For one thing, as many people have commented, Ron Paul's followers are kind of scary. They have an almost cult-like devotion to their leader and the gold standard and turn out in droves whenever he is criticized. During the Republican primary, they were noted for manipulating the process, infiltrating caucuses to push through their candidate despite the wishes of the majority, and other unsettling behavior. Paul may be a libertarian, but his followers show disturbingly authoritarian tendencies. When a politician attracts a very authoritarian following, regardless of his nominal ideology, this is strong evidence that his followers see some sort of a kindred spirit. Johnson shows no such authoritarian followers. During his governorship of New Mexico, he did start out with a CEO-like tendency to disregard the separation of powers and certain checks and balances. But he learned and improved with time. Certainly I see no threat to democratic norms from Johnson. Paul makes me uneasy.
Next and most obvious -- the newsletters. Although the newsletters are really just a symptom of what Ron Paul was up to at the time. He had cast his lot with a faction of the libertarian movement that had decided to move in the direction of right-wing populism. This amounted to seeking an alliance with Pat Buchanan, the John Birch Society, neo-confederates, white supremacists, anti-government militias, vigilantes, Holocaust deniers, and anyone else who would back a gold standard. The newsletters simply pandered to their worst instincts. Johnson has no such distasteful baggage.
Nor can the newsletters be dismissed as a not-so-youthful indiscretion. For one thing, they completely give the lie to Paul's claims that other politicians pander, but he is a fearless truth-teller who is not afraid to tell people what they don’t want to hear. The letters were a shameless act of pandering to some very disturbing people. Paul’s attempts to disclaim them and deny any association with what went out under his name show that he is as willing to lie as any other politician. Johnson, by contrast, is remarkably candid in admitting mistakes he made in the past and things he has changed his mind about.*
For another thing, the newsletters reflect a very dangerous
psychology. As wise observer put it,
they are not really anti-state, but anti-other masquerading as anti-state. The newsletters appealed to a wide range of
xenophobes – racists, anti-semites, isolationists, and people who simply fear
all change. This is, of course, exactly
the same psychology that underlies fears that any practice of Islam in the U.S.
is a creeping shariah takeover, or that is terrified of releasing any terrorism
suspects, even if proven innocent beyond reasonable doubt, or favors torture of
terrorism suspects, just to be on the safe side. The scapegoats have changed, but not the desire for scapegoats. And if Ron Paul is the scapegoat seeking type, what is to stop him from seeking some new ones.
Finally, there is at least some evidence that Ron Paul has
not left his anti-other past altogether behind.
His opposition to abortion is the most defensible. If you believe that life begins
at conception (and there is no way to disprove it, after all), then abortion is
truly morally indistinguishable from infanticide, and being a libertarian would
no more mean condoning abortion than infanticide. So I think his opposition to abortion does
not disqualify Ron Paul from begin a libertarian. It might also reflect his experiences as an obstetrician,
delivering babies and doing his best to save a pregnancy in danger. But at the very least, it also suggests that
Paul is casting his lot with religious conservatives who are not notably
libertarian. (Gary Johnson favors
repealing Roe v. Wade and returning
the issue of abortion to the states. But
he opposes legislation against abortion before viability).
Opposition to immigration is harder to defend in libertarian
terms. Labor, after all, follows the
same free market rules as everything else – it tends to migrate from areas of
lower price to areas of higher price, and so to equal out prices over the long
run. And, as in other cases where
government tries to block the workings of the free market, immigration
restrictions lead to evasions and increasing repressive policies. Paul wants to "do whatever it takes" to secure our borders, track and deport anyone who overstays a visa, and end birthright citizenship. None of this sounds very libertarian. In fact, it sounds like extremely intrusive
and meddlesome government. Once again, this is more anti-other than anti-state. Johnson, by contrast, favors enlarging and streamlining the work visa
system to bring supply and demand more or less in to balance and give people currently here illegally two years to obtain such a visa. He would allow exclusions of immigrants for
health or safety reasons, but not much else.
But then
again, very few libertarians would go so far as to allow a total free market in
immigration. I thus find Ron Paul’s
opposition to immigration less alarming than his opposition to NAFTA. Why should that seemingly abstract issue be
more alarming than something concrete like abortion or immigration? Because all mainstream, right-thinking
conservatives and libertarians favor free trade. Gary Johnson, for instance, says that he
favors free trade, period, and believes that any currency manipulations and so
forth are minor matters compared to the benefits free trade offers. People on the left may oppose free trade out
of concern for saving U.S. jobs, or poor working conditions in Third World
countries. But on the right, opposition
to free trade is found only in the made fever swamps that Ron Paul inhabited in
the 1980’s and ‘90’s. The people on the
right who oppose NAFTA are ones who oppose any sort of international
cooperation at all as a threat to our sovereignty, who think it is a prelude to
turning North America into something like the European Union, with the United
States annexed to Canada and Mexico and the amero replacing the dollar. Rand Paul is one who holds such views. It makes one wonder about his father.
And, of course, Paul is a goldbug and Johnson
is not. Johnson favors tighter monetary
policy and may favor ending the Fed, but his real focus is on fiscal policy and
balancing the budget. Reading Johnson’s
website, one gets the impression he does not know much about monetary policy,
is not much interested in it, and treats it as little more than an adjunct of
fiscal policy. Ron Paul wants a gold
standard. It seems to be his primary
obsession. A gold standard would be even
more disastrous economically than Johnson’s fiscal and monetary
tightening. Johnson appears to be a
flexible, non-ideological kind of libertarian who is willing to admit when he
is wrong and change his mind. Paul is a
rigid ideologue. Furthermore, although I
know of no logical reason that support for the gold standard should correlate
strongly with support for the John Birch Society, the Confederacy, Glenn Beck,
and other forms of right wing madness.
But as an empirical matter, these views do, in fact, appear to correlate.
All of these
are absolute deal breakers for me with Ron Paul. None of them apply to Johnson. And besides, Johnson is a likeable sort of
guy who can win people over with his sunny personality. Paul is not.
My only real problem with Johnson is that I think his economic policies
would throw us into a major tailspin.
Given that he has not chance of winning, should this be a deal
breaker? That is what I will get to in
my third post.
____________________________________________________________
*Most notably, he was once a strong advocate of capital punishment who
even mused aloud about lowering the age of executions to 14! He has since decided that execution is the
ultimate state intrusion on liberty and therefore something libertarians should
oppose.
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