Posted on 07/31/2007 4:32:57 AM PDT by 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:
(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!
Every time some conservative calls for slowing down the growth of existing entitlements, not stop them mind you, just slow them down, the Earned Income Tax Credit comes to mind, there's a hue and cry from liberals and c.s. Republicans, that it would hurt the poor. There are factors built in to entitlements that make them constantly increase, the same is true of government workers.
After all, as these programs grow like cancer does, it takes more and more government employees to handle them.
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.
Worth repeating in full - too many non-productive rent-seekers are the cause of most of our problems. Unfortunately, it's like trying to change an oil tanker's course a hundred yards from the rocky coastline.
But if there is no one who's willing to try to turn the wheel, the tanker and the coastline are doomed. OTOH, spinning the wheel might make the rest of the crew think about the situation and realize that the ship isn't doomed. If someone reverses the engines; someone else thinks to drop the anchor; someone else starts preping the lifeboats; maybe the ship or at least the crew isn't lost.
That's the role that Ron Paul is playing. Would I like to see him nominated; sure.
Do I think he's going to be nominated; no, at least not if the GOP power brokers have anything to say.
Do I think that he could implement all the things he stands for; no, not with the Washington bureaucracy.
Do I think he'll get a surprising number of votes in the primaries; yes, if his message gets out.
Do I think that that number of primary votes will make the other candidates look at his platform versus their own; yes, if they want to prevent a third party revolt among conservatives.
Do I think he can begin to turn the GOP ship around; I hope so.
That's why Paul is attracting the attention of so many; he represents the hopes that they have for a true conservative government.
Remember that Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power to coin money...it also prohibits the states from issuing bills of credit (in the parlance of the Founders...that was paper money). Did this mean the feds had the power to issue paper money? Of course not, the feds had the power to coin money...but nowhere was it given the power to emit bills of credit...and, hard as it is to believe now among people who don't know much about the Constitution, it was well understood at one time that any powers not expressly delegated to the federal government in the Constitution, the feds do not have.
Anyone familiar with the debates over ratification of the Constitution will remember that one of the strongest arguments the Federalists had against the Anti-Federalists was that the US Constitution would do away with the scourge of paper fiat money...the tool of free-spending, fiscally irresponsible governments everywhere....and something that was causing financial chaos in most of the colonies
So, economics aside...those who are faithful to the Constitution can only advocate a gold-backed dollar (or some other precious metal-backed currency)...either that, or advocate an actual amendment to the Constitution to give the federal government the power to issue fiat currency
Whatever. This thread isn’t exactly about a gold-based currency. That’s a side issue. We’ll have a thread to deal with that in the future.
Probably a sub-issue more than a side issue. Its one of Paul's positions (among several) that is often cited by those who dismiss him as a "kook". The derision directed as calls for a return to a gold standard, even among conservatives, is an indication of how far America in 2007 is from a government operating under the Constitution. A gold-backed currency was, at one time, accepted as the only Constitutionally legitimate form of money. Calls for a fiat currency would have been dismissed as "bizarre" and "kooky" just as calls for a gold-backed currency are now. The same holds true for many of Paul's positions (eliminating the IRS, returning to a non-interventionist foreign policy, doing away with the federal entitlement system, etc.).
This is RP's problem...and the problem of any candidate who is faithful to the Constitution. I think that's the point Derbyshire is making
Even if he doesn’t win, Ron Paul can do for modern right wing politics what Barry Goldwater did in losing in 1964.
Provide the impetus for a future return to constitutionalist/libertarian limited government ideology.
Of course, he has to at least do well enough to send a scare into both the libs and the Big Govt GOP folks.
Amen
I recently heard Ron Paul being interviewed by Edd Hendee on KSEV in Houston. Paul talks a good talk, but apparently accomplishes little in office. Hendee held Paul’s feet to the fire on some hot issues and Paul’s response sounded like a weasle. Too bad, I wanted to believe Paul was better than that.
He’s the only true Reaganite in the race. I’m old enough to remember the 1980 GOP National Platform which called for returning to the Gold Standard. Ron Paul is responsible for it being included in the platform and he served on Reagan’s June 1981 Gold commission.
“That’s the role that Ron Paul is playing. Would I like to see him nominated; sure.
Do I think he’s going to be nominated; no, at least not if the GOP power brokers have anything to say.
Do I think that he could implement all the things he stands for; no, not with the Washington bureaucracy.
Do I think he’ll get a surprising number of votes in the primaries; yes, if his message gets out.
Do I think that that number of primary votes will make the other candidates look at his platform versus their own; yes, if they want to prevent a third party revolt among conservatives.”
Exactly, the Author makes a key mistake, they assume that we expect that Dr. Paul will win the nomination, for the record, I don’t think he will.
However, next fall when Hilliary and Rudy are duking it out over who gets to cut up the American Taxpayer the most, to pay for the most hairbrained Govt.Inc program, there will be some who can say:
“I supported Ron Paul, you guys got what you deserved, at least we maintained our principles, after 16 years of Bill Clinton and George Bush, we chose a conservative, you chose who you thought could win.”
Ron Paul as Republican Presidential Nominee might lead to a flamming Gotterdaminrung, but at least we shake off the Rhinos and the lite weights.
I agree with your post, but I take issue with your tagline. The NRST taxes all goods, including goods made in Communist China at the same rate as goods made by Americans and Mexicans will truck both of them in the NAU. Tariffs and the NAU are mutually exclusive.
But it also eliminates the tax burden on American manufacturers in competition with imports. That, and the creation of a tax haven which will attract a fortune in foreign investment money, are what will make the NAU a moot point if FairTax is enacted.
Not that the control freaks will stop trying.
But ultimately yes, I would prefer tariffs and no Federal taxation, the Constitution originally mandated.
Paul PING back at ya bro!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.