Yet despite these highly laudable positions, Paul is potentially as treacherous as the creatures of the system most of us have come to loathe. Compared to opportunistic moneyed elites like Mitt Romney or Hillary Clinton, Paul is indeed an alluring candidate.
However, he has at least one very deep flaw which would almost certainly make his presidency an unmitigated disaster for the poor and the working class the world over:
Ron Paul ardently supports the libertarian notions of laissez faire, free markets, deregulation, and privatization. In an ironic and almost comical twist, the imperialism, corporatism, and prefigurements of fascism he has so accurately identified (and vowed to eradicate) are symptoms of monopoly capitalism, a mature form of the system that his libertarian principles would serve to buttress and amplify.
In “The Shock Doctrine” Naomi Klein amply documents the widespread murder, mayhem, and misery caused by implementing a libertarian economic doctrine (as the United States facilitated under the tutelage of Milton Friedman and his acolytes) throughout South America, Southeast Asia, Russia, and China. Savage capitalism at its finest. And for evidence that it CAN happen here (in our “enlightened” Western culture), one need only look back to the Gilded Age and Dickensonian England.
Regardless of how malformed it was due to the relentless pressure applied by the United States via the nuclear arms race we initiated to break it and our HUGE economic advantages, the Soviet Union represented a powerful counter-balance to the forces of unrestrained capitalism. Upon its collapse, the capitalists of the world united and set out to eliminate the hard fought gains the working class had made throughout the Twentieth Century. And Dr. Paul wants to hand those cynical bastards the keys to the kingdom by dismantling what is left of government restraints on the bourgeoisie.
Contrary to the agenda advanced by Ron Paul, “all government” is not inherently evil. It is true that the federal government we have now is an enemy to the masses in many respects. But Uncle Sam is not our foe because he “over-regulates” the parasitic capitalists who are raping the planet, “steals” our money through taxation, or acts as a “nanny state” by providing what has become a nominal safety net for the poor and elderly, as Paul suggests. He is our adversary because he is looking out for the wealthy elite and views people like you and me as disposable. In contrast to Lincoln’s vision—“of the people, by the people and for the people,” we have a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.
While Ron Paul MIGHT be able to slay the dragons of the military industrial complex and undue Zionist influence, his adherence to a “prehistoric” form of capitalism has the potential to essentially eliminate what is left of the rapidly eroding gains the working class and poor have made over the last century.
Despite his apparent opposition to the powers that be, a vote for Ron Paul is still a vote for our continued enslavement by a system predicated on greed, selfishness, and the prosperity of the few at the expense of the many. In fact, unless by some miracle a viable candidate who opposes capitalism actually emerges, the act of voting in our bourgeois democracy is little more than a validation of our servitude.
So don’t participate. Our ruling elite can’t mouth hollow platitudes about democracy if they don’t have voters.
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