Okay, not so much Rand Paul as Tommy Carcetti, but when you think about it...
Those of you who question the value of newspaper journalism should check out the New York Times’s torrential coverage of Tuesday’s midterm congressional primaries, which appear to portend a vast wave of anti-incumbent sentiment. The emerging narrative is one of Tea Party-style rage gone mainstream, at least in Arkansas, Pennsylvania and Kentucky—where GOP-chosen and Mitch McConnell-sponsored senatorial candidate Trey Grayson was defeated by Rand Paul. Yes, that Rand Paul. The man who has argued that the Federal Reserve, the Department of Education and pretty much all of the New Deal are unlawful infringements on the Constitution, who said in his victory speech that “capitalism is freedom” and declared himself a card-carrying member of the Tea Party, if only they issued cards, will now have to sell a specific, non yelling-based political platform to a general populace. Candidate Paul, welcome to compromise country, population: the rest of us.
If you want some idea of how much our nation’s politics is willing to organize itself around anti-govermnet sentiment at this moment, consider the words of Orrin Hatch (R–UT, net worth $3.2 million,) who told reporters “My gosh, these people in Washington are running the country right into the ground,” after serving in the Senate for the last 34 years. Wisely or not, candidates across the land have opted for the throw-the-rascals-out approach. Of course, some take to it better than others; Arlen Specter (R/D–PA,) for example, was rewarded for changing parties with a loss in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary. It was a better Tuesday for Tea Party-approved candidates like Paul, whose innocence of any elected office has enabled him to position himself as a consummate outsider.
It’s also enabled him to develop political positions that are, um, idealistic. Like many libertarians, Paul has thus far professed a politics untouched by the compromises of actual governance, declaring his opposition to bailouts, regulation of Wall Street, the Fed and other Keynesian economic safeguards and pretty much all social welfare programs. He also supports a bill requiring congressmen to read all bills in their entirety. Such broad condemnations sound good through a megaphone outside the post office, but how will they translate into, say, the discussion of actual issues of governance during a political campaign? As Timothy Egan pointed out yesterday, Paul’s victory may force the Tea Party and its franchise candidates to reconcile some of the most glaring contradictions in their values.
Consider the problem of Social Security and Medicare, two big-government entitlement programs that currently account for about 40% of federal spending. In theory, Candidate Paul should oppose them, since A) he has repeatedly claimed that government should only provide those services, like police and fire departments, than individuals cannot provide for themselves, and B) he believes the federal government should be required to balance its budget every year. It seems Paul should make abolishing Social Security and Medicaid a major plank of his platform—except that 60% of self-identified Tea Party members are in favor of those programs, along with 72% of Tea Partiers over 60. Presumably, the number goes up once you start counting people who are not wearing Uncle Sam hats and holding misspelled signs. What’s a maverick outsider to do?
Paul got an early taste of the bitter admixture of theory and practice after his remarks on the Civil Rights Act, which seemed to indicate that he finds it easier to talk about everything than to talk about something. Paul’s waffling on the Rachel Maddow Show about whether his professed opposition to government interference in private business meant that he would have opposed desegregation in the south has been interpreted in the most unfavorable light imaginable, as critics claimed that he intends to repeal the Civil Rights Act. That seems unlikely. What seems more likely is that Paul honestly never considered whether Value A—government should in no way interfere with the private lives of its citizens—might interfere with Value B—black people should be allowed to eat at Carl’s Jr.
“I believe we should work to end all racism in American society and staunchly defend the inherent rights of every person,” he said in a statement issued by his campaign this morning. Herein lies a problem for Rand Paul the candidate that did not exist for Rand Paul the Tea Party member. Sure, we should “work to end all racism in American society,” but how? What tools should we take up? Rand Paul says he’s against Washington, against spending, against big government in our lives. Now that his life is in government, he’s going to have to start reconciling what he says with what might actually be done. So much the better for the Tea Party, and for all of us.
Re: the last paragraph or so, the issue is not that Libertarians disagree with the goals of a race-blind society, or a healthful citizenry, or environmental well-being, or education, or any goal typical of a blog-literate, upper middle class Liberal, it’s that they believe that the free market (and private ownership) is the only legitimate approach to it. True libertarians aren’t conservatives, or liberals, they simply – let’s emphasize that – believe that natural law, the scrum of capital and violence, should dictate private lives. Life is a petri dish, a frog pond. No matter if the pond has been seeded with generations of social history: fight on and breed. No matter if breeding, by nature, creates unequal footing for future generations, thus invalidating the whole experiment: fight on and breed.
What the rest of the political marketplace has, for decades, failed to do sufficiently, again and again and again opening the window for these gnats, is demonstrate (1) modern capitalism has never been a “free” market and (2) whenever society fumbles over itself to move closer toward one we get ourselves into messes not dissimilar to the one we’re in now.
You’re absolutely right: Libertarianism is a theory. And it sounds great (people like to see success in themselves). So does Marxism (people like to see lack of success as external to themselves). Does Libertarianism’s failings mean that it’s an illegitimate political sounding board? Nope. Marxist thought still has value, too. However, American society’s consistency in accepting it as a foundation for political and thought leadership, and failure to relegate it to the dim and echoing academic hallway, does, methinks, say something about the legitimacy of the American electorate. Leadership by proxy of the median voter isn’t so compelling a fundamental truth when the median voter’s as likely to choose a demagogue as a ham sandwich.
Re: the last paragraph or so, the issue is not that Libertarians disagree with the goals of a race-blind society, or a healthful citizenry, or environmental well-being, or education, or any goal typical of a blog-literate, upper middle class Liberal, it’s that they believe that the free market (and private ownership) is the only legitimate approach to it. True libertarians aren’t conservatives, or liberals, they simply – let’s emphasize that – believe that natural law, the scrum of capital and violence, should dictate the trajectory and upward limits of private lives. Life is a petri dish, a frog pond. No matter if the pond has been seeded with generations of social history: fight on and breed. No matter if breeding, by nature, creates unequal footing for future generations, thus invalidating the whole experiment: fight on and breed.
What the rest of the political marketplace has, for decades, failed to do sufficiently, again and again and again opening the window for these gnats, is demonstrate (1) modern capitalism has never been a “free” market and (2) whenever society fumbles over itself to move closer toward one we get ourselves into messes not dissimilar to the one we’re in now.
You’re absolutely right: Libertarianism is a theory. And it sounds great (people like to see success in themselves). So does Marxism (people like to see lack of success as external to themselves). Does Libertarianism’s failings mean that it’s an illegitimate political sounding board? Nope. Marxist thought still has value, too. However, American society’s consistency in accepting it as a foundation for political and thought leadership, and failure to relegate it to the dim and echoing academic hallway, does, methinks, say something about the legitimacy of the American electorate. Leadership by proxy of the median voter isn’t so compelling a fundamental truth when the median voter’s as likely to choose a demagogue as a ham sandwich.
Murder used to be legal on your own private property … any takers in the Tea Party for a resurrection of that one?
“For you freedom means ‘leave me alone.’ For the worker it means ‘give me a chance.'”
Rand Paul made me write this:
http://tundratastic.blogspot.com/2010/05/political-capital-civil-rights-in.html
I think the civil rights discussion makes sense in a larger discussion of how intimately we relate to our money and our possessions. People used to possess other people, remember? I guess the federal government infringed on their right to own slaves when they freed them. A libertarian boycott of the South wouldn’t have meant much to the slaves there.