Let’s be honest here. The Ron Paul phenomenon stems from the Iraqi and Afghan wars to which he has consistently been against. There is good reason why some Paul supporters come from a large segment of veterans of these wars. He was always against these wars, and people in the military obviously wish to avoid war. While the military wishes do its duty (and should be praised for it), many in the military see no need to start what seem to be unnecessary wars—simply because they would obviously be the one’s taking the risk of life and death.
Many Paul supporters in the military see these recent wars as unnecessary, and they like his version of America alone. Just as Pat Buchanan shows the futility of WWII in terms of a “bumbling generation,” Ron Paul thinks the only war worth America’s fight was the war of ’76. All others, even when formally declared, were bad for America. What about “Manifest Destiny?” Not Good. Paul lives in Texas. Doesn’t he realize in his own comfortable isolation that his own home is based on racist and imperialist aggrandizement of territory that itself led to war? Where does Paul draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable imperialism? John Ford’s The Searchers is more profound in its ant-war stance than Paul.
On the terms that Paul sets up, it must be okay to fight if it is for white people who share his vision. To be fair, he doesn’t say this, but he argues it in terms of personal ethos. Who the hell is he to talk of imperialism? Land aggrandizement for one’s own is okay for him. Many generations after the fact have personally made Dr. Paul some money as an OB/GYN. I kid, but Abraham Lincoln, one of the originators of Paul’s party, became “Spotty Lincoln” due to his opposition to this American land grab of Mexico.
Look, history is history, but what world is Paul living in where he thinks we should just apologizes for the last 300 years and live in a world of free trade where everyone and every nation seeks its own advantage for the comparative advantage of all? This may be true in general, but it required force to make it so. With force came resentment—(resentment whether just or unjust) points to the idea of dignity and that is a big force arguing against the idea of free and open global matkets. You can’t just wipe the slate clean.
I only mention this because, while Lincoln—against the Mexican-American War—was willing to fight for the Union in 1861. I suspect Paul would only fight for himself under any circumstance. Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, thought Lincoln was “mystically” attracted to the Union. Paul is “mystically” attracted to Austrian economics.
But the appeal for Paul is real, and much of it has to do with our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and North Korea, let alone with bases in Germany, Japan and globally underwater with nuclear submarines).
It is true that no one wishes for peace more that the soldier in the foxhole, and no one in the military has a problem fighting a war, a la “Red Dawn,” when the enemy invades, but when it comes to fighting foreign wars, it seems as meaningless to a Ron Paul as an Oliver Stone movie or a Gustav Hasford novel. Without the “Cold War” many in the military who support Paul think that there is no need to waste time in backwaters like Iraq and Afghanistan, as many thought about in Vietnam back in the day. They may be right. But Paul seems to follow Gustav Hasford (i.e., Stanley Kubrick) who summed up the racism and brutality when he had the Vietnamese prostitute said “me so horny” in the movie “Full Metal Jacket” (to which trope Luther Campbell made a hit rap song). Call it the “Vietnam Syndrome,” but Paul’s America lost confidence long before what “baby boomer liberal” Tom Engelhardt called “the end victory culture.”
9/11 was surely a motive for fighting, but no presidential administration since has yet identified an enemy one could fight.
These recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have proven to be problematic from the view of success (let alone victory) nearly ten years later. The issue of these wars is not simply the cost of the budget deficit (although it is also that). Norman Mailer wrote a novel, Why Are We in Vietnam? and support for Paul stems from a sizable concern that these wars are wrong.
Paul is big on constitutionalism regarding foreign affairs, which is why he has a problem with the Civil War, let alone WWI, WWII, and Vietnam. Paul says he is not “isolationist,” but rather “non-interventionist.” He is surely anti-war.
Because I am not a veteran, on the issues I feel as if I cannot speak. Nonetheless, GW Bush made the legacy of his presidency on the wars in first Afghanistan and later (more controversially) Iraq. I have no problem with taking force to our terrorists out to do harm to us, nor do I have a problem with Bush’s doctrine that he would make equivalent a specific regime and one which deliberately supported terrorist organizations. After 9/11 he needed to do as much.
But nearly 11 years after in Afghanistan, let alone the near 9 years in Iraq, has made me wonder what it was all about. I wonder like Ron Paul. I always doubted American commitment to the ultimate nasty methods that eliminating this threat would require. And despite the threat, one needed to take into account its feasibility. It is true that you cannot prevent a psycho from wreaking huge death and destruction in a terrorist attack. As the philosopher Richard Rorty noted after 9/11, you cannot declare war against a method of action. Of course, in terms of his own rhetoric Rorty had no idea why one should care if terrorism destroyed what we hold to be good, right and decent.
Ron Paul, is not a postmodern in that way, but his rhetoric naively encourages such naivete.
Paul is also popular to the young because he points to the looming national debt that they would need to pay for. His answer, end all programs and re-litigate the 20th century so we could go back to pre-Lochner America. This may be fine in theory, but it’s not gonna happen.
So Ron Paul doesn’t care about his newletters having racist content. He should be admired for not caring about racial grievances, until he panders to them. He looks for the Hispanic vote by likening their conditions to the Holocaust. He may be a hypocrite, but he is surely an idiot.
