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Posted By Daniel W. Drezner
Tuesday, January 3, 2012 - 1:56 AM
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Ross Douthat had a great column to start the new year, offering his own interpretation on the Ron Paul phenomenon. His last few paragraphs:
There’s often a fine line between a madman and a prophet. Perhaps Paul has emerged as a teller of some important truths precisely because in many ways he’s still as far out there as ever.
The United States is living through an era of unprecedented elite failure, in which America’s public institutions are understandably distrusted and our leadership class is justifiably despised. Yet politicians of both parties are required, by the demands of partisanship, to embrace the convenient lie that our problem can be pinned exclusively on the other side’s elites — as though both liberals and conservatives hadn’t participated in the decisions that dug our current hole.
In this climate, it sometimes takes a fearless crank to expose realities that neither Republicans nor Democrats are particularly eager to acknowledge.
In both the 2008 and 2012 campaigns, Paul has been the only figure willing to point out the deep continuities in American politics — the way social spending grows and overseas commitments multiply no matter which party is in power, the revolving doors that connect K Street to Congress and Wall Street to the White House, the long list of dubious policies and programs that both sides tacitly support. In both election cycles, his honest extremism has sometimes cut closer to the heart of our national predicament than the calculating partisanship of his more grounded rivals. He sometimes rants, but he rarely spins — and he’s one of the few figures on the national stage who says “a plague on both your houses!” and actually means it.
Obviously it would be better for the country if this message weren’t freighted with Paul’s noxious baggage, and entangled with his many implausible ideas. But would it be better off without his presence entirely? I’m not so sure.
Neither prophets nor madmen should be elected to the presidency. But neither can they safely be ignored (emphases added).
Conor Friedersdorf and Glenn Greenwald take a similar position. Greenwald in particular argues that Paul's positions on foreign policy/national security/civil liberties are so much better than the bipartisan consensus view that Paul's tacit approval of those odious newsletters should be heavily discounted. As Greenwald puts it, progressives who don't support Paul must apparently accept the following preference ordering:
Yes, I’m willing to continue to have Muslim children slaughtered by covert drones and cluster bombs, and America’s minorities imprisoned by the hundreds of thousands for no good reason, and the CIA able to run rampant with no checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for “espionage,” and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers in secret, and a substantially higher risk of war with Iran (fought by the U.S. or by Israel with U.S. support) in exchange for less severe cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs, the preservation of the Education and Energy Departments, more stringent environmental regulations, broader health care coverage, defense of reproductive rights for women, stronger enforcement of civil rights for America’s minorities, a President with no associations with racist views in a newsletter, and a more progressive Supreme Court.
I'm of two minds about this line of argument. On the one hand, there is no denying that Paul's worldview has helped him to launch a powerful critique on American foreign policy. This can't just be dismissed as "yes, he was right on Iraq, but..." either. As Douthat, Friedersdorf and Greenwald observe, Paul really is the only candidate to bring up these issues not named Gary Johnson or Jon Hunstman. His hypothesis that the United States has invited some blowback by overly militarizing its foreign policy cannot be easily dismissed.
Think of it this way: Paul is a hedgehog. He knows One Big Thing and uses it to construct his worldview. We know from Philip Tetlock that hedgehogs are less likely to be right when making predictions than foxes -- those people who know a little about a lot of things. Hedgehogs outperform foxes is in getting big macro-consequential events correct, however. We tend to ignore such predictions, however, because hedgehogs usually lack the emotional intelligence necessary to persuade nonbelievers. I want Paul banging on about the dangers of excessive government intrusion and overexpansion. That's not nothing.
Here's the thing, though -- precisely because Paul is a hedgehog, he brings other less-than-desirable qualities to the table. I don't think his intriguing take on foreign policy and civil liberties can be separated from, say, his batshit-insane views about the Federal Reserve. In fact, let me just edit Greenwald's proposed tradeoff so that it's a bit more accurate:
Yes, I’m willing to continue to have some Muslim children inadvertently die by covert drones and cluster bombs, and a disproportionate percentage of America’s minorities imprisoned for no good reason, and the CIA taking action with minimal checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for “espionage,” and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers and lots of rhetoric & covert action against Iran that makes Glenn Greenwald hyperventilate in exchange for avoiding a complete and total meltdown of the global economy due to the massive deflation that would naturally follow from a re-constituted gold standard.
I don't like this choice, but it's an easy one to make.
To paraphrase both Douthat and This is Spinal Tap, there's a fine line between prophetic and crazy. I would posit that only someone who fanatically accepted this entire worldview would have been capable of inspiring the Ron Paul movement. Only those leaders with sufficient levels of ideological zeal to never compromise, never bend on principle, until they eventually reach a position of power are able to foment revolution. This kind of zeal requires a singular worldview that might contain some worthwhile elements but is likely also based on some axioms or articles of faith that seem a little nuts and makes the person wrong an awful lot of the time. These kinds of leaders, precisely because they were in the political wilderness, will tend to be supremely convinced in their own rightness if they ever win power.
Ron Paul is great at affecting the marketplace of ideas. He would be worse than Newt Gingrich if he actually became president, however. The great presidents -- Washington, Lincoln, FDR -- knew the when to compromise and when to stand firm, when to lead public opinion and when to follow it. They were, in other words, great politicians. The presidents who simply knew they were right on everything and resisted compromise -- Jackson, Wilson, Bush 43 -- tended towards the disastrous. Paul would be part of the latter group.
So if Ron Paul wants to influence the debate, that's good. He raises important questions about important issues. He's also wrong about some really important issues and therefore should be kept away from the presidency.
Fortunately, as James Hohmann's Politico story suggests today, Paul and his supporters seem to care about the former more than the latter:
As much as anything else, [Paul's] pitch centers on sending a message.
“This is ideological,” he said here late Friday night at his last campaign stop of 2011. “So it isn’t a numbers game. It has to do with determination.”
He paraphrased a Samuel Adams quote, saying, “It doesn’t take a majority to prevail. It takes an irate, determined minority keen on starting the brushfires of liberty in the minds of men.”
“So in many ways, it’s a political revolution to change these ideas, but it’s an intellectual revolution,” Paul explained, wrapping up a nearly hourlong speech. “It’s a change in ideas about economic policy, understanding our traditions about foreign policy, understanding monetary policy. This is where we’re making progress. This is where we have advanced so much over the last couple decades and even in the last four years.”...
Many of his die-hard supporters see him more as an alarm-sounding Paul Revere than a Founding Father.
“I would say its 10 percent campaign, 90 percent a movement,” said Quaitemes Williams, a 26-year-old nursing student who drove from Dallas to volunteer for the full week before the caucuses. “Once you’ve seen the light, you can never go back to the dark. Once you learn about the Federal Reserve and foreign policy, you can’t go back to thinking in the right-left dichotomy.” (emphasis added)
That last quotation, by the way, is part of what I find problematic about the Paul movement. The revolutionary leader worries me -- but the Jacobin followers scare the ever-living crap out of me.
EXPLORE:2012 ELECTION POSTER 4, ELECTION 2012, RON PAUL, 2012 CAMPAIGN, FOREIGN POLICY COMMUNITY, PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS 
This might be a bit alarmist. Ron Paul might be a terrible choice for a 21st century president* but we aren't looking at the Jacobins or Robespierre. Additionally we certainly aren't looking at revolutionary circumstances. Compared to real revolutions currently happening or that have happened this is just basic dissatisfaction with the government. I don't think he'll win but if he did he would try to make some ridiculous sweeping changes, he'd face universal opposition from the bureaucrats who get things done (and possibly the courts depending on the situation), international and domestic realities would send him sprawling and he'd end up a one-term president.
*Though he might have had some good qualities as a 19th century one.
End the Fed's going to get more popular
Dan you're a member of generation X. You weren't exactly aware of the collapse of Bretton Woods, and for most of your life your experience with the Federal Reserve is as this elite institution that managed to use non-partisan technocratic expertise to create some semblance of control over otherwise chaotic processes. The Fed has always been the last safety net, the last bastion of intelligence, and under the kind rule of elites managed to create the so called 'great moderation'.
I can understand a person who's view of the Fed is seen in contrast to say, Congress, which has such noted economic experts like Maxine Waters serving as a ranking member on the Committee on Financial Services. In such a world view you have the good technocratic elites (Volcker, Greenspan, Bernanke) battling against increasingly insane and stupid democratic forces who are increasingly incapable of governing. Yeah, we get it. Yay Technocracy! If only we could go back to the good old days when technocrats did the right thing, we could bring back the great moderation and get everything normal again.
In contrast, Generation Y and Millennials grew up watching the end of the great moderation. They've grown up in an era of Elite and Expert Failure. The Great Moderation is seen as nothing more than an artifact of the increasing productivity from computers and internet, and democratic and globalization factors opening up new markets. At best it's a story of the virtue of technological progress, and at its worst, a statistical phenomenon. Even a modest concession to the value of eliteness is seen in the light of an era when it was possible to put a man on the moon with a computer with 16 bits of memory. A time when the total knowledge of the world was manageable by a few brilliant men acting together who knew enough about everything and were given enough discretionary power to act on it.
That era is gone.
This is what Ross is leaning towards when he says "The United States is living through an era of unprecedented elite failure, in which America’s public institutions are understandably distrusted and our leadership class is justifiably despised".
More importantly, I think Millennials have a stronger appreciation of things that were just unknowable by Generation X. If you had asked in 1986, or even 1992 - Is the Federal Reserve, a managed monetary policy, /better/ than the alternatives? You'd have no way of *actually knowing* where to begin to solve that problem. If you were really smart you might have known some sci-fi alternatives - currencies based on energy or basket of commodities, or maybe something about the system before Breton Woods, but more than likely you'd have to trust an elite who would tell you, 'Well, obviously managed Monetary policy is better, we don't need to have blind faith to useless rocks in the ground, besides everything is great!" (this seriously passed as an argument!).
But at the time, the evidence wasn't really that good was it? Were central banks /really/ making our economy safer, or was the elite management shoving the normal risks of business cycles into increasingly more terrible and likely black swan events? In the long run, which narrative has become more appealing?
Economic History has come a very long way since the 80's and 90's. I think we are now finding evidence suggesting that relying upon a central bank to manage ones economy is not actually 'more stable', nor does it make 'recessions less bad' - the two standard answers offered during the great moderation. The fact is, Money is very complicated and very weird, and hard to understand, and maybe we don't have a really good explanation for why the Gold Standard worked better than a Central bank but it should definitely bother you that it does! Maybe the answer is that *elites are just not smart enough anymore to do this*. Maybe they never were, and just got lucky. Maybe the alternatives would just be worse today too. What this means is that it is no longer a crazy idea to contend that managed monetary policy is a fools game, even if it looked that way for a couple decades.
Dan, you need to know Ron Paul is not going to be the first. There's a reason why at his College speeches the most popular line is "End the Fed". This is a generational divide that is coming, and they're going to be armed to the teeth with data and theories on why elite management of currency is simply the worst thing in the universe. You're going to have to have a good answer to them why the return to the great moderation is possible, even as we see greater and greater global instability and recession brought about through the inability of central banks to manage. I suspect the tipping point will come when a nation openly declares a policy of Nominal GDP targeting or Inflation targeting, and it results in a disaster (Failure to hit targets, creating unstable inflationary regimes, hitting targets and causing no change in employment, being amongst the most likely failure states).
I suggest taking these alternative ideas seriously and not calling them crazy, because there might come a time when the idea of centrally managed banking is seen as crazy and stupid. A strange fad of 20th century like Communism and Fascism that has no place in a modern world of competing privatized currency.
Those are great insights. Your characterization of the sentiment of Generation Y and the Millennials is spot on. The same can be said about their view of US foreign policy. They are now left with the job of cleaning up the messes created by the current and previous generations.
Positions not as radical as portrayed.
1. Opposition to central banking.
"...One unsolved economic problem of the day is how to get rid of the Federal Reserve..."
-- Milton Friedman
(THE mainstream conservative economist. Romney favorite. )
2. Marijuana
"Respondent's local cultivation and consumption of marijuana is not "Commerce ... among the several States."
Certainly no evidence from the founding suggests that "commerce" included the mere possession of a good or some personal activity that did not involve trade or exchange for value. In the early days of the Republic, it would have been unthinkable that Congress could prohibit the local cultivation, possession, and consumption of marijuana."
-Clarence Thomas's dissent in Gonzalez vs. Raich
(ALL of the candidates favorite Justice, per one of the debates.)
3. Anti-War
The fact is, neoconservatism is the radical position. Leo Strauss's import of Italian fascism and is fundamentally alien to all traditional American political thought, that it's somewhat difficult to find opposition to it, because it didn't existed before.
So here's an oldie but a goodie.
"
Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.
But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
"
-John Quincy Adams.
Paul is a phony, his supporters can't be taken seriously
He is all against use of federal power in personal issues, except curiously when it comes to the right to abortion and gay gay rights.
His statements about ending the drug war are full of crap. He actually doesn't want to see it ended, just referred back to the states (where it can be used for greater discriminatory effect). In essence if one state went "full Amsterdam" and another "full Rockefeller" he would be OK with that.
The guy thinks the Civil Rights Act was wrong. Such issues should belong to the states, Besides violating the 14th Amendment, it was "states rights" which incidentally were the reason we have it as federal law in the first place. State governments have the greater capacity than the federal government to enact and enforce discriminatory policies on people.
His foreign policy is a joke. It can't be taken seriously at any level in this day and age. He is 2 centuries too late for isolationism. Besides, it never worked for anyone. You cannot name one civilization which benefited by cutting itself off from connections with others. It is a recipe for decline and demise.
This is a guy who stated that the US should never have gotten involved when Hitler was committing genocide. He not only published extremely racist newsletters on a regular basis, but has not even bothered to come up with decent excuses for them. His supporters try to minimize it, but Paul, does not.
The man complains about the American lives lost in foreign conflict, yet his policies will kill many many more Americans through poor healthcare, unsafe working conditions, and lack of infrastructure.
Whatever merits Paul's positions have, they are buried in a sea of bigotry, misogyny, religious fanaticism, He may say the right thing once in a blue moon but his motives are so thoroughly repugnant that such things would be better served with a far different advocate.
really? your logic is that we ought to allow genocides? is that yours and pauls plan? wonderful!
rwanda is squarely in the lap of chiraq....
per the americans record in WWII of coming to the jews rescue in europe? they knew what was going on and failed miserably to stop the genocide...they could have done much more. Can you say bomb the railroad tracks? they were bombing targets miles away but not the railroad tracks near auschwitz? scandalous. they could have helped immigrants seeking refuge in 1938... they knew what jews and others were facing in germany..they knew what mein kampf said, they knew what the nuremburg race laws were all about in 1935 on....
but your logic is twisted...as a non interventionist, you seem to advocate that if a genocide is taking place somewhere else, its not our business. good luck to you and mr paul with those theories...
I can see you're not wasting your life eh? LOL
And you wonder why Stormfront endorsed Paul?
>>>Why should the US have gotten involved when Hitler committed genocide? Did the US get involved when Khmer Rouge was committing genocide? the Rwandans? The bolsheviks? The Japanese actions in China?
And why did we not get involved? Because of idiots like yourself and Paul who didn't care about colored people or heathens were being murdered en masse. You have used as examples, illustrations as to why isolationism is a bad thing.
>>You dont mind any of Ron Paul's ideas except his opposition to the FED and he's desire to walk away from Isreal. If he pulled that off your very world would coming crashing down
Bullshit! I don't like ANY of his ideas.
Your reading comprehension is obviously defective. You missed my critique of his stance on abortions, states rights, civil liberties and use of federal power. The guy is garbage and his appeal is to morons, bigots and religious fanatics. Smokey the Unbearable, I have no problem believing you are all of the above.
So do you think this country is headed down the right path?
I worry about guys like you instead of Ron Paul. Are you still spewing that storm front nonsense? That is a strawman argument and I think you know it. So who would be a good candidate for president that is not bought and paid for? I think that is what alot of his supporters are looking for, somebody that hasn't sold themselves to wall street, rightly or wrongly.
He has done nothing to humanity except service to self. The man is not in contact with his heart.
One advantage to an Interventionist Foreign Policy:
It helps make the world safer for Taiwanese, Israeli, Georgian anti-statist Libertarians among other anti-statist Libertarians. Doesn't Ron Paul care about Israeli, Taiwanese, Georgian Libertarians. Or does he think that American Libertarians are "exceptional"?
Libertarianism means that people and countries should rule themselves.
A "Libertarianism" where Taiwan, Israel, Georgia are puppet states of the U.S. is not Libertarianism.
American Libertarians aren't exceptional. So why do we get to decide for everyone else?
Yes, I read Zbigniew Brzezinski's article. Let's make the world outside the U.S. more Libertarian friendly.
"8 Geopolitically Endangered Species". All of whom have Libertarian who will suffer from American Isolationism.
The boomers have left this country with a heck of a mess regarding issues of liberty and privacy. They have destroyed so many of the institutions that raised us out of the outhouses it will take much to build new ones and for that we will pay. Why with the enlightenment that the newest generation claims to posess do they think the continued destruction of our institutions will bring about positive change? Is it not clear that these institutions have provided the framework to stand on the collective shoulders of our forefathers? Ron Paul advocates going back to a simpler time when we all supposedly borrowed John Galts car in exchange for a single gold coin. (A). That time never existed and (B). There is no BACK. We must work to strengthen our institutions not destroy them. If they are wrong, make them right. Paul is not the answer.
Randy, you haven't a clue what the hell you're talking about.
How can you advocate supporting institutions that either caused the mess we are facing or didn't prevent it? I would understand you if you had said build different institutions, but if you had done so you would basically be closer to Paul's position than the idiotic one you took.
So this is the new tactic of the Paulies
Claiming that "if you just understood Paul, you would agree with him".
Of course for most reasonable people, its complete bullshit.
Its very tough for most people to agree with a guy who openly opposes The Civil Rights Act, has published extensively in white supremacist rags, opposes using federal power except to ban abortion and criminalize gays, wants to make it easier to institutionalize discrimination of all stripes and turn our global economy into a giant dungpile.
Study the value of institutions in American history then tell me I've no clue. The lifetime of a single human being and an old one at that is not enough time to bring about lasting change. Idiotic? Yeah right pal so are all those who build trusts and endowments to outlast their own lifetimes. The central banking system is far from a perfect institution and when it came time for the boomers to improve on that system their best effort is to destroy it? And replace it with what? Nothing? Is that really the most imaginative solution you can come up with? To say the fed has not averted this mess is not to say it does not serve us well. Ron Paul's "solutions" are to destroy and dismantle the institutions built with the blood of 30,000,000 people. Think we can't relive those nightmares again? Really? There is no back. Fervent belief in an easier happier time that supposedly once existed will not bring about the fairy tale land of Ron Pauls fertile if not grossly distorted imagination. Destruction of the foundations for a bridge does not bring about a bridge, it brings about a divide. Cutting ourselves off from the rest of the world is a false panacia that will not end well for Americans.
"Institution" is term to ambiguous as to be worthless.
If by "institutions" you mean Civil Society, then yes, Civil Society is the basis of democracy, because it is through voluntary, participatory institutions that make up the culture, character, and intelligence of society that gets passed on from generation to generation.
If by institutions you mean the coercion of government, than no, I don't agree. Since 9/11 especially, there has been a relentless assault on civil society by government.
Being strong and influential has nothing to do with how many military bases we have across the world or how many countries we invade or how much money we pour into the militaries of foreign governments it's all about economic strength at home and the example of democracy and freedom that the United States used to stand for.
The budget deficit would be gone with the war in Afghanistan ended, expensive military bases closed and if the government resumed printing and backing it's own currency instead of 'borrowing' it from the FED.
The 'War on Terror' can be won by simply not selling weapons to states that try and crush civilians or force a minority rule on a majority, radical Islam was a response to western backed governments attempt to marginalize and destroy Islams influence in it's homelands.
At home reforming the murky tax code, cutting government waste and repealing the repressive Patriot Act, NDAA and dismantling the TSA, CIA and Department of Homeland security would free up resources and return the civil liberties Americans enjoyed before 9/11.
President Bush said (quite rightly) if we change the way we live the terrorist have won.
Look around. 9/11 changed our laws, changed our society and our political discourse , the terrorists have won.
We need a President that gets it and will not ignore the Constitution and the people. That is Ron Paul.
With all due Respect to Mr. Drezner maybe the media needs to stop 'interpreting' and listen to what he says.
Force is the only meaningful social interaction. Not diplomacy, trade, sharing technology, only force.
That's called psychopathy.
Also, if it were true, that he terrorists hate us for our freedoms, than clearly they have won, for we are now far less free.
Drezner come on drink the kool-aide.
oh yes, by your logic, or by pauls, we ought to ALLOW genocide's to take place.
greeeeeeaaaat foreign policy! LOL....
Lets hope that this country doesn't end up with a bunch of modern Jacobins but if this country keeps going in the direction it is, it may well happen. You cannot expect the masses to continue to see the growing wealth disparity between the corrupt ruling class and the common man, who is also losing his civil liberties without a reaction at some point. Crony capitalism can be the end of the empire.
Daniel W. Drezner is professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
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