The Philosopher's Fortress

This was written a couple of months ago as part of series in which I take “an honest look” at each of the GOP presidential candidates:

The Republican conceives of his party as the party of conservatism, the Constitution, and “limited government.”  For this reason, he loathes the so-called “RINO” (Republican In Name Only), the faux conservative who comes like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  At the same time, however, on those all too rare occasions when a genuine conservative, Constitutionalist comes along, the “conservative” Republican refuses to support that for which he claimed to ardently wish.

There are two current, mutually reinforcing illustrations of this paradox.  The first is the response on the part of Republicans to Newt Gingrich’s latest remarks.  The second is the response of those same Republicans to Ron Paul’s presidential candidacy. We shall look at them in this order.

Last weekend, while on Meet the Press, Gingrich not only refused to endorse Paul Ryan’s plan to reform Medicare; he explicitly and unequivocally rejected it.  “I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering,” the former Speaker of the House asserted. Whether “radical change” is imposed via “Obamacare” or courtesy of plans authored by a “conservative” like Ryan, Gingrich is equally opposed to both.  “I’m opposed to Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative proposing radical change.” 

As if this wasn’t enough to convince the GOP faithful that Gingrich is no conservative, he then turned around to advocate a “variation,” as he characterized it, of the controversial “individual mandate” that is among the most salient of the constitutionally dubious aspects of the much dreaded “Obamacare.” 

The swiftness with which legions of the Republican Party faithful have declared Gingrich a faux conservative is a puzzling phenomenon, for many of the same “conservative” voters who are now slamming Gingrich have supported and continue to support Republicans—whether George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, etc.—whose political differences with Gingrich are, for all practical purposes, negligible.  We have no reason for believing that a President Gingrich would govern any less—and any more—“conservatively” than a President Bush, President McCain, President Santorum, President Huckabee, President Romney, or President Palin. 

Each will be just as enthusiastic as all of the others to grow the military ever more for the sake of furthering the crusade to export “Democracy” to the Middle Eastand beyond. And when it comes to domestic policy, none will express any enthusiasm in the least over the prospect of truly weakening the federal government by eliminating the leviathan of entitlements and bureaucracies of which it consists.

There is another reason why the Republican voter’s demand for truly “conservative” candidates can’t but engage the intellectually curious.  This brings us to Ron Paul.          

Paul is the one presidential candidate in the current Republican field who most certainly does promise to govern more conservatively—and dramatically so—than all of the rest, for he is the only person resolved to honor the Constitution and its original design for America. That is, he is the only person with the determination to bring about the restoration of the old Constitutional Republic that “conservatives” claim they desire.

Moreover, Paul has been billed “the Godfather” of the very Tea Party movement with which the Republican Party has labored tirelessly to align itself ever since it first emerged but two years ago. 

While Paul may or may not be the sole or even primary progenitor of the Tea Party movement that some have depicted him as being, there are few who would be comfortable denying that he is indeed among the sources of inspiration from which it arose.  And there is no one who can credibly deny that the ideas for which Paul argued a few years ago and for which he was roundly ridiculed by his Republican colleagues are for the most part the ideas that define the Tea Party and the whole political climate today. 

Simply put, there is no one in the Republican primaries whose vision of the Constitution and the Republic whose terms it delineates approximates more closely than Paul’s that of the Founders.  

In spite of this, it is a virtual certainty that he will not receive the GOP’s nomination.

So, what accounts for this paradox that is all too seldom unpacked?

The truth is that the “conservative” Republican suffers an identity-crisis—and Paul, perhaps even involuntarily, draws his attention to it.

Effortlessly, Paul at once exposes two dirty little secrets about his fellow partisans.  The first is that they are virtually interchangeable with one another with respect to domestic and foreign policy issues.  The second is that they are virtually interchangeable with Democrats when it comes to these same issues.

In short, Paul puts the lie to the Republican fiction that the Republican Party isAmerica’s “conservative” party.  

Someone like Paul makes many Republicans uncomfortable with themselves.  He beckons them to revisit their identity as “conservatives.”  But introspection is hard work and most people prefer to avoid it.  Thus, they would rather attack, ridicule, and otherwise marginalize those who challenge them.  Conversely, they would prefer to associate with those who reinforce the myths that they have come to accept about themselves.

This, I surmise, is why Republicans reject a political conservative or “constitutionalist” like Paul when they have the opportunity to endorse him.  It is this that accounts for why they fool themselves and one another into believing that there are gradations of “conservatism” among candidates who for all intents and purposes are indistinguishable from one another—and their Democratic rivals.    

Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have the two most highly rated talk shows in the country.  This has been the case for quite some time. 

But although Limbaugh and Hannity remain numbers one and two, respectively, their ratings have decreased precipitously during recent months: Limbaugh has lost about a third of his audience while Hannity has lost over a quarter of his. 

This phenomenon may be only temporary.  On the other hand, it’s possible that the very same fate that befell their leftist counterparts in the “mainstream” during the last few decades is now being visited upon self-avowed “conservatives” in the so-called “alternative” media.

In short, just as the left’s monopoly over the creation and dissemination of the news gave way to the rise of Fox News and talk radio, perhaps the monopoly that Limbaugh and company achieved over “the alternative media” is now giving way to the internet and satellite radio. 

This thesis is more than a bit plausible.

For a long enough period of time, the Republicans held control of both chambers of Congress and the White House.  Yet not only did Republicans fail to contract the federal government. They succeeded at expanding it: during their tenure the government assumed more domestic and foreign engagements than ever before.

With the exception of some episodic nods of disapproval here and there, however, “conservative” commentators offered nothing in the way of sustained, serious, substantive criticisms.  Instead, they continued to pummel the Democratic opposition while transforming every objection to the Republican Party’s aggressive Big Government agenda into an expression of “liberalism.”

The problem is that Limbaugh, Hannity, and most of their colleagues persist in whistling the same tune today.

Admittedly, after Republicans suffered devastating losses at the voting booths in 2008, Republican commentators and politicians have expressed regret over how their party “lost its way” by “betraying” its “conservative principles.”  But beyond such generic issuances, no specific apologies or regrets are ever uttered. 

How exactly is it that the GOP “lost its way?” Who exactly “betrayed” its “conservative principles?”  What exactly did you do to contribute to your party’s reversal of fortunes? 

These are the questions to which the talking heads of the “alternative media” and the politicians for whom they apologize have never provided answers. 

It isn’t just that talk radio has lost droves of listeners that intrigues.  It is the time frame within which it is losing listeners that supplies much food for thought.

Barack Obama is a disastrous president.  His popularity among Americans fell more precipitously, and more rapidly, than that of any other president in our history.  Millions and millions of us believe, along with Rush Limbaugh, that Obama wants nothing more or less than to substitute for the historicalUnited Statesa socialist utopian of his own imagination.  So, Obama needs to be defeated as of yesterday.

Within less than a year, the goal of defeating this president could very well come to pass, for the Republicans are in the midst of nominating a candidate who will take the fight to Obama.

One would think that given the convergence of these two events, more people than ever before would be availing themselves of “the alternative media.”  Conservatives, neoconservatives, libertarians, independents, “moderates,” and even disenchanted Democratic liberals—of whom there are many—would regularly consume the latest from the “conservative” voices of the airwaves. 

So we would think.  

But such is not the case.

It isn’t, of course, that people have reconsidered their all too justified judgments of Obama and his Democrats.  Nor is it the case that millions from across the political spectrum aren’t concerned about the outcome of this next election. 

It is just that more and more people, eager to engage genuinely unfettered voices, are circumventing Big Corporate Media in both of its authorized rightist and leftist varieties in order to drink of the ocean of internet magazines and blogs.  There is a conservative or anti-leftist media:  but it is to be found on-line.  

One step toward regaining some of their lost credibility that Limbaugh, Hannity, and the others can take would be to start treating Ron Paul a bit more respectfully.  Paul, along with millions of the most demographically disparate Americans, is defying both the conventional wisdom as well as the two-party system that embodies it.

After that, they should consider abandoning the notion that George W. Bush, a man who, along with his Republican Congress, presided over the largest expansion of the federal government since Lyndon Banes Johnson’s “Great Society”, was a great “conservative” president.  

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.

The most recent CBS poll shows that among the Republican challengers to President Obama, only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul have the potential to defeat him.  This same poll shows that among all of the candidates, including Obama, Ron Paul does best when it comes to the much coveted “independent” voter.

Today, the morning after Ron Paul finished in second place in the New Hampshire caucuses and this poll was released, the hosts of Fox and Friends, as if still in a state of disbelief, began to consider the possibility that Paul just might be a serious contender in this presidential race.

If ever we needed proof that the pundits of the so-called “conservative” media—Fox News, talk radio, National Review, The Weekly Standard, Commentary, Newsmax, etc.—are nothing more or less than Republican Party propagandists, their treatment of Congressman Paul provides it in spades. 

Paul has been a serious, “viable” candidate since this primary contest began.  And, unlike every other “anti-Romney” flavor that, like the proverbial flash in the pan, has come and gone—Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, and, now, Rick Santorum—Paul’s viability has only become solider.  This is a remarkable achievement when it is considered that all of the other candidates could rely upon the GOP’s apologists in the “alternative” media to fuel, and in most instances, actually create, their momentum.  Paul, in sharp contrast, has managed to steadily become ever more popular in spite of overwhelming media resistance to his campaign.

Paul is indeed a serious presidential contender. Not only can he pick up more independents than Obama, legions of young people draw to Paul like moths to a light, and they draw to him with energy, with passion, that no other candidate has succeeded in tapping.  As far as non-white voters are concerned, Paul is more appealing than every other GOP candidate—including Mitt Romney.

Whether we are discussing the Republican or Democratic Parties, there is but one “anti-Romney” candidate: that candidate is Congressman Paul.

How, we can’t but wonder, could so many otherwise presumably astute observers in the media fail to notice this? 

Well, perhaps many of us do not wonder about this at all.  Moreover, there may even be, and probably are, a number of people who would eagerly take exception to my premise that the chattering class is composed of “astute observers.”  But for those who do not react incredulously to my question, there is an answer in the coming.

In a word, it is Paulophobia that accounts for the media’s reckless coverage of Ron Paul’s feats. 

What makes this Paulophobia intractable, though, is that it is institutional or structural or systemic.  Even those media pundits who don’t consider themselves Paulophobic nevertheless suffer from the same condition as those of their colleagues who are chronic Paul haters.   

Institutional Paulophobia is actually more invidious than overt Paulophobia because, being undetected, it is more difficult to discern and weed out.  It is like the air that the media, especially the Republican controlled media, breathes: ubiquitous and, thus, invisible.  

This, of course, isn’t to say that those Paulophobes who are unconsciously Paulophobic are more vicious than those for whom Paulophobia has come to define their very essence.  Fox News contributor and former Democratic fixer Dick Morris, for instance, is a full throated, doctrinaire Paulophobe.  So virulent is Morris’s Paulophobia that he has resorted to spewing outright lies regarding Paul.  The most recent lie—and that it was indeed a lie, and not an honest mistake, is easily gotten from Paul’s recent poll numbers alone—is that Paul routinely does far worse than all of the other Republican candidates against Obama.  Just a couple of weeks ago, Morris said on Fox that Rasmussen shows Obama beating Paul by 20 points! 

Nationally syndicated radio talk show host Michael Medved is another dogmatic Paulophobe.  Medved is obsessed with not just discrediting Paul as a candidate, but with demonizing him as a person.  According to Medved, Paul is a “neo-Nazi,” a “9/11 Truther,” a “racist,” a “leftist,” a “kook,” and an “extremist.”  Medved irresponsibly refers to Paul as “Dr. Demento” and his supporters as “Paulastinians.”   Irresponsibly repeating Morris’s lie on his show, he insists that Paul is “unelectable.”  Medved’s Paulophobia is fueled by a zealotry for which the constraints of reason and morality are no match.

Unconscious Paulophobes, on the other hand, by virtue of inhabiting the same circles of such rabid Paulophobes as Morris and Medved, essentially just imbibe the party line.  They don’t give much thought to what they have been conditioned to think.  Their intimate, daily association with Paul Deniers prevents them from realizing Paul Denial for what it is—the function of Paulophobia, but another species of raw, undifferentiated irrationality. 

Ron Paul has already scored some amazing achievements.  Perhaps he will, eventually, succeed in weakening institutional Paulophobia.    

 Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.

Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman has just barely been able to have his voice heard in the Republican Party’s presidential primary race, so low are his polling numbers.  Yet, still, he is a candidate that, not unlike every other such candidate, proudly proclaims his commitment to liberty and, hence, “limited government.” 

But is Huntsman really who he claims to be? 

This is the question with which we must concern ourselves.  Yet as we will see, just a brief look at Huntsman’s utterances and deeds discloses in no time that, in his case, appearance is eons apart from reality.

To Huntsman’s credit, as governor of Utah he presided over tax cuts—sales taxes especially—and a simplification of the overall tax code.  For this, the Cato Institute lavished praise upon him.  Yet lest we hastily exploit this fact as proof of his commitment to smaller government, we would be well served to note that the very same libertarian-friendly think tank criticized Huntsman for having “completely dropped the ball on spending, with per capita spending increasing at about 10 percent annually during his tenure.” 

Huntsman believes in “global warming,” and in 2007 he combined forces with the governors of others states to sign the Western Climate Initiative, a bill oriented toward reducing the generation of greenhouse gasses.  This, it is worth observing, would have been bad enough if it was just a matter of the governments of individual states asserting their sovereignty over an issue.  But Huntsman does not have the “states’ rights” card at his disposal in this case.  As it turns out, he appeared in an ad for the organization Environmental Defense, an ad in which he demanded that the federal government “act by capping greenhouse-gas pollution.” 

That Huntsman has now retreated from this position seems more than coincidental.  However, his stated reason for revising his earlier view is telling: “Much of this discussion [concerning ‘Cap-and-Trade’] happened before the bottom fell out of the economy, and until it comes back, this isn’t the moment [for ‘Cap-and-Trade’]” (emphases mine). 

Notice, for Huntsman, the problem with so-called “Cap-and-Trade” hasn’t anything whatsoever to do with liberty; the problem—presumably, the only problem that would prevent us from pursuing this policy—is that we lack the material resources to effectively implement it. “Five years ago” we could afford to permit the federal government to conscript American taxpayers into the service of subsidizing this gargantuan policy; today we cannot.  However, once our economy bounces back, we will then be able to afford it once more!

On immigration, Huntsman is no different from his colleague and rival, Rick Perry.  Perry, everyone now knows, permitted illegal aliens pursuing a higher education at any of Texas’s public universities and colleges to pay in-state tuition rates.  Less well known is that Huntsman was equally generous with the resources of Utah’s citizens toward the illegal aliens in his state.  As Governor, he promised to veto any bill that would deprive the illegal residents of Utah of the benefit of in-state tuition rates should they go to college.  Huntsman also signed a bill granting illegal aliens “driving-privilege cards.”  Under this bill,Utah’s illegal residents would be permitted to obtain driving “privileges,” but they would not be permitted to use these licenses as forms of identification.

American liberty is inseparable from the rule of law.  Indeed, without the rule of law, there is no liberty.  Those who would govern should know this better than anyone.  Thus, when someone, like Huntsman, who is entrusted with the heavy responsibility of safeguarding the law not only fails to do so but actively undercuts it, he reveals himself to be a threat to our liberty. 

More recently, Huntsman expressed his desire to break apart our nation’s largest financial institutions, those banks that the conventional wisdom deems “too big to fail.”  That this is no mere desire on his part, that it is something to which he has given considerable thought, is born out by the fact that he has actually designed a plan to bring it about.  According to Huntsman, the only way we can avoid taxpayer-subsidized bank bailouts of the sort to which we were subjected in 2008 is to legislate out of existence these banks that are, supposedly, “too big to fail.”  Because, in his estimation, the banks at present remain “too big to fail,” the bailouts of 2008 were necessary. 

Given these aspects of Jon Huntsman’s record, it is no wonder that the left-leaning Huffingtonpost described him as a Republican “with moderate positions who was willing to work substantively with” President Obama.

As far as his approach to foreign policy is concerned, although it is true that he opposes the Patriot Act and seeks to bring American military personnel home from the Middle East sooner rather than later, it would be a mistake to conclude from this that Huntsman is any less of an “interventionist” than his more hawkish Republican colleagues.  Prior to being confirmed as President Obama’s Ambassador to China, Huntsman promised that, if his confirmation went through, he would see to it that there would be “robust engagement” with China vis-à-vis the issue of “human rights.”  He also advocates an American/China alliance in pressuring North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

Our analysis need go no further, for our conclusion is inescapable: Jon Huntsman is an apostle of Big Government.

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.

originally published at The New American 

Dear Michael,

I have been a long time listener of your nationally syndicated radio talk show.  You are, without question, among the most talented, entertaining, and intelligent of hosts.  Many a day, in spite of what disagreements I may have had with you, I have been provoked by, and delighted in, your exchanges with guests and callers.  Although I obviously do not know you personally, you also strike me as a genuinely descent human being, a loving husband, devoted father, and a good citizen who really does have his country’s best interests at heart.

Sadly, I pay you these compliments here not for their own sake, but in the way of prefacing the less flattering remarks that are to follow.

It is clear, Michael, that you do not like Dr. Paul.  I admit, given the countless hours that you spend arguing for a vastly smaller, less intrusive federal government than what we currently have, I find this puzzling.  As I am sure you yourself will acknowledge, Dr. Paul is nothing if not a champion of just the “limited” or “Constitutional government” to which the Republican Party routinely pays lip service.  Yet talk is one thing, action another.  Inasmuch as proud Republicans and self-avowed conservatives like you spare no occasion to ridicule, mock, and criticize the one person in contemporary national politics who is genuinely, passionately committed to restoring the vision of our Founding Fathers, they risk exposing themselves as frauds.

But it isn’t just that you dislike Paul, Michael.  You seem to disdain him.  If your dislike for the man is perplexing, your hatred of him is that much more baffling.  Still, both feelings, though morally confused, are nevertheless morally tolerable.  

Such cannot be said for the dishonesty to which you resort in sustaining your fear of Dr. Paul. 

Your obsession with Dr. Paul is prevailing over the better angels of your nature Michael.  Some of the dishonesty of which you are guilty is intellectual in character.  An ever growing portion of it, however, is born of sheer malice. 

In 2008, in spite of the concerns many a voter had with John McCain’s age, you supported the Arizona Senator enthusiastically.  You dismissed such concerns regarding your candidate’s age on the grounds that, in spite of his years, McCain was full of energy.  Now, Paul’s age is one of the grounds on which you object to his candidacy.  Granted, McCain is younger than Paul, but can there be any question that Paul looks better than McCain, both at present and three years ago?  That Paul is physically more agile than McCain doubtless has something to do with the injuries that McCain sustained during the Vietnam War.  That Paul is intellectually more adroit than McCain owes to the simple fact that he is a more serious, more informed, and much more impassioned thinker.

In short, when you argue against Ron Paul from his age, you sound patently disingenuous.

This, however, is far from an unpardonable offense.  It is the outright lies—the most malicious of lies—that you have told about Ron Paul that could fail to offend the sensibilities of only the most hardened of Washingtoncynics. 

On multiple occasions now, and for years, you have done your best to convict Ron Paul of sympathizing with Nazis.  Nazis!  Michael, this is pathetic.  It is reprehensible.  And it is, as I have already remarked and as I must believe even you yourself know well enough, a lie.  No, it is more than a lie.  It is a bold-faced lie.  Only someone who is either wholly unaware of Paul’s background or an intellectual misfit could so much as remotely entertain this idea, much less endorse it.

Please Michael, take the advice you urge daily upon your audience and focus like the proverbial laser beam.  “Nazism,” let us never forget, is a short-hand term for “National Socialism.”  Now, who among Washington politicians generally and the GOP presidential candidates specifically would you say is most opposed to socialism in any of its forms?  Has Ron Paul, by way of the same sorts of domestic and foreign policies of which he has been a tireless advocate for decades, ever even hinted at the slightest sympathy for anything that could credibly be described as “socialism,” whether of the nationalistic variety or any other kind?  Did the National Socialists seek to reduce the size and scope of government?  Did the National Socialists campaign inexhaustibly for the civil liberties of all citizens?  Did the National Socialists adopt a foreign policy designed to avoid war and the invasion of other lands—i.e. the kind of “isolationist” foreign policy that you constantly, and erroneously, attribute to Ron Paul?

Let’s get serious Michael.  It would appear that you haven’t succeeded in shedding the vestiges of your leftist roots, for given the indiscriminateness with which you throw the “Nazi” label at figures as disparate as Ron Paul and that “Islamo-Nazi,” Osama bin Laden, it becomes painfully obvious that, like the stereotypical leftist, you seek to demonize your opponents while you avoid having to argue with them.

Ron Paul is no kind of socialist, Michael, and you know it.  Insofar as your neoconservative Republican ideology is closer on the political spectrum to socialism than is the libertarian vision of Paul, you are more of a socialist than he.  Even The Daily Beast for which you write once had to excise from one of your tirades against Ron Paul your allegation that he was closely tied to “neo-Nazis.” 

It isn’t just “Nazism” in which you have tried to implicate Ron Paul.  You have tried as well to depict him as an “extremist” and a “crackpot.”  It is usually in connection with his “isolationist” foreign policy that you level this charge of “extremism.”  Michael, ad hominem attacks are the last refuge, if not of the scoundrel, than certainly of the man who is losing, or has lost, the argument.  Paul is not an “isolationist.”  He simply opposes the neo-imperial foreign policy favored by you and your fellow ideologues.  Paul is a stalwart defender of national defense.  It is from his desire to keep our country safe that he resists with every fiber of his being the policy—embraced by the Republican and Democratic Parties alike—of prosecuting one offensive war after the other for the ostensible sake of “Democracy.” 

If Paul is a “crackpot” and an “extremist,” if he is “naïve” and an “isolationist,” because of his foreign policy, than the millions of Americans who count themselves Paul supporters—Tea Partiers and Occupiers of Wall Street; conservatives, liberals, and moderates; Republicans, Democrats, and independents; housewives, college students, and more active military personnel than support all of the other candidates combined—are extremist crackpot isolationists as well. 

Please Michael.  If you have problems with Dr. Paul’s positions, then invite him on your show.  If this, for some reason, can’t be managed, then the good doctor has several able defenders who, I am sure, would be more than willing to come in his stead.  And if they cannot make it, I would be happy to come onto your program to discuss his views.

Sincerely,

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.

originally published at The New American 

A while ago, I wrote an article in which I spoke of “Paulophobia.”  Paulophobia, I claimed, is a cognitive disorder.  Like a parasite, it eats away at its victim’s intellect.  Perhaps because of this, it also corrupts his moral character.  To encounter a Paulophobe whose disorder has reached an advanced stage is to come face-to-face with Irrationality incarnate.  At the mere mention of Ron Paul’s name, this sort of Paulophobe practically begins to foam at the mouth.  Everything in which he previously claimed to believe—his ideals, his principles, his values—he abruptly throws to the wind as he frantically searches for every and any aspersion, no matter how incredible, that he can cast against Congressman Paul.  The Paulophobe doesn’t just want to discredit Paul as a presidential candidate.  He wants to discredit him as a human being.  

Unfortunately, once Paulophobia has reached this stage, it is terminal, for it is now impervious to reason.  There is no other conclusion to draw given the following facts.

Those suffering most acutely from Paulophobia are Republicans, self-styled “conservatives” (read: neoconservatives).  Now, Republicans have always claimed to believe in smaller, more limited, decentralized government.  In short, they pride their party on being the party of liberty, the party that is committed to preserving and protecting the United States Constitution. 

Yet when they have the opportunity to nominate the only presidential candidate in their primary race who even they recognize is most committed to “limited government” and the Constitution, they call him a “kook” and “extremist.”  Some Paulophobes like talk radio hosts Michael Medved and Mark Levin go further to imply that he is evil.  Medved continually insinuates that Paul is a “racist” and a “neo-Nazi.”  Levin has explicitly said of Paul that he is “poison.”  Both adamantly deny that Paul is authentic.

Republicans, especially since they have been ejected from power, inexhaustibly complain about “out of control” spending.  Our country is on the precipice of ruin, they note, because of the profound profligacy of the Democrats.  This next election promises to be the most important of our lifetime, for this may be our very last chance to save America. 

But when one Republican presidential candidate comes along and proposes one trillion dollars in spending cuts within the first year of his term as President, they either pretend that he doesn’t exist or they spare no occasion to marginalize him.  This is like a man lost at sea who, in spite of longing for salvation and knowing that the ship in the distance is his last chance at it, refuses to be rescued.  Moreover, he attempts to chop off the arm of the ship’s captain who reaches out to him.

Republicans, like professional Paulophobe Rush Limbaugh, repeatedly claim their party alone embodies the spirit of the Founding Fathers.  The Founders, mind you, although a philosophically heterogeneous group, never so much as contemplated a federal government that would demand of all Americans that they refrain from using any product, however potentially self-destructive it may be. 

However, when Ron Paul contends that it is unconstitutional and immoral for the federal government to criminalize drug usage, such Paulophobes accuse him of wanting to “legalize” drugs.  Ron Paul, they shout hysterically, is in favor of legalizing heroin and cocaine!   If these Paulophobes were capable of it, just the slightest bit of rudimentary logic would make plain to them the implication of this line of thought.  If Paul can be convicted of wanting to “legalize” drugs because of his opposition to the federal government’s criminalization of them, then inasmuch as the Founders didn’t seek to criminalize drugs, they too can be said to have favored the same.  Far from being a radical, much less a radical “leftist” (as Paulophobe Dick Morris recently described him), Paul’s position on drugs is but another example of his desire to restore the vision of our Founders.

Republicans have often (and quite pathetically, actually) taken to accusing their Democratic rivals of being “racist.”  It is Democrats, they claim, who seek to keep blacks “dependent” upon the government by way of welfare and a massive assortment of race-based preferential treatment policies.  Thus, Democrats are “racist” against blacks.

Because of his belief that we should eliminate foreign aid toIsrael, these same Paulophobic Republicans say of Ron Paul that he is “anti-Semitic.”  Two observations are here in order. 

First of all, Ron Paul does not single out Israel: he wants an end to all foreign aid.  More importantly, though, these Paulophobes fail to recognize that if Democrats are “racist” because of their desire to keep blacks dependent upon the United States government, then inasmuch as these Republicans want to keep Israel dependent upon the United States government, it is they who are “anti-Semitic.”

To put the point another way, if it is the enemies of “racism” who oppose welfare dependency for blacks, then it is the enemies of “anti-Semitism” who should oppose welfare dependency—i.e. “foreign aid”—forIsrael.  This means that it is the Republican Paulophobe who is the real “anti-Semite,” while it is Paul who is “pro-Semitic.”  

In accordance with the 9/11 Commission Report as well as numerous reports that have been supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency, Ron Paul regularly observes that the attacks of September 11, 2001 specifically and Islamic hostilities toward the United States generally are in large measure the function of an interventionist American foreign policy.  That is, the federal government’s actions in the Islamic world are causally related to the terrorism that we are now combating.

For this, Republicans accuse of him of “blaming America.” 

But if Paul can be said to be a member of “the blame America First” crowd because of his stance that the federal government has acted objectionably vis-à-vis the Islamic world, then his accusers who have made their careers railing against the federal government’s objectionable treatment of American citizens must be members of the same crowd.  Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and all self-avowed champions of “limited government” and “individual liberty,” it turns out, are in reality the most vociferous of American Haters, for they are tirelessly criticizing the federal government for something or other.

Republican Paulophobes imply that Ron Paul is a “racist” because of some articles from decades ago that were published in his newsletter.  As was just noted, Republicans accuse Democrats of being “racist” because of their support of welfare entitlements and affirmative action for blacks.  They have also leveled this charge against Democrats when the latter opposed the enterprise of spreading Democracy to the Islamic world, a world, Democrats suggested, that wasn’t yet ready for this ideal.  So, from the Republican’s perspective, a (white) “racist” is one who either promotes policies that deleteriously impact non-whites, or resists those policies that allegedly promise to benefit them.

Sadly for Republicans, by this standard they are among the biggest “racists” of all.  Their “War on Drugs” has devastated the black poor.  As such black thinkers as Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams have long noted, this “war” has transformed black communities throughout the country into virtual combat zones and economic wastelands.  And if their “War on Drugs” has ruined the lives of many blacks, their “War on Terror”—alternately and more euphemistically characterized as “the Freedom Agenda”—has been even worst for Muslims.

But if Republicans are the biggest “racists” by their own standard, then Ron Paul is the biggest “anti-racist” by the same.  Paul wants to end both “wars” and, thus, spare the lives of countless numbers of non-whites.

Republicans say that Ron Paul’s foreign policy is “isolationist,” “naïve,” and “dangerous.”  One Paulophobe, Newt Gingrich, has even gone so far as to suggest that whoever supports it is “indecent.”  At the same time, Republicans have established for themselves a reputation of being pro-military.

Yet if Ron Paul is “isolationist,” “naïve,” and “dangerous” when it comes to foreign policy, then all of those veterans and active duty military personnel who endorse him are “isolationist,” “naïve,” and “dangerous.”  Ron Paul, a veteran of the United States Air Force, receives more contributions from the members of our armed forces than all of the other candidates combined.   He receives ten times the amount that Mitt Romney receives and one hundred times the amount received by Newt Gingrich!

Republicans know that they cannot win the presidential election of 2012 unless their candidate can get the independent vote and that of racial minorities.  But polls show that Ron Paul beats Obama among independents and receives more of the non-white vote than every other Republican candidate. 

Still, Republican Paulophobes can’t even bring themselves to conceive of the possibility that Paul could secure their party’s nomination.  Like the very word “cancer” that those from earlier generations couldn’t bring themselves to utter, just the idea of a nominee Paul strikes terror into their hearts.

The Republican Paulophobe, I hoped to have shown, is a walking contradiction.  There is, though, one final consideration that shouldn’t be lost upon us.

Republican Paulophobes know that should Ron Paul not get his party’s nomination and choose to run on a third party ticket, or should he encourage his devoted following to turn its back on the GOP, then President Obama is insured a second term.  Hence, a little prudence dictates that Republicans refrain from treating him unjustly.

But they insist upon treating Paul to one injustice after the other.

The Paulophobe is impervious to reason.  Maybe, though, another crushing loss, courtesy of Ron Paul and his followers, will cure him of his condition.   

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.

originally published in The New American 

With practically each passing day, we are becoming ever more familiar with the recently identified PDS—Paul Derangement Syndrome.  Also known as “Paulophobia,” PDS, it has now been determined, compels its victims to create for themselves an alternative reality, a parallel universe that is, in some critical respects, quite literally the mirror image of our own.

In the real world, those who are looking for a tireless, consistent champion of “limited government,” “individual rights,” “states’ rights,” and the like—i.e. “conservatives” and Republicans—know that there is but one person in the field of GOP presidential candidates to whom they can turn.  That person, of course, is Congressman Ron Paul.  In the real world, of this field of candidates, the former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, has a record that exposes him as the least likely of such candidates to advance these principles.

But in the parallel universe that the Paulophobe labors incessantly to create, Mitt Romney is the GOP’s “front runner” while Ron Paul is treated as if he is marginal at best, non-existent at worst.

In the real world, Ron Paul has proven himself second to none in eliciting as devoted and enthused a following as any politician of our generation—including Barack Obama and Sarah Palin.  This is no mean feat at a time when the electorate seems to have become as disenchanted with politicians as it has ever been.  At least as impressive is that this following is as substantial in size and diverse in quality as it is loyal to their candidate. 

In the Paulophobe’s alternative reality, however, Paul supporters are somehow less than real voters, maybe even less than real people.   At a minimum, they are neither respectable voters nor respectable people.  Those who endorse Ron Paul are depicted as constituting a marginal group of cultists.  Paulophobe extraordinaire, nationally syndicated neoconservative Republican talk show host Michael Medved, as purely as any PDS patient illustrates this tendency to reduce Paul backers to intellectual and/or moral paupers.  That Medved routinely refers to Paul’s supporters as “Paulistinians” is, to put it mildly, telling.

In the real world, most national polls had steadily assigned Ron Paul third place for months, and theTexascongressman defeats all competitors in one straw poll after the other.  A candidate’s straw poll performance, though certainly not determinative of how a race will end, is still a not insignificant indicator of the strength or weakness of his or her candidacy.

In the world of the Paulophobe, either Ron Paul doesn’t participate in straw polls or, if he does, his ranking in them—not necessarily the straw polls themselves—are dismissed as meaningless.  When Paul’s supporters protest that their candidate is being treated unfairly, the Paulophobe is as dismissive of their complaint as he is dismissive of Ron Paul himself: the “Paul people” are “paranoid” and “conspiratorial,” he insists.  At the same time, though, to explain away Paul’s fortunes, the Paulophobe conjures up conspiracy theories of his own.  “The Paul people” rigged this poll or that, etc.

In the real world, Ron Paul argues for redeploying our troops from overseas lands to our own porous borders.  That Paul receives more contributions from active military personnel than our current president and all of the other Republican presidential candidates combined that his message resonates with legions of those men and women who, presumably, know best when it comes to matters of national security.

In the parallel universe of the Paulophobe, in glaring contrast, Ron Paul is an appeaser, a virtual pacifist, “nuts on parade,” as Paulophobe Rush Limbaugh described him not too long ago.  No, a President Paul would beAmerica’s last president, because it wouldn’t be long after his inauguration thatAmericawould meet her demise and the entire planet would come under “Islamist” rule. 

In the real world, Ron Paul has pointed out what the bi-partisan “9/11 Commission,” the Central Intelligence Agency, and Islamic terrorists themselves have long noted: anti-American Islamic hostilities, from the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 through 9/11 to the present are primarily designed as responses, not to our beliefs regarding ourselves, but to our conduct toward the Islamic world.  In drawing our attention to what is obvious to all who have thought about this issue, Paul, of course, never meant to excuse or justify the heinous acts of those horrible men who are determined to murder Americans.  After all, shortly following 9/11, Paul spared no time in casting his vote in favor of invading Afghanistan.  And he most certainly never meant to suggest that it is the American citizenry who deserve blame for the terrorist attacks that they have suffered.  Rather, it is precisely because Paul cares so deeply about the well being of his country, because he so highly values peace and a strong national defense, that he seeks to analyze our situation in ideologically-neutral, even if politically risky, terms.

In the Paulophobe’s universe, Ron Paul is exceedingly naïve when it comes to confronting “the Evil of our time”—i.e. “Islamofascism.”  Paul fails to grasp that “Islamists” want to ruin Americabecause of her “exceptionalism,” her unrivaled freedoms and liberties.  Americais the only nation in all of human history to have been founded upon a universal “proposition” or “idea,” the proposition that all men (and women) are created equal. It is this—the “exceptional” character ofAmerica—that makes her the target of the “Islamist’s” animus.  Not only, though, is Ron Paul naïve; he is as well dangerously close to being an anti-American himself, for Paul never spares an occasion to “blame America” for 9/11 and other acts of terrorism. 

While it is understandably exasperating for the inhabitants of the real world to abide by his delusions, they should consider taking pity upon the Paulophobe, for in the imaginary world of the latter, “Ron Paul people” constitute a dispensable—indeed, even an irritating—ragtag band of misfits who he would just as soon see disappear.

In the real world, however, assuming Paul doesn’t get his party’s nomination, if his supporter’s oblige the Paulophobe and disappear come Election Day 2012, Barack Obama will sail to a second term.

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D. 

originally published at The New American

I must confess to being more than a bit amazed at the ease with which so many of my fellow Americans, including and especially those in the media and politics, unabashedly identify themselves as “conservative.”  That this many people should declare themselves subscribers to this particular political orientation is in and of itself unremarkable; but when this phenomenon is coupled with the fact that few of these “conservatives” appear to know little if anything about the intellectual roots of their self-declared vision, it is hard not to be bewildered. 

However, while we can’t but find shocking the ubiquity and depth of both this ignorance and apparent lack of desire to ameliorate this ignorance, both phenomena do shed some much needed illumination upon an otherwise enigmatic reality, namely, the stone cold fact that most of what passes for “conservatism” in America today is nothing of the kind. 

With rare exceptions, what is today considered “conservatism” is actually neoconservatism.  This is no criticism; it is just an honest observation.  In order to know a thing or two about genuine conservatism, we would be well served to revisit Edmund Burke, widely regarded as its “patron saint.”

Burke, an Irishman, was an eighteenth century member of the English Parliament.  Primarily in response to the metaphysical and other excesses of the French Revolution, he articulated what remains to this day the most provocative, impassioned, and imaginatively rich statement of what subsequent generations came to call “conservatism.”

The conservatism of which Burke is a progenitor, on the one hand, and the neoconservatism that dominates the contemporary American right, on the other, are not just distinct from one another; they are mutually incompatible.  But more than this, they differ in kind from one another.  I have written at length about these differences in the past.  I will here focus only upon one critical respect in which neoconservatism departs radically from Burkean conservatism, namely, its stance on the issue of “natural” or “human rights.”  

While he never actually repudiated the concepts of “human nature” and “natural rights”—in fact, he actually affirmed them—Burke nonetheless was keenly aware that as far as the art of politics is concerned, such concepts were irrelevant.  Politics, rather, is concerned with “the civil social man, and no other.”  This means that political decisions are not to be settled according to some abstract, universal conception of “human nature”; indeed, they cannot be settled according to any such rule.  Instead, politics “is a thing to be settled by convention” (emphasis original).

Burke is direct: “Government,” he asserts, “is not made in virtue of natural rights,” for natural rights “may and do exist in total independence of it; and exist in much greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection[.]”  But Burke is quick to point out that “their abstract perfection is their practical defect.”  Their strength is also their weakness, for it is precisely because of their “abstract perfection” that “natural rights” are incapable of supplying guidance for navigating our way through the endless maze of concrete details that constitute the stuff of everyday life.

Human beings do have rights.  But these rights consist of both “the liberties” as well as “the restraints” upon appetites and “passions” for the sake of which “civil society” came into being in the first place.  Since “government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants,” human beings living under it “have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.”  However, because “the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule”—like, say, the proposition or principle that there are natural or “human” rights to life, liberty, property, the pursuit of happiness or anything else.

How different Burke sounds from today’s self-proclaimed “conservatives.”  In order to justify one war after the other, neoconservatives routinely invoke the notions of “human rights” and “Democracy.”  Burke, in sharp contrast, draws our attention to the fact that such “abstract perfection[s]” are wholly out of place as far as the governance of civil society is concerned.  “If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law,” he tells us.  What this in turn implies is that “convention must limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution which are formed under it.” More specifically, “every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory [sic] power are its creatures,” for “they can have no being in any other state of things[.]”

There are no “rights” to any particular kind of government, set of institutional arrangements or, for that matter, any goods that “do not as so much as suppose” the “existence” of civil society and that “are absolutely repugnant to it.”  Appeals to “human nature” and “natural rights” are misplaced, Burke says, because, in short, the civil condition is not our natural condition.  In fact, insofar as it is exactly in order to relieve ourselves of the inconveniences with which brute nature is replete that civil society arises, there is a real sense in which the natural and civil “states” can be said to be contraries.  “Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together.” 

Natural rights are “metaphysic rights,” “primitive rights” that, “in the gross and complicated mass of human passions and concerns,” endure “such a variety of refractions and reflections” that “it becomes absurd to talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original direction.”  But this is exactly what proponents of natural rights do.  The trouble with this way of speaking is that it conflicts with reality.  In the real world, “no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man’s nature, or to the quality of his affairs,” for “the nature of man is intricate” and “the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity[.]”

It is no wonder that the neoconservative speaks little of Burke.  This “father” of the conservative intellectual tradition finds his cherished concept of “natural rights” to be not just a fiction, but among the most treacherous of fictions to have come out of the modern world.

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.  

Human beings, regardless of time or place, share in common a perennial fascination with tales of enigmatic creatures, beings that, in spite of the numerous testimonials that have been offered on their behalf, remain questionable.  Sasquatch; the Lochness Monster; and the Abominable Snowman, are just some of these who immediately come to mind.  While some really believe in the existence of such entities, others are unsure, and still others just don’t care, there is a fourth class of people that never fails to crop up wherever tales of this sort prevail.  This class is composed of those who may be either indifferent to or even incredulous regarding such legends, but who, nevertheless—through sales of souvenirs, the production of documentaries, or what have you—stoke the flames of belief in order to turn a profit.

I suggest that to this list of mythic beings we add White Racism. 

Just a moment’s worth of sober reflection in no time reveals that there is more than sufficient warrant for treating White Racism of a piece with Bigfoot and the rest of similarly mythic beings.

Actually, there is a sense in which reports of Bigfoot sightings are more credible than similar reports of White Racism.  Bigfoot sightings from across time, though they tend to differ in degree as far as relatively trivial specifics are concerned—e.g. height, weight, etc.—nonetheless neatly coincide.  Reports of White Racism, on the other hand, diverge wildly from one another.  White Racism is the ugliest of creatures; upon this all who claim to have spotted it agree.  But beyond this, so varied are the accounts, it is impossible not to think that witnesses are talking about different things altogether.

White Racism is seen rearing his horrific head at a Ku Klux Klan meeting in the Deep South of yesteryear as well as in the shop owner who keeps a suspicious eye on the group of rowdy black teenagers who wander the aisles of his store.  It is spotted in Adolph Hitler’s genocidal regime just as easily as in a Tea Party movement demonstration or a Republican Party convention.  In fact, even in the case of Hitler’s Nazism, for as awful as it was, it remains doubtful whether it is actually White Racism that we witness, for biologically or racially speaking, both the Nazis and their Jewish victims are indistinguishable: both are white.

The point is that if Bigfoot exists, we at least have some idea as to what we would see if we were to encounter him.  White Racism, on the other hand, is a far different matter.

By some accounts, White Racism sounds as if it may even be something like a god, for it is said to exist independently of individual whites.  When it is described as such, it is given the name “institutional racism.”  White Racism is at once pervasive and just as destructive as it has ever been, according to this perspective.  Indeed, it is much more destructive than it has been in the past.  White Racism is embedded in the very “structures” that constitute American society.  As such, it informs the worldview of the best intentioned, most magnanimous of whites. 

Those individual whites who voted against Barack Obama as well as those who voted for him; Obama’s grandmother, who feared being harassed and molested by a black panhandler who had already harassed and nearly molested her; those who call for an end to “affirmative action” and those who want to preserve it; those who suspect blacks of being inferior and those who think that they are superior; those who believe in a common “human nature” and those who reject it; those who demand race-neutral criteria of evaluation and those who repudiate such criteria; those white employers who provide opportunities to non-whites immigrants and those white citizens who want to diminish the flow of such immigration; Confederate soldiers and Union soldiers; Nazism, Fascism, and “the American Way”; Capitalism and Communism—White Racism allegedly appears in every instance.

There is another respect in which White Racism resembles other legendary figures like Nessie and Bigfoot.  Just as there is no shortage of would-be profiteers ready to cash in on the latter, so an entire industry has emerged to capitalize on the notion of White Racism.  The captains of this industry comprise a diverse lot, it is true: academics, media pundits, politicians, and racial (“civil rights”) activists receive the lion’s share of the spoils.  But it would be a mistake to think that they are the only beneficiaries of the Racism Industrial Complex (RIC).  It would be equally mistaken to suppose that the only benefits to be had are material in nature.

Legions of common folk, white, black, and other, gain also, but they gain much more in the way of psychic rewards than they could ever hope to gain monetarily.  Against all of the evidence that White Racism hasn’t any more substance than a phantom, the members of the various races, whatever their biological differences, ultimately rail against this mother of all monsters for the same reason: doing so elevates their own self-conceptions.

Like Roman Catholics who, in renewing their baptismal promises, unequivocally renounce Satan and all of his works, “the believers” in White Racism can’t resist the temptation to unequivocally renounce it, for doing so enables them to discern virtue in themselves.  This virtue is as much a phantom as the White Racism that fills their imaginations, of course.  It is virtue on the cheap, so to speak.  The “anti-White Racist” can no more be possessed of wisdom, justice, or courage for standing up to the unadulterated evil of White Racism than can the merchant who decides to set up shop selling souvenirs near a Bigfoot sighting be said to have such virtue.

Neither the committed “anti-White Racist” nor the merchant really believes in that of which he speaks. 

In my home state of New Jersey, we have our “Bigfoot.”  His name is “the Jersey Devil.”  The Jersey Devil is said to dwell in the Pine Barrens, thousands and thousands of acres of forestry.  Every year, just about, for several years, my late father, my brother, and I would venture out to thePine Barrensfor camping trips.  We are all born and bred in the city, mind you, three of the least “outdoorsy” guys you could ever meet.  Yet it was always fun to imagine that we were driving into the wilderness to live off of the land and combat all of the challenges that untamed nature would dare to throw our way—including and especially the abomination of the Jersey Devil. 

In reality, we spent the night on a campground with a heated bathroom and showers and a grocery story about a mile or two down the road.

And, obviously, we knew that there was no Jersey Devil.

Likewise, those who rally most ardently to defeat White Racism know, at least at some level, that there is no such thing.  They must know this.  Not only are they eons apart from reaching agreement as to what White Racism is; there is ample proof of the most virulent anti-white animus all around them and yet their silence is deafening.  Worse, the purveyors of the White Racism myth typically seek to deny or even excuse the shocking levels of hatred and violence to which blacks and Hispanics have regularly subjected whites.

If White Racism was really the ubiquitous evil that it is claimed to be, then presumably it is because “racism” is an evil; that it is whites who allegedly promote the “racism” should be neither here nor there.  That those who live and die by the ideology of White Racism, our “anti-White Racists,” those contractors of the Racism Industrial Complex, do not really believe in the windmills with which they do battle is effortlessly grasped once we consider that they care not a lick about combating real racial animus as long as the guilty are non-white and the innocent white.

No, White Racism is indeed the new Bigfoot.

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.

By now, no supporter of Ron Paul’s will find himself surprised by the glaring inconsistencies, outright distortions, and, frankly, boldfaced lies to which Republican-friendly media figures will descend in their efforts to marginalize his presidential candidacy.  Still, so unabashed is their illogic, so overt the dishonesty, it is nevertheless difficult not to be amazed, even mesmerized, by the audaciousness with which Paul’s critics subject him to one injustice after the other.  

For as ugly as it is, though, this phenomenon is not without its value.  That is, it supplies us with a classic textbook illustration of what many of us have always known: it is indeed politicians and their cohorts in the media, and not voters, who select candidates. 

Joseph A. Schumpeter was a conservative theorist who was also among the most distinguished and erudite of social scientists of the first half of the twentieth century.  In his Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Schumpeter debunks what he characterizes as “the classical doctrine of democracy.”  According to this doctrine, it is “the people itself” that settle “issues through the election of individuals who are to assemble in order to carry out its will.”  In reality, though, “the will of the people is the product and not the motive power of the political process” (emphasis mine). 

The problem with this idealized notion of democracy—a notion, mind you, that continues to prevail today, over two centuries after it emerged—is that it ascribes to “the will of the individual an independence and a rational quality that are altogether unrealistic” (emphasis original).  Thomas Sowell, I believe it was, once said that ideology is fairy tales for adults.  Schumpeter would agree.  More specifically, inasmuch as the average democratic voter makes his decisions on the basis of largely “extra-rational and irrational” factors, he would say that the eighteenth century rationalist ideology of “Democracy” is among the grandest “fairy tales” that had ever been invented.

If the “classical doctrine of democracy” was sound, then “everyone would have to know definitely what he wants to stand for,” and this “definite will would have to be implemented by the ability to observe and interpret correctly the facts that are directly accessible to everyone and to sift critically the information about the facts that are not.”  Then, “according to the rules of logical inference,” the citizen should be able to draw “a clear and prompt conclusion as to particular issues” (emphasis original)[.]

This, though, is most certainly not how the average voter thinks. When it comes to politics, his will, far from being “determinate” and “rational,” is actually “an indeterminate bundle of vague impulses loosely playing about given slogans and mistaken impressions” thrust upon him by “pressure groups and propaganda[.]”  For the average voter, “mere assertion, often repeated” is much weightier than “rational argument” could ever hope to be.

It isn’t that the average voter is dumb.  He attends carefully to those matters with which he is intimately bound, those concerning his family, friends, work, current financial condition, church, neighborhood, and town.  When it comes to national politics, in fact, there are some issues that engage him personally.  But even then, voters not infrequently “prove themselves bad judges of their own long-run interests, for it is only the short-run promise that tells politically and only short-run rationality that asserts itself effectively.”

Schumpeter explains that the average voter easily falls prey to the manipulative machinations of politicians, journalists, and pundits because, at bottom, national affairs generally have an air of unreality for him.  “Normally, the great political questions take their place in the psychic economy of the typical citizen with those leisure hour interests that have not attained the rank of hobbies, and with the subjects of irresponsible conversation.”  Issues concerning the nation as a whole “seem so far off; they are not at all like a business proposition; dangers may not materialize at all and if they should they may not prove so very serious[.]”  In short, when it comes to national politics, the average voter “feels” like he is “moving in a fictitious world.”    

“The will” of “the people” of which politicians tirelessly proclaim themselves unqualified champions is, then, an “artifact.”  Along with the issues themselves, it is “manufactured” similarly to the ways in which the desires and wants of consumers are manufactured by “commercial advertising.”  As Schumpeter explains, in politics:

“We find the same attempts to contact the subconscious.  We find the same technique of creating favorable and unfavorable associations which are the more effective the less rational they are.  We find the same evasions and reticences [sic] and the same trick of producing opinion by reiterated assertion that is successful precisely to the extent to which it avoids rational argument and the danger of awakening the critical faculties of the people.”

Schumpeter’s argument resonates more readily with our imagistic generation than it did in 1942 when he first composed it.  While thinking about our national politics generally, and the media coverage of Ron Paul’s candidacy in particular, we would be well served to call it to mind.

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.

originally published at The New American