Positive Liberty

Mona Charen, in a column titled “Too Close to Kooky,” has joined in on the Ron Paul attacks. Her latest column is full of character swipes — designed to create misleading impressions.

First, she says Paul is “inconsistent.” What is her evidence? Well, he’s a libertarian, but he wouldn’t pardon Scooter Libby. That’s like saying, “Paul says he really likes pizza, but that can’t be true, because he was born in Pennsylvania.” Excellent non-sequiter Ms. Charen.

Second, she accuses Ron Paul of being “historically challenged.” But the only challenge is to her reading and listening comprehension skills. Let’s put the same fine point on history that Ron Paul has put on it.

* On Eisenhower: Paul points out that Ike was ELECTED to stop the Korean War.

* On Nixon: Paul suggests that Tricky Dick was ELECTED to stop the Vietnam War.

Both Eisenhower and Nixon behaved badly in office. Paul, for example, is very, very, very critical of Eisenhower’s decision to overthrow Iran’s Mossadegh. Paul has not approved of their entire foreign policy record, just the tradition that, as my father used to put it to me, “Democrats get us into war; Republicans are elected to get us out of them.” And while my Dad’s statement of history wasn’t complete, that was much closer to true than it is now with George W. Bush, Bill Kristol, and the rest of the gang who’ve changed the GOP for the worst.

Continuing her second point, she says that Paul embraces “isolationism.” This is the first smear to appear in the article. Ron Paul is not an isolationist. He denies the charge whenever it’s hurled at him. (Next thing you know, they’ll be calling him a racist!)

Here’s the truth: Paul’s an “originalist” — that is, he embraces the policy of the Founding Fathers. And the Founders advocated trade and diplomacy with all, military alliances with none. Nor, by the way, is Paul a pacifist. He embraces the centuries-old, Christian doctrine of Just War, which has been gradually crushed to bits by both Republicans and Democrats throughout the 20th and 21st Century. He believes in a strong national defense, but not a strong national offense, “policing the world.”

Only a liar or an ignoramus would insist that Ron Paul is an isolationist. Which is it in this case?

Third, Ron Paul is “unserious.” Unserious? Really?

Should we take that to mean that Paul doesn’t mean what he says? Well, if you’re a simple, honest person who uses words by their dictionary meaning, you won’t parse that sentence in the code Ms. Charen intended.

“Unserious” in this case means he’s not willing to indiscriminately regulate, suppress, and even kill others for the advancement of his team’s political goals. No, I’m not exaggerating. The present ruling class doesn’t believe in the Constitution as a limit on power. They believe power un-exercised is no power at all. Only true practitioners of machtpolitick are to be trusted with power. He may be an S.O.B., but he’s our S.O.B. The rest are radicals or “kooks.”

Ron Paul is quite serious. He actually believes in the Constitution — believes that it limits power. So if Ms. Charen ever appeals to the Constitution in support of a given position in any of her future columns, then please, I urge you, remind her she doesn’t really care for the document — she’s not really “serious.”

Fourth, horror of horrors — bad people have endorsed Ron Paul on their website. Oh my! Guilt by association keeps cropping up. Ron is not responsible for who supports him. Charen points out that Michael Medved has called upon Paul to disavow some contributions and return them. Some points…

So what? Medved is a demagogue who makes Bill O’Reilly seem quiet and demure in comparison. Medved’s a warmonger too. There would be no satisfying him. Were Ron Paul to do Medved’s bidding, would Medved applaud the move and tell people what a great, principled guy Ron Paul really is?

Of course not; if that’s all it took to get Paul to return money, why shouldn’t every one of the legion of warmonger radio hosts and talking heads (starting with Medved, and including Bennett, O’Reilly, Hannity, Horowitz, Coulter etc.) begin a campaign to get Paul to return all of his money, bit by bit?

“Egads, anti-government types are giving money to him,” they’ll cry.

Then he’ll have to give all the money back. Gosh, how ignorant does Ms. Charen think her readers are if they think this is a “real” objection?

There’s an important thing about money: It’s pedigree doesn’t really matter most of the time (ah, can’t wait to read how this gets re-interpreted).

* No matter who handles it, it’s still green and it still buys things whether it touches the hands of princes or populists… or even racists.
* If you’re at the store buying a tool or a toy, the clerk doesn’t ask you where your money came from. You’d probably get offended if they did (only lenders are allowed to ask such questions).
* Most of you reading this don’t know where all your money comes from. It’s not your duty to trace it. It’s not Paul’s duty either.

So let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.

Here’s the pithy, sound bite, point Paul’s campaign should make: Money can voluntarily move from the evil, to the righteous, and that’s actually a good thing. And when that happens, it should never be returned; that would be like donating money to a bad cause. It’s Paul’s duty to raise as much as possible and invest it wisely to advance his campaign. Not satisfy his enemies or refund people who might then do something more sinister with the money.

It’s also interesting to note that neither Ms. Charen nor Mr. Medved are decrying the use of stolen money (taken from taxpayers) to fund the campaigns of the likes of McCain or Huckabee or even Edwards for that matter. Paul isn’t doing that. And they’re not applauding him for this principled stand. Apparently citizens being compelled to finance the rantings of those they find immoral or distasteful is perfectly OK. Jefferson would be ashamed. But how wonderfully inconsistent and opportunistic of these prevaricators!

Finally, there’s the charge that Ron Paul is a closet conspiracy theorist.

Ms. Charen claims to have done extensive research. She’s either lying about the depth of her research or she knows the truth and told the lie anyway. Neither reflects well on her character, or anyone else who reads this post and continues to repeat that canard, because I’m going to prove it wrong, here and now.

Ron Paul believes in the theory of blowback, a concept that was included in the 9/11 Commission Final Report. Entire books have been written about this concept, including one by the former head of the CIAs Bin Laden unit. Blowback means the foreign policy actions of our government create resentment and, unfortunately, response.

Paul believes that 9/11 was a predictable event, not in specific timing, target, or scope, but just that a terrorist attack was virtually inevitable because of eventual blowback.

He also thinks more attacks are inevitable given how much worse our foreign policy has become since 2003.

Further, when given the opportunity to disavow Jones, Paul publicly stated that Jones put words in his mouth and that he (Paul) didn’t agree with Jones. Just like Medved wouldn’t be willing to applaud Paul for returning donations, the interviewer in this case, FoxNews’ own John Gibson, wouldn’t accept Ron Paul’s explicit disavowal.

Gibson, Charen, and the rest of the critics who keep bringing this up, are engaged in projection. And by projection, I mean that this thought process is akin to the allegedly intellectual analysis that people who oppose the War in Iraq hate America and want sharia law brought here.

That’s partisan politics for ya. It sucks. It brings out the worst in people. Those so engaged, will heartily embrace fraud and dishonest ad hominem to achieve their political and social goals.

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