Whether or not you like Ron Paul, you have to acknowledge that something is going on. There is a disaffected center that is sending America a signal. It’s not the center of Joe Lieberman, but the freedom-loving center — the "stop trying to run my life" center. It’s the: Nolan Chart center (which is the top).
Old school conservatives better sit up and take notice. These crazy Ron Paulites make up the future of conservatism — one that has been reluctant to participate due to all the power brokering, the partisanship, and the sell-your-soul pathologies of the two-party system. While retaining their small government roots (and their Constitution-centric suspicion of power) they are more socially liberal than conservatives of old. They are also suspicious of the wisdom of foreign wars — for better or worse. They cannot be ignored. For as the old guard dies off, a new guard is going to emerge with all the tricks, technology and fervor of the Deaniac left, and they’re going to fight for an America that radically distributes political power, empowering individuals and their communities to do good in the world without all of government’s nannying. Watch out.
-Max Borders
I wish I shared your optimism – not for Paul per se, but to a political infrastructure that empowers individuals. That said, you can bet your bottom dollar I will keep fighting to swing the pendulum back to individualism and away from the leviathan of statism.
In regards the Nolan Chart, I take issue with him seperating “economic freedom” and “personal freedom.” When government plans and directs the economy, it limits people’s choices and directs their decisions. Oftentimes this results in limiting options people have with both their time and property. I would say that affects people pretty peronally.
In response to your concern about economic vs. personal liberty, it’s not that Nolan separates them conceptually from a normative view, it’s that he separates them from a factual view. This is a non-normative chart as far as I can tell. In other words, there are people who think you should be able to smoke pot, get an abortion, or live a gay lifestyle who are also statists with respect to government. They will plot differently on these axes.
The truth is that we, as Republicans, have not resisted the urge to micro-manage the lives and pocketbooks of the people nearly as much as we said we were going to. (This is either through mismanagement, or getting enthralled by the apparatus of government once we get in control of something. I don’t think that it is through any dishonest “bait and switch” efforts on our part.)
The “less government” approach SHOULD be that of the traditional conservatives, but we have apparently largely abdicated this stance. When in power, we have allowed government to grow wildly, and have made only half-hearted attempts to rein it in. This is why the Republican brand is not what it ought to be these days.
Let’s face it, the Ron Paul folks are dedicated, motivated, grass roots activists. They put their time and money where their mouths are. I know some of them, and their are to be admired for their dedication. Their strength, while it seems unlikely to procure the nomination of Paul as the Republican presidential candidate, ought to have the rest of us sit up and take notice. Maybe it will serve to keep the rest of us honest, and will help the party return to our conservative, more liberty, less government roots.
Most of Paul’s stances make sense to me, right up until we get to his foreign policy views. If I understand his views correctly, this is where we part company completely. I personally think that we ought to hunt down and kill terrorists, until there is just one left, and then put him in a museum, so we don’t forget about the existence of such human evil. This will not be wrapped up in the next fortnight. It will be a long process, just as the Cold War was. We won the Cold War, but as far as I can tell, Paul would not have us prosecute this new fight, and he especially does not think it proper to take the fight to the enemy. He is just plain wrong on this issue, and this issue it a supremely important one. This alone has been enough to get me to not come out in support of him.
But his folks are a darn sight more active and excited than ANYONE that I know in any of the other camps. (Except for a couple of pretty girls I know – one a Guliani supporter and the other a devotee of Mitt Romney, but that is another story.) We need to try to persuade them to our views, and find some common ground with these Ron Paul folks, and co-opt them into the “mainstream” of the party. This meeting of the minds will likely make us have to change some of our views, or perhaps return to some of the views that we have given lip service to all along, but that we have not worked real hard to advance when we have had the chance.
To ignore or shun these Ron Paul folks would be to consign their excitement and enthusiasm (not to mention their money) to other political causes which will NOT necessarily be to our benefit, or to have them get frustrated and return to their former apathy. Neither one of those seem to be a good idea to me, at least not when we could turn this into a boost for the party.