For someone who is trying to learn about politics as I am, Ron Paul is fascinating. Here is a candidate for president who says and advocates things that virtually no other candidate does -- thirty minutes spent listening to Paul exposes me to more new ideas than hours spent listening to most of the other candidates. That isn't to say that the other candidates don't have good ideas, too, but their ideas tend to be composed within the context of the systems that are already in place in America. Ron Paul just isn't like that -- more often than not, he seems to advocate the tearing down of the systems that are already in place. He wants to change the way America operates on a very fundamental level. Paul has gained a measure of fame and support for his opposition to the war in Iraq, but the rest of his platform is really far more unique!
An example of Paul's "fringe" views in legislative action is the recently proposed H.R. 2755, a bill which would essentially destroy the Federal Reserve System. I was interested enough in economics to take three economics classes in college as electives, but I cannot say any of those classes gave me any reason to think the Federal Reserve was a "bad" thing. How can you dislike the thing that is controlling the money supply and regulating banking? Don't we want to be protected from inflation and irresponsible banking policies? Ron Paul, as a rule, doesn't like to see government impose rules and regulations, so I strongly suspect his answer to my previous question would be a resounding, "No!" Paul supports a return to the gold standard, which I presume he believes will protect America from inflation far better than the Federal Open Market Committee has ever done. I'm honestly open to the idea of a return to the gold standard (it's something I plan to read up on more), but I'm worried by the prospect of the federal government backing out of the world of banking. It's a fact that banks are vulnerable to closure. It's a fact that banking crises have devastated savings and wreaked havoc on economies in the past. In fact, I'm from a state which experienced such a severe banking crisis in the 19th century that it was left without ANY locally based financial institutions as a direct result of that crisis. I'm not sure to what extent Ron Paul would allow federal interference in the private world of banks, however; he might just plan to protect American savings more than I am implying. One thing is most definitely true: Ron Paul is the only major-party candidate for president who wants to repeal the Federal Reserve Act! I might be hesitant to institute such a big change, but I totally think it is a healthy thing for us to question our institutions and our monetary policy as Ron Paul is encouraging all Americans to do. The economics classes I took presented the gold standard largely as a thing of the past, a relic in an era of fiat money. They were correct in at least one sense: the major economies of the world do not adhere to the gold standard any more than the United States currently does. However, Ron Paul is most definitely not alone in supporting the gold standard, as any Google search will quickly reveal! These ideas deserve to be heard and considered.
I am most enthusiastic about Ron Paul's commitment to individual liberty. One example of this in action is Paul's legislative attempt to repeal the Military Selective Service Act! Philosophically, I'm totally with Paul on this issue -- it is a liberty issue, plain and issue. Pragmatically, I do wonder what the world would be like today if there had been no draft in World War I and World War II. To an extent, I think the draft had an effect of delaying patriotism in an odd way; that is, since men knew they would be drafted eventually they did not seek to volunteer. Had there not been a draft, I expect there would still have been many enlistments, especially in World War II after Pearl Harbor; indeed, I am consistently surprised from my reading of military memoirs from the great wars at how many people really did volunteer to fight just because they felt it was the right thing to do at the time. However, it's hard to imagine massive mobilization of American resources for those wars without the draft. Indeed, war by its nature tends to infringe on liberty; unfortunately, war's tentacles wrap around all they come into contact with. Luckily, I think we've reached a point where the draft really is an anachronism; the United States can boast of a skilled, professional armed forces of soldiers whose service cannot be quickly replaced by random Americans. I think we're ready for an end to selective service in this country.
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Hi,
I think your blog is interesting, and so I'm going to take the opportunity to respond to your thoughts on Ron Paul. I hope you don't mind. I find your blog refreshing; writing about politics that is honest, open-minded, critical, and not unfair is really very rare. But anyway, on to Ron Paul.
Ron Paul is an extreme libertarian; I suspect the only reason he's a Republican is because he wants recognition. As it happens, I disagree with both you and Ron Paul on selective service. Honestly, though, the important principles at play in that question are better discussed with reference to other issues.
To my mind, libertarians like Paul make an idol out of what they call 'individual liberty' and worship it to the detriment of everything else. In their minds, the only thing that any governmental body should have the power to do to anyone is to stop them from actively interfering with the liberty of others. I used to think that was a great idea when I was a kid. I've long since given up on thinking of other people primarily as threats to my ability to do whatever it is I happen to want to do -- that's very much an adolescent's way to think of the world! I'm not quite willing to say that libertarians are all just kids who never grew up, but there is something awfully juvenile about their fundamental orientation.
As I see it, libertarianism's extreme individualism and opposition to government are both theoretically mistaken and morally and politically harmful. It is theoretically mistaken because it attempts to combine subjectivism about what is good for people with a universal moral requirement to respect the rights of others. Worse, libertarianism dogmatically assumes that all but the most unfortunate people are responsible for their own plight, or at least responsible for failing to get themselves out of it. So they conclude that we shouldn't help them on the grounds that they could fix their own problems if only they would quit being lazy. That conclusion reflects mistakes about the social contextualization of individual human action and ignores the impact that upbringing and environment can have on a person's abilities and success.
Libertarianism seems to me morally and politically harmful because human beings are social creatures who flourish and thrive together, who find their good through, with, and among others. Human communities typically try to pursue, promote, and protect these common goods through collective action, through the creation of institutions, and through laws. Thus we have set up things as simple as traffic laws and as complex as public education. The promotion of these goods often requires the ability to compel others to cooperate. Libertarianism would declare virtually all such action illegitimate on the grounds that it violates people's right to liberty. Thus many libertarians oppose the very idea of public education. Liberty is certainly a good, but it is far from obvious that its value is so supreme that nobody could ever legitimately compel anyone else to do anything, however reasonable or important.
There is certainly plenty of room for debate about particular policies, and conservatives may be right that the liberal method of solving everything with a government program is flawed. Nonetheless, the libertarian idea that such disputes can be settled by a simple appeal to our absolute and inalienable right to personal liberty seems to me untenable.
Of course, I've been directing my wrath here against extreme libertarians, who are sometimes indistinghuisable from anarcho-capitalists. The only difference, it seems, is that the anarcho-capitalists actually think that we can get along without a state at all, while the extreme libertarians think that we need a tiny, little state that will make sure that the big guys can't overtly beat the shit out of the little guys. It all sounds crazy to me.
In short, I won't be voting for Ron Paul, even if he somehow does win the Republic nomination.
Apollodorus, first of all I want to thank you for your kind words regarding this blog as well as for making Learning Politics a more interesting place to visit with your thoughtful commentary! Now that that is out of the way, we can get to the good stuff: Ron Paul and libertarianism.
I think you are writing as a person who has had a fair amount of experience with libertarianism as a philosophy and perhaps with people who call themselves libertarians. To an extent, I think the reason Ron Paul has attracted as much attention as he has (most notably on the Internet) is because most people aren't that familiar with libertarian beliefs, so many are responding in part just to the novelty of his campaign. I'm part of that group myself in that the libertarian philosophy is still relatively new to me -- Ron Paul is not delivering a message that I've heard numerous times before. For that reason alone, I find him an interesting person to listen to and I feel like hearing his unusual opinions helps me understand issues more deeply than I would otherwise. Thus, I'm glad he's in the race, although I wouldn't vote for him at this point either. In some ways, Dr. Paul may not even fit the libertarian mold; as libertarian as he is on foreign policy and economic issues, he's also something of a social conservative in the traditional sense of that term!
You talked a lot about the tradeoff between individual liberty and the good of society. I agree that such a tradeoff does exist; for instance, any government program that requires the smallest amount of tax money infringes on Americans' financial freedom to some extent. Libertarians perhaps make a mistake of turning the liberty dial all the way to 11 irregardless of the impact that will have on society as a whole; others make the mistake of turning that dial way down ostensibly to make life better for all without considering how the lives of individuals will be changed as a result. In general, I do think it is better to err on the side of liberty than on the side of society's good because free people can often solve problems on their own and it is generally difficult to decide what government policy will benefit society as a whole the most. Where it is evident that individuals are not equipped to solve societal problems through their own individual actions, then government should intervene if the problems truly need to be addressed.
In general, I think it's hard to give libertarianism a fair shake because it exists largely in theory at this point. In evaluating any political philosophy I like to consider two things: the quality of the ideas themselves and the impact those ideas will likely have when made into policy. Considering the impact that libertarian ideas will have if implemented as policy is hard to do because the world is still awaiting the first libertarian government. At best, one can try to evaluate the impact of specific policies (such as adherence to the gold standard) on societies in the past, but this is hardly conclusive because so many variables are involved. So I think it certainly is possible that libertarianism in practice could be better than I think it would be, since I am relying on my reason and imagination rather than facts to evaluate the philosophy. For the time being, though, I'll trust my reason and imagination rather than take a leap of faith!
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