Dr. Ron Paul: The McGovern of the Right

On Silverwolf’s desk sits a round discoid. Thirty-six years it has sat there, in its fixity, displaying the same name, in white letters against a dark-blue background. “Capital Em, small cee, capital Gee, ow, vee, eey, ahr, en.” Remnant of a vain hope of the Remnant of thirty-plus years ago, of a once quickened pulsing heartbeat that thought perhaps there could be a world revolution, carried out with the Midwest courtesy and twang of Senator George S. McGovern, and so pervasive in the Minnesota Wisconsin N. Dakota enclave, the only area in America to reject the death penalty, though fortunately it has recently been joined by New Jersey. Though at the time one was ensconced in the warm nest of Keynesian economics — the whole world belongs to everybody and it’s merely a technological problem to figure out how to redistribute the goods in the world so that no one suffers too much, — and one had unbounded confidence in Senator McGovern’s ability to implement many worthy social programs, one regrets and thinks, even now that one is a convinced Austrian free-market economist, that it is a great shame that McGovern could not have been elected, and America could have had a real test of whether this Liberalism, with its miriad social programs and a guaranteed annual income, logical as they may sound, actually worked. Rothbard talks about this fact somewhere, that it is a shame that the most radical socialism and the most radical free-market capitalism haven’t been practiced somewhere in America so that we could see if they really worked in the context of a great social experiment. Silverwolf has fantasized such a situation exactly in some of his more fantastical blogs, and if a Libertarian philosophy, similar to Ron Paul’s fiscally conservative minarchism combined with his fiercely liberal civil rights attitude, should become popular enough to come to power with any significant puissance, then perhaps this great social lab-work will take place in states that choose to experiment with either very capitalistic or very socialistic systems. Silverwolf can’t wait to see.

But back then, we were Keynesian, because we’d never read a book on economics all the way through, so we knew that the Democrats “knew what to do” because they were “good people”. If politician Joe was a “good man” it meant he was going to make sure the rich got reamed in the tax code.That is what the young wolves of those days believed. Heilbroner and Thurow from M.I.T. guided our economic thinking. The liberals were right, and the guilty rich needed their noses hauled to the grindstones of social equality to have a bit of the hardened toffee buffed off and redistributed in sacks to the poor.

Thirty-six years on after McGovern, observing the behaviour of the Democrats, and the so-called Liberals, one is drawn to the conclusion that we  young wolves were absolutely wrong. We now realize that the Fed and the Liberals are merely a mechanism for making sure the wealth doesn’t get fairly distributed, rather than does, and that the Young Wolves of yesteryear were completely bamboozled. As George Romney said, in order to wreck his political chances for life, “I was brainwashed.”

But what is so striking to Silverwolf is the noticable similarities between Rep. Ron Paul’s current campaign and Senator McGovern’s during his candidature for the presidency in 1972. Not only is there the same calm courtesy of demeanor in their public addresses, the same quality of discussion and logic holding sway over their speeches, instead of hyperbole, feel-good “inspiration”, back-biting and innuendo, and the relentless laying out of more and more plans, growing in more and more complexity, and more and more plans to fund those more and more plans(Ad infinitum ad nauseum.), but also there are the same forensic subtleties of an intellect honed in the niceties of argument. And also, there is another quality they share in common which no other significant candidate puts forward.

Silverwolf refers to their fierce pacifism.

Now, no one could reasonably call either McGovern or Ron Paul pacifists. McGovern went on countless bombing raids over Nazi-occupied Europe and helped smash the Nazi miscreants. He is to be greatly honored for his service.

Ron Paul served in the military, doing physicals on pilots. He never actually killed anybody, although you could say he contributed to the war-effort by doing those physicals. One gets the impression he wasn’t too thrilled with the military, and one can only blanche to think of how this very frugal fiscal conservative must have reacted when he saw how the military burns dollar bills. Lester Thurow pointed out that military spending is virtually all inflationary; it is taking a hugh chunk of the wealth of the society and setting fire to it, and getting nothing in return except some kind of insurance policy. Most agree that there must be some military, and it must be maintained in readiness, if only to deter would-be aggressors, but given the vast hardware and stockpiles of American weapons, and their automation, it’s obvious that the U.S. military could probably operate on a $100 Billion if it were stripped to the bone, but still be strong enough to deter any foreign attack. Clinton could have drastically lowered the bloated military budgets of Reagan from 300 to 100 billion after the ending of the cold war, and used that money against the deficit, but he kept the spending right at the cold war peak levels, because all the circles he moves in, and all the union and public pension funds, benefit so handsomely from the profits on military stocks. Starving the kids of Africa for a few lousy dollars.

It is Paul’s and McGovern’s shared feeling that this military waste is not only a great human tragedy, but also a great economic tragedy for America, and that it is also the main reason we are lagging so far behind what should be our national performance. Dr. Paul tells us to strive in our personal lives for virtue and excellence. He, as was McGovern in his time, is trying to divert a nation from an unsound course that has set it on the path to ruin.

And how they are and were vilified for doing so.

Now Ron Paul is being painted as some kind of “kook” by all the “normal” people. Though it’s obvious that the American financial ship of state is taking on serious water, the Democrats and all the Republican’s except Dr. Paul, continue to completely ignore the issue. Perhaps because the economic understanding of many Democrat and Republican voters is virtually non-existent. If your standing on an ice-shelf that is highly prone to avalanche as any expert might tell you, it probably is better not to know it if you plan to build your home there. At least you won’t worry.

But it’s interesting to compare the pacificistic words of this “right-wing kook” the Liberals so seem to loathe, with the words of Senator McGovern, 36 years ago:

Questioner (elderly man with glasses): “If our economy depends on a war, we’re licked.”

McGovern: “I agree. It doesn’t though. We’ll do better in peace time than in war time if we invest the money that we save from the war with some common sense. You’ll have more jobs for people, if you invest the money we’re now blowing up over there in Vietnam on building the things that we need here at home. It’ll actually create more jobs.”

Funny, that sure sounds like Ron Paul talking. And now that Ron Paul is talking like this, the Liberal Democrats call him a right-wing kook, unrealistic, a threat to national security. Imagine what America could do with the money we spend funding 700 military bases around the world. But somehow we can’t fund soup kitchens for the destitute, even though the union-backed minimim wage laws make it impossible for hobos to get any kind of income, unless they run to the welfare authorities. The party of McGovern has become the party of Nixon.

And what of the lies, the obfuscations, the back-biting and dirty e-mails, the charges of narcotics use, as one power faction tries to take over from another, and constantly using its barking dogs on talk radio to assuage and calm down the populace. What of those who flip-flop, who say one thing, and then claim that by some obscure, legalistic definition, they were saying another thing and so weren’t lying? Do they think the public is so thick?

Again, let’s hear the words of Saint McGovern: “I don’t think we ought to try to con the public or kid the public into thinking we hold a position merely because it’s popular in the Gallup polls. I think the real test of leadership is to take the hard position, even though it may be unpopular, and not to advocate any course, except what you honestly believe to be truth.”

Dr. Paul: abolish the Fed, abolish the income tax, phase out Social Security, close the 700 bases, end the war and bring the troops home,  release the controlled-substance prisoners, get us out of the UN.

George McGovern and Ron Paul (and probably Dick Gregory) were the only candidates with any guts (O.K. let’s throw in McCarthy — Eugene, that is) to run for the presidency between 1964 and 2008.

Liberal Democrats: He’s a right-wing kook. Thank goodness we don’t have unrealistic nuts like that amongst the “good people” of the Democratic party.

Right, right. We know, good Democrats, Ron Paul is just “Another Mother for Peace”.

Just like George McGovern was.

Silverwolf will howl to that.

Hooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! — Silverwolf

Tags: Bill Clinton, Dick Gregory, George McGovern, Ron Paul