My Ron Paul rant…
This morning, between getting ready for work and cooking breakfast, I dashed off a quick piece for Counterpunch, floating the idea that the anitwar movement — that has once again been sidelined by the Democratic Party and the media — could cross over during the Presidential primaries and vote as Republicans… casting a Republican primary vote for Ron Paul.
CP ran the piece, typos and all, and my email box has summarily filled up.
Damn.
Once I weed out the deeply weird stuff, like one that claimed Ron Paul is a closet communist in the pay of Jewish bankers, the rest either applauded my suggestion, or reviled it in ways that I had predicted in the rant, and a few wanted to “correct” me on my allusion to Ron Paul as a “passive racist.” Several did not seem to get the tactical gist of my proposal.
I take responsbility for any and all lack of clarity; and I’ll try to correct that now.
Let me start with the suggestion of “passive racism.” This is an offense for which about 90 percent of white people are guilty… hey, we live in a white supremacist society. It’s in the air. I won’t engage in extensive polemical arguments about the difference between white supremacy (a system that is reflected in the minds of the peope in that system). Every liberal who ever said we can’t leave Iraq because without the Americans there the place would descend into chaos… is a passive racist. This is a white supremacist assumption.
My main point was that the biggest social catastrophe for Black and Brown folk in the US today is the criminal justice system and the American gulag that goes with it.
Bill Clinton might be more comfortable drinking wine with boozhie African Americans than Ron Paul; and Bill Clinton might have somehow convinced a lot of Black folk that he is “the first Black President.” But Bill Clinton is the reason there are well over 2 milliion human beings languishing in hell-hole prisons in the US right now, with people of color shockingly over-represented among them. Clinton’s crime bill did that; and the main method for locking up all these people has been for non-violent drug offenses on their first incarceration.
One candidate has quoted the figures on how this has unfairly impacted African Americans. Ron Paul. He opposes the criminalization of drugs. The issue of blanket pardons — within the President’s authority, and the de-prioritization of federal drug enforcement, are both within the Prez’s purview.
One point I emphasized in my rant is the difference between agreeing with someone’s expressed views and the net effect of someone’s likely actions.
In this case, I pose a hypothetical question. If Ron Paul were elected, what would the net effect of his policies be on the American Gulag, given the capabilities and limitations of the office?
That’s all.
My main point was that the war is my issue. Let me flesh that out. This war has caused the deaths of over a million human beings. Iraq and Afghanistan have become abattoirs. Stopping this war is an urgent and immediate moral imperative.
Let me add something to this. As an anti-imperialist, who believes US hegemony in the world is the most destructive and dangerous political force in our world, and as someone who wants to see that political power broken, for good, there is no single action that would underline an immediate and decisive loss of some of that power than US withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is exactly why whichever DLC-anointed candidate is nominated, the Democratic Party leadership has not the least intention of reversing what is going on in Southwest Asia: the permanent post-Cold War re-disposition of the imperial armed forces of the United States of America. The leadership of the Democrtatic Party is committed to American imperialism.
Any leftist who is more interested in seeing the net practical effect of a US withdrawal from Southwest Asia (Paul proposes that all US troops return to the US!) than promoting the all-or-nothing, comprehensive program of some toy International, should give this some thought.
Let’s back away from the most unlikely scenario — that Paul would actually be elected. What if he were to get the Republican nomination? If he were to campaign solely on the issue of the war, a Democratic candidate could be forced into adopting an out-now posiiton to fend off this challenge. The majority of the people in the United States want out of this war.
Let’s back further away from improbability. Ron Paul gets a massive crossover vote from antiwar folks that is pulled from the left. Whomever comes in second among the Democrats — along with the Democratic Party leadership — will see the tangible threat that can be posed by independent coalition politics… even on a relatively small scale.
We must become spoilers; and quit being so terrified. Spoilers today; rebels tomorrow. Hey, you only live once.
Now for one of the more polemical reactions (based on Ron Paul’s personal opposition to abortion):
Hi. Saw your Counterpunch article. Guess you’ve abandoned women for the Gold Standard, huh?
My reply (which includes a paste-in from another emailer):
More than half of Iraqis are women. Half of the billions who are immiserated by dollar hegemony are women.
Paul’s position on choice is exactly that of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Reid was put in that position by a unanimous vote of the other D senators!
This kind of polemeic always comes from a leftist sect posing as The One and Only True and Everlasting Revolutionary Party (TOOTER Party). It intentionally distorts one’s position, then sneers at the distortion.
My beliefs on the issues related to gender are well-known, and they stand for themselves. I will restate my position.
IF Ron Paul were President, and if he followed a foreign policy that ended US military intervention, ended US political meddling abroad, and ended dollar hegemony (the net effect of a return to the gold standard), this would end the most signficant causative agent of human misery in the world… and half of humanity are women. That is over 3 billion people.
Net effect. Give a damn what sort of sexist drivel he utters among his friends. We can’t even get lefty-boys to give up their own woman-bashing, their cluelessness about rape culture, or their intractible and tedious defenses of the porn industry.
While supposed populists like Johnny Edwards claim to be seeking a better wage for the workers in agribusiness, pharmaceuticals, and defense industries, the net effect of a libertarian policy of cutting off all government subsidies to these industries would be to crash these industries altogether. They need to be crashed.
The liberal regulation regime in agriculture paved the way for the monopolization of farming by large corporations. Read Joel Salatin. Wanna know why we can’t get good, local, organic food when we want it? It’s because it mostly against the law to grow and sell it.
Stopping the tax-funded subisidization of business through highway construction would stop suburban sprawl in its tracks.
Creating and maintaining jobs that are dirty, dangerous, and destructive is not a Good Thing.
For that matter, I don’t know why I should support bureaucratic public schooling that is — by practice and curricula — permanently damaging our kids. I say this knowing that there are heroic teachers out there who swim against this tide; and who are pushed back every time they actually try to teach kids that learning how to think for themselves is more important than being “well adjusted.” Well-adjusted to what!? Global warming and Guantanamo?
We are entering a period of imperial decline, stagflation, and international exterminism. The problem is that we are gaining altitude. The sooner we crash, the less damage we’ll suffer.
Practical, tactical, revolutionary politics beats the shit out of all-inclusive “programs” any day. Leftists and libertarians can and should form tactical alliances. That doesn’t mean we have to hang out together in a jacuzzi. It means we pursue some goals together; and leave the rest to pursue apart.
jimi 45:
the white man’s burden part deuce.
4 January 2008, 7:34 pmskol:
Barring whatever happens in the next eleven months, I will cast my vote for Ron Paul.
4 January 2008, 8:38 pmMaybe I’m wrong, but I figure it like this: Kucinich won’t work (it’s like asking the NRA to forgo guns, or thinking the DNC would ever forgo theirs); McKinney siphons from the Paul plan, and our experience with Greens hasn’t been all too swell (and national opinion on McKinney isn’t too swell, either), and even so, Paul would get a larger margin anyway. Everyone else is hideous, although my gut goes with Obama (my brain says politicians rarely have any good cards up their sleeves, but my gut really wants me to believe otherwise).
Joe4Pack:
I know you mean well, but why would any rational person vote for a rethug ever again? Isn’t Mr. Paul a long-time rethug? Why doesn’t he quit associating with those scum? Sorry, I am going to vote for someone who has a long and distinguished record for public service-Ralph Nader. Not that it matters, as my state has electronic vote-altering machines…..
4 January 2008, 8:38 pmTinoire:
You didn’t even need to explain it. I reached the same conclusion before the New Year and already registered Republican. Best wishes Stan and here’s to getting that “boot off the necks of hundreds of millions of people around the world”.
Tinoire, ProgressiveIndependent
4 January 2008, 8:52 pmDavid Parish:
Stan,
Thanks for laying out a cogent argument for voting for Paul. I considered voting for Edwards, with some misgivings, largely because his anti-corporate message has been ignored by the media. However,yesterday I discovered that even a write-in vote in the Michigan primary won’t be counted. Your article pushed me over the edge to cross over and vote in the Republican primary for Paul. Paul’s not perfect. But he’s right on the most important issues. And I believe that he is honest and principled. That’s enough for me.
P.S. I’ve got to get Joel Salatin’s latest book “Everything I Want to Do is Illegal” (you can certainly relate to that message after the condo-nazis took out your garden!) Another great agrarian writer is Wendell Berry.
4 January 2008, 9:19 pmbarry:
i think people are more worried about him being an active racist - http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/12/ron-pauls-friends-in-black-and-white.html
and the fact that be wanted to ban abortion.
If he were really a Libertarian, sure, there’d be grounds for working together. He’s an anti-abortion, racist creationist. He’s not a libertarian, and there’s no grounds for the left to work with him.
4 January 2008, 9:44 pmgRegor:
I enjoyed your Counterpunch piece and _loved_ this follow-up post; bravo!
4 January 2008, 10:39 pmRequired:
Word.
5 January 2008, 1:36 amMichael Anderson:
Right on, Stan…forwarded the Counterpunch article to a lot of folks, and will forward this post to same…”librul” AND conservative. As you said once a few years ago..the primary directive at this point is disrupt, disrupt, disrupt…get it out there, and damn quick!
Ron Paul has piqued my interest for a few years now. He regularly has articles on Quebec Libre, a Libertarian site in the Great White North. Their website is worth looking at, as an information source on Libertarianism.
5 January 2008, 4:56 amalex:
right on! i’ve been thinking along the same lines for some time… and trying to convince my frso wife why i’d support ron paul despite his obvious drawbacks. this is clearly written and convincing, and i suspect a good many ‘undecided’ folks will take your advice (not too sure about the wife though…).
anyhow, thanks, and keep at it stan!
5 January 2008, 6:57 amJosiah:
I’ve been having trouble getting comments through due to problems with Wordpress or my browser, but this is too serious not to try again. Stan, while I understand your tactical endorsement of Ron Paul for his position on Iraq, I’m guessing you haven’t heard about his position on the Civil Rights act of 1964 (which, he said in 2004, was a “massive violation of the rights of private property”) and his erstwhile links to white supremacist organizations like Stormfront.
See this 2004 article by him, explaining his opposition to the Civil Right Act: http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul188.html. A brief excerpt:
The Trouble With Forced Integration
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD
Mr. Speaker, I rise to explain my objection to H.Res. 676. I certainly
join my colleagues in urging Americans to celebrate the progress this
country has made in race relations. However, contrary to the claims of
the supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the sponsors of
H.Res. 676, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations
or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing
individual liberty.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the federal government unprecedented
power over the hiring, employee relations, and customer service
practices of every business in the country. The result was a massive
violation of the rights of private property and contract, which are the
bedrocks of free society. The federal government has no legitimate
authority to infringe on the rights of private property owners to use
their property as they please and to form (or not form) contracts with
terms mutually agreeable to all parties. The rights of all private
property owners, even those whose actions decent people find abhorrent,
must be respected if we are to maintain a free society.”
_____
5 January 2008, 7:41 amFor these reasons, I would strongly encourage you to reconsider even a limited, tactical endorsement of Ron Paul. For those of us on the socialist, feminist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist (etc.) end of the spectrum, trying to influence Obama’s or even Edward’s platform would be more fruitful at this juncture, if we’re going to dabble in presidential politics at all. Just my 2 cents.
-Josiah
Michael:
Stan,
Thanks for the very thought provoking strategem. I have followed your writings for years now and have your book about Haiti. I was also very leery of Ron Paul as I am of all libertarians.
However, your article has me seriously thinking about doing what you suggest. It may be the only way to let the elites know that we will not be taken in by their distractions. I know that Clinton, Obama and Edwards are members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Paul is not.
michael
5 January 2008, 8:24 amStan:
I know I didn’t say I am a libertarian… anywhere.
I also know what I did say, perhaps not explicitly enough.
Every action has its expressive as well as its instrumental aspect; and I don’t want to set up the old gendered dualism of “expressive versus instrumental” here. But this is an appropriate discussion for using these two categories for their finite explanatory value.
What is a vote? For me, it is a two-mile trip to a fire station, where I go give my name to a very congenial, elderly woman, who gives me a cardboard ballot and asks if I need anything explained on it. I tell her no, thank you, and I go into a small stand-up stall with a sharpie pen and mark the ballot. Then I put the ballot into a machine that — once I advance about two inches of the ballot into a slot — snatches the thing out of my hand with a low-frequency, mechanical gulp.
When I do this, I am not “endorsing” anything or anyone. I am participating in a big, collective game that has a short list of limited outcomes. I don’t confuse it with popular democracy, because I know the game pretty well. I actually worked as a researcher and organizer with an NGO for about four years that focused exclusively on “money and politics.”
Now I will be somewhat sharp; but I am not directing this at any individual or trying to hurt any feelings.
The claim or implication that casting a vote within this system is in any way endorsing the views of a candidate is spurious, presumptuous nonsense. Giving a more extreme analog to explain my point, if one receives a call from a kidnapper demanding a ransom for the return of a loved one, paying the ransom is not an “endorsement” of kidnapping. Giving a less extreme example, returning each day to one’s shitty, thankless job at a place owned by a giant corporation is not an “endorsement” of capitalism. Remaining for the time in a stultifying and abusive relationship, when the real consequences of leaving right now might be homelessness for a woman and her kids, is not an “endorsement” of male social power.
In the real world, to shift from one circumstance to another requires taking steps, and each step is constrained by concrete conditions. One does not wave a magic wand, nor does one wave a magic political program listing all the things that need changing, and abracadabra the desired circumstances into existence.
The electoral system we are stuck with now should not be seen the same way it is touted by the establishment. It is not an exercise in democracy, but in legitimation of power and stability. Of course, both these objectives are only accomplished if that legitimation is widely accepted based on the constructed belief that (1) voting is how we do “democracy” and (2) that there is no better alternative.
The game was exposed by Republicans in Cynthia McKinney’s district when Republicans — recognizing that they had no chance to win that district — crossed over into the Democratic primary to elect DLC plant Denise Majette. the same game was exposed when Republicans defected en masse in Connecticut to vote Liebermann after Ned Lamont thrashed him in the Dem primary on an anti-war position.
These are not examples of how the system is supposed to work. These are examples of how voting can be used in a heterodox way to accomplish something instrumental… in those cases, to freeze out “undesirables” from public office. In both cases, by the way, Democratic Party leadership was utterly complicit in the tricks that employed Republican voters.
In both cases, the voters who cast ballots were participating in a collective gambit that was motivated not by any “endorsement” (expression of support for the views) of anyone, but in a public punishment of those who had gone too far off their little political reservation. These were purely instrumental votes.
The risk involved in these practices is that they undermine the legitimacy of elections as true expressions of democracy by putting this gamesmanship on open display. And these were not expressions (in the more philosophical sense) of strength, but of relative weakness.
The antiwar sentiment of the general population has been bottled up on the one hand by competing leftoid sects who are trying to use the war as a ramp-up for a larger agenda, and on the other hand by a rigged, bourgeois-democratic electoral system that employs multiple mechanisms (ballot access restrictions, wealth primaries, winner-take-all non-proportional voting, district gerrymandering, and two extremely well-financed and entrenched party bureaucracies) that is the only legal outlet offered to the public for change of any kind.
Engaging in tactical interventions, with our eyes wide open (how dare so many people lecture some of us on what these elections are!), by voting collectively to monkeywrench the system (use it in ways that were not intended by the establishment), is not a frigging endorsement.
Stop using that language, because it is a straw man. If you believe this is an “endorsement” of all the views of Ron Paul, it is worse than a straw man (which is a garden variety logical fallacy). It is buying directly into the establishment claim that 50.1% of a vote is somehow a “mandate.” In other words, you are accepting their premise that this is something far more than playing a bad hand in a game.
Josiah, my friend, no offense, but I have to quote you on one reply to this very common accusation of “endorsement.”
Every single thing we do in our political lives cannot include every aspect of our political beliefs. In the case of Paul, I have said repeatedly, his personal beliefs are not the issue. I am simply suggesting a way to participate in these elections that does not conform to the election-legitmation script. In the real United States circa 2008, Obama and Edwards and Clinton are a far greater obstacle to the ability of socialists, feminists, anti-racists, and anti-imperialists than the personal beliefs of Ron Paul.
This programmatic fetish, a kind of ritual listing of our core beliefs as a measuring stick every time we make a decision about what we do next, is a substitution of expression for instrumentality. And as a marxist (in many respects I am that, though not in the orthodox sense), this program-fetish approach to politics — including elections — is an exercise of philosophical idealism… the idea that right-thinking produces right-acting. Any historical materialist worth her/his salt should remember the HM 101 premise… ideas are a < i>reflection of lived experience, not the opposite.
The Democratic Party machine has not the least whiff of fear of any person or grouplet that touts its “socialist, feminist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist” program every time it gets a soapbox. At the same time, the Democratic Party machine is the single biggest impediment in the United States to advancing any apsect of those beliefs. It is the good cop that keeps us bottled up. Before you can move forward, then, you have to break the bottle… sorry for the hopelessly mixed metaphors.
What the DP machine does fear, and what all institutions of power fear, are holes in the dike. If you have ever been invovled in a ballot access campaign (as both Greens and Libertarians know), you will see how much resistance you can mobilize from Democrats over this one little practical change proposal… one that never needs mention socialism, feminism, anti-racism, or anti-imperialism.
If I need a willing libertarian to get my back while I drive a hole in the dike… or vice-versa… then that’s what we are gonna do. It’s not endorsing… its playing the hand we are dealt.
5 January 2008, 9:36 amjohn steppling:
Good work, Stan…..and more or less my exact feelings.
5 January 2008, 10:23 amjohn steppling:
its amazing that a reactionary like Paul seems so appealing…..but anyone who speaks of American imperialism, fascism, and says he wants ALL troops home…..AND who isnt completly owned by corporate america, IS going to be appealing, and notwithstanding his implicit racism and what is, after all, his uber-capitalism … he is dramatically raising the level of discourse via a committed anti war message. I certainly have no intention of voting for any democrat….not edwards who so many left leaning liberals like…..and not war mongering ghouls like o-BOMB-a or hillary…..so, yes, at this moment (nothing happens in an historical vacuum) ron paul is to be supported.
5 January 2008, 10:29 amJosiah:
Stan,
5 January 2008, 10:42 amI respect your arguments, and I retract the statement that you are “endorsing” Ron Paul. No illusions in this corner about Obama et. al. either. Your earlier statements about tactical alliances with libertarians make sense to me to some extent, so long as we keep in mind the danger of such alliances, given the deeply reactionary character of many libertarians on crucial issues. What I say about Ron Paul is not a knee-jerk, left-liberal denunciation (where you need to list what you support/oppose in a perfunctory way, as you point out I did in my post). It is based on Paul’s stated positions, which in my opinion should make him beyond the pale of even a tactical ‘yes’ vote. And I say that out of respect for your work, and a genuine belief (partly from talking to batshit Ron Paul enthusiasts recently) that the man is unworthy of even limited, calculated support in the voting booth.
john steppling:
sorry, one final thought. Paul is also (and has been) one of only three candidates who is clearly and without qualification against capital punishment (kucinich and gravel are the others).
5 January 2008, 11:04 amChris S:
I got your gist man. Good article
I wish that both sides could just put divide and conquer aside for a few more years while we deal with War, Empire, and Inflation, three heads of the same Hydra. DU doesn’t care what party you affiliate with.
5 January 2008, 11:20 amStan:
There is no “yes” vote. And again, I am basing this suggestion not on beliefs, but on effects. Clinton was soinging coombayah with his Black friends while his crime bill was consigning hundreds of thosuands of Black folk to prison.
Ron Paul’s close-the-borders talk is no different than any of the pols; but his antipathy to Free Trade (TM), if acted on, would do more to address the root causes of Hispano-Latina displacement to the US than all the pro-corporate partial measures supported by Dems.
I have also heard people referring to libertarians as “right wing.” This betrays a fundamental ignorance of the guiding philosophy of most libertarians (with which a admantly disagree). Libertarians do not fit neatly onto some imaginary left-to-right continuum. Libertarianism is a religious dogma… and I don’t mean that in a perjorative way. I mean it is based on a set of unwaivering principles against which everything is measured. It is based a very strict interpretation of the idea of civil liberties (and on private property, which is where it fails philosophically, but we can have that discussion in another thread).
One of the expressions of that strict civil libertarian standpoint is that it defaults against pre-emptive war, against the criminalization of drugs, against government spying, etc. These are not right-wing positions. In fact, it throws the whole right-left paradigm into doubt… just as the ecological, food-praxis, communalist leftism I have come to embrace wrong-foots the R-L paradigm from the… left? These polarities are constructions… archaic ones in my view.
I’ll fight libertarians tooth and nail if they try to privatize national parks. I’ll side with evangelicals against them on the issue of state lotteries (which I oppose). But if they are pushing to bring the military back inside the boundaries of the US, or stop the construction and maintenance of highways (which are taxpayer-subsidized corporate infrastructure), I’m going to be shoulder-to-shoulder with them.
I am not a libertarian. But I have received a lot of emails in the last day from libertarians who know I am not a libertarian, who are saying the same thing I am. Let’s work together to stop the war.
I have two sons in the Army.
5 January 2008, 11:30 amJim:
(reposting - didn’t seem to work first time)
Ron Paul is not a reactionary (unless, by “reactionary”, you mean, “he’s also against the big government programs I support”). He’s not a racist. By definition, no private property advocate can be. He is not associated with extreme racist movements, that is a classic political dirty trick, to have some group like Stormfront make a contribution to a candidate and then publicize it (”look who this guy associates with!”).
And whoever said Ron Paul is not a libertarian…man that is beyond comment.
BTW, I’m not some Paulite troll who happened on this blog. I’ve read two of Stan’s books (reviewed the Haiti one for Amazon). I know what I’m talking about.
Stan, I hope you are successful in pursuading some leftists to cross over and vote for Ron Paul, that would be most welcome, of course. But I hope even more that some of you guys will eventually wake up to the real truth: the problem is not the warfare state per se (nor the welfare state, for any readers on the right), it is the state itself.
5 January 2008, 11:45 amSean O Grady:
As the State and the businesses that run it get bigger and bigger, all of the decisions are made by a progressively smaller minority. Hope of any kind of representative democracy (I have no hope of real democracy) recedes with that growth. I kept looking for someone to arise in the Democratic Party who would/could champion the cause of limiting government/corporate power, to no avail. Even when they might poke out their heads, corporate media made sure they would not advance far. The “liberal position” has for years contributed to the problem we face today by increasing the power of the central government in order to attempt to solve problems, while failing to see what that would bring when that government was taken over by the other side”. I want an end to this centralization of power. Several elections ago I started voting for any Libertarian candidate who might make it to the elections in North Carolina. Not because I agreed with all of their positions, but because they came closer to my positions than any of the Dem-Publicans.
5 January 2008, 1:14 pmThis time I am switching my registration to Republican for the very reasons Stan said. I registered Democrat just to get a voice in the primaries-a useless exercise. Despite some of his other positions, I will vote for Paul. If he somehow gets in, it doesn’t mean every position he has becomes law. It does mean someone is in their that does not believe to the absolute power of the State.
I’m going tomorrow to change my affiliation. Thanks Stan!
john steppling:
Paul did run an add against immigrants……no visas for students from *terrorists nations* — so my racism claim seems apt. Notwithstanding, I still agree with stan’s argument….he is a means to bring into the discourse topics the corporate media wont touch.
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2007/12/29/ron-pauls-disgraceful-ad/
for more on that ad.
5 January 2008, 1:37 pmStan:
Quick moderator intervention, then a couple of things.
FIRST, there is a comment in moderation that I will not post without alteration. He obviously hasn’t read the rules. Personal attacks and gratuitous name calling (as well as macho posturing) are neither welcome nor allowed. We can disagree here, even very sharply. But some stuff doesn’t fly. Same applies to openly racist, homophobic, or sexist epithets.
NEXT, on ther point above about liberal solutions relying too heavily on the state and on the further centralization of state power: a contradiction created by slavery and Jim Crow. As slavery became southern (it began in the North, btw) and the economics and morality of it polarized the institution between North and South, the centralizing forces of the North emerged as the instrument of abolition. Post-Civil-War, federal occupation of the South was necessary for the interregnum of Reconstruction in which African Americans actually enjoyed a period of political agency.
With the end of Reocnstruction and the emergence of Jim Crow in the South, of American regional aparthied, the governments of the southern states themselves were the political expression of southern white supremacy (a de facto, as opposed to de jure, white supremacy still operated in the north… let’s be clear). The only way out of Jim Crow, under the actual conditions that prevailed in the 50s and 60s, was through the federal government. Southern governments and southern white civil society had demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that they would resort to terror if necessary to preserve the racial caste system there.
Even the reluctant federal government had to be shamed on the international stage — in the context of the Cold War — before it would be compelled to act. The legislation of 1964-65 was the remedy that was available at the time.
Generalizing about the state, about the government (two different things, btw), and about methods employed is a pretty sketchy business. These were concrete, not abstract, conditions. I have noted more than once, to liberals who constantly generalize about the awfulness of Christiainity, that the Civil Rights movement they hold up as THE model for social change organizing was at its very core a Christian phenomenon. So much for generalities.
Stick with the details.
On the other hand, there is something about centralization, about management, and about inevitable bureaucratization, that always leads to the reconsolidation of power by those on the top of the heap. This is their game. The same state, under a sequence of federal governments, that ended Jim Crow has facilitated the simultaneous and symbiotic construction of the suburb and the ghetto. The same state has expanded the prison-industrial complex. The same state has continued the deeper and deeper militarization of US society.
Relocalization is currently blocked, and much liberal legislation is complict in blocking it. And as capitalism has metastisized toward its own lethal endgame, capitalists have come to depend more and more on a direct partnership with governments to stay afloat. I do not arrive at the conclusion that severing this relaitonship is necessary by the same thought-process as a libertarian. But our remedy is the same. Dispense with the regulations that privilege big companies by making operation for small producers impossibly complex and expensive. End all government support for profit-taking activities.
We may not be on the same path; but we are definitely at an intersection.
5 January 2008, 4:03 pmGoldenEagle:
Joe4Pack> There are differing views withing the GOP. Ron Paul has quoted Republican Robert Taft (R.I.P.) multiple times during his speeches, who supported a far different policy from that of the present party leadership. I believe he has joined the party in an attempt to take it back to its fiscal conservative and anti-war views. There are a lot of disillusioned ex-Reps out there, now counting as independents. It would seem RP gets a lot of support from them.
Barry> I understand he believes human life exists from the moment of conception and thus should have a right to its life. I think he did say he would let each state decide and wouldn’t impose his view on federal level.
Josiah> Respect for private property and freedom of association are fundamental to libertarianism. The free market punishes racism. For example, if a black man is more productive but is not employed by a racist entrepreneur, that businessman will need to employ someone less productive hurting his business, while at the same time leaving the more efficient worker on the open market, to be hired by non-racist businessmen. In short, racism = bad business and smaller profits. Should one force morals by the gun?
I think we should be on watch for other hopefuls flipping on key issues. If Paul support increases, they might steal some of his lines (on war, taxes, etc). I don’t like people telling me just what I want to hear. Consistency is so rare these days.
Cheers!
STAN: GoldenEagle will not be back. This site will not be transformed into a site for libertarian polemics. The thread is on the pros and cons of a tactical alliance. This site is pro-feminist, eco-socialist, and anti-racist (that means somenthing different than the simplistic ahistorical drivel above). We are not going to have ideological trolls using it for a megaphone.
5 January 2008, 6:16 pmjon:
I start from an admittedly pessimistic premise: simply voting won’t change anything. I don’t expect who I will vote for to win.
I care about a campaign, who it will unite, what relationships can be built, what message will they unite on. What does the campaign matter for creating a movement.
That’s my starting point.
Ron Paul won’t win. Not this election, not this time. Can we agree on that?
But look at who and what he is gathering around him. Free market fundamentalists. Racists. Religious fundamentalists. Are these people you want to see gain strength and gather together? Are these people you want to assist?
Because that is what is going to be the result of Ron Paul gaining more attention.
Oh, sure. It was great to hear him say on that Republican debate that 9/11 might have been caused by 50 years of US economic and military domination of the Middle East. It was great to see the rest of the Republican candidates go apoplectic. Sure, there’s a teachable moment there. But not much else.
Say free market fundamentalism gains more strength than it already has. Do you think that it will be corporate subsidies that will get the ax first? Or a further reduction in the whithering social safety net?
For someone like you, who has argued in the past the US black community votes defensively for the Democratic Party because they can’t afford the greater evil, you are sure presenting a strange solution.
Tell me where you think I’m wrong. You can find me over at Run Cynthia Run! I’m disappointed that I won’t find you there with me.
STAN: I am there. Read the site. I am a McKinney supporter. How does that conflict with voting Paul in the Republican primary?
5 January 2008, 6:18 pmpeggy:
Stan,
Voting in the U.S. is optional, and almost half of the eligible U.S. population exercises the option *not* to vote. That is the giant hole in the dike right there. I’m wondering why you don’t just join the masses and exercise the option not to vote. To cast your one little vote for some major jerk is not a revolutionary act, nor will it in any way disrupt the system. Please rein back on that male ego a little bit, and concentrate your energies where they will really make a difference for real people right now.
STAN: It takes me around half an hour all tolled to vote (driving time included). Is there something revolutionary I ought to be doing with that half an hour. Peggy, the refusal to vote in the US right now does not have one iota of an effect against the system. I really don’t understand what you are talking about here.
5 January 2008, 6:40 pmLegume Sam:
Very persuasive Stan. Well-reasoned.
However, someone’s still got to stand behind my candidate, demanding that his voice be heard. Maybe this is an exercise in futility; that is, however, insufficient reason for me to quit.
I’m still voting for, and supporting, Kucinich. Once the CA primary is over February 5, we’ll take it from there.
5 January 2008, 7:27 pmGoldenEagle:
Just thought about emphasizing the fact that the free market punishes discrimination. Let’s take another example.
Let us say I am a sexual-minority entrepreneur that will only hire gays.
If the gay people that I hired are more productive (produce more for what I pay them) than the straight people I didn’t hire, that is a rational allocation of resources and would correspond to a free market choice. Now, if government comes in and forces me to hire some less productive straights (quotas, anyone?), the situation will be less economically-efficient (resources would be misalocated). Not only I would produce less, but some more productive potential employees are left-out (and isn’t that discrimination against them?)
Another case is that of straight people left out being more productive and yet me insisting on hiring less productive gays. This clearly is a bad allocation of resources and thus corresponds to bad business and loss of profits. Such a situation cannot persist as competitors will gladly take me out of business. But let’s say the government comes in again and forces me to hire more productive straights. This is better economically and thus the intervention only tries to stop the market from punishing discrimination.
We can thus draw two conclusions from this simple example:
1. free markets promote non-discrimination
2. government intervention only makes things worse (either badly allocating resources or preventing the economic punishment of discriminators).
This is just from one point of view. Another would be consumers voting with their bucks. If the general public frowns on discrimination, there’s always the risk of them not buying from that “racist bastard”.
STAN: Hold on right there. This conversation will hijack the thread, which is tactical voting for Paul, pro or con. Where this is going is toward an interminable and tedious philosophical debate about libertarianism. This site already has a strong orientation in another direction that we are not going to subject our regulars to the melee that will ensue when dozens of libertarian posters pile on to quote Ayn Rand at us. Moderator’s prerogative.
5 January 2008, 7:39 pmjon:
STAN: I am there. Read the site. I am a McKinney supporter. How does that conflict with voting Paul in the Republican primary?
If you are voting as an individual act, I think that is fine albeit pointless. (Of course, in states where party registration is tracked it could kick you out of legalistic participation in other parties. I don’t think I could be on my state green coordinating committee if I was a registered Republican!)
But if you are working and advocating for voting for Ron Paul, I disagree. At that point, adding points to his total builds his movement, the people around him, his message, etc. That I think is destructive for the reasons in my above post. Contributing to the gathering of free market fundamentalists, racists and religious fundamentalists, distracting anti-war people away from a campaign like McKinney’s - that’s destructive.
It also takes energy better put toward talking to people about McKinney’s candidacy, Gulf Coast Reconstruction, Jena, why US foreign policy is imperialist, etc.
STAN: Some people just won’t admit when they’ve said something that makes no sense. I have received hundreds of emails over the last two days from people like me (not free market fundamentalists, blah blah blah) who are doing the same thing. On “talking to people,” there are some people who have written more than I have about the topics you list above, but not a lot. I suggest you browse this blog, or have a peek at any of the books or articles I have written, or we can chat about 21 practical trips to Haiti, work with antiwar veterans, dozens of speaking engagements, jillions of meetings, or even what I might be doing now, ie, learning about food systems.
I’ve spent more time responding to these straw men over the last two days than I did writing the rant. Whatever protean thing might be “developing” around Paul will change when the major force in that development becomes antiwar.
This contagion thesis you imply is a hoary old myth that has kept the left isolated and fractured for decades. We will be contaiminated by the unclean libertarians. Every scratch of impurity threatens to turn into full-fledged gangrene… sheesh! Come out of your bunkers, before your immune systems fail from lack of exercise.
5 January 2008, 8:32 pmjohn steppling:
stan…..i just wrote a piece on your piece and on paul a bit….and probably too many other things.
5 January 2008, 9:54 pmhttp://www.bestcyrano.org/voxpop/?p=243
peggy:
Stan - You are certainly spending more than half an hour right now defending your tactical-vote-for-Ron-Paul proposal. Looks like you’ve spent the whole frigging day on this. Every moment counts. Focus on what you can really do.
Respectfully,
5 January 2008, 10:03 pmjon:
STAN: Every scratch of impurity threatens to turn into full-fledged gangrene… sheesh! Come out of your bunker.
I’m posting here because I _have_ been reading here. I bought your book on Haiti years ago.
Come out of my bunker? Thanks for the insult. I’ve been a freaking union organizer, knocked on doors in the projects. As a member in my current union, I’ve stood up, argued, got elected to represent us on the labor council, lobbied and educated members about the war, networked with other local labor activists doing the same, passed anti-war resolutions on up to our state labor council, etc. I’ve argued for Greens in my local, got space for Green candidates to address the members, etc. I went with other unionists to NOLA, and we came back to talk to folks here about racism and collected money for PHRF. I don’t think I’m in any bunker. I work with plenty of people and have to make those hard choices of how to be anti-sexist, anti-racist while working with folks that are - but folks that are willing to get busy.
I continued to occasionally read here after you left FRSO, because I do respect the work you do and who you do it with. I was thrilled to read your posts last month on McKinney.
So you think that something anti-war will develop around Ron Paul. I agree, I see anti-war people flock to Ron Paul. I’ve had run-ins with them. Here’s one: In the build up to the October 27th demonstration, with others I was passing out leaflets outside a Clinton campaign appearance. Somebody had to tell the interested rank and file Democratic Party people that there was an anti-war demonstration. Ron Paul people came to protest and pass out their campaign literature. I made sure they knew about the Oct 27th demo. They knew. I asked them if they knew what else Ron Paul stood for, that for instance he thinks the free market will solve the health care crisis. They knew and defended it. They’d bought in to the whole argument that government regulation was the reason for the increase in health care costs, that the government needed to get out of the way of the insurance companies and the hospitals.
5 January 2008, 10:06 pmI don’t think I’m imagining things, or that I’m just living in theory land. Those were real people, not a “straw man” argument. I think it is experience that tells me that when anti-war people flock to Ron Paul, they won’t become part of a larger progressive movement. They’ll be influenced by the rest of the Ron Paul kool-aide. How does that “make no sense”? Have the Ron Paul people I’ve talked to been aberrations? Are all the other Ron Paul followers like you, leftists riding the wave? If so, isn’t that kind of silly?
I am still convinced that presenting Ron Paul’s candidacy as an anti-war vehicle is destructive.
I also don’t understand what you hope to accomplish by promoting him, when there are better things to promote that do stand a chance to be a uniting presence. I’m talking about McKinney, not some red flag waving program.
peggy:
“I’ve spent more time responding to these straw men over the last two days than I did writing the rant. Whatever protean thing might be “developing” around Paul will change when the major force in that development becomes antiwar.”
“When”?? Don’t you mean “if”? From my point of view, that is a very big if.
5 January 2008, 10:12 pmChris:
If you want Antiwar, and you REALLY want to fight the Class War, Ron Paul is the real deal. Real Antiwar people on the “Left” need to get over it and get behind him. He wants to remove the heart of the beast and drain its blood. The Empire is more than the War in Iraq, it also involves the monetary system, the War on Drugs, Human Trafficking, Slavery, Depleted Uranium, Secrecy, and other niceties. While everyone is playing divide and conquer at home they are missing the chance to seriously deliver a blow to the Establishment.
And how do you know that President Paul wouldn’t give McKinney more of a voice as President? Do you think that he wouldn’t help to promote third parties as President? Because that goes against anything I’ve ever read from him, if anything, everything I’ve read indicates the opposite:
http://www.ballot-access.org/2007/09/19/ron-paul-re-introduces-ballot-access-bill-in-congress/
5 January 2008, 11:15 pmLester Hunt:
As a libertarian myself, I have long intended to vote for Paul, but what I find downright inspiring about your posts is that the four of five reasons for voting for him that you lay out so well are the very ones that I consider most important. The issues we disagree about are trivial, by comparison with these.
5 January 2008, 11:18 pmKevin Bart:
I agree, Stan. I myself am a social libertarian/ecologically minded lefty who prefers Kucinich and Gravel, but has nevertheless sent Ron Paul over $200 in donations. K&G don’t have the momentum to go very far, but RP just might.
While I shudder to think of dismantling Social Security and Medicare, the RP platform offers too much that is desperately needed to not rally behind it:
01. End the Patriot Act Immediately.
02. End the IRS.
03. End the Homeland Security Department.
04. End the Iraq Police Action.
05. End the private ownership of the Federal Reserve.
06. End the national ID Card program.
07. End the sending of jobs overseas.
08. End the war on drugs.
09. End preemptive military strikes.
10. End the “future” police state.
11. End nation building & defend OUR nation, not others.
12. End executive war powers. Congress alone can declare War.
13. End the North American Union. Preserve US sovereignty.
14. End the War on terror. Terror is not tangible. Therefore it cannot be won [EVER].
15. End the onslaught of our freedoms and liberties by the Federal Government.
16. End corporate welfare/subsidies for big business.
How anybody on the political “left” (progressive, socialist, whatever) can turn away from such an offering is confounding.
Stan, your comment about how ending the war on drugs will serve minority interests far better than a sax-jamming, minority-imprisoning Bill Clinton is an excellent point.
With the end of “free trade” (which is about supra-national governance, not trade) and a non-interventionist foreign policy, the economic need to immigrate here will be abated; Latin and South America will have a chance to make the reforms needed to assist their masses of disenfranchised poor. Which, by the way, can’t all come here; it’s impossible. The ranks of the poor increase by 80 million births a year. Their ONLY HOPE is reform in their homelands. The most permissive immigration policy you can think of won’t make but a pinprick in that 80 million a births year…not to mention the 2.8 billion that live on less than $2.00 a day. RP is THE BEST HOPE for these people.
Monetary reform in desperately needed; the debt-money system is killing not only us in the American middle and lower classes, but billions around the world. Even if you’re a Greenbacker (like I am) rather than a Goldbug, RP is the only candidate I’ve ever heard even talk about monetary reform. Good for him.
Great for us if we support him.
6 January 2008, 12:53 amSean O Grady:
I had a few other choices available to me when I lived in Minnesota. Since coming home to NC 25 years ago, even those few choices are not there. I am a socialist (anarcho-syndicalist?) and there is a lot that I disagree with the Libertarians about. However, I have never in my life voted for MY candidate. I always vote for someone who falls short, way short of what I am looking for. My choices in the Democratic primary will be who the establishment has determined I will vote for. My choices this time will be for pro-war, pro-corporate, fascist interests who mouth some populist platitudes. In 1980 “liberals” demanded that I support Anderson. It didn’t matter to them that he sponsored a constitutional amendment to make Christianity the official religion of the US, amongst other travesties. Now I’m supposed to vote for Obama, yet he campaigned against anti-war candidates in the last election. Edwards voted for the war and his bedroom is filled with corporate sponsors. Will any of them change the fascist nature of our government?
I am very aware that, in the Southern States as they existed, the Fed was relied upon to break the power of the racist governments. However, there must be a way to defend people without building more powerful centralized government. The same outcome was sought and expected in Northern Ireland in the 60s (a government very similar to the Southern States). The people were thrilled that local government was superceded by the big “liberal” British government and expected rescue when British troops arrived. What they got was the opposite. When we centralize power we diminish our power. No matter who or where it is and we get what they want us to get. The opportunity to deliver freedom to the South was always there, but no one showed up for a hundred years. It’s almost an accident of history that the Fed did so in the 60s. I don’t believe it was inevitable that Southern Governments ended up the way they did. They were built that way, with complete complicity by the Federal Government. Local movements that long ago promised freedom were crushed, with assistance from the North.
The point of this is that I am getting desperate for change. I would much rather vote for a socialist candidate who is adamantly anti-war and anti-fascist. I won’t get that chance. Paul is the only one who is adamantly anti-war. He wants to reign in the power of the Pentagon and end our “Cops of the World” routine. I’ll grimace and place a primary vote for him, if I can. Next November I will grimace again while I vote for whoever has won the big corporate contest.
6 January 2008, 12:59 amJosiah:
On the issue of priorities, I agree that some things matter more than others, and withdrawing US troops from Iraq should be at the top of everyone’s list of minimal criteria for getting our vote. But so should supporting a woman’s right to choose (which Paul opposes), supporting the Civil Rights Act (which Paul opposes), and action on climate change (Paul thinks we the problem is exagerrated, and we should leave it up to the corporations). Being open-minded and building alliances, shedding the bunker mentality you speak of, etc., are admirable things, but Paul isn’t worth it.
6 January 2008, 2:38 amAdam:
I think jon’s comments above are pretty accurate descriptions of intellegent political decisions.
A lot of the logic of this argument is built around the straw-man argument of why the “left is isolated and fractured”. Though probably true as a general statement - “the left is fractured”, there are significantly more important reasons than not voting for Ron Paul types in primaries, or similar gambits. And fundamental justification of Stan’s “tactical choice” argument is based on Paul actually winning - which he won’t obviously - and without Paul’s election, Stan’s reasons for those on the Left to vote for Paul are flaccid and opaque.
P.S. While the whole Left-Right spectrum is not entirely inclusive and descriptive, its not exactly archaic; and in fact, in this discussion, is quite illuminating.
6 January 2008, 8:51 amChristian Roselund:
Stan,
First off I want to say that I am an avid reader of your work. Full Spectrum Disorder and Sex and War are among my favorite books. However I disagree with you on this one.
While the left should be open to tactics that include electoral sabotage, ultimately voting for a candidate results in endorsing ideas, whether it is done cynically or not. If I were to say to my leftist allies that they should vote for Ron Paul, even as “monkeywrenching”, what would that say to my friends, colleagues and allies who are immigrants, and who work for immigrant rights?
Ron Paul is for increased militarization of the US border. The first point of his six-point plan is to: “Physically secure our borders and coastlines. We must do whatever it takes to control entry into our country…”
While I also agree that the war in Iraq is the single biggest issue, I can’t vote for that. Even cynically.
6 January 2008, 10:17 amSteve S:
Stan–good piece. Certainly has made me rethink my position on Paul. However, I have some reservations about your analogies, i.e. the defeat of McKinney and the re-election of Lieberman. In both cases, the right mobilized to vote for the best candidate under the circumstances in the only election that could make a difference (the Democratic primary in one case, the general election in the other). In the case of Lieberman, it was a pretty damn good lesser of two evils from the right’s perspective, the only weakness was his failure to affiliate with the Republican party. A bigger ‘monkey wrench’ in that case was that fragment of the Democratic coalition that abandoned Lamont in favor of the ‘independent’ Lieberman, in exchange for his commitment to caucus with the Dems, thus giving them the committee chairs etc that they value. In any case, in both of these cases, it was a substantial number of voters who ‘threw the monkey wrench’. Locally and nationally, the right (a real force) was wholeheartedly behind the strategy. With all due respect, do you anticipate a substantial fragment of the traditionally Democratic coalition to jump ship for Paul? Even were they advocating this strategy (which they are not) I’m not sure the major anti-war coalitions could influence many voters at this point, given their pathetic state. And it goes downhill from there. Who’s the agency here? The Green Party? Counterpunch? So the basic story of the Paul insurgency is likely to be that a certain libertarian-anti-war-rugged individualist sort who almost always votes Republican is getting pissed. They’ll likely sit out the general election, unless Paul runs as an independent. They may well cost the Republicans the presidency. The notion that all the anti-big business/government, freaky individualists in this country, right and left alike, can come together has been a fantasy (I don’t mean that in a bad way) since the early seventies at least–and Amory Starr reiterated it after Seattle. It remains a fantasy, because the electoral and organizational backbone of any plausible left–African Americans, Latinos, union members–remain dependent on the federal government for a number of important things and aren’t about to just jump ship. I’m not sure the nativism that tends to surround rugged individualist types (both Paul on the right and Nader on the left) is some weird, unfortunate coincidence.
I don’t see any prospect of a Paul presidency (nor will he be the Republican nominee). Vote in the primary for him if you’d like, but don’t expect to send a message any broader than that a certain portion of the Republican base is completely fed up with Bushism. Then can we get back to the task of constructing a multicultural left that would have something worth negotiating with the rugged individualist right, if that strategy seems like it makes sense.
6 January 2008, 11:11 amzerowing:
I’m really troubled by the parochialism exhibited (enthusiastically) by so many Democrats and purported liberals in reaction to Ron Paul’s candidacy. The most common refrains go something like the following:
1) Sure, he’s antiwar but he’s going to cut my grandmother’s Social Security and throw her out on the street!
2) I like how Ron Paul is getting the Repukes bent out of shape but he would outlaw abortion if he got elected!!
3) I can’t vote for him because he doesn’t believe in evolution!`
This is the kind of knee-jerk reaction I saw a LOT of the last time around… by Republicans (”I hate Bush but I could never vote for a Democrat because he’d just open the borders to terrorists”).
The reason this is so incredibly, agonizingly, infuriatingly frustrating to me is that I hear this not just from people around the web but also from progressive activists I have known for years. Many are liberals, some are Democrats, some even have been in the Workers Party for decades. How can so many of these people support ::gag:: Obama and have previously supported ::shudder:: John Edwards and yet vow to not support Paul? We finally have a truly antiwar candidate who is viable and not afraid to use the word “imperialism” to describe the US government’s foreign policy. We have someone who asserts that maintaining an empire is wrong not only because it’s unsustainable but also because it’s morally reprehensible. It’s the same message progressives have been trying to get across for years. Ron Paul is no Howard Dean.
Many people here have already debunked the myths about Paul that I listed above, but I’ll repeat that the guy is not going to cancel anyone’s Social Security checks, or try to get Roe v. Wade overturned. He is saying that what we have now isn’t a “free market” but rather a shared monopoly.
Why the laundry list of pet issues that every candidate must adhere to? It’s really frustrating to see the progressive/antiwar movement continue biting its own ankles.
This article here sums things up better than I ever could: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_caleb_fr_071225_ron_paul_3a_a_means_to.htm
6 January 2008, 12:59 pmStan:
By tomorrow, I expect to open a thread entitled Libertarianism, where folks who are for or against or in-between can weigh in. I’ll even allow GoldWing back on, because this won’t constitute his hijacking the thread.
The discussion will be prefaced by a fairly lengthy critique of libertarianism from a pro-feminist eco-communalist perspective.
I invite any and all who can argue their cases without flame-warring. Provocation for the sake of provocation will die on the vine. Other than that, we can see just where our differences lie… and maybe force oane another to re-examine some deeply held philosophical assumptions.
6 January 2008, 2:31 pmLegume Sam:
zerowing:
The problem with much of the Democrat rank-and-file is that it suffers from Democratic Party Bipolar Syndrome. During the election off-season, Democrats are willing to entertain the most searching critiques of the political system, and even of the politicians within their own party ranks. Pelosi and Reid are sell-outs, Hillary is a corporate shill, Obama stands for nothing, and so on.
But once the election run-ups begin, the spirit of critique is swept aside, and Democrats engage the emptiest form of cheerleading, as one can see from reading the candidate diaries on DailyKos.com . During this phase they’re also obsessed with “electability,” such that they will “step in line” with the most dreadful of candidates once said candidates are deemed “electable.”
6 January 2008, 2:52 pmSteve:
Your a freaking genius Stan. Being were all passengers on a slow motion train wreck thats careening off the tracks ahead of us, it truly makes sense.
6 January 2008, 6:08 pmMichael Anderson:
Quebecois Libre (my apologies for typo) had this article on Ron Paul by Martin Masse, the publisher:
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/08/080106-5.htm
6 January 2008, 6:26 pmskol:
Condense-o-tron starting *beep*:
1. Anti-war vote Paul in the primary
2. 2nd Democratic nominee: Hey, look, our base is voting Paul! Here’s my chance! Quick, Out Now rhetoric!
3. 1st Democratic nominee: Egads! My rival is taking votes away from me! Quick, Out Now rhetoric!
4. Polls show Paul still has support, because at least we trust him for it. Paul rides this wave.
IF Paul wins:
1. War over, plus many potential future ones.
2. Still needs congressional approval for 1/2 of what he wants to do for the 1/2 of what worries us, and for 1/2 of the things that don’t. Congressional Democrats: Duck! Congressional Republicans: Sitting Duck! (watch as the alliances shift!)
IF Paul gets ticket:
1. Democratic nominee will have to campaign on a mostly anti-war platform
2. Good-bye Huckabee, Giuliani, McCain
ELSE (likely):
McGiulibee wins: Crap.
Edbamally wins: We voted you in on Certain Expectations. Follow-through may be minimal, but very, very obvious. Democrats: Duck!
IF Paul does not shore up much AND Obamallywards wins: Crap!
I could be wrong. But wouldn’t you like to hear George Stephanopolous explain this …interesting… new development?
*dreams*
6 January 2008, 7:34 pmSteve:
Christian Roselund @ 10:17 am
Christian I don’t believe Paul is suggesting an East German style system. Nor do I believe he has any hidden agenda to do so. To many Americans most of the fears in the immigration debate come from fear of drug cartels, gangs like M-13, criminals, terrorists, and others freely crossing the border undetected and assimilating into American Society and wreaking havoc.
This fear mongering by the media may be over played, maybe not, but it certainly drowns out the voices of those who want to find a way to accommodate those who wish to become American Citizens.
There is no easy solution in this mess. And nothing truly worthwhile in life comes easy.
6 January 2008, 7:52 pmpeggy:
Stan,
If you look up Ron Paul’s earlier expressed views on race, they are deeply disturbing. Although he has denied the exact wording of the statements made in his name about blacks in America, he has never denied that he held and continues to hold those views. His personal views of immigrants are almost as disturbing.
I cannot believe that you or any other intelligent person who is aware of what has been said in his name, and of the fact that these views have not been denounced by Ron Paul, can cast a vote for him, even in a token way for supposedly “tactical” reasons.
Please! Look these views up, and tell me you think he is more and worse than a mere “passive racist” as you think all white people are.
Or do you think that white supremacism is tolerable after all?
6 January 2008, 9:01 pmpeggy:
p.s. Many libertarians can be and are racist. All they need to do is believe that black people are inherently inferior, and therefore they cannot survive (or even be enabled to survive) in a free society.
6 January 2008, 9:33 pmAnd do I notice that women and women’s concerns in general are being ignored in this thread? I thought FS had feminism as one of its three principle bases. That seems to have gone by the wayside here, together with anti-racism. Am I the only woman posting on this thread? If so, I wonder why. Actually, I don’t wonder, I know. Glad that you have said you will start the Libertarianism thread with a feminist. But at this point I can’t help but feel that you have started that thread to distract attention from this thread, which must (or should) be deeply embarrassing to you
Yah, the war in Iraq hurts women and people of color. So you can say it covers those bases. But does it? Is war the cause of racism and sexism, or the reverse? Ron Paul is a libertarian capitalist. I am personally acquainted with more than one such, nice congenial folks all. But isn’t modern war founded on capitalism, as well as racism and sexism? Just about everybody, including many Republicans, is opposed to the war in Iraq. Some, like Ron Paul, saw it would be counterproductive, basically a waste of money, from the beginning. Everybody is against the war, now. Everybody is saying we have to get out of Iraq. I just don’t see how or why you assert that the mainstream press and the politicians have marginalized that issue.
arh:
I read Stan Goff’s article on Counterpunch and now his response. It’s pathetic to see supposedly intelligent leftists indulging in this sort of drivel. He swallows plenty of libertarian nonsense. And the way he assumes Ron Paul will actually become president is so totally absurd.Look at the way he talks about “net result”. Paul can’t win any primary let alone winning presidency. I am sure every now and then leftists get an urge to identify with powerful social forces.
Paul is a kooky little reactionary. Look at the way goff talks about “supposed populist” Edwards but he never says the same about Paul. When it comes to paul Goff simply swallows every nonsense peddled by Paulistas. What is the guarantee the libertarians will actually follow the policy they advocate? Even if they follow it the place will simply implode if they ever tried to implement their silly agenda.
Goff can peddle his nonsense.But I won’t take him seriously anymore. Till now I used to think Goff knows what he is talking about.That Goff was a smart man. The illusion is over. There are quite a few idiots among Left. It is tragic Goff turns out be one of them. There are plenty of kooky cults for leftists to waste their time and resources. JFK Assassination, 911 Truth Movement and now this bizarre Ron Paul Cult.
Goff thinks Americans can stop this war , that it is their responsibility.But the Iraqi resistance has already been doing the job just great. Sooner or later they will drive the Americans out. Even the reason Americans are worried about Iraq War is because of Resistance Successes.
6 January 2008, 11:25 pmJohn Smith:
Is there a West-East divide on this question?
I’ve seen stats that most of RP’s support comes from West of the Plains.
In the East we live in big cities. For us, federal transportation support is not simply highways and sprawl; it is also mass transit. It will be a long time before we can bicycle to work with ease, so until then we will continue to take trains. We actually like this approach. There have been plenty of articles written which show the environmental advantages of city living. We use cars less frequently; we heat our neighbors.
We recognize small is often not beautiful, but can be very wasteful. Many cities are incorporating their suburbs (NYC was created by incorporating Queens). Small, decentralized suburbs are incredibly wasteful, with huge replication of services between them.
In the East, and in the Midwest, we still have strong unions. We grow up knowing we will never cross a picket line. In NYC, some of the most important unions are in the “creative class”.
I realize there are huge cities on the West coast as well, but perhaps there is something about the “opt out” aspect of Libertarianism which is appealing to some out West, but fundametally repulsive (and I mean repulsive) to those of us who have remained in the Midwest/East.
7 January 2008, 1:25 amchris:
“…What is the guarantee the libertarians will actually follow the policy they advocate? Even if they follow it the place will simply implode if they ever tried to implement their silly agenda…”
Implosion is part of the point in case you missed that bit about “the fall” being shorter the sooner it occurs. If Libertarians imagine that they can make Capitalism work without Imperialism I say let ‘em try. This will be worse than Imperial Capitalism how? Do you want to dismantle the system or not?
Nowhere does Stan suggest that Ron Paul is a shoo-in for the presidency.
All the accusers could learn a thing or too from Stan’s post following this one wherein he apologizes for his method of argument in a particular case.
7 January 2008, 5:41 pmDirk:
“Ortega’s war on women
11th December 2006, 08:56 am by Stan
This post is from Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff aka Heart, at Women’s Space, on the outrageous and draconian ban on abortion just pushed through in Nicaragua, with full support from president-elect Daniel Ortega… a so-called leftist.
Shame!
***
War on Women in Nicaragua: Left and Right Unite in Total Ban on Abortion
Protest at Embassies in Nicaragua”
“My Ron Paul rant…
4th January 2008, 07:25 pm by Stan
Let me start with the suggestion of “passive racism.” This is an offense for which about 90 percent of white people are guilty… hey, we live in a white supremacist society. It’s in the air.”
http://www.feralscholar.org/blog/index.php/2006/12/11/ortegas-war-on-women/
In some countries some things seem to be more “in the air” than in other countries…. Nicaragua, as an example, is one of the most “machist” countries on planet earth.
“One point I emphasized in my rant is the difference between agreeing with someone’s expressed views and the net effect of someone’s likely actions.”
Although I don’t have any illusions about Ortega, I certainly do believe that the net effect, one year ago, for the people in Nicaragua to vote for the Sandinastas might be much more important than the net-effect of leftists and feminists in the U.S. voting for hardcore market-liberal racist Ron Paul. Reading your article and the comments about Ortega nearly exactly one year ago on your blog, I was surprised to find this kind of Manichaeism here.
As if every voter in Nicaragua, who votes for the Sandinastas, expects paradise on earth to happen shortly after the elections. I didn’t.
“IF Ron Paul were President, and if he followed a foreign policy that ended US military intervention, ended US political meddling abroad, and ended dollar hegemony (the net effect of a return to the gold standard), this would end the most signficant causative agent of human misery in the world… and half of humanity are women. That is over 3 billion people.
Net effect. Give a damn what sort of sexist drivel he utters among his friends. We can’t even get lefty-boys to give up their own woman-bashing, their cluelessness about rape culture, or their intractible and tedious defenses of the porn industry.”
Give a damn what sort of sexist drivel he utters among his friends?
Yes leftist men, with their women-bashing and defenses of the porn-industry…. should shut their mouth: Ron Paul is on his way to “end the most signficant causative agent of human misery in the world… and half of humanity are women. That is over 3 billion people.”
If I’d live in Nicaragua, I guess I would have voted for the Sandinastas in 2006. Not expecting much, but maybe that a few 100.000 people more would have enough to eat. More than half of them being women.
You wouldn’t. But one year later, voting for Ron Paul is associated with “ending the most significant causative agent of human misery in the world”???
What’s so sexy about elections and candidates in the U.S.A. that Nicaragua doesn’t have? What is Ortega supposed to do to become as sexy and intellectual challenging as Ron Paul does?
No Protest at Embassies in the USA so far….
I’m aware that I’m ignoring many of the more subtle details of your article. And again, you kind of initiated a real debate. How boring would it be, if you would have posted an article about how right-wing, racist etc. Ron Paul is…
Yes, yes, yes, but nonetheless,
Dirk
8 January 2008, 12:13 amRandy M.:
Thanks for another great learning and mental flexibility excercise, Stan. I haven’t settled on what to do yet, but I’ve appreciated most of the comments as well as your initial rants.
Keep fighting.
Randy
8 January 2008, 10:39 amJosiah:
On Ron Paul’s racist past, this article is a must-read for anyone looking at his candidacy:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e2f15397-a3c7-4720-ac15-4532a7da84ca
I am n o fan of the New Republic, but Kirchick has unearthed some pretty ugly stuff.
Excerpt:
“This “Special Issue on Racial Terrorism” was hardly the first time one of Paul’s publications had raised these topics. As early as December 1989, a section of his Investment Letter, titled “What To Expect for the 1990s,” predicted that “Racial Violence Will Fill Our Cities” because “mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white ‘haves.’” Two months later, a newsletter warned of “The Coming Race War,” and, in November 1990, an item advised readers, “If you live in a major city, and can leave, do so. If not, but you can have a rural retreat, for investment and refuge, buy it.” In June 1991, an entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC’s Adams Morgan neighborhood was titled, “Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo.” “This is only the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s,” the newsletter predicted. In an October 1992 item about urban crime, the newsletter’s author–presumably Paul–wrote, “I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.” That same year, a newsletter described the aftermath of a basketball game in which “blacks poured into the streets of Chicago in celebration. How to celebrate? How else? They broke the windows of stores to loot.” The newsletter inveighed against liberals who “want to keep white America from taking action against black crime and welfare,” adding, “Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems.”
8 January 2008, 7:11 pmchlamor:
A little late to the game here but Stan you’re gonna have to get over the hurdle of your title. A system that is based on and supplied by the vicious Free Marketeers can hardly be monkey-wrenched by supporting the most ardent spokesman for The Free Market.
I know, I know we haven’t yet experienced the “truly free” Free Market.
And then there’s that ugly bit about sealing the border.
There are many many options out there beyond supporting this candidate or that candidate. The fact that considering the support of such a beast is of primal importance to anyone displays an intellectual vaccuum in what passes for the Left in the good ol’ US of A.
Maybe we need offices in every city?
8 January 2008, 10:30 pmCassie:
Josiah, James Kirchik is the a neocon attack dog. He’s a man so vile he gloated over Rachel Corrie’s murder and is part of the same Podhoretz fabrication machine that had slam dunk information there were WMDs in Iraq.
Very quickly:
1. Ron Paul voted FOR Martin Luther King day. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2007-24
2. From the horse’s mouth, a little more than 1/3 into the audio: http://prisonplanet.com/audio/211107paul.mp3
“One of my heroes in the way he acted was actually Martin Luther King. I mean he was attacking some very stupid, vicious laws, but he never used or preached violence, was willing to go to prison, and Gandhi as well. I look to Gandhi as a leader.” - Ron Paul
3. Paul’s preference for a running mate is Walter Williams is a very Black man. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams
4. None of the Jews or Blacks who’ve worked very closely with Paul have ever To this day, Eric Dondero, who broke with Paul over Israel, will rip your throat out if you call Paul an antiSemite (another smear from the Kirchik crew).
“I’ve been asked by others if my former boss is an Anti-Semite. My answer is an emphatic NO. I am half Jewish. I am familiar with Anti-Semites. Ron is not one of them.”
http://www.shadowdemocracy.org/2007/11/19/for-the-recordwho-is-eric-dondero/
I wouldn’t put any stock in anything coming from the Kirchik smear machine. Matt Yglesias summed up Kirchik very well here:
“Kirchick has a promising future in conservative journalism, having mastered the time-honored techniques of rising through the ranks without any demonstrated ability in fields other than arguing with straw men and making things up about his opponents.”
The advocates of Middle East war are worried stiff about a national dialog on the war. With the Obama/Brzezinski machine set to take DC and take us into Pakistan, it’s absolutely vital to have some antiwar representation in future debates. Being a Black female, I’m not too keen on defending racists but I’m also distressed to see anyone fall for a well-timed “the newsletter’s author–presumably Paul” attack. Paul’s response can be read here: http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080108/20080108006395.html?.v=1 What he neglected to mention is that he fired the person who had been ghost-writing that newsletter when he found out about it.
All of this is only important if you’re backing Paul for his domestic views and an election smear likes this shocks you right before you go vote. I’m not backing him for his domestic policies and I’m not shocked because these allegations aren’t new. I had several months to research them so I could make an informed decision on the strategic usefulness of voting for an antiwar candidate with whom I disagreed on other issues. What I’m backing are the 8,000,000+ Haitians suffering under racist, colonialist bipartisan exploitation and all the victims of our imperialism worldwide.
Innocents in Iraq are getting the crap blown out of them everyday. If they have to wait until we have perfect leadership, well I guess the Iraqi kids are on their own. Perhaps they can pull themselves up by their boot straps.
Maybe it’s because I used to be in the military and I hear those screams in tecnicolor. I don’t know. All I know is this madness has got to stop now before more lives are destroyed. And it won’t stop if the last antiwar/non-intervention candidate is silenced & shooed from the stage.
Someone tell the New Republic to wake me up when Ron Paul is caught conspiring for an illegal war, funding one or excusing the abominable, racist crimes being perpetrated on the Palestinians that James Kirchick spins into nothingness. Kirchick has a serious axe to gring with anyone who critizes Israel. I’m not playing his game. I want our troops home, US imperialism struck a fatal blow and the whole rotten system here to crumble as quickly as possible. The racism charge against “enemies” of the regime is pretty weak in a country where both parties back institutionalized racism and war against poorer, darker people on this earth.
Maybe I’ve seen too many children cry at night rubbing their starved tummies saying ‘M grangou’ as their riches are stolen by all the “non-racists” politicians to care about a bunch of words that maybe may have been written and/or believed. Stop the exploitation, the death and the destruction first, then we can get on with the distraction of whose political racism is acceptable and whose isn’t. The thousands of children eating clay in Haiti or losing their parents in Iraq could give a rat’s ass about this hit piece, or even about Paul’s alleged racism. To me the key of this whole thing is who are we fighting for? I’m fighting for the victims. Whatever tool I have at my disposal today to do so, I’ll use. That’s all this Ron Paul thing is- a tool.
9 January 2008, 12:44 amStan:
In no way am I endorsing libertarianism, but I have to point out here that many on the left have bitten on one ofthe key fallacies of libertarians and, in the process, paradoxically positioned themselves to argue agaisnt libertarians when they are right. Capitalism is not now, nor has it ever been, about “free markets.” The “free market” that libertarians describe is an idealized abstraction with zero historical support. This is what allows the most purist libertarians to accidentally make a correct statememt… what we (the left) are calling capitalism is not “true” capitalism (the idealized premise); the system we have now is one in which massive state intervention is required to keep this “non-capitalist” system as it is.
Capitalism — the real thing — was built on plunder, genocide, slavery, and war. These are “externalities” to the actual M-C-M+ capital accumulation process that Marx described for the creation of surplus value, but then air is an “externality” for the human body, too.
Where we get wrong-footed in our debates with libertarians is precisely when we confuse “free markets” with capitalism… the term being something with limited descriptive value in the real world, and mostly ideological cover for a process that requires incessant expansion of appropriation of land and water and minerals and clean air, et al, armies and armies of cops, and the inevitable development of an ever more bureacratic/technocratic state apparatus to defend the interests of the dominant class, and gender, and nationality… in societies with a strong history of racial caste emerging as internal oppressed nations.
This is where the history — referring back to Joel Salatin’s examples here — has presented the left with a huge contradiction, largely based on a failure to account for the dynamics of industrialism and, I think, also the absence of theories of social scale (Dunbar’s number, eg) integrated with our theories of management and bureaucracy. When small farmers complained that regulaitons were creating an undue burden on them, they were telling the truth. Those regulations received support from the left, in many cases, because the left was responding to the horror stories that emerged from food production… but they didn’t differentiate between small farm production and CAFO, mono-crop industtrial (Green Revolution) food production.
The left ignored small farmers’ complaints, even as they were losing farms like crazy, while libertarian-like forces validated what the small farmers knew… the regulations are making it impossible for small producers to survive economically. In effect, the regulation of industrial monocrop production, to prevent the problems created by industrial monocrop production, ended up creatinig a financial obstacle to competition from below in the putative “free market” that turned agriculture into a corporate country club with a prohibitive membershnip fee… the ability to pay enough to comply with the regs.
Small producers heard these libertarian-like forces validating what they knew was damn well true… the regulations did place an undue burden on their viability. Instead of uniting with small producers on this count, much of the liberal-left did what they always do when confronted with a contradictory situation (that requires re-evaluating one’s premises); they retreated into vapid phrase-mongering about how the small producers were being manipulated into arguing against their own interests.
The Achilles heel of libertarianism is not “free markets,” per se, but abstractionism, their scientifically insupportable account of “human nature,” and ahistoricism… uh, and property.
9 January 2008, 6:54 amJosiah:
Cassie,
Since Paul has a snowball’s chance in Hell of winning the nomination, let alone the presidency, I see little reason in pinning the future of U.S. foreign policy on Ron Paul’s positions. But suppose he were to win. His position on the war is no different in substance from that of Pat Buchanan or, for that matter, David Duke, (although I’m not claiming Paul or any of his tactical ballot-box supporters is in any sympathy with the likes of Duke). Nixon promised to “end the war” too, and war crimes rapidly escalated after he took office. I don’t trust Paul any further than I can throw him on this, because his opposition is not rooted in any moral qualms about “blowing people up,” but out of the same nationalist isolationism that they turn against illegal immigrants on the drop of a dime.
What you say about Kirchik is absolutely true, and I did not mean to imply any approval of him in posting the link, although most of what he says about Paul remains to be disproven. You’re also right about the urgency of ending the war by any means we can, and the moral bankrupty of the Democrats who continue to fund and perpetuate U.S. imperialism, which is responsible for 1 million+ Iraqi deaths since 2003 alone.
But you’re wrong about Paul. Even if he did end the war (of which I am skeptical), his policies on AIDS, climate change, trade polices, arms deals and much else would create even more human suffering than what has occurred in Iraq under the U.S. boot. And on his supposed non-racism, it’s one thing to say that the stakes are so high that voting for an opponent of the Civil Rights Act and Roe V. Wade is worth it. It’s something else to use purely symbolic measures like his expressed fondness for MLK or his preference for Walter Williams as a running mate to wave away the significance of his opposition to these fundamental legal bars on U.S. apartheid, his belief that slaveowners should have been paid off in cash for the loss of their “property,” or his photo-ops and autograph signing with white supremacists:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=28353&only
9 January 2008, 8:07 amJosiah:
Also, the idea that Haitians would be any better off under Paul goes against the historical record. How did they do under previous U.S. presidents who waved the banner of non-interventionism to get elected, like James Monroe or Woodrow Wilson. How about Paul’s laissez-faire trade policies? People in the slums of Port-Au-Prince have absoolutely no reason to warmly anticipate a Paul presidency.
9 January 2008, 8:12 amCharles:
_private_ property.
Property is not a thing. Property is a relationship between people with respect to a thing.
9 January 2008, 3:38 pmfolktruther:
Voting for a candidate is, among other things, endorsing their views. No rhetoric can get around this political effect.
Paul is not a passive racist; he is, among other things, an active racist. His newsletters for two decades promoted racism. His current response, that he didn’t know it, or didn’t edit it, is utter bullshit. His weak defense now that he admired King or Rosa Parks is insulting without an apology for supporting everything they were fighting. Which he doesn’t make.
11 January 2008, 5:16 amLegume Sam:
Not exactly. Voting for a candidate is giving that candidate one vote’s worth of support. What that candidate does with that support (e.g. wins the Republican nomination) is another thing to be decided.
11 January 2008, 10:17 amCharles:
Well, Stan, Paul may not be too cool, but I still think you are an ace for trying to think outside the box, as they say.
John Henry
11 January 2008, 1:39 pmCharles:
. Paul’s preference for a running mate is Walter Williams is a very Black man. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams
^^^^
Walter E. Williams is what Black people call an Uncle Tom or Sambo, i.e. a traitor to his people. He’s like Clarence Thomas.
If you read that wikipedia article you posted you will see he is a racist rightwinger.
11 January 2008, 1:54 pmStan:
Uh… no, it’s not. It’s voting. This statement is ridiculous on its face.
In 1991, the Governor’s race in Louisiana matched Edwin Edwards — openly and proudly corrupt and under indictment iirc at the time of the campaign — against Klansman David Duke (the Republican nominee).
Louisianans were sporting bumper-stickers that said, “Vote for the crook. It’s important.”
When we have public financing of campaigns, open ballot access, proportional representation, the abolition of the Senate, and the end of the electoral college… then, maybe, voting will be tantamount to endorsing the views of candidates.
My Paul rant was a provocation… but I believe it began by saying I have become a single-issue voter. I do endorse one view of Ron Paul’s. The United States military — all of it — needs to be brought back inside the borders of the United States… now. There is one more view of his I endorse… ending ALL forms of public subsidies to corporations.
In the general election, I will not cast a vote for any candidate who is not calling for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. I hope millions will join me in that. I will hold a sign outside the polls saying exactly that.
And not solely because I have two sons in the Army. This war is unspeakably cruel, unspeakably bloody, and on vast scale of bloodletting and cruelty. We are paying daily, just by showing up at work and letting the government tax us, to have out co-signature forged on this horror show, this cataclysm, that has become Iraq.
Soldiers wearing the US uniform are being exonerated for mass murder, rape, and a host of lesser offenses. Tons and tons of bombs are being dropped on people… do we get this. Human beings.
If I thought eating shit on the White House lawn would stop this war, then I’d be headed north right now with a bowl and a spoon.
Nearly 30 million people have had their lives transformed into a living Hell… and that is seen in our political culture as something that is an open “subject” for debate. It is not. This is Sin; it is an unmitigated evil.
11 January 2008, 7:08 pmJosiah:
Stan,
11 January 2008, 11:13 pmI can appreciate your argument that ending the war is so important that Paul’s promise to do so, coupled with his promise to end government subsidies to agribusiness, outweighs his wrongness on other issues. It makes more sense to me, with all due respect to Cassie, than trying to put symbolic window dressing on the latter. My disagreement with you is based on a disbelief that Paul’s talk of closing US military bases abroad is any more credible than, e.g., Charles Lindbergh or Calvin Coolidge’s isolationism. Great campaign-trail applause lines, yes; likely eventualities, given the forces of geopolitical-economic-institutional inertia, no. But in a sense our disagreement is a moot point, because the 2008 campaign is now essentially winnowed down to a final four match of Obama or Hillary vs. McCain or Huckabee, with Paul possibly striking off into Perot or Nader territory at the last minute. All the prospective nominees, of course, will in one way or another advance the agenda of permanent US bases in Iraq. And this leads to me to sympathize with the ‘monkey-wrench’ idea, while being unable to accept it due to Paul’s likely (IMO) resemblance to past ‘isolationists’ when questions of empire get down to the bone, and his near-antebellum positions on race and gender.
Legume Sam:
Sharon Smith has a piece in Counterpunch outlining the anti-Paul position in historical perspective. I’m not voting for Paul, but there are a good number of places where I disagree with this piece:
1) Kerry didn’t lose the 2004 election. He was cheated out of victory by widespread electoral fraud; he refused to contest this fraud, because (in fact) so little was at stake in 2004. Thus I’d call Smith’s version of history into question. I think we have far less control over the results of Presidential elections than we think we do. At any rate, it certainly wasn’t Kerry’s fault that Ken Blackwell was a Republican or that Diebold controlled Ohio’s voting machinery.
2) The point of voting for Paul is not “based solely on his opposition to the Iraq war.” Paul doesn’t have the slightest chance of winning the 2008 election; were he to gain the Republican nomination, the corporations would line up against him and the fundamentalists would desert his political party. The point of voting for Paul in the primaries, as I understand it, is to embarrass the Democrats by forcing Clinton/ Obama to defend the war in public, something they certainly won’t do in running against McCain/ Huckabee/ Romney.
3) The monstrosity of Clinton was not made possible by “single-issue voters.” The monstrosity of Clinton was made possible by “lesser of two evils” voters, an issue having to do with final elections. We’re not there yet; this is a discussion about primary voting.
4) Smith can “rebuild the Left” any way she wants; a meaningful Left would be about a global, ecologically sustainable, society centered around what Joan Martinez-Alier calls “the environmentalism of the poor’; people who “support the environment” because they live together with it rather than merely regarding it as the source of their favorite consumer appliances. I don’t see candidates doing that yet; perhaps they never will, though that doesn’t mean we should give up.
16 January 2008, 10:15 pmCharles:
3) The monstrosity of Clinton was not made possible by “single-issue voters.” The monstrosity of Clinton was made possible by “lesser of two evils” voters, an issue having to do with final elections. We’re not there yet; this is a discussion about primary voting.
^^^^^
4 February 2008, 3:18 pmCB: And by a white race riot in the 1994 Congressional elections electing the Gingrich gang.
Anitra L. Freeman:
This is a very thoughtful piece. I agree entirely with several points: 90% of all white people are passive racists; the drug war must end; a vote for a candidate is not an endorsement of all or even any of that candidate’s positions; and the *effect* of an action is a lot more important than being 100% ideologically pure.
For all of those reasons, I am voting for Obama. Sure, he’s in the pocket of the nuclear industry and has said some very worrisome things about using American military power. The effect of electing Hillary would be worse, and the effect of electing McCain would be far worse.
We at the grassroots are going to have to do all of the real work anyway, no matter who is in what political office. Obama’s campaign is pulling more people into political participation. Instead of trying to tell the Paul supporters and the Clinton supporters and the Obama supporters that they are all dupes and idiots, I think it would be much more productive to talk about the causes we have in common and enlist their help in getting real action on them, whatever leaders get elected.
Deligitimizing the system is a good goal. I certainly want to deligitimize the Bush League’s “10 Year Plan to Extend Homelessness,” for instance — I am not going to do anything in the process that will cause the deaths of even more homeless people. Any action that contributes to getting John McCain elected is going to get more people killed.
19 February 2008, 7:22 pm