Category Archives: Political Philosophy

No Tats, Toots

Classical Liberalism, Drug War, Elections, Foreign Policy, libertarianism, Liberty, Natural Law, Political Philosophy, Rights, Ron Paul

Yes, it’s all very endearing and cute: Young college kids, most of whom are not self-supporting, are supporting Ron Paul, age 76. Paul’s “college-aged volunteer army” has “descended on Iowa from around the nation to coax people to the state’s Republican caucuses.”

Are these kids mere libertines, more committed to toking it up than cutting an overweening state’s reach and spending? It doesn’t appear so. The New York Times believes that, “For the students, much of Mr. Paul’s appeal derives from civil libertarian views like ending the federal ban on marijuana and other drugs, as well as his desire to end foreign wars and his small-government credo.”

I have never been in favor of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, smuggled into the Constitution by statute. The Amendment artificially swelled the ranks of Democratic voters, which has further eroded any protections the Constitution afforded to private property, and swayed the balance of power in favor of those who “vote for a living,” as opposed “those who work for a living.”

However, if Ron Paul’s youthful devotees are voting for negative, leave-me-alone rights—then, by all means, hop on board and bring along your pals on the Left.

UPDATED: Ron Paul Rising (Stand Up for Middle America!)

Democrats, Ilana On Radio & TV, libertarianism, Liberty, Media, Political Correctness, Political Philosophy, Propaganda, Race, Racism, Republicans, Ron Paul, Russia

As of this writing, Rep. Ron Paul—the ultimate outsider and quintessential anti-establishment presidential candidate—is the favorite to win the Iowa caucuses, scheduled to take place on January 3, 2012.

Polls such as Insider Advantage and Public Policy Polling place Paul in the lead, at 23 and 24 percent respectively, to Mitt Romney’s 20 percent and Newt Gingrich’s 14 percent. From ignoring Congressman Paul, the Republican Party establishment and mainstream media have moved to strategizing on how to discount his lead, and likely win, in Iowa.

Especially exercised is the Republican Party of Iowa. Its functionaries seem willing to delegitimize Iowa poll results—and the importance of the Iowa caucuses as harbingers of things to come in the national convention—if these don’t fall in line with the Party line. Apparently, caucus-goers who dare to “reward” candidates “who are unrepresentative of the broader party” deserve to be discredited.

What Grand Old Party apparatchiks cannot accept is that voters are coming around to reality dictated truths. And when “[t]hings fall apart; the center cannot hold.”

Against this backdrop, I was interviewed, on December 15, by the Russia Today (RT) television network, a broadcaster that does not abide herd behavior. Topics covered: The rise of Ron Paul, his rivals, and the Representative’s chances of parlaying his accomplishments in Iowa (to be repeated, we hope, in the Granite State and South Carolina) into a national win.

WATCH THE RT CLIP ON WND.COM.

My book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon. (Don’t forget those reviews; they help this cause.)

A Kindle copy is also on sale.

Still better, shipping is free and prompt if you purchase Into the Cannibal’s Pot from The Publisher. Inquire about Xmas and New Year specials.

UPDATE ((Dec. 23): STAND UP FOR MIDDLE AMERICA. In reply to Jeff’s comment, here: You are right about Pat Buchanan’s mind. The man is brilliant. However, as for your recommendation to Ron Paul; it is mainstream and wrong. Utterly wrong. Paul should do the exact opposite of what you advocate. He should stand up for middle America. White America is not racist. That is pure propaganda. If anything, America is dangerously stupid about the reality of demographic differences on the ground.

You need to read my book, especially the section about the “Pathos of the Puritan.” (Look Inside the book.) Your argument is of the Left but has been adopted by the so-called Right. This waffle about low expectations is also the in-vogue leftist argument, conjured by the “Right” so as to both come across as politically palatable, and make excuses for 1) the militant anti-white sentiments blacks have adopted voluntarily, albeit with the encouragement of race huckster Democratic leaders. 2) Give credence to the leftist explanation for underachievement in this racial cohort: racism. All you have to do is expect more, and racial differences on the achievement variable will disappear. Hardly. Enough of this dangerous utopian day-dreaming.

Should Paul quit the obsequious apologetics and stand up for Americans—he would succeed mightily in galvanizing mainstream Republicans, heartland America. They are still a majority, if a waning one. The idiot Republicans will never win over the Left in this country with which most minorities identify. The GOP’s libertarian faction needs to veer Right and stand up for its base.

Granted, it is fashionable among the feminist Republican media bimbos and their beaus to castigate the GOP for being the party of Anglo-American males. Where’s the shame in that? That’s an acquired Mark of Cain; acquired through PC brainwashing. Who founded this country? The ancestors of this much-maligned majority. Were they so bad? Be a man. Stand up for America.

If Ron Paul proves unable to reject the racism accusations and stand up for an America that is defended as good and non-racist—he will be political toast.

UPDATED: Liberty’s Civilizational Dimension

Foreign Policy, History, IMMIGRATION, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Old Right, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, Republicans, Ron Paul

LIBERTY & CIVILIZATION. In the post “STRASSEL’s Non Sequitur,” it was pointed out that whether Ron Paul’s statements about Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum were true or not, “Paul has taken a classic Chris-Matthews kind of ad hominem swipe against Bachmann: she hates Muslims. Santorum hates gays and Muslims. Siding with the Left by adopting its arguments may be situationally advantageous, but it will backfire on a Republican candidate in the long run. This tactic, even if it was tantamount to a not-so-funny joke, damages Ron Paul’s effectiveness from the vantage point of conservative libertarians who think that liberty cannot be reduced to the non-aggression axiom and has a cultural and civilizational dimension.”

In their demands for an explanations, my libertarian readers seemed to forget that “conservative libertarians” are the majority who matter.

This writer is a paleo-libertarian; a libertarian of the Right. If libertarianism is ever to appeal to middle America, it is this libertarianism, as it is rooted in the founding ideas, which is also why I prefer classical liberalism as a philosophical label.

As I pointed out in “Libertarianism Lite,” “A certain establishment-endorsed libertarianism is currently being touted on the Fox News and Business channels as the only legitimate brand of libertarianism. This life-style libertarianism, or libertarianism-lite, as I call it, tends to conflate libertinism with liberty, and appeals to hippies of all ages, provided they remain juveniles forever.”

These sinecured TV types appeal to middle America not at all. “Ordinary, gun-toting, homeschooling, bible-thumping Middle Americans remain unmoved by people who draw their paycheques from foundations, think tanks, and academia, and wax orgiastic about MTV and Dennis Rodman. This stuff might appear sophisticated, but it is reductive and shallow—a post-graduate cleverness that lacks philosophical depth.”

More crucially: If you are driving a libertarianism that hates the whites BHO described derisively as clinging to their bibles, bigotries and guns—you are a marginal and insignificant force in American politics, and so you will remain.

True, salt-of-the-earth America (the founding stock of this great nation) is diminishing fast thanks to immigration central planning: mass immigration from the third world.

In “The Sequel to ‘Suicide of A Superpower’” I wrote: “…almost all the immigrants replacing the host population in the U.S. come from ‘Asia, Africa, and Latin America.’ Given America’s preference for welfare-dependent, third-world immigrants, pillage politics will proliferate. Thirty years on, when the Rubicon is crossed, most Americans will be poorer, less educated, and more welfare-dependent. One party will represent this majority. This party will serve as an instrument of perpetual oppression of the minority by a politically powerful majority. … America is destined to degenerate into a dominant-party state.”

The party of choice for this socially engineered America will never ever be Republican or libertarian leaning (capital or lower case “l”). Never ever.

A candidate who dismisses the national questions, namely immigration, affirmative action, the centrality to America of Christianity and the English language, etc.—fails to appreciate the civilizational dimension of ordered liberty.

Like it or not, the libertarian non-aggression axiom has a cultural and civilizational dimension, stripped of which it has no hope of being restored. I’m not saying that in her fumbling iterations on Islam Ms. Bachmann evinces such an understanding; far from it. But Bachmann is instinctively using Islam and Jihad as proxies for arguments that have become politically too dangerous to make.

For a conservative candidate to mock individuals who do so is a grave error.

UPDATE: “Two new polls show that Ron Paul is now the undisputed leader in Iowa, while Newt Gingrich has deflated and Rick Perry may be on the verge of making a small comeback.”

Insider Advantage (12/18)

Ron Paul 24%
Mitt Romney 18%
Rick Perry 16%
Newt Gingrich 13%
Michele Bachmann 10%
Rick Santorum 3%
Jon Huntsman 4%

UPDATED: STRASSEL’S Non Sequitur

Conservatism, Foreign Policy, Military, Neoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, Propaganda, Republicans, Ron Paul, Terrorism

KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL of the Wall Street Journal claimed, in “Why Ron Paul Can’t Win,” that “conservative Republicans” cannot accept Paul’s philosophy as it “fundamentally denies American exceptionalism and refuses to allow for decisive action to protect the U.S. homeland.”

Is STRASSEL equating American exceptionalism with the kind of non-defensive militarism America currently practices? It would appear so.

This writer’s position on said “exceptionalism”: “the United States, by virtue of its origins and ideals,” was unique. But most Americans know nothing of the ideas that animated their country’s founding. In fact, they are more likely to hold ideas in opposition to the classical liberal philosophy of the founders, and hence wish to see the aggrandizement of the coercive state and the fulfillment of their own needs and desires through war and welfare.

Thus, I find myself in agreement with this one statement by Princeton’s Joyce Carol Oates:

“[T]ravel to any foreign country,” Oates wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in November 2007, “and the consensus is: The American idea has become a cruel joke, a blustery and bellicose bodybuilder luridly bulked up on steroids…deranged and myopic, dangerous.”

[SNIP]

I thought Paul was strong on Jay Leno, but should probably not have cozied-up to the Left in the way he did. More on that later:

UPDATE: About Bachmann, Paul Said, “she doesn’t like Muslims, she hates them, she wants to go get ‘em.'” “In reference to Rick Santorum, Paul said he can’t stop talking about ‘gay people and Muslims.'” (ABC)

Leave aside whether these statements are true or not: Paul has taken a classic Chris-Matthews kind of ad hominem swipe against Michele Bachmann: she hates Muslims. Santorum hates gays and Muslims. Siding with the Left by adopting its arguments may be situationally advantageous, but it is wrong, and will backfire on a Republican candidate in the long run. This tactic, even if it was a not-so-funny joke, damages Ron Paul’s effectiveness from the vantage point of conservative libertarians who think that liberty cannot be reduced to the non-aggression axiom and has a cultural and civilizational dimension.

Paul is wrong to imply, reductively, that Islamic terrorism in general and September 11 in particular are the sole consequences of American foreign policy. Libertarians cannot persist in such unidirectional formulations. Our adventurous foreign policy is a necessary precondition for Muslim aggression but it is far from a sufficient one.