A wave of support for dark horse presidential candidate Ron Paul is sweeping the internet. In fact, it’s going so fast that it will be old news by the time I click “save” on this blog entry.
But, as with all things which move so fast, the sensation is more than a little misunderstood.
There are plenty of reasons to like Ron Paul. He’s the only Republican who’s against making the war in Iraq an eternal one, for instance. Even better, he’s the only candidate from either party who seems to understand the true politics of the Middle East, along with our involvement in them. (For those of you who don’t know, those are the politics of poverty, exploitation, and victimization — all seeming, to the uneducated, which the majority surely is, to come from the hands of the west.) And, while I’m sure most of the candidates understand these politics of cause and effect, Mr. Paul is the only one willing to talk about it, openly, to the American public.
But noble as his diatribes may be, they come from another place than that of the well-traveled scholar. Rather, they’re the accidental rantings of an isolation-obsessed, hardcore libertarian conservative. If most of the kids who’ve thrown their weight and wealth behind the unlikely contender knew what he truly planned to do with America, they’d save their five bucks for another day.
Ron Paul is a man with a bone to pick with the IRS — namely, he wants to disband it. He’s also happy to end public education, and pretty much everything else the government does. But instead of running under the title of “Libertarian,” which is what he is, he’s chosen “Republican,” and found a good deal of success.
Why? Because conservatism has lost its way, and none of the main GOP contenders care much about such archaic notions as fiscal responsibility, small government, or avoiding the influence of special interests. Since Reagan, the Republican party has been one of making war, raising taxes, and using the whole mess as an excuse to end social services, which it believes is the heart of the conservative spirit — to refuse help to people.
Instead, we get failure on all fronts. As Markos Mulistas says, “When you vote for people who believe government is bad, that’s the kind of government you get.”
So Ron Paul has a foothold in the minds of conservatives and libertarians alike, and as disappointed as they may be when his presence merely undercuts the frontrunning Republican and allows a Democrat to gain an unassailable lead, it says something far greater about the Republican party:
It’s time to wake up, and find some sense of modesty. Because finally, your interest in protecting the prominence of the majority is no longer enough, and you’re facing the constant bane of the multi-issued Democrats’ existence: the threat of an opposition ideology within your own ranks.
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