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.

Not Libertarian? You're Probably a Socialist

EDITOR'S NOTE:  If you haven’t read the first part of this series, please do: We are The Planners, Not You.  Government isn’t a Business Either.

Part II

Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC hits the nail on the head.

The Left & The Right As Socialists

Both Republicans and Democrats plan.  Off the bat it doesn't sound like a bad thing, think “social safety net”.  But the notion of planning is predicated on the idea that someone else has information you don't, moreover that they have the right to plan for you.  While the former may of course be true, the information age has diluted the strength of this argument significantly.  This brings us to the right to plan.

To “plan” by public sanction is to evince a value desiring the wide recognition of a social goal, think universal health care, a drug free America, a living wage, a stable and friendly Iraq, the War on Poverty, the list is endless because our potential values are endless.  Hence, to enact said “plan”, through whatever political mechanism available is appropriately called - socialism. 

While use of the word socialism might not be politically correct as Lawrence O’Donnell admits, its use per the definition is very much still en vogue.  Considering everything is in some measure societal in nature and therefore social then anything positively enacted which diminishes someone's life, liberty or property rather than precluding encroachment upon these rights is socialism. This is how F.A. Hayek put it in The Road to Serfdom in 1944:

“…Some groups may want less socialism than others…some want socialism mainly in the interest of one group and others in that of another.  The important point is that if we take the people whose views influence developments they are now in the democracies in some measure all socialists.”

F.A. Hayek was echoing a fundamental truth which gripped European politics as far back as 1888 when Sir William Harcourt announced to Britain’s House of Commons: “We are all socialists now.”  Sir William found his modern voice in Republican President Richard Nixon when he proclaimed the same “We are all Keynesians now” referring to F.A. Hayek’s socialist contemporary.

            The fact of the matter is every American ideological movement save one, Libertarianism, is socialist from one degree to another.  In other words, while each party may espouse individual freedom in one arena or another they all require government to do their bidding regarding a small number of particular values and always at our expense.  Often times we call these “special interests.”  This line of reasoning may seem austere, but this merely validates my point.

The New American Century’s Enemy: Gullibility  

            After the fall of the Soviet Union and with it the easy to hate goose-stepping armies and the ubiquitous red flags it was hard for many of us to anticipate how our next enemy might be one of our own creation.  This is not new and was not unanticipated.  F.A. Hayek alluded to how Americans might succumb to similar seductions:

“It seems almost as if we did not want to understand the development which has produced totalitarianism because such an understanding might destroy some of the dearest illusions to which we are determined to cling.” 

            While there has been robust argument over what is more important than another thing, as O’Donnell puts it between good or bad socialism, there has been little progress in restricting the scope of government, regardless of the mountain of rhetoric piled on since the Reagan Revolution.  The beast was never starved, the Keynesians and our Central Bank saw to that.  If you’ve noticed our debt is higher than ever, we owe more than we’re worth.

            The question then is, to what "dearest illusions" are we still holding onto?  Well think of all the social ends I mentioned at the beginning of this article.  All are demonstrable failures, ephemeral taglines tossed aside as easily as they are conjured in favor of more sensational and politically expedient slogans.  It is all mere marketing.

          It's the difference between an arrogant vanguard seeking ever-newer demons to vanquish and the chastened but vigilant guardian seeking to protect the individual so he himself may conquer, create, aid and love.  As O’Donnell astutely points out, Glen Greenwald is timid to show his stripes.  Like the slogans they extol the word socialist has undergone similar metamorphoses: "liberal", "progressive", "neoliberal", "labour", "neoconservative", "progressive-Republican", no doubt reaching into perpetuity awaiting a new banner to raise.

          Uncomfortable in their own skin these political chameleons demagogue our fears and passions in one realm or another and they use our wealth and technology to achieve their current social goal.  More often than not as it goes because it can be done means it should be done!  But this is the "dearest illusion, which we are determined to cling."  Again, think of the social goals I mentioned earlier as you read how F.A. Hayek felt about allowing politicians and bureaucrats to plan for us:

“They would merely make it necessary to choose between gaining a particular advantage by compulsion and not obtaining it – or, in most instances, obtaining it a little later, when further technical advance has overcome the particular difficulties.  It is true that in such situations we may have to sacrifice a possible immediate gain as the price of our freedom – but we avoid, on the other hand, the necessity of making future developments dependent upon the knowledge, which particular people now possess. 

By sacrificing such possible present advantages we preserve an important stimulus to further progress.  Though in the short run the price we have to pay for variety and freedom of choice may sometimes be high in the long run even material progress will depend on this very variety, because we can never predict from which of the many forms in which a good or service can be provided something better may develop.”

In other words our political leaders are not seers.

NEXT: How the governments of the left and right distort reality.