I think John Nichols is way too excited about the unquestionably momentary and ephemeral Ron Paul boomlet; but this, at least, is probably correct:
Ron Paul is not a progressive. He takes stands on abortion rights and a number of other issues that disqualify him from consideration by social moderates and liberals, and his stances on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and labor rights (like those of the author of the Taft-Hartley Act) are anathema to economic justice advocates. But Paul cannot be dismissed as just another robotic Republican. Indeed, he is more inclined to challenge Republican orthodoxy on a host of foreign and fiscal policy issues than Barack Obama. He does so as something that is rare indeed at the highest levels of American politics: a conservative.
I’m more likely to unapologetically endorse the oeuvre of Michael Bay than I am to argue that someone should vote for or support Ron Paul. But I’ve come across a significant number of people lately on the internets — people I respect — who have insisted that supporting the Texas Congressman, blemishes and all, is worth it.
Acknowledging that I’m speaking for others and generalizing to a large extent: the idea is that Paul’s nomination would highlight, to a degree not only unprecedented but basically verboten, the neo-imperial militarism of the Democratic Party (and more or less everyone else in DC besides Paul). I’m not swayed; but it’s not a ridiculous justification for supporting the man, provided that one understands the assumptions baked-in to the proposition.
There are two:
- that the American electorate is unaware of its nation’s hegemonic foreign policy
- that if they are aware, their opposition goes almost completely ignored by the powers that be, due to any number of reasons
Short version: people who support Paul because of his foreign policy worldview, and a desire to see it injected further into the national debate, don’t believe — whether they know it or not — that American foreign policy represents the will of the people. I’m really skeptical that this is the case. I think that nationalism is as influential a force in politics as any other, and that the lure of empire is great. Many people see human history through the transition from one hegemon to another for a reason.
What’s more, the US’s self-mythology as humanity’s redeemer, Freedom’s guardian, God’s favorite — this is all the kind of stuff that makes it especially difficult to convince Americans that a humble, mature foreign policy is best. A foreign policy that values life above glory, and doesn’t try to smother its existential fear (consciously or not) by constructing meaning through bloody struggle; despite what Americans may say now, after nearly 10 years of anti-climax and failure, it leaves many voters rather cold.
Maybe I’m being too cynical or, rather, fatalistic. But after a week or so of paeans to Hitchens, a man who embodied the Nietzschean vision of geopolitics with more frankness and verve than most, I doubt it.
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Elias,
Very thoughtful article and great marketing. I will tune in for more. You have a future. Don’t give up!
Gradually we will come to understand that acknowledging our actual world-historical role and passing beyond it are the same thing, the same process. It just takes a long time for a realization of such a type to sink in – perhaps all of the rest of history as we understand history. Another way of saying the same thing: What is authentically redemptive in the American idea can now no longer be advanced, or chiefly advanced, by the United States through the positive application of power politics. The extension of Jefferson’s “federative concept” (a world revolutionary concept) increasingly depends upon the actions of others, under their own preferred self-conceptions.
Elias, the establishment carpet-bombs the electorate with nationalistic propaganda and fear-mongering in order to maintain support for their policies and to keep themselves ensconced in power. Until the Internet, alternative voices didn’t even have a chance against such a tidal wave. The ideas that Paul champions have been around for a long time, but the movement could not have happened even twenty years ago. Today, there is finally some viable competition to the status quo world-view. We will see if Americans really are what they are told to be on T.V., or if given the opportunity, they might dare to rethink themselves.
Well there is an irony, we saved Saudi Arabia, from Saddam, he repays us with 9/11. Had his original plan been implemented, it’s likely he would have met his just rewards, somewhere in the Hasa province, we might have lost part of the pipeline, but that’s scant loss,
How far do you want to take this, should we have intervened in WW2, if so
then retreated immediately after. perhaps Korea was the last straw, arguably Vietnam, made little sense in the grand scheme of things.
I think you’re forgetting a few things:
First, America’s self-myth as God’s chosen country has never been unconditional, but instead is predicated on the righteousness it draws from its avowed disinterest in empire. That’s why True American Patriots ™ are always reminding the world about World War II, and trying to avoid the subjects of Iraq and Vietnam — the latter conflicts don’t fit easily into America’s flattering self-schema. It’s easy to forget that George W. Bush campaigned in 1999 on a platform against nation-building. Anyone who worries that America has a bottomless thirst for military adventurism should remember the dejected words of one elderly veteran to another after the Abu Ghraib scandal: “We’re supposed to be better than they are.” Indeed.
Second, I think your misapprehension above leads you to overlook the moment Ron Paul is capturing: America has sinned against its self-myth by worshiping the false idol of imperialism, and Ron Paul is uniquely situated to call it to repentance. Yes, anti-imperialism has historically faced an uphill electoral battle, but that’s because it’s usually been associated with the cultural left, which commands little voting power. Ron Paul, however, is a typical conservative in nearly every other respect: He’s a visceral opponent of abortion, an outspoken proponent of individual responsibility, a Southerner/Midwesterner, a 76-year-old rural Protestant veteran, and a deep skeptic of the urban establishment. Ron Paul is a mix between Noam Chomsky and your grandparents, which means that his case for winding down Pax Americana has unprecedented prospects for success. For me, that’s enough reason to support him on its own.
Third, while I can understand why progressives are reluctant to support Paul, America’s economic issues can’t be resolved without fixing its international role first. America can never have a robust safety net as long as 10% of its GDP is spent on a globe-girdling military. Besides, the totality of Ron Paul’s domestic positions are actually surprisingly favorable to our nation’s downtrodden: Sure, the prospect of slashed welfare spending is frightening, but what lefty wouldn’t trade that in a heartbeat for an immediate pardon of all nonviolent drug offenders, and a commutation of death sentences? (Not to mention that Congress’s veto threat would prevent Paul from cutting much from social services anyway.) Throw in the candidate’s dedicated libertarian opposition to the Patriot Act and the NDAA, and compared to Obama, Ron Paul starts to look like like a progressive’s wet dream.
Thanks. Great comment; and I’ll save my response for a post (which it requires and deserves).
Cool — looking forward to it.
Put differently: The Paulian critique surfaces the contradictions within the American Idea, and is appealing because it proposes a simple and positive Americanism as antidote to neo-imperial overstretch and moral compromise, but it cannot withstand, as it never has withstood, history. When the blogger refers to the enduring appeal of aggressive nationalism/hegemonism/imperialism, he gets at the same thing. Put the two ideas together in the form of a mechanism – freedom -> freedom to oppress -> freedom, etc. – and you have the history of the American Idea all the way back to the Founding and beyond. The configuration appears in the history of libertarianism – as evidenced by, but in no way exhausted by the newsletter scandal and the strategy the newsletters embody; is foregrounded by the schizo-libertarian/Christian Zionist militarists who represent the Republican mainstream (from Bachmann all the way to Romney); and it eventually appears, under tactical adjustments, across the American liberal-left, such as it is, as well.
Another interesting comment. If I come across an “in” to segue from into this, I’ll use it. It’s a convo Americans (outside the Academy, at least) don’t have.
One reason it’s a difficult to discuss because you sooner or later end up saying some very “wrong” things – as you inched up to in your post. What I mean is that I could translate your theme as a) Paul’s right that we’re imperialistic warmongers suffering for our sins, but b) we seem to like things that way, so get used to it.
Yeah. America’s flattering self-schema has long been wedded to white Christian chauvinism — “They hate us for our freedoms!” is best translated as “They hate us because we’re so great… and white!” Ron Paul’s apparent comfort with this chauvinism distresses liberals (understandably), but perhaps only someone so close to it could have the leverage to pry it from the American identity once and for all. I see Paul as kind of an anti-Obama in this context: I think Obama is much more wary of American Empire than his policies suggest, but is constrained from acting on it because his cultural Otherness reduces his currency with the military and its civilian boosters. (If you’re tempted to disagree with this kind of analysis, consider how well it also explains Obama’s awkward maneuvering with regard to DADT. But maybe that’s a subject for another post.) George Bush’s presidency could survive a terror attack on American soil, but Obama’s would be immediately faced with ugly accusations of collusion from the rural Christian culture that dominates the military, conceivably to the point of mass insurrection. When it comes to dismantling empire, Ron Paul will enjoy a certain benefit of the doubt.
The Faustian flavor of this analysis is not lost on me (“Let’s elect someone with a racist past to fight racist imperialism!”), but given the radicalness and sincerity of Paul’s platform, I think it’s also possible to interpret the “racist newsletters in 1991 –> astonishingly pro-minority platform in 2011″ journey as a kind of absolution. And what could be more American than that?
I think the conventions of political discussion get in our way here: Paul is extremely unlikely to become president, regardless of your, or my, or Andrew Sullivan’s, or the progressosphere’s level of support. So we’re mostly talking about the meaning and manner of Paul’s breaking into public consciousness, and potentially making use of it.
As a symbolic gesture, the protest vote is compromised and potentially reversed by the unsavory attachments, and also by the further implications of a right-libertarianism. If the problem is that anti-imperialism, a minimally humane and morally sound civilized penal system, and other leading, left-friendly elements of Paul’s program can’t be advanced due to insufficient cultural influence from the left, then it may not help much to support a rightwing reactionary fantasist and pave the way for his son. Better to leap in and seek to exploit the space he’s opened up.
I don’t think Paul boosterism is condemned to protest-vote status, even if one accepts the (extremely dubious) proposition that he essentially cannot win. If Paul puts on an impressive showing in the early primary contests, he’ll earn a certain level of engagement with the national press for at least several weeks. This presents a significant opportunity for his foreign policy stance to be sussed out in the national dialogue, which in turn stretches the parameters of acceptable debate. If Paul can stay in the race until Super Tuesday or beyond, American voters will hear very forceful arguments for a progressive foreign policy, for an extended period, from a candidate who speaks the dialect of American tribal rhetoric without a condescending affectation. Paul’s candidacy would soften up opposition to progressive foreign policy, not just for the election but over the long-term. I see that as an unequivocally good thing.
Ending all foreign aid and withdrawing from all international institutions and alliances isn’t “progressive,” comrade.
Maybe I’m reading you wrong, but I don’t see any chance at all of a 76-year-old relic of the previous era’s lunatic fringe even challenging for the R nomination, much less for the presidency. I think Beinart’s speculation at the Daily Beast sketches out Paul’s maximum potential – http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/26/peter-beinart-how-ron-paul-will-change-the-gop-in-2012.html
If Beinart’s right, then the result might pose an interesting dilemma for the liberal left, and expose its own internal divisions, while bringing us back to EI’s thesis. But even an anti-imperialist/isolationist wave overtaking the public imagination would be vulnerable to sudden reversal: Democracies are extremely vulnerable to that kind of thing.
I disagree. I think it’s fair to say that Paul’s foreign policy is progressive on balance. His criticism of foreign aid and international alliances comes from a progressive direction: He derides those practices as being lashed to the yoke of hegemonic realpolitik instead of some Wilsonian idealism. More than that, his vision of international trade as a binding force for intercultural friendship is hard to locate anywhere else than the progressive tradition. It’s tempting to categorize Paul as a prickly isolationist in the vein of Pat Buchanan, sure. But that’s just not accurate.
I think Paul’s chances for the nomination are a lot stronger than the professional commentariat realizes. None of the other not-Romney campaigns have as much experience running for president. None of them have as much money, or as much organizing firepower in the early states. Most importantly, none of them have NEARLY as much intensity of support.
Right now, voters’ support for the non-Paul candidates is very ephemeral: Voters can’t explain well why they’re for or against a candidate, and perhaps as a result, their current support is very soft. It’s easy to make fun of Paulites for following their candidate so fervently, but one corollary of their mania is that they’ve been following the race a lot closer than everyone else. As the contests get closer and the ranks start to close, the Paulites will be much better equipped to collect voters who were previously wafting in the ether.
We’ve already seen Paul’s Iowa support rise dramatically in the final weeks before that state’s contest, and a similar phenomenon is germinating in the New Hampshire numbers. If Paul can parlay his support from the military into credibility on national security, and if he can plausibly show electability, then he’ll be a formidable challenger to Mitt Romney.
If you squint hard enough you can see the dominos falling just right for anyone. Maybe we can leave discussion of the real potential for a Paul candidacy beyond protest to some other day: In my opinion it’s harder for the Rs simply to dismiss him this time around because of their own confusion and division, not because he’s an intrinsically credible presidential candidate on any level.
Like a lot of Paul’s more utopian notions, the vision of peace through trade goes back to the 18th Century. Jefferson was particularly fond of the idea. If it’s “progressive,” it’s by a very broad definition of the term. (It’s amusing in this context to recall that Paul’s recommendation for dealing with Al Qaeda also called upon a turn of the 19th Century institution, the Letter of Marque and Reprisal.)
There is certainly a tradition of progressive or Progressive isolationism and war resistance: LaFollette comes to mind, but TR has at least as much a claim to the label as anyone else. But defining “progressive” is also perhaps a discussion best left to another day.
I think in the meantime you and I at least agree that Paul opens up an interesting space for discussion (including our own discussion), that ideally the left would cleverly exploit. I’m just a lot more skeptical that getting into bed with a guy like him, or even just wearing his pin, can be good for anyone’s reputation.
Ron Paul is certainly far from ideal but voting for him in the primary is essential to shifting the debate. Consider this: http://progressivesforronpaul.blogspot.com/2011/10/tho-how-and-why-of-dirty-work-of-green.html
Missed this post until it popped up due to another comment.
This is depressingly bang on.
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