4
3
2
Limited Government, the Free Market and Moral Relativism
The Deception:
Ron Paul goes beyond the popular calls to limit excessive taxation and pro-corporate bureaucracy, and takes the market-fundamentalist position to eliminate the Departments of Education and Energy, social programs like Medicare, Social Security and food stamps, and any other government distortion of "the market" (gradually, of course). He has succeeded in rebranding what in other countries is called IMF shock therapy or fascist austerity as "liberty". Beyond this, he is notably less concerned about the effects of legalizing heroin than the effects of legalizing financial derivatives.
The Truth:
The idea that an unregulated market for goods, services and financial products leads to prosperity, equal opportunity and fairness spits in the face of history. Certainly private interests have learned to use the power of the state to protect their investments, but in the absence of an effective state, we see not freedom, but open oligarchy. If the present effects of deregulation aren't evidence enough, the results of the IMF's free market experiments, as detailed in books like Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, should seal the deal.
The fundamental problem with monetarism (the notion that money = value, which is pervasive across the political spectrum) is that it accepts the notion that economics is a science. But the pseudo-scientific theory of the market relies on impossible factors --such as consumers with perfect information, honest sellers, no emotional or moral considerations in transactions, etc. The Austrians and Chicago economists wish away any counterexample to their models by calling it an "externality".
In truth, economics is little more than an encoded system of morality. Other than accountancy and statistics, economic policy is about setting priorities, goals and limits for the individuals within the economy. When we leave these priorities entirely to individuals in "the market", economic activity is pulled toward things like credit default swaps, drugs, pornography and gambling. There are people in this world who will cheat, steal and murder for money, and many of them wear 3-piece suits. Why didn't the Clinton-era deregulations lead to mass transit, cheap energy and full employment? Because it's easier to get rich by stealing than it is by creating.
The libertarian definition of freedom doesn't free us from oppression --it frees our oppressors. By holding our government to technical rather than moral standards --whether in healthcare or financial regulation -- we remove the very purpose of the nation-state, encoded so beautifully in the US Constitution and writings of figures like Hamilton and Lincoln.
Of course, you can have too much of a good thing --communism being one example. As Ludwig on Mises was fond of saying, "government is force." Our process of self-government should be the evolving struggle to define the general welfare, and the best means of achieving it. If history shows anything, it's that prosperity is possible only in a protective system. The purpose of a national government to defend our rights against the organized powers of money, the pull-down nature of international trade, and to use public credit and commonwealth to help foster the conditions for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Obama Has Been Bad, But There's Something Worse
(Credit to Webster Tarpley for the paraphrase). Obama thus far has made some feeble attempts at a Keynesian model of government --corporate and personal welfare spending without any attempt to increase production or the value of labor. Yes, he's selling us down the river -- but at least he's still trying to give us a log to cling to. The next phase, if the bankers have their way, is crushing austerity at the hands of "the market". Hopelessness, despair and stagnation, without the dwindling safety net of the New Deal. Someone like Mitt Romney or Bobby Jindall could very well emulate the Reaganesque rhetoric of Ron Paul to deliver us into the jaws of corporate retirement, insurance, charter schools, water, libraries, police, and anything else of value that will finalize the looting of America's earned national income.
As 2008 was the year for anyone other than Bush, 2012 may well be the year for anyone other than Obama --and given the mobilization of the independent right, anyone resembling Ron Paul. When the next crisis hits, America will be looking for answers, and Paul may have the nation's most functional political coalition. Most on the right, probably including Ron Paul, are well-intentioned, concerned citizens that honestly but wrongly believe "big government" is the source of their problems. In limited instances they are right, but the big picture is a broad, anti-historical, anti-Constitutional theology that leaves us no organized means to fight organized private power. The solutions are ready to be adopted -- look to people like Mr. Tarpley or his former employer Lyndon LaRouche for a complete program which could be adopted today by the current president. We need to work together to rescue our institutions of government, earned by the blood of our forefathers, from their current occupants. We do not need to fight against the institutions themselves, which are the proverbial babies floating in a sea of fetid bathwater.
1 | 2
