By John F. Welsh
The presidential campaign of Texas congressman Ron Paul has received
considerable attention from the national media in recent weeks because of the
success of his online fundraising efforts, his victories in many straw polls of
Republican organizations around the country, and his performance in the
nationally televised debates of Republican candidates. The cable news channels,
which had been particularly dismissive of his ideas and candidacy, are now
willing to include discussion of Ron Paul, although he is still not, in their
parlance, a “top-tier” candidate.
Despite the media’s promotion of its self-assigned
authority to legitimate and anoint viable presidential candidates and political
tendencies, there is growing prairie fire of dissatisfaction with the
“top-tier” candidates in both national parties and an antagonism toward the
mainstream approaches to the political issues confronting the United States.
Much of the dissatisfaction is clearly rooted in frustration with the indolence
and incompetence of the Bush administration, especially its failures with the Iraq war and an
increasingly unfocused War on Terror. However, a considerable amount of this
antipathy goes beyond George W. Bush and is directed toward the national
political class as a whole, including the liberal Democrats, neoconservative
Republicans, and the religious right, who have set the policy agenda in this
country for at least the past three decades, but who have also collectively
demonstrated that they cannot govern the country effectively.
What unites these otherwise disparate political actors in
the governing elite is their fundamental belief in the unconstrained use of the
power of the state in the achievement of public policy objectives, whether
these include the redistribution of wealth, the management of political speech,
or the imposition of religious definitions of legitimate marriages. Our
national political culture has become collectivist and statist. Our individual
problems and challenges are transformed into policy issues and the federal
government, especially, is the presumed vehicle for solving them.
Ron Paul is an attractive presidential candidate to many
Americans because the libertarian dimension of his platform is a welcome
alternative to the absolute commitment to collectivism and statism by the
political class in the United States. Ron Paul’s campaign and his performance in the Republican presidential
debates have interjected some life into an otherwise dismal political ritual
because many of his ideas pose serious questions about the appropriate role of
the state in society. Paul has also challenged the notion that the federal
government is able to address the multifaceted crisis confronting the United States.
A large component of Ron Paul’s appeal is the libertarian trajectory of many of
his ideas.
Consequently, many libertarians are delighted with the
attention and support Ron Paul has received in recent weeks, much of which is
evident in the success of his fundraising. Other libertarians are skeptical of
his candidacy, or hostile to it, because of specific policy positions he has
taken, such as his pro-life stance on abortion and his “border security first”
position on immigration.
While most libertarians particularly like his opposition
to the Iraq War, many question whether Paul’s positions adequately reflect a
libertarian perspective. In short, the concern is that the totality of Paul’s
ideas and proposals do not sufficiently differentiate his libertarianism from
the nativist or paleo-conservative tendencies within the Republican Party. Pat
Buchanan’s support for Paul’s candidacy only lends credence to the concern that
Paul is better described as a paleo-conservative than a libertarian. Much of
the discussion about Paul’s candidacy that has occurred at LeftLibertarian.org
reflects this general discomfort among some libertarians with Paul’s
candidacy. The prevailing viewpoint at
LewRockwell.com is that Paul’s candidacy provides a profound opportunity for
both America and libertarianism.
Beyond the concerns with some of Paul’s policy
perspectives, there are also some significant structural or organizational
sorts of questions that Paul’s candidacy poses about the relationship between
libertarianism and the political system in the United States. While the pundits on
the cable news channels are concerned with Paul’s electability and the extent
to which the Republican Party can accommodate libertarianism and still appeal
to its conservative base, libertarians should be concerned with the extent to
which their philosophy can meld with the Republican Party without compromising
the fundamental principles of libertarianism and, thereby, relinquishing its
identity as an alternative political philosophy and movement? Is libertarianism destined to become nothing
more than one philosophic tendency safely tucked away within the Republican
Party? If so, what happens to its potential as an oppositional philosophy and a
movement devoted to the radical transformation of the social structure and
culture of the United States?
A more radical libertarian and individualist perspective
suggests that voting and participation in the democratic political process is
much more of a surrender of sovereignty than an expression of it. If so, the
more significant questions pertaining to Ron Paul’s campaign for the presidency
of the United States are not the appeal of his policy positions nor his electability in 2008.
Instead, the more significant issues pertain to the long-term consequences for
the struggle for individual liberty. Is the struggle for individual liberty
promoted or inhibited by efforts to elect a president who believes in some
libertarian ideas? The focus on presidential politics within the Republican
Party tends to detract from and undermine the interest in developing
libertarianism as an oppositional social movement so that it can effectively
challenge collectivism and statism in politics, culture, and everyday life in
the United States.
John F. Welsh is the author of After
Multiculturalism: The Politics of Race
and the Dialectics of Liberty.
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