Saturday morning, I slogged over to the Revolution March on Capitol Hill, an all-day rally for quixotic Republican candidate Ron Paul. I’ve long been fascinated by the heterodox clan of followers that have congealed around Paul’s candidacy, and nowhere were the many faces of the Paulites more manifest than at yesterday’s march. Christian homeschoolers and sound money-seekers, college kids in robot armor, 9/11 truthers, antiwar veterans, dirigibilists and guys in colonial hats — every discrete component of the Ron Paul movement was on display.
Many have argued that the Ron Paul phenomenon is a good thing for the future of liberty in America. I agree, and I voted for Paul in Arizona’s Republican primary. But after listening to the rhetoric of Saturday’s speakers and interacting with the motley marchers, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two crucial and ultimately flawed currents within the Ron Paul Revolution.
First, the influence of Richard Hofstadter’s paranoid style, the political mentality first explained in reference to that other great libertarian Republican, Barry Goldwater. Here’s how Hofstadter described his conception of the paranoid right in 1964:
America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.
Hofstadter was no fan of Goldwater, and his essay was meant to frame him as one among a great chain of kooks in American history. But this passage hits on many of the points of Ron Paul Republicanism — where a healthy distrust of government turns into the unhealthy belief that the Fed is a sinister cabal, martial law is just around the corner, and our sovereignty will soon be undermined by a covertly-planned North American Union. Unfortunately, each of those ideas was expounded at length by at least one speaker at the rally. I’d like to think that the ideas of liberty are the most fundamental part of the Paul message, but paranoia was put in the spotlight alongside principle on Saturday.
Of course, the paranoid style is not limited to Paul and company — simply see the persistent “Barack Obama is a secret Muslim” rumors for proof. But the idea of dispossession from liberty inherent to the paranoid right is a critical part of Paul’s appeal.
That leads to the second key characteristic: widespread acceptance of Tyler Cowen’s first libertarian heresy — the belief that we are now less free than in the past, and we ought to seek to return to an earlier era. Restore the Constitution. Return to limited government, the gold standard, isolationism. You say you want a revolution — but it sure sounds like a restoration.
Problem is, there never was a golden age of American liberty and prosperity. I’ll agree that in some areas, I am less free today than I would have been in 1910. No surveillance state, no income tax, no nanny state, no war on drugs or poverty or terror distorting personal and economic liberty. But each of those developments is largely the product of technology and prosperity that simply didn’t exist back then. Further, it’s hard to argue that we do not live in a more open and equal society than in the past. White males may indeed be less free, but on balance the rest of society has far more liberty.
Plus, even if negative liberties were a wash, I have far more positive liberty than humans have ever had, thanks to unprecedented global prosperity. Hands down, I would rather live in today’s world than a century ago. There is no golden age — there is only now, and seeking to return to a mythical past is counterproductive.
I believe in progressive liberty — shaping today’s society toward a freer, more prosperous future, especially with an eye towards emerging technology and an evolving culture. And although Ben Bernanke may do dumb stuff, I don’t think he’s out to swindle me or devalue my currency to pave the way for the Amero. Neither, I’d imagine, do the vast majority of those who voted for Ron Paul this year. But for an ardent and vocal set of supporters, paranoia and nostalgia are critical components of a fatally flawed — but powerful — worldview. If there is to be a permanent Ron Paul revolution, I sincerely hope its leaders choose to ditch those ideals.
