow Wilson (D) is famous
for his campaign to make the "world safe for democracy."
His theories proved otherwise and lead to the death of millions.
Read "Wilson's War" for the break down.

While it is crucial to have a war of ideas delineating the differences between fact and opinion; concepts, beliefs, and ideologies will ultimately prevail or fail on their own.  While there is little doubt there are combatants willing to sacrifice their lives in order to advance their radical ideas, Islam's jihadists, for the foreseeable future, will be incapable of rhetorical, let alone, physical invasion.  To repel invasion and to ensure self determination or what we call sovereignty is the ultimate motive of our armed forces; today their motive is evidently much different.  Moreover, even if the penultimate threat of a nuclear armed Al' Qaeda materialized, the fear of this potential event isn't sufficient to justify the invasions of pre-nuclear states Afghanistan, Iraq, or Yemen.

Lets expand a bit, maybe we are being a little myopic when it comes to the War on Terror as there are of course other threats over the horizon.  Humanitarian crises, like the Libyan Civil War or Clinton's interdiction in Kosovo, justify our intervention on this basis of enforcing a UN mandate or international law, not necessarily the judgement of Congress.  It is argued that if we leave them unresolved and if tyranny is left unchecked it will embolden dictators and despots all over the world to oppress their people.  How this effects the United States' national security is anyones guess, but humanitarianism isn't the only call to arms, there is the cosmos to worry about too!


The Pentagon has been prepping for war in space as early as 2004 and ever since space has been a contentious subject between the US, Russia, and especially China.  Considering our mutual ability to shoot down satellites and with potentially massive stores of energy on the moon future resource wars in the mass expanse above our blue planet would be catastrophic.  


If that weren't enough to worry about, state-sponsored and multinational brigades of hackers have raised much alarm causing the Pentagon to declare the internet "operational domain."  With all of these dire possibilities cropping up virtually everywhere (pardon the pun) it seems as though the Pentagon believes the sky is almost certain to fall without constant intervention.  


There is, however, an alternative way of understanding this paranoid view of the world, our unbelievable spending associated with it, and our legitimate national security challenges.  By recognizing the phenomena of mission creep (after reading the definition, think WWII) and considering the warning given to us by our 34th president, Republican General, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it becomes clear how much we as a nation have departed from our founding principles. 

President Eisenhower's military industrial complex (MIC) has on one hand become the epitome of a self-fulfilling prophet:

“The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior, which makes the original false conception come 'true'. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.” 

             -  Robert K. Merton, from Social Theory and Social Structure 

And on the other hand (as evidenced in the interest paid on the debt incurred by defense organs) the MIC which includes multinational banks and the Federal Reserve, benefit from the Pentagon's "reign of error":

“…a lot of people are getting rich, building careers, and accreting power out of hyping the money flow. While soldiers at the pointy end of the spear and taxpayers are getting hosed, generals are going through the revolving door to big jobs in industry; congressional staffers on defense committees move into high ranking political jobs in the Pentagon, which then gives them a spring board to big jobs with the defense contractors; industry titans move between jobs in industry, the Pentagon, and back to industry; and contractor PAC money flows to congressmen.  The result is a self-sustaining harmonious circular flow of money through the political economy of the MICC -- what we in the Pentagon call a self-licking ice cream cone.”

            - Excerpt from Madison's Nightmare by Chuck Spinney at The Atlantic 

While it has recently been reported that "liberals see chance for big cuts in defense" I find it easy not to hold my breath.  While it is fun to poke holes in neo-conservative dogma, especially when faced with the obvious incongruent belief that while small government is crucial to freedom so is a large military (constituting 19% of federal spending), it is sobering to realize that Big Peace is a bipartisan sham.  

It is a sordid fact that liberals are often times if not more culpable than "conservatives" when it comes to groveling before the military money pit.  My cynicism is corroborated by three recent phenomena: 1) the total disappearance of the anti-war left after the election of Barack Obama 2) that one of the most liberal senators turned rabidly liberal president actually asks for more money from Congress, amidst a deep recession and perilous debt, for special forces to infiltrate over 70 countries around the world and 3) that apologists of Barack Obama, namely Center for American Progress' Lawrence Korb, lie openly to their base that the president "has dumped George W. Bush's overall strategy for preemptive attacks against terrorist states."  Mr. Kob, those aren't love letters Obama is dropping preemptively on Libya.