So despite warnings from the judicious, our nation continues to careen toward Iowa and New Hampshire. And, given the lay of the land, and what the possibilities are, it appears that the American people will once again get what we deserve, good and hard.
Ron Paul is the one doctrinal anomaly in the race — he is saying something really different, and is offering something more than the variations on a theme that we are getting from everybody else — but despite the excitement he has generated among his supporters, and the big money he has raised, he still doesn’t have any chance of actually becoming president. That said, here are just a few random observations on Ron Paul, some critical, but most just explanatory. They come in no particular order.
First, the reason he has caught fire with so many — particularly young people — is because there is absolutely no sense that what comes out of his mouth is a function of any kind of polling, or finger-in-the-winding. He is the un-Romney, the anti-Clinton. He wakes up in the morning knowing what he thinks, and what that is is a function of his reading and study. He has real positions that were not handed to him by his staff.
Second, his economic libertarianism is not the same thing as support for whatever someone might do with their economic liberty. Economic libertarians understand the difference between a sin and a crime. And if we pay attention to Scripture, we should be forced to recognize that there are reprehensible actions that ought to be legal. Not all sins should be crimes. Keep that in mind when you hear Paul accused of supporting the right of a racist business owner to be an idiot.
Third, Ron Paul is getting something of a free ride from the media because his anti-war position as a Republican embarrasses the president, and that is in line with the interests of the media. But we should never forget an important distinction. Some opposed the war for sound policy reasons, while many others opposed it because they are hand-wringers and bed-wetters. If Ron Paul were ever to get to a place where he might get some of his policy ideas implemented, the fawning media interviews would stop and hostility would commence.
Fourth, his allegiance to the Constitution is not idolatrous — although I think it is quixotic. He is simply treating the Constitution the way it was originally intended to be treated, a document that specified how we are to do our civic business at the national level, and which would have prevented a whole lot of carping. For example, with the war in Iraq, if the president had obtained a declaration of war as the Constitution requires, the “existence” of the war could not a issue in this presidential campaign. The competence of its prosecution could be an issue, but if Congress had declared war, then congressmen running for higher office could not be complaining that there was a war on. The actual constitutional idolators are those who trundle the Constitution out for special occasions, like the Fourth of July, and whose language of praise for all things American is embarrassingly devotional, but who have no intention of allowing themselves to be in any way slowed down by the actual restrictions the Constitution contains. I said that Ron Paul was quixotic in his faithfulness to the Constitution — as though the great constitutional revolution of 1861-1865 had never happened — but I have to admit to a certain guilty pleasure in watching someone take the Constitution seriously in the midst of all those charlatans who pretend to — it is as though Josiah just showed up with his just-acquired copy of Deuteronomy, and a bunch of the abashed court theologians don’t know where to look.
Fifth, there can be a principled pragmatism that recognizes that America (like all nations more than ten years old) has an unwritten constitution in addition to (and in some cases, on top of) our written Constitution. Our intevention in the Middle East is completely in accord with that unwritten constitution — which, incidentally, is a strange amalgam of written constitutional republicanism, direct democracy, big business mercantilism, periodic media frenzies, and an elected imperial presidency. A conscientious Christian can function in the context of an imperial America. What he cannot do is function in the context of intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy about how we got here.
Sixth, in line with the previous point, one of the areas where I differ with Ron Paul is in his “just bring the troops home now” approach. I say this as one who opposed the war in Iraq before it was launched, but also as one who subscribes to Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn rule — “you break it, it’s yours.” Going into Iraq created moral obligations for us that we did not have before. Restitution is an obligation for nations as well as for individuals, but it is simplistic in the extreme to think that restitution looks the same in both cases. If a man trespasses in his neighbor’s home in order to take all his stuff, repentance means putting everything down, and leaving right away. But if one nation removes the government of another nation, and then thinks better of it, leaving that second nation in a state of anarchy (in the name of restitution) would compound the original offense, and would not mitigate anything at all.
And last, the reason Ron Paul is appealing to many old-guard conservatives like myself is that we have had it up to here (gesture helplessly about ear level) with conservative statesmen who have written more books than they have read, with compassionate conservatives who simply want government to bloat in different departments than under the Democrats but with the necessity of bloat as a given, with conservatives who will believe the government capable of any wickedness or folly if the president’s last name is Clinton, but capable of no wickedness or folly if the president’s name is Bush, conservatives who conserve absolutely nothing but the lunatic programs of their liberal predecessors, and of conservatives who invoke the Reagan legacy now that he is safely dead and not actually proposing that government be cut back.
I am not a Ron Paul junkie, but he is appealing to quite a few people for clear reasons. And so when ostensible conservative supporters of the Ken Doll Republicans respond to those reasons with dog whistle argumentation and something approaching religious indignation, it does nothing to dislodge me from my bemused observation of the current parade of Republicants. Like I said, I believe Ron Paul has no chance. But neither did Goldwater. I am happy to watch the Ron Paul Goldwater be the skunk at the garden party. Perhaps down the road there will be a Ron Paul Reagan.