Ron Paul's Strange Bedfellows

by Katha Pollitt

The Nation

January 4, 2012
This article appeared in the January 23, 2012 edition of The
Nation.

http://www.thenation.com/article/165440/ron-pauls-strange-bedfellows

What is it with progressive mancrushes on right-wing
Republicans? For years, until he actually got nominated,
John McCain was the recipient of lefty smooches equaled only
by those bestowed upon Barack Obama before he had to start
governing. You might disagree with what McCain stood for,
went the argument, but he had integrity, and charisma, and
some shiny mavericky positions-on campaign finance reform
and gun control and. well, those two anyway.

Now Ron Paul is getting the love. At Truthdig, Robert Scheer
calls him "a profound and principled contributor to a much-
needed national debate on the limits of federal power." In
The Nation, John Nichols praises his "pure conservatism,"
"values" and "principle." Salon's Glenn Greenwald is so
outraged that progressives haven't abandoned the
warmongering, drone-sending, indefinite- detention-
supporting Obama for Paul that he accuses them of supporting
the murder of Muslim children. There's a Paul fan base in
the Occupy movement and at Counterpunch, where Alexander
Cockburn is a longtime admirer. Paul is a regular guest of
Jon Stewart, who has yet to ask him a tough question. And
yes, these are all white men; if there are leftish white
women and people of color who admire Paul, they're keeping
pretty quiet.

Ron Paul has an advantage over most of his fellow
Republicans in having an actual worldview, instead of merely
a set of interests-he opposes almost every power the federal
government has and almost everything it does. Given
Washington's enormous reach, it stands to reason that
progressives would find targets to like in Paul's wholesale
assault. I, too, would love to see the end of the "war on
drugs" and our other wars. I, too, am shocked by the
curtailment of civil liberties in pursuit of the "war on
terror," most recently the provision in the NDAA permitting
the indefinite detention, without charge, of US citizens
suspected of involvement in terrorism. But these are a
handful of cherries on a blighted tree. In a Ron Paul
America, there would be no environmental protection, no
Social Security, no Medicaid or Medicare, no help for the
poor, no public education, no civil rights laws, no anti-
discrimination law, no Americans With Disabilities Act, no
laws ensuring the safety of food or drugs or consumer
products, no workers' rights. How far does Paul take his war
against Washington? He wants to abolish the Federal Aviation
Authority and its pesky air traffic controllers. He has one
magic answer to every problem- including how to land an
airplane safely: let the market handle it.

It's a little strange to see people who inveigh against
Obama's healthcare compromises wave away, as a detail,
Paul's opposition to any government involvement in
healthcare. In Ron Paul's America, if you weren't prudent
enough or wealthy enough to buy private insurance-and the
exact policy that covers what's ailing you now-you find a
charity or die. And if civil liberties are so important, how
can Paul's progressive fans overlook his opposition to
abortion and his signing of the personhood pledge, which
could ban many birth control methods? Last time I checked,
women were half the population (the less important half,
apparently). Technically, Paul would overturn Roe and let
states make their own laws regulating women's bodies, up to
and including prosecuting abortion as murder. Add in his
opposition to basic civil rights law-he maintains his
opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and opposes
restrictions on the "freedom" of business owners to refuse
service to blacks-and his hostility to the federal
government starts looking more and more like old-fashioned
Southern-style states' rights. No wonder they love him over
at Stormfront, a white-supremacist website with neo-Nazi
tendencies. In a multiple-choice poll of possible effects of
a Paul presidency, the most popular answer by far was "Paul
will implement reforms that increase liberty which will
indirectly benefit White Nationalists." And let's not forget
his other unsavory fan base, Christian extremists who want
to execute gays, adulterers and "insubordinate children."
Paul's many connections with the Reconstructionist movement,
going back decades, are laid out on AlterNet by Adele Stan,
who sees him as a faux libertarian whose real agenda is not
individualism but to prevent the federal government from
restraining the darker impulses at work at the state and
local levels.

It's all pretty incoherent for a man often praised as
principled and consistent and profound-if states could turn
themselves into a Christian theocracy, could they also turn
themselves into socialist mini-republics? If they can ban
contraception, can they also compel contraception? For
people who see Paul as an antiwar candidate who will restore
the Bill of Rights, it's almost bad manners to bring up his
opposition to just about every piece of progressive
legislation passed in the last 200 years, from the
Occupational Safety and Health Act and membership in the UN
to Federal Deposit Insurance and requirements that
undocumented immigrants be permitted treatment in ERs. But
come on! This man has been a stone reactionary his entire
life. Consistent? Not to harp on abortion, but an effective
ban would require a level of policing that would make the
war on drugs look feeble.

If Ron Paul was interested in peace, he wouldn't be a
Republican-that party has even more enthusiasm for the
military-industrial complex than the Democrats. For decades
the GOP has turned every election into a contest over who is
more macho, more nationalistic, more willing to do exactly
the things lefty Paul fans excoriate Obama for doing. Paul
doesn't get re-elected in his Texas district because of
boutique positions like thinking Osama bin Laden should have
been arrested, not assassinated.

Supporting Ralph Nader in 2000 was at least a vote for one's
actual politics. Supporting Ron Paul is just a gesture of
frivolity--or despair.

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