Somethings for Ron Paul/Libertarian supporters to consider, saved from
Counterpunch, Dec. 12, '07:
/The Freedom to Starve/
Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul
By SHERRY WOLF
"POLITICS, LIKE nature, abhors a vacuum," goes the revamped aphorism.
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul's surprising stature among a
small but vocal layer of antiwar activists and leftist bloggers appears
to bear this out.
At the October 27, 2007, antiwar protests in dozens of cities noticeable
contingents of supporters carried his campaign placards and circulated
sign-up sheets. The Web site antiwar.com features a weekly Ron Paul
column. Some even dream of a Left-Right gadfly alliance for the 2008
ticket. According to the Cleveland /Plain Dealer/, liberal maverick and
Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich told supporters in late
November he was thinking of making Ron Paul his running mate if he were
to get the nomination.
No doubt, the hawkish and calculating Hillary Rodham Clinton and flaccid
murmurings of Barack Obama, in addition to the uninspiring state of the
antiwar movement that backed a prowar candidate in 2004, help fuel the
desperation many activists feel. But leftists must unequivocally reject
the reactionary libertarianism of this longtime Texas congressman and
1988 Libertarian Party presidential candidate.
Ron Paul's own campaign Web site reads like the objectivist rantings of
Ayn Rand, one of his theoretical mentors. As with the /Atlas Shrugged/
author's other acolytes, neocon guru Milton Friedman and former Federal
Reserve chair Alan Greenspan, Paul argues, "Liberty means free-market
capitalism." He opposes "big government" and in the isolationist fashion
of the nation's Pat Buchanans, he decries intervention in foreign
nation's affairs and believes membership in the United Nations
undermines U.S. sovereignty.
Naturally, it is not Ron Paul's paeans to the free market that some
progressives find so appealing, but his unwavering opposition to the war
in Iraq and consistent voting record against all funding for the war.
His straightforward speaking style, refusal to accept the financial
perks of office, and his repeated calls for repealing the Patriot Act
distinguish him from the snakeoil salesmen who populate Congress.
Paul is no power-hungry, poll-tested shyster. Even the liberalish chat
show hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar on "The View" gave a friendly
reception to Paul's folksy presentation, despite his paleoconservative
views on abortion, which he-a practicing obstetrician-argues is murder.
Though Paul is unlikely to triumph in the primaries, it is worth taking
stock not only of his actual positions, but more importantly the
libertarian underpinnings that have wooed so many self-described
leftists and progressives. Because at its core, the fetishism of
individualism that underlies libertarianism leads to the denial of
rights to the very people most radicals aim to champion-workers,
immigrants, Blacks, women, gays, and any group that lacks the economic
power to impose their individual rights on others.
*Ron Paul's positions*
A cursory look at Paul's positions, beyond his opposition to the war and
the Patriot Act, would make any leftist cringe.
Put simply, he is a racist. Not the cross-burning, hood-wearing kind to
be sure, but the flat Earth society brand that imagines a colorblind
world where 500 years of colonial history and slavery are dismissed out
of hand and institutional racism and policies under capitalism are
imagined away. As his campaign Web site reads:
"The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a
limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of
individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means
free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and
competence-not skin color, gender, or ethnicity."
Paul was more blunt writing in his independent political newsletter
distributed to thousands of supporters in 1992. Citing statistics from a
study that year produced by the National Center on Incarceration and
Alternatives, Paul concluded: "Given the inefficiencies of what DC
laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely
assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal
or entirely criminal." Reporting on gang crime in Los Angeles, Paul
commented: "If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you
know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be."
His six-point immigration plan appears to have been cribbed from the
gun-toting vigilante Minutemen at the border. "A nation without secure
borders is no nation at all. It makes no sense to fight terrorists
abroad when our own front door is left unlocked," reads his site. And he
advocates cutting off all social services to undocumented immigrants,
including hospitals, schools, clinics, and even roads (how would /that/
work?).
"The public correctly perceives that neither political party has the
courage to do what is necessary to prevent further erosion of both our
border security and our national identity," he wrote in a 2005 article.
"Unfortunately, the federal government seems more intent upon guarding
the borders of other nations than our own." The article argues that,
"Our current welfare system also encourages illegal immigration by
discouraging American citizens from taking low-wage jobs." The solution:
end welfare so that everyone will be forced to work at slave wages. In
order that immigrants not culturally dilute the nation, he proposes that
"All federal government business should be conducted in English."
Though he rants about his commitment to the Constitution, he introduced
an amendment altering the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing citizenship
to anyone born in the United States, saying in a 2006 article:
"Birthright citizenship, originating in the 14th amendment, has become a
serious cultural and economic dilemma for our nation. We must end the
perverse incentives that encourage immigrants to come here illegally,
including the anchor baby incentive."
Here we come up against the limits of libertarianism-Paul wants a strong
state to secure the borders, but he wants all social welfare
expenditures eliminated for those within them.
Paul is quite vocal these days about his rank opposition to
abortion-"life begins at conception," he argues. He promotes a "states'
rights" position on abortion-that decades old hobgoblin of civil rights
opponents. And he has long opposed sexual harassment legislation,
writing in his 1988 book /Freedom Under Siege /(available online), "Why
don't they quit once the so-called harassment starts?" In keeping with
his small government worldview, he goes on to argue against the
government's right "to tell an airline it must hire unattractive women
if it does not want to."
In that same book, written as the AIDS crisis was laying waste to the
American gay male population prompting the rise of activist groups
demanding research and drugs, Paul attacked AIDS sufferers as "victims
of their own lifestyle." And in a statement that gives a glimpse of the
ruling-class tyranny of individualism he asserts that AIDS victims
demanding rushed drug trials were impinging on "the rights of insurance
company owners."
Paul wants to abolish the Department of Education and, in his words,
"end the federal education monopoly" by eliminating all taxes that go
toward public education and "giving educational control back to
parents." Which parents would those be? Only those with the leisure
time, educational training, and temperament commensurate with home
schooling! Whatever real problems the U.S. education system suffers
from-and there are many-eliminating 99 percent literacy rates that
generations of public education has achieved and tossing the children of
working parents out of the schools is not an appealing or viable option.
Paul also opposes equal pay for equal work, a minimum wage, and,
naturally, trade unions. In 2007, he voted against restricting
employers' rights to interfere in union drives and against raising the
federal minimum wage to $7.25. In 2001, he voted for zero-funding for
OSHA's Ergonomics Rules, instead of the $4.5 billion. At least he's
consistent.
Libertarians like Paul are for removing any legislative barriers that
may restrict business owners' profits, but are openly hostile to
alleviating economic restrictions that oppress most workers. Only a boss
could embrace this perverse concept of "freedom."
*Individualism versus collectivism*
There is a scene in Monty Python's satire /Life of Brian/ where Brian,
not wanting to be the messiah, calls out to the crowd: "You are all
individuals." The crowd responds in unison: "We are all individuals."
Libertarians, using pseudo-iconoclastic logic, transform this comical
send-up of religious conformity into their own secular dogma in which we
are all just atomized beings. "Only an /individual/ has rights," not
groups such as workers, Blacks, gays, women, and minorities, Ron Paul
argues. True, we /are/ all individuals, but we didn't just bump into one
another. Human beings by nature are social beings who live in a
collective, a society. Under capitalism, society is broken down into
classes in which some individuals-bosses, for example-wield considerably
more power than others-workers.
To advocate for society to be organized on the basis of strict
individualism, as libertarians do, is to argue that everyone has the
right to do whatever he or she wants. Sounds nice in the abstract,
perhaps. But what happens when the desires of one individual infringe on
the desires of another? Libertarians like Paul don't shy away from the
logical ramifications of their argument. "The dictatorial power of a
majority" he argues ought to be replaced by the unencumbered power of
individuals-in other words, the dictatorial power of a /minority/.
So if the chairman of Dow Chemical wants to flush his company's toxic
effluence into rivers and streams, so be it. If General Motors wants to
pay its employees starvation wages, that's their right too. Right-wing
libertarians often appear to not want to grapple with meddlesome things
like economic and social power. As the bourgeois radical Abraham Lincoln
observed of secessionist slaveowners, "The perfect liberty they seek is
the liberty of making slaves of other people."
*Too much government?*
Unwavering hostility to government and its collection of taxes is
another hallmark of libertarianism. Given the odious practices of
governments under capitalism, their repugnant financial priorities, and
bilking of the lower classes through taxation it's hardly surprising
that libertarians get a hearing.
But the conclusion that the problem is "big government" strips the
content from the form. Can any working-class perspective seriously
assert that we have /too much/ government involvement in providing
health care? Too much oversight of the environment, food production, and
workplace safety? Would anyone seriously consider hopping a flight
without the certainty of national, in fact international, air traffic
control? Of course not. The problem doesn't lie with some abstract
construct, "government," the problem is that the actual class dynamics
of governments under capitalism amount to taxing workers and the poor in
lieu of the rich and powerful corporations and spending those resources
on wars, environmental devastation, and the enrichment of a tiny swath
of society at the expense of the rest of us.
Ron Paul argues, "Government by majority rule has replaced strict
protection of the individual from government abuse. Right of property
ownership has been replaced with the forced redistribution of wealth and
property" Few folks likely to be reading this publication will agree
that we actually live in a society where wealth and property are
expropriated from the rich and given to workers and the poor. Even the
corporate media admit that there has been a wholesale redistribution of
wealth in the opposite direction. But Paul exposes here the class nature
of libertarianism-it is the provincial political outlook of the
middle-class business owner obsessed with guarding his lot. As online
anti-libertarian writer Ernest Partridge puts it in "Liberty for some":
"Complaints against "big government" and "over-regulation," though often
justified, also issue from the privileged who are frustrated at finding
that their quest for still greater privileges at the expense of their
community are curtailed by a government which, ideally, represents that
community. Pure food and drug laws curtail profits and mandate tests as
they protect the general public."
In fact, the libertarians' opposition to the government, or the state if
you will, is less out of hostility to what the state actually does than
who is running it. Perhaps this explains Paul's own clear contradiction
when it comes to abortion, since his opposition to government
intervention stops at a woman's uterus. But freedom for socialists has
always been about more than the right to choose masters. Likewise, Paul
appears to be for "small government" except when it comes to using its
power to restrict immigration. His personal right to not have any
undocumented immigrants in the U.S. seems to trump the right of free
movement of individuals, but not capital, across borders.
Right-wing libertarians, quite simply, oppose the state only insofar as
it infringes the right of property owners.
*Left-Right alliance?*
Some antiwar activists and leftists desperate to revitalize a flagging
antiwar movement make appeals to the Left to form a Left-Right bloc with
Ron Paul supporters. Even environmental activist and left-wing author
Joshua Frank, who writes insightful and often scathing attacks on
liberal Democrats' capitulations to reactionary policies, recently
penned an article citing-though not endorsing-Paul's campaign in calling
for leftist antiwar activists to reach out to form a sort of Left-Right
antiwar alliance. He argues, "Whether we're beer swilling rednecks from
Knoxville or mushroom eatin' hippies from Eugene, we need to come
together," ("Embracing a new antiwar movement").
Supporters of Ron Paul who show up to protests should have their
reactionary conclusions challenged, not embraced. Those of his
supporters who are wholly ignorant of his broader politics beyond the
war, should be educated about them. And those who advocate his noxious
politics, should be attacked for their racism, immigrant bashing, and
hostility to the values a genuine Left champions. The sort of Left-Right
alliance Frank advocates is not only opportunistic, but is also a
repellent to creating the multiracial working-class movement that is
sorely needed of we are to end this war. What Arabs, Blacks, Latinos-and
antiracist whites, for that matter-would ever join a movement that
accommodates to this know-nothing brand of politics?
Discontent with the status quo and the drumbeat of electoralism is
driving many activists and progressives to seek out political
alternatives. But libertarianism is no radical political solution to
inequality, violence, and misery. When the likes of Paul shout: "We need
freedom to choose!" we need to ask, "Yes, but freedom for whom?" Because
the freedom to starve to death is the most dubious freedom of all.
*Sherry Wolf* is on the editorial board of the International Socialist
Review. She can be reached at [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>.
pete wrote:
On Sun, 17 Jan 2010, Steve Kurtz <[email protected]> wrote:
While I don't agree with with his religious views which aren't
mentioned here, the rest has merit. He doesn't acknowledge overshoot
or waste; but I think he is aware of them. Perhaps discontent in
general could open some minds.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2010/01/ron-paul-prepare-for-revolutionary.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JessesCafeAmericain+%28Jesse%27s+Caf%C3%A9+Am%C3%A9ricain%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
I like the one at the bottom of the (Jan 16th) page, under the title
"Wall Street Thinks You Are a Jealous Little Malcontent":
"...the halls of too many corporations and big government are infested
with such power needing, neurotically driven personality types.
This is what renders any notion of self-regulation and efficient markets
the romantic fantasy that they are. People are not uniformly rational
and moderate in their behaviour. All people are not possessed of a
natural goodness and a self-effacing moderation.
This is what makes the rule of law, the Constitution, so indispensable."
-Pete
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