Y’all understand that Ron Paul is crazy, right?
First watch Ron Paul explain how the Civil War was just a huge power grab by the national government:
First off: He’s talking about how the Civil War was an unjust imposition of Federal power on the South in front of the Confederate Battle Flag. On camera. Someone thought that was a good idea? Really?!
Moving on… Let’s just put aside, for a moment, that the reason the South seceded was that they were terrified that Lincoln would end slavery through institutionalized means (like say… legislation). Instead let’s focus on the fact that according to Ron Paul government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. Thus the Southern states had a right to secede just as the original colonies had the right to independence when the British sought to impose what the colonists viewed as unjust laws upon them.
The problem (well, one of many) with this view is that it completely ignores the fact that huge portions of the ‘governed’ in the South were disenfranchised. I’m sure if you asked the people who were enslaved at the time whether they wanted to secede from the Union in order to keep institutionalized slavery or if they’d rather stay and be potentially freed that their views might shift the outcome just so slightly. Thus the idea that by revoking their consent to be governed gave the South the right to secede is only true if you completely ignore that millions of black people who had no voice or political power whatsoever and that the South was seceding precisely to preserve that status quo.
I get why some people who have liberal leanings have a soft-spot for Ron Paul: He’s against the drug war! He wants to end the wars and cut defense spending! He’d leave gay marriage up to the states! He has a bumper sticker slogan to explain economic malaise!
All those positions are prone to make a left-leaning person’s heart flutter (except for the whole ‘End the Fed’ thing, that’s just terrifying). Yet it’s kind of hard to square those widely publicized positions and his reputation for being a proponent of ‘individual liberty against the tyranny of government’ with some of his other positions. He wants to end (the Constitutionally protected) birthright citizenship, meaning that even if you’re born here to foreign parents you don’t get to become a citizen and so even if you were born and lived your entire life here, the Federal government could still deport you. He wants to ban abortion at the Federal level and has expressed support for a ‘Sanctity of Life Act‘, which would define life as beginning at conception and anything that terminated a fetus after that point would be considered murder… which could include common forms of hormonal birth control. He supports a federal “Right to Work” act which would effectively end what few union rights still exist in this country, exposing more workers to the whims of the corporations they work for. This is all in addition to the typical Republican tropes about ending the welfare state, making assault weapons legal (and allowing guns on airplanes (!)) and an entire section on his official campaign website dedicated to homeschooling.
Basically Ron Paul is an extremely right-wing guy who learned a long time ago that he can get more publicity than he would otherwise if he took some heterodox positions. So you get the extremely anti-abortion, anti-immigration, anti-union guy – who seems to believe the South was justified in seceding from the Union – making a few noises about how the drug war is bad or how the bloated Defense department’s budget is… because it’ll get him more votes.
It’s not that he’s a secret liberal who feels more comfortable in the Republican party cause he’s just quirky like that. It’s more like most of his views are extremely right-wing yet he espouses some unorthodox views cause it’s easier to build a national brand when you can distinguish yourself from more generic alternatives.
If ending the drug war is your number one, super-important priority over the next four years then support Ron Paul. Yet if you think that things like protecting Social Security and Medicare or standing by our allies or not having assault rifles on the streets or having access to abortion and birth control or being able to join or organize a union might make more of a difference to the lives of you and your loved ones, then perhaps it’s time to rethink things a bit.
