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Showing Original Post only (View all)Ron Paul's Strange Bedfellows - "What is it with progressive mancrushes on right-wing Republicans?" [View all]
http://www.thenation.com/article/165440/ron-pauls-strange-bedfellowsRon Paul's Strange Bedfellows
Katha Pollitt January 4, 2012 This article appeared in the January 23, 2012 edition of The Nation.
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 positionson 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. Salons Glenn Greenwald is so outraged that progressives havent abandoned the warmongering, drone-sending, indefinite-detention-supporting Obama for Paul that he accuses them of supporting the murder of Muslim children. Theres 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, theyre 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 interestshe opposes almost every power the federal government has and almost everything it does. Given Washingtons enormous reach, it stands to reason that progressives would find targets to like in Pauls 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 problemincluding how to land an airplane safely: let the market handle it.
Its a little strange to see people who inveigh against Obamas healthcare compromises wave away, as a detail, Pauls opposition to any government involvement in healthcare. In Ron Pauls America, if you werent prudent enough or wealthy enough to buy private insuranceand the exact policy that covers whats ailing you nowyou find a charity or die. And if civil liberties are so important, how can Pauls 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 womens bodies, up to and including prosecuting abortion as murder. Add in his opposition to basic civil rights lawhe maintains his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and opposes restrictions on the freedom of business owners to refuse service to blacksand 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 lets not forget his other unsavory fan base, Christian extremists who want to execute gays, adulterers and insubordinate children. Pauls 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.
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Ron Paul's Strange Bedfellows - "What is it with progressive mancrushes on right-wing Republicans?" [View all]
G_j
Jan 2012
OP
They say that he is very smart. Will he figure this out in time? Do we even matter to him?
AnotherMcIntosh
Jan 2012
#12
Correction: A candidate only a straight, wealthy, white Klansman could love. nt
TheWraith
Jan 2012
#17