Most interesting, for me, is the way that Greenwald seems to tap dance around the issue that Pollitt keeps hammering home, namely that there are a lot of things that Ron Paul believes that are considered to be absolutely terrible by a whole lot of people on the Left. Greenwald continually emphasizes that those things are indeed terrible … but that it’s also really interesting that Paul is bringing to this election cycle important issues like ending the disastrous war on drugs or the horrific results of American imperialism.
There’s a moment — probably 35 minutes into the discussion — when Greenwald, I think, reveals what’s actually at stake behind all of his talk about Ron Paul. Paul believes a bunch of things that are anathema to progressives. But so do the Democrats, Greenwald tells Pollitt, and Paul’s campaign should serve to ensure that people know it. If they know it, perhaps they’ll demand an end to those things or they’ll vote differently or something. This is the part that’s not really clear … especially because Greenwald repeatedly says he isn’t suggesting that anyone on the Left ought to actually vote for Ron Paul.
At bottom, Greenwald just wants us to have the conversation about imperialism, the war on drugs, and our loss of civil liberties that he thinks we can only have as a result of Ron Paul candidacy. All of the other politicians embrace these things. And then, once we’ve had the conversation, something will happen. Perhaps a new candidate will emerge out of thin air. This one will be perfect and incorruptible, will always do exactly what (s)he promises, and will always fight the good fight on every issue important to every single person who identifies with the Left in America.
Or, what is more likely, we’ll have an election between Obama and Romney, and a whole bunch of people who voted for Obama in 2008 will decide to stay home in 2012. And then maybe we’ll be so lucky as to have President Romney, at which time the Left will be so glad we had this important conversation because that’s the guy who’s certain to close corporate loopholes, restrict money in politics, bail people out of debt, more fully embrace the LGBTQ community, help make life in America better for people of color, and put an immediate end to our (mis)adventures in the Middle East. Right?
As Pollitt points out, and I’ve stressed a number of times (here, here, and here, for example), the real world of politics is one that’s messy; it’s one that offers the lesser of two evils much more often than it offers the best possible candidate. Many people on the Right are incredibly unexcited about Mitt Romney, but he probably seems a whole lot better to them than Obama so they’ll end up voting for Romney. Many people on the Left are incredibly disappointed with Obama, but Greenwald seems to want them to disregard the idea that he remains the lesser of two evils on a whole host of issues that matter a great deal to people on the Left.
Stay home, then, and don’t vote. It’s very much your option. And perhaps you’ll feel better about yourself for having chosen no one in a contest whose rules didn’t suit you. Or perhaps you’ll just feel better for having stuck to your guns (or, in this case, your abhorrence of guns). But don’t forget that, in doing so, you’re sticking to some guns and disregarding others.
”Well said.
High Comedy: Coates on Paul
Ta-Nehisi Coates has been using Twitter to take on Ron Paul and his acolytes for the past week or so. If you haven’t been following along, it seems that it’s certainly not too late.
My favorite tweet of the day:
For the record “I’m against the drug war” has officially replaced “I have a black friend.”
— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisi) January 2, 2012
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ entire piece on Ron Paul’s infamous racist and anti-Semitic newsletters is well worth reading; he brings together quotes from the newsletters, Paul’s one-time public defense of those quotes, and then Paul’s more recent attempts to distance himself from those quotes.
But if you don’t have the five minutes, here’s what I take to be the centrally important paragraphs, especially given the unusual (and unusually prominent) brand of Ron Paul fanaticism that seems unwilling to even entertain the idea that Paul might hold (or might ever have held) racist beliefs or opinions:
Racism, like all forms of bigotry, is what it claims to oppose—victimology. The bigot is never to blame. Always is he besieged—by gays and their radical agenda, by women and their miniskirts, by fleet-footed blacks. It is an ideology of “not my fault.” It is not Ron Paul’s fault that people with an NAACP view of the world would twist his words. It is not Ron Paul’s fault that his newsletter trafficked in racism. It is not Ron Paul’s fault that he allowed people to author that racism in his name. It is anonymous political aids and writers, who now cowardly refuse to own their words. There’s always someone else to blame—as long as it isn’t Ron Paul, if only because it never was Ron Paul.
This is not a particular tragedy for black people. The kind of racism which Paul trafficked is neither innovative nor original. Even his denials recall the obfuscations of Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens. But some pity should be reserved for the young and disgruntled, for those who dimly perceive that something is wrong in this country, for those who are earnestly appalled by the madness of our criminal justice policy, for those who have watched a steady erosion of our civil liberties, and have seen their concerns met with an appalling silence on the national stage. That their champion should be, virtually by default, a man of mixed motives and selective courage, is sad.
Some people will continue to attempt to explain all of this away — they’ll continue to suggest that libertarians, unlike normal human beings, simply can’t be racist — but I think it’s increasingly difficult to either explain it or ignore it. When you write things or allow other people to write things in your name, those things stick around rather than vanish after some amount of time. When those things are racist and anti-Semitic, with a dash of conspiracy theory thrown in too, then they definitely stick around.
aheram asked: The question I received was in regards to him receiving donations from repugnant individuals. I mentioned Ron Paul’s own take on racism and then made the argument that actions do speak louder than perceptions founded upon false premises. Paul’s record all but disproves the charges of racism. To call it a “bad argument” without once addressing the main thrust of my post is intellectually dishonest.
I assure you, it’s actually not in any way intellectually dishonest.
I’m not making an argument about whether or not Ron Paul is racist. I say, in the very first paragraph of my post, that it doesn’t really matter to me whether or not he’s a racist or whether he associated with racists some years ago or whatever.
All I’m saying in my post is that it’s a bad argument to say that one cannot be both a libertarian and a racist; of course one can. There isn’t anything about libertarianism that make its adherents immune from racism. Ron Paul’s take on the matter is wrong and all of the people who quote it as some sort of defitive argument are being myopic.
Your post was about trying to prove that Paul isn’t a racist. My post isn’t interested in that question; I’m interested in the phenomenon of Ron Paul fanatics who actually believe that holding a philosophical position means that one’s beliefs and actions are obviously beyond reproach, and thus shouldn’t even be mentioned.
My point was essentially proved on Twitter in the minutes after I posted a link to my blog post:
These are just the first few.
Claiming that “libertarian racist” is an oxymoron is just a bad argument. Here’s another take on the point I’m making. And here’s another. If you have other arguments about Ron Paul, that’s great. I linked to your blog post so that others could read it if they were interested. But, again, it doesn’t much matter to me since he’s not going to win the presidential election. If some Texans want him to be their Representative, so be it.
Noob: Once again, how delusional must you be to make the claim that libertarians can’t be racist because racism is for collectivists?
Ron Paul, Racism, Bad Arguments
I’ve become absolutely fascinated by the number of arguments I’ve seen recently about Ron Paul and racism. It doesn’t much matter to me if Ron Paul espouses racist ideas or has simply associated himself with people who do. But what amazes me is the lengths to which some people will go to defend Paul against any statement that doesn’t simply and straightforwardly crow about his many obvious virtues.
But my favorite argument of them all (here, here, and here, for example) is the one that says Ron Paul can’t hold any racist beliefs because he’s a libertarian and libertarianism is inherently an anti-racist philosophy insofar as it discourages any thinking about groups and only focuses on individuals (and their rights).
To see why this is nonsense, consider the following statements:
- Leaders of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union or any of its Eastern European satellite states couldn’t possibly have owned private property because they were all committed Marxists and Marxism is inherently opposed to private ownership.
- Throughout history, Christians have always been forgiving to one another and have always treated all human beings with the respect befitting their dignity because the Christian Bible teaches that forgiveness is one of the highest human virtues and that all human beings, as the beloved children of God, are brothers and sisters.
I could go on and on with these, but I’ll stop with just two. The logic in each one is delightful, except that we all know the statements are false.
Holding a particular philosophy, religion, or doctrine does not mean that a person necessarily follows its every tenet, or even its central one. People are notoriously bad about applying their beliefs consistently.
Here’s my post on this subject (which Alex selectively quotes above.)
