Ron Paul And The Liberal Playbook

Having spent years observing liberals in their own natural habitat, I consider myself qualified to analyze their rhetorical tricks. One of which is to delegitimize right wing perspectives by portraying them as a mental affliction capable only of inflicting the uninformed. This has the dual effect of implying liberalism as an intellectually superior consequence of reasoned analysis. The application of this to race and immigration is a serviceable example. Differing from the liberal line on these issues is “prejudice” grown as a result of “ignorance” to be vanquished through “education.” As is typical of those who seek to define themselves through a pretense at intellectual superiority, this cliché is easily deconstructed. An opinion is not prejudicial if it is supported by empirical evidence, the possession of which makes one informed, not ignorant, so any attempt at changing the dissenter’s views will not be “education” but behavior modification. And predictably, this is what it is, in the form of “sensitivity” training, “anti- racist” seminars, and classroom propaganda supplied directly by the Southern Poverty Law Center.



In this, we can see how the unearned hubris of elites creates deterioration both linguistic and instutional. Within public discourse, terms devolve into double speak….observation becomes “prejudice”, statistics “ignorance”, and social engineering “education.” Schools and universities become ideological training camps, and all of this is doctored rather than presented by an increasingly ineffectual mass media. Ron Paul is a wrench in this ointment, not for what he represents but for what he doesn’t. Matt Parrot, in his recent article lays this bare without trying….

“The notion that thus year’s election is a choice between freedom (in the form of Paul) and tyranny (in the form of any other candidate) encapsulates Paul’s grant appeal to men in their late teens and 20s: He traffics in absolutes. Political scientists point out that age and newness to politics predispose young voters to a less nuanced view of the political world. They’re less likely to take the long view, less likely to have patience, less likely to spin the implications of their political theories.”



Here he quotes Slate wench Libby Copeland, dismissing as usual Paul’s popularity as a carefully marketed appeal to immaturity. The hypocrisy is immediately obvious: for as much as the Left portrays themselves as “nuanced” thinkers, always in tune with “gray area”, they adhere to binary worldview as black and white as the Hebraic religion they ceaselessly denigrate. Paul’s dichotomy of liberty and statism could easily be “racist” vs. “anti-racist” or “equality” vs. “hierarchy.” The only difference would be that Paul actually carries his pieties to their concrete, and logical, results.



As is often the case, the Left does not state their underlying assumption, but it is implied nonetheless, and this is where things truly become laughable. Am I to believe that managerial liberalism, emerging as it did as a rubber-band on the ruin age of its classical forebear, is a rational and well assembled worldview? And that the motley crew of college students, rappers, and pompous celebrities that rallied around Obama are seasoned and mature political thinkers? While I disagree with his rationalist outlook, Paul can at least be commended for inspiring his disciples to read; Obama has only driven his to purchase merchandise.



It is clear, then, the waves of liberal hand wringing over Paul is due to the alleged insolvency of his worldview, but that is merely a cover; it is insolvent only in that it illiberal. He presents a narrative diametrically opposite his critics; that of an America that lost its way and needs to return to it, not an America that just recently found its way and needs to keep running. His proposed return to roots, grounded in Lockean principles, would be the death knell for the mountain of socially uplifting legislation the Left has piled upon us for the last seventy years. And with it goes the army of beauracrats and ideologues whose livelihood depend upon the misappropriated dollars of those whose extinction they’re engineering.



The Left sees in Paul what his supporters fail to. The latter are in large part deracinated rationalists, whose support stems from economic concerns, and who approach issues as a matter of abstract principles. To them, Paul is a restorationist messiah. The former are highly racialized irrationalists who see nothing but their own utopian theocracy. To them, Paul is a dangerous subversive. We’ve observed how liberalism’s lack of empirical support explains it’s increasingly totalitarian nature; Paul demonstrates to us this totalitarianism’s method of implementation.