That Old-Time Religion

National Review ^ | July 31, 2007 | John Derbyshire

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

That Old-Time Religion
The Ron Paul temptation.
By John Derbyshire

Go on, admit it: you have felt the Ron Paul temptation, haven’t you? And it’s not just the thrill of imagining another president named Ron, is it? Ron Paul believes a lot of what you believe, and what I believe. You don’t imagine he’s going to be the 44th POTUS, but you kind of hope he does well none the less.

And why not? Look at those policy positions! Abolish the IRS and Federal Reserve; balance the budget; go back to the gold standard; pull out of the U.N. and NATO; end the War on Drugs; overturn Roe v. Wade; repeal federal restrictions on gun ownership; fence the borders; deport illegals; stop lecturing foreign governments about human rights; let the Middle East go hang. What’s not to like?

We-e-ell. We all have nits to pick, though we wouldn’t all pick the same ones. The gold standard? Wasn’t it going off the gold standard that gave us full control over the wilder swings of the business cycle? Which was, like, a good idea? I am by no means as willing to surrender to the collective wisdom of modern economists as Bryan Caplan wants me to be, but — the gold standard? Come on. And stopping the War on Drugs? Where would that take us? — Philip Morris brands of crack cocaine available over the counter at Walgreens? You pick your own nits.

That’s not the point, though. Nits aside, the broad outlook there is conservative in a way we don’t often see from a presidential candidate. It is, in fact, conservatism of exceptional purity. Reading through those policy positions, an American conservative can hear the mystic chords of memory sounding in the distance, and hear the call of ancestral voices wafted on the breeze: Hayek, von Mises, Rothbart, Nock, Kirk, John Chamberlain... Unlike the product in that automobile commercial, this is your father’s conservatism — the Old-Time Religion. What is there among Ron Paul’s policy prescriptions that the young William F. Buckley would have disagreed with?

So why aren’t we all piling into the wagon behind Dr. Ron? It’s not that the guy is personally unacceptable in any way. A pious family man, he has worked in an honorable profession — Ob/Gyn medical practice — all his life. (Paul has the slight political advantage of having brought several hundred of his constituents into the world.) He is personally charming and likeable. If not exactly eloquent in the florid, gassy manner American voters are used to from their politicians, he speaks clearly and well, keeps his wits about him, minds his temper, and holds his own in debate. With the positions he has, it’s easy to see why he’s not ahead with the media or the polls, but why isn’t he leading the pack among conservatives?

I doubt it’s his anti-war stand. Outside a dwindling band of administration loyalists in the wagons circled around George W. Bush, I can’t detect much enthusiasm for the Iraq war among conservative commentators and e-mailers. "We gave the Iraqis a fair shot, now let’s leave them to it and concentrate on chasing down worldwide terrorism," is the dominant sentiment. I’m not clear about Ron Paul’s position on routine counter-terrorism and covert ops, but on the war in Iraq, I don’t see much of a problem for him base-wise.

And so far as domestic counter-terrorism is concerned, his robust attitude to our nation’s borders and to illegal immigrants is likely to do far more for our security than W’s lackadaisical ethnic pandering. It is hard to imagine that under a Paul presidency, gatecrashers would still be streaming in across an undefended border six years after 9/11.

Is it the fact that the Ron Paul campaign has attracted a lot of loonies that cools our ardor? I don’t think so. For sure, Ron Paul has attracted loonies to his cause. Christopher Caldwell’s piece on Paul in the July 22 New York Times describes one such:

Victor Carey, a 45-year-old, muscular, mustachioed self-described “patriot” who wears a black baseball cap with a skull and crossbones on it, drove up from Sykesville, Md., to show his support for Paul. He laid out some of his concerns. "The people who own the Federal Reserve own the oil companies, they own the mass media, they own the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, they’re part of the Bilderbergers [?? — JD], and unfortunately their spiritual practices are very wicked and diabolical as well," Carey said. "They go to a place out in California known as the Bohemian Grove, and there’s been footage obtained by infiltration of what their practices are. And they do mock human sacrifices to an owl-god called Moloch. This is true. Go research it yourself."

(That word "unfortunately" is a rhetorical master stroke.)

But Caldwell is being very unfair to Paul here. You could turn up people like that among the camp followers of any candidate, from any party. Send me out to poke among activists for Giuliani, Clinton, Edwards, or — for sure! — Obama: I’ll come up with worse than that. And around the hard core of Venusians there is always a penumbra of people who are just not quite right in the head. I got talking to a local Ron Paul activist here in my home town the other day. She is a very pleasant and charming lady, but I could hear the distinct rustle of bats in the belfry.

It is a fact, a sad but a true one, that grassroots political activism, the heart and soul of any democracy, attracts a lot of lunatics. I used to be a constituency activist for the Tory party in Kings Cross, London. Of the twenty or so people who turned up regularly to meetings, four or five were noticeably deranged (or, as an elderly fellow-Tory was wont to murmur in my ear when one of these cranks sought the meeting’s attention, "not quite sixteen annas to the rupee"). One or two were barking mad. My favorite was a gent with an Albert Einstein hairstyle and a permanent ferocious glare who, at every darn meeting, would try to advance his pet project for a law against class discrimination. (This was at a time, in the early 1980s, when laws against racial discrimination were being passed, to much controversy.)

If it’s like that in the Tory party, one of the Anglosphere’s oldest and solidest, at the heart of an ancient metropolis, I can imagine how thing are further away from the political center. A friend of mine, a brilliant, charming, and highly civilized man I shall call X, runs a fringe political group here in the U.S. He invited me to one of the group’s annual conferences. Not sure what to expect, I asked a mutual friend, name of Y, who had attended a previous year’s conference. "Well," said Y, "there are a dozen or so people like X, thoughtful and well-informed — people you’d be happy to hang out with. And around them buzzes this big cloud of latrine flies." I decided not to take up X’s invitation.

So, I ask again, if it’s not the man, or the war, or the latrine flies, why aren’t we conservatives all on board with Ron?

By way of an answer, let me introduce you to my friend Zhang (not his real name). Zhang came here from China after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. An energetic and clever young man, he worked at odd jobs around New York City while looking for an opportunity to make his fortune. The opportunity soon arrived. He happened upon a business opportunity — a new method of engraving on stone, the patent held by a fellow-exile with whom he had struck up a friendship. The two of them were sure they’d be rich in no time. They struggled for a couple of years to bring the thing to market. At last, defeated, they gave up. Zhang took a desk job as a clerk for a credit card company.

What was the cause of the failure? I asked him. He: "We didn’t realize this is a mature economy. So many permits, regulations, accounting rules, taxes! In China, we could have got this off the ground in no time, working out of back rooms and sticking up poster ads. Here — forget it! You’re killed by lawyers’ and accountants’ and agents’ fees before you get started. Stick up an ad, the city comes after you."

Something analogous applies to politics. If Washington, D.C. were the drowsy southern town that Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge rode into, Ron Paul would have a chance. Washington’s not like that nowadays, though. It is a vast megalopolis, every nook and cranny stuffed with lobbyists, lawyers, and a hundred thousand species of tax-eater. The sleepy old boulevards of the 1920s are now shadowed between great glittering ziggurats of glass and marble, where millions of administrative assistants to the Department of Administrative Assistance toil away at sending memos to each other.

Few of these laborers in the vineyards of government do anything useful. (In my experience — I used to have to deal with them — few do anything much at all.) Some of what they do is actually harmful to the nation. On the whole, though, we have settled in with this system. We are used to it. It’s not going away, absent a revolution; and conservatives are — duh! — not, by temperament, revolutionaries.

Imagine, for example, President Ron II trying to push his bill to abolish the IRS through Congress. Congress! — whose members eat, drink, breathe and live for the wrinkles they can add to the tax code on behalf of their favored interest groups! Or imagine him trying to kick the U.N. parasites out of our country. Think of the howls of outrage on behalf of suffering humanity from all the lefty academics, MSM bleeding hearts, love-the-world flower children, Eleanor Roosevelt worshippers, and bureaucratic globalizers!

Ain’t gonna happen. It was, after all, a conservative who said that politics is the art of the possible. Ron Paul is not possible. His candidacy belongs to the realm of dreams, not practical politics.

But, oh, what sweet dreams!

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

RON PAUL is the RIGHT Candidate for Pro-Life social conservatives.

• Ron Paul introduced the Sanctity of Life Act of 2005, recognizing the Personhood of every unborn baby and removing Abortion from the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
• Ron Paul is rated ZERO percent by the National Abortion Rights Action League.
• Ron Paul is an original co-sponsor of the Marriage Protection Act.
• Ron Paul voted to ban Homosexual adoption in Washington DC.

RON PAUL is the RIGHT Candidate for Tax-Cutting fiscal conservatives.

• Ron Paul is ranked by Human Events as the biggest Tax Cutter in all of Congress. Paul Named #1 Tax Cutter in Congress: “(Paul) is a co-sponsor… of a constitutional amendment to repeal the 16th amendment and end income, gift, and estate taxes. Regularly pushes for tax cuts. Sponsor of bills to allow tax credits for private school tuition, to permit tax deduction of college tuition, and to stop all taxation of Social Security benefits. Opposes all unconstitutional spending programs.”
• Ron Paul has ranked in the 99th percentile of the National Taxpayer Union ratings every year he has been in Congress, and holds the NTU record for the most #1 "Taxpayer's Friend" rankings.

RON PAUL is the ONLY 100% Anti-Terrorist candidate.

• The ruling Islamic Theocracy of Iraq is dominated by the psychopathic gang of murderers known as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Islamic Al Dawa Party, who are the very same Islamic Terrorist Parties which bombed the US & French Embassies in Kuwait, and murdered 241 United States Marines in Beirut in 1983. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, of the Al Dawa Party, was the Bureau Chief of the Al Dawa Party's terrorist "Jihad Office" in Damascus in the 1980s and was thus heavily responsible for Al Dawa operations in Beirut, while parliament member Jamal Jafaar Mohammed of his ruling coalition is one of the "Kuwait 17", still under a Kuwaiti death sentence (in absentia) for his direct involvement in the vicious attack on the US Embassy in Kuwait! Ron Paul is the ONLY candidate calling for an immediate END to all Military and Financial support for the criminal Islamic Terrorist thug-regime of Iraq.

RON PAUL is the RIGHT Candidate for National Defense and Foreign Affairs.

• Ron Paul voted for the National Missile Defense Act. (source)
• Ron Paul is one of only two co-sponsors of H. Res. 123, for the establishment of a Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs to "conduct a full investigation of all unresolved matters relating to any United States personnel unaccounted for from the Vietnam era, the Korean conflict, World War II, Cold War Missions, or Gulf War, including MIA's and POW's." (POW-MIA InterNetwork)
• Ron Paul supports a strengthened Coast Guard and increased port security, and increased benefits for veterans.
• Ron Paul advocates United States withdrawal from the United Nations and withdrawal from the World Trade Organization. Says Ron Paul: "We don't need CAFTA or any other international agreement to reap the economic benefits promised by CAFTA supporters, we only need to change our own harmful economic and tax policies. Let the rest of the world hurt their citizens with tariffs; if we simply reduce tariffs and taxes at home, we will attract capital and see our economy flourish." (source).
• "Ron Paul is one of the outstanding leaders fighting for a stronger national defense. As a former Air Force officer, he knows well the needs of our armed forces, and he always puts them first. We need to keep him fighting for our country." --U.S. President Ronald Reagan

RON PAUL is the RIGHT Candidate for the Bill of Rights.

• "Congress Unanimously Supports Paul Amendment to Protect Civil Liberties"
• Ron Paul is one of only five Congressmen to have an A+ Rating from the Gun Owners of America.
• Ron Paul Denounces National ID Card.

RON PAUL is the RIGHT Candidate on Illegal Immigration.

• Ron Paul voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006. “Amnesty for lawbreakers is not the answer, and it’s time to rethink birthright citizenship,” Paul added. ("Paul Votes for Stronger Border Security")
• Ron Paul is a co-sponsor of HR 487, which "expresses the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction of a NAFTA superhighway or enter into any plans to create a North American Union between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico."
• "We need to allocate far more resources, both in terms of money and manpower, to securing our borders and coastlines here at home. This is the most critical task before us, both in terms of immigration problems and the threat of foreign terrorists. Unless and until we secure our borders, illegal immigration and the problems associated with it will only increase." – Ron Paul (source)

RON PAUL is the ONLY socially-conservative Candidate defending the independence of the Christian Church against Federal "Faith-Based Socialism".

• "Government funding of religious organizations will transform them into adjuncts of the federal welfare state, more concerned about obeying federal rules and regulations than fulfilling the obligations of their faith." – Ron Paul (source). Every other so-called "social conservative" candidate actually FAVORS this underhanded Orwellian Federal assault on the Freedom of the Christian Church.

"I got to know President Reagan in 1976 when, as a freshman congressman, I was one of only four members of that body to endorse then-Governor Reagan’s primary challenge to President Gerald Ford. I had the privilege of serving as the leader of President Reagan’s Texas delegation at the Republican convention of 1976, where Ronald Reagan almost defeated an incumbent president for his party’s nomination. I was one of the millions attracted to Ronald Reagan by his strong support for limited government and the free-market. I felt affinity for a politician who based his conservative philosophy on '...a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom.' I wish more of today’s conservative leaders based their philosophy on a desire for less government and more freedom." – Ron Paul, Remembering Ronald Reagan

In 2008, I'm voting for the REAGAN REPUBLICAN. I'm voting for former Vietnam Combat Flight Surgeon, and Leader of Ronald Reagan's Electoral Delegation from Texas: In 2008, I'm Voting for RON PAUL!

"The greatest champion of conservative principles we have seen in Congress in the past quarter century."
(David T. Pyne, Esq., Vice President of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies)

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

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[ari-freedom]

stop lecturing foreign governments about human rights; let the Middle East go hang. What’s not to like?

That.

The gold standard? Wasn’t it going off the gold standard that gave us full control over the wilder swings of the business cycle? Which was, like, a good idea?

ummm, like, no.

I can’t detect much enthusiasm for the Iraq war among conservative commentators and e-mailers. "We gave the Iraqis a fair shot, now let’s leave them to it and concentrate on chasing down worldwide terrorism," is the dominant sentiment.

Stop spending too much time with Grover Norquist and Pat Buchanan. How can you concentrate on worldwide terrorism when worldwide terrorists are concentrated in Iraq?

[from occupied ga]

How long do you figure before the brave bushbot keyboard warriors start to show up frothing at the mouth and trashing RP calling him a coward and a nut? 5 minutes? 20 mintues?

[Nephi]

Conservatives confuse the primary process with a horse race. They pick their candidate before he’s out of the gate and stick with him until the end. It doesn’t have to be that way. Let the candidates debate and the conservative ideas will be able lead all the candidates to the right. (Except for Rudy, who may realize that he’s really a Democrat and McCain who’ll finally see the writing on the wall and McFred who’ll realize that bragging about co-authoring the unconstitutional McCain/Feingold wasn’t conservative.)

[ovrtaxt]

BTTT! That’s an awesome article. This guy nails the DC mentality perfectly.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

Stop spending too much time with Grover Norquist and Pat Buchanan. How can you concentrate on worldwide terrorism when worldwide terrorists are concentrated in Iraq?

We haven't done the basic things that were needed on 9/11 to protect Americans to the greatest extent possible. That's domestic border control, not for any racist reason or anti-immigrant reasons but to give law enforcement a chance to find out who is in the country without a pool of illegals that increases by the hour.

The president and Mrs. Clinton, they all say we have spent tens of billions of dollars on fancy gadgetry for our border crossing points, so we are safer.

Well, that assumes that al-Qaida is stupid and [will] walk in with an al-Qaida T-shirt carrying a nuclear suitcase and having a bandoleer of bullets around their chest and say here I am at Miami International.

They are not going to come in that way. They are going to come across the border and they are going to come in through a port. ~~ Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA's "Bin Laden" desk

[ovrtaxt]

Imagine, for example, President Ron II trying to push his bill to abolish the IRS through Congress. Congress! — whose members eat, drink, breathe and live for the wrinkles they can add to the tax code on behalf of their favored interest groups!

No wonder the GOP doesn't want him in the debates. Must protect that gravy train!

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

Yeah, I usually enjoy reading Derb.

[George W. Bush]

Outside a dwindling band of administration loyalists in the wagons circled around George W. Bush, I can’t detect much enthusiasm for the Iraq war among conservative commentators and e-mailers. "We gave the Iraqis a fair shot, now let’s leave them to it and concentrate on chasing down worldwide terrorism," is the dominant sentiment.

Since this is largely my own position, he must be a genius. LOL. I do think that, having destroyed Iraq's own military, we are obligated to defend Iraq's borders against Iran and especially Turkey for another 3-5 years, primarily from remote bases in Iraq.

I don't share his overall pessimism though. RP running can stir interest in conservative economics and liberty issues. It can recruit future leaders. And, given the right moment and series of events, even win the nomination and the White House.

You can argue how many other politicians were elected that were just as impossible in their contemporary political climate. Yet, they were elected.

Certainly, Ron Paul's odds are long. But well short of impossible. And they continue to improve.

[George W. Bush]

The gold standard? Wasn’t it going off the gold standard that gave us full control over the wilder swings of the business cycle? Which was, like, a good idea?

ummm, like, no.

The United States has never had a full gold-backed currency system. We have always had some fiat money.

Ron Paul favors transition, meaning the introduction of an alternative gold/silver currency to compete with other monetary and financial instruments (Fed currency, credit cards, debit cards, etc.).

If we can have Paypal operate as legal tender, why not gold and silver coins? I don't get the panic. The market can determine their popularity.

[billbears]

But Caldwell is being very unfair to Paul here. You could turn up people like that among the camp followers of any candidate, from any party. Send me out to poke among activists for Giuliani, Clinton, Edwards, or — for sure! — Obama: I’ll come up with worse than that.

But, but I was told right here by the party 'faithful' that only Ron Paul has a few kooks in his ranks. You mean, gasp, that other candidates may have fringe supporters?!?

I doubt it’s his anti-war stand. Outside a dwindling band of administration loyalists in the wagons circled around George W. Bush, I can’t detect much enthusiasm for the Iraq war among conservative commentators and e-mailers. "We gave the Iraqis a fair shot, now let’s leave them to it and concentrate on chasing down worldwide terrorism," is the dominant sentiment. I’m not clear about Ron Paul’s position on routine counter-terrorism and covert ops, but on the war in Iraq, I don’t see much of a problem for him base-wise.

This is the NRO isn't it? The National Review?!?

[RhoTheta]

A thoughtful article. I’m not sure Ron Paul is actually electable at a national level, not sure who would be his running mate (Pat Buchanan??), but I am glad he consistently surfaces all these conservative ideas and can agree him on almost all of them.

[George W. Bush]

Google Trends

Google's search trends stats. If you go there, you'll see the interest in Ron Paul is building, not subsiding. There are links for individual states as well.


ron paul    mitt romney    fred thompson    john mccain    rudy giuliani   

Despite the news reference advantage the others have, Ron Paul's interest levels continue to increase, making him a real wild card in the Iowa straw poll and in primaries in 2008.

Here's Iowa's search results:


ron paul    mitt romney    fred thompson    john mccain    rudy giuliani   

I saw Nebraska and other states have something like a 90% advantage for Ron Paul. But Washington D.C. has FDT edging out RP by a nose.

[Logophile]

Few of these laborers in the vineyards of government do anything useful. (In my experience — I used to have to deal with them — few do anything much at all.) Some of what they do is actually harmful to the nation. On the whole, though, we have settled in with this system. We are used to it. It’s not going away, absent a revolution; and conservatives are — duh! — not, by temperament, revolutionaries.

At the very least, we should stop adding to the numbers of government "workers." Can't that be done without a reveolution?

[ari-freedom]

I don’t think 2 currencies will work because people will pay their debts in the fiat money and lock up their gold money.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham’s_Law

[George W. Bush]

I don’t think 2 currencies will work because people will pay their debts in the fiat money and lock up their gold money.

You know, there are many forms of silver/gold currency that are still legal tender. The Federal Reserve even sells a gold dollar. So it's not so radical really.

People can already buy gold in many forms as an investment. I think that offering a silver/gold currency is a nice way for people to hold legal currency that also has value as money. I also still have the silver dollars my uncle gave me as a baby, a nice keepsake for family members to give babies or graduates against a truly rainy day.

Given the fluctuations of the gold and silver market, I doubt most Americans would want more than $200-$1000 of gold/silver currency.

However, a more widespread use of gold/silver dollars would help to hedge against the hidden inflation of a Fed that prints money to deflate savings in order to manage the out-of-control federal debt interest costs.

Voting for Ron Paul is a vote to move toward a sounder currency, not a vote to return to a complete gold-backed currency, at least not in the short run.

[ari-freedom]

well sure anyone can invest right now in gold if they fear inflation. There's e-gold. There are gold etf's.

But nobody is going to spend their valuable gold unless gold money is all there is. And that may ironically require govt enforcement. So that is the big problem I'd like to understand.

[rineaux]

thanks for the ping

[George W. Bush]

I just don't see why issuing $20 billion - $40 billion in gold/silver currency can be a bad thing. After we issued it, we could see if it was a good idea to proceed.

Personally, I'm not supporting RP for the currency issue or the Federal Reserve issue. He has a much broader agenda for liberty and small-government. And I think we're going to see Iraq and Afghanistan winding down by election time, one way or the other. Either the surge works or not. We will start to pull back regardless by next spring.