Thoughts on Politics, Culture, Books, Sports and Anything Else Your Humble Author Happens to Think Is Interesting
"It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life."
--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Friday, December 23, 2011
Christmas is All Around
The Regular Guy has taken the Regular Family and fled the jurisdiction for the remainder of the Holidays. Best wishes to all for a very Merry Christmas and a safe and happy New Year!
Dear Paul, Thanks for your comments on Ron Paul. What you have shown after even a brief study is that his views are not those of a politician, but of someone who has studied the philosophy and history of economics and government, and has come to form to a consistent set of positions across the spectrum of issues and throughout his career. I would like to point to a couple of quotes in a very general response to your misgivings about his positions on foreign policy, and if you like I could make very specific responses to all of the criticisms you and your other correspondant have raised.
Paul bases his positions on government policy, including foreign policy, on the premis that this institution made up of men should be held to the same moral principles as individuals and their other organizations. So my first quote you should recognize comes from November of 2010.
"When I used to teach English a million years ago, I taught my students that pretty much everything you need to know about the novel and what it is supposed to be about you can learn from the central moment of Middlemarch where, after hundreds of pages in which the reader comes to loathe the dried-up old pedant, Casaubon, whom the wonderful young heroine, Dorothea Brooke, has unaccountably married in a fit of misplaced intellectual romanticism, the narrator (the Wise Woman, i.e., Eliot herself), turns to the reader and asks, "But what about Casaubon? Does he not have dreams, feelings, hopes, pains? Put yourself in his shoes, dear reader." I'm paraphrasing, but the effect is thrilling and almost heartbreaking. Middlemarch makes the reader confront what it means to be a moral person -- the ability to view other people as things-in-themselves and not as means-to-an-end, to accord even the most unattractive character the dignity and human consideration all are due."
Are we not treating Iran like a Casaubon? Are not the people of Iran things-in-themselves and not as means-to-an-end. I thought you have eloquently affirmed the Golden Rule, and that is what Paul is declaring should be the basis of our foreign policy. Ridiculous, certainly not Christian concepts, such as the US is the indispensable nation, that we not only have the right, but the power and special insight, to destroy and make societies in our own image are false propaganda tools in the lust for empire.
The second quote from William Buckley points to a key reason why we should resist this drive for empire. Writing in the early 50s he wrote that "We have to accept Big Government for the duration — for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged given our present government skills except through the instrumentality of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores." Buckley went on to recommend that we support "large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards and the attendant centralization of power in Washington." In my own retrospect, I wonder if much of what was done to create and fight the cold war was not justified. But I have not had the slightest doubt that totalitarian bureaucracy formed on our shores to fight the war on terror is dangerous and evil in every way and is reason enough to change are foreign policy.
One last note on economic policy. To allow for a transition Paul’s policy proposal is for allowing competing currencies a la Hayek; specifically to allow Americans to make contracts and exchanges in any medium of exchange they desire (e.g., gold). This would drive out of circulation the worthless Federal Reserve Notes and would make abolishing the FED a fait accompli.
Dear Paul,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments on Ron Paul. What you have shown after even a brief study is that his views are not those of a politician, but of someone who has studied the philosophy and history of economics and government, and has come to form to a consistent set of positions across the spectrum of issues and throughout his career. I would like to point to a couple of quotes in a very general response to your misgivings about his positions on foreign policy, and if you like I could make very specific responses to all of the criticisms you and your other correspondant have raised.
Paul bases his positions on government policy, including foreign policy, on the premis that this institution made up of men should be held to the same moral principles as individuals and their other organizations. So my first quote you should recognize comes from November of 2010.
"When I used to teach English a million years ago, I taught my students that pretty much everything you need to know about the novel and what it is supposed to be about you can learn from the central moment of Middlemarch where, after hundreds of pages in which the reader comes to loathe the dried-up old pedant, Casaubon, whom the wonderful young heroine, Dorothea Brooke, has unaccountably married in a fit of misplaced intellectual romanticism, the narrator (the Wise Woman, i.e., Eliot herself), turns to the reader and asks, "But what about Casaubon? Does he not have dreams, feelings, hopes, pains? Put yourself in his shoes, dear reader." I'm paraphrasing, but the effect is thrilling and almost heartbreaking. Middlemarch makes the reader confront what it means to be a moral person -- the ability to view other people as things-in-themselves and not as means-to-an-end, to accord even the most unattractive character the dignity and human consideration all are due."
Are we not treating Iran like a Casaubon? Are not the people of Iran things-in-themselves and not as means-to-an-end. I thought you have eloquently affirmed the Golden Rule, and that is what Paul is declaring should be the basis of our foreign policy. Ridiculous, certainly not Christian concepts, such as the US is the indispensable nation, that we not only have the right, but the power and special insight, to destroy and make societies in our own image are false propaganda tools in the lust for empire.
The second quote from William Buckley points to a key reason why we should resist this drive for empire. Writing in the early 50s he wrote that "We have to accept Big Government for the duration — for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged given our present government skills except through the instrumentality of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores." Buckley went on to recommend that we support "large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards and the attendant centralization of power in Washington." In my own retrospect, I wonder if much of what was done to create and fight the cold war was not justified. But I have not had the slightest doubt that totalitarian bureaucracy formed on our shores to fight the war on terror is dangerous and evil in every way and is reason enough to change are foreign policy.
One last note on economic policy. To allow for a transition Paul’s policy proposal is for allowing competing currencies a la Hayek; specifically to allow Americans to make contracts and exchanges in any medium of exchange they desire (e.g., gold). This would drive out of circulation the worthless Federal Reserve Notes and would make abolishing the FED a fait accompli.
Best wishes,
Ira