The Ron Paul Challenge for Progressives

The Ron Paul Challenge for Progressives:

As conservative voters in Iowa get
set to
deliver their verdict on whether the GOP should have at its
head someone with a long and clear philosophy about reducing the
size of government, some liberal commenters around the country are
grappling with a similar conundrum: What to say about a
presidential candidate who wants to end foreign and domestic wars
and protect civil liberties against the imperial presidency?

While there is plenty of
material in the don't be fooled, he's really a moral
monster
category, here's a roundup of progressives defending the Texas
congressmen from their ideological fellow travelers.

Glenn Greenwald, Salon:

Whatever else one wants to say, it is indisputably true that Ron
Paul is the only political figure with any sort of a national
platform — certainly the only major presidential candidate in
either party — who advocates policy views on issues that
liberals and progressives have long flamboyantly claimed
are both compelling and crucial. The converse is equally
true: the candidate supported by liberals and progressives and for
whom most will vote — [...]

Ron Paul's candidacy is a mirror held up in front of the face of
America's Democratic Party and its progressive wing, and the image
that is reflected is an ugly one; more to the point, it's one they
do not want to see because it so violently conflicts with their
desired self-perception.

Matt Stoller, Naked Capitalism:

Modern liberalism is a mixture of two elements. One is a support
of Federal power – what came out of the late 1930s, World War II,
and the civil rights era where a social safety net and warfare were
financed by Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and the RFC, and human
rights were enforced by a Federal government, unions, and a cadre
of corporate, journalistic and technocratic experts (and cheap oil
made the whole system run.) America mobilized militarily for
national priorities, be they war-like or social in nature. And two,
it originates from the anti-war sentiment of the Vietnam era, with
its distrust of centralized authority mobilizing national resources
for what were perceived to be immoral priorities. When you throw in
the recent financial crisis, the corruption of big finance, the
increasing militarization of society, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the
collapse of the moral authority of the technocrats, you have a big
problem. Liberalism doesn't really exist much within the Democratic
Party so much anymore, but it also has a profound challenge insofar
as the rudiments of liberalism going back to the 1930s don't
work.

This is why Ron Paul can critique the Federal Reserve and
American empire, and why liberals have essentially no answer to his
ideas, arguing instead over Paul having character defects. Ron
Paul's stance should be seen as a challenge to better create a
coherent structural critique of the American political order. It's
quite obvious that there isn't one coming from the left, otherwise
the figure challenging the war on drugs and American empire
wouldn't be in the Republican primary as the libertarian
candidate.

Robert Scheer, Truthdig:

It is official now. The Ron Paul campaign, despite surging in
the Iowa polls, is not worthy of serious consideration, according
to a New York Times editorial; "Ron Paul long ago disqualified
himself for the presidency by peddling claptrap proposals like
abolishing the Federal Reserve, returning to the gold standard,
cutting a third of the federal budget and all foreign aid and
opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

That last item, along with the decade-old racist comments in the
newsletters Paul published, is certainly worthy of criticism. But
not as an alternative to seriously engaging the substance of Paul's
current campaign—his devastating critique of crony capitalism and
his equally trenchant challenge to imperial wars and the assault on
our civil liberties that they engender.

Paul is being denigrated as a presidential contender even though
on the vital issues of the economy, war and peace, and civil
liberties, he has made the most sense of the Republican candidates.
And by what standard of logic is it "claptrap" for Paul to attempt
to hold the Fed accountable for its destructive policies? That's
the giveaway reference to the raw nerve that his favorable
prospects in the Iowa caucuses have exposed. Too much anti-Wall
Street populism in the heartland can be a truly scary thing to the
intellectual parasites residing in the belly of the beast that
controls American capitalism.

Coleen Rowley and John Walsh, Des Moines Register:

There is today only one anti-war, anti-corruption,
pro-Constitution, pro-civil liberties candidate for president in
either party who stands squarely against expanding military empire
and for democracy. That candidate is Ron Paul. Like prairie
anti-interventionists Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern and Harold
Hughes in an earlier era, Paul is a maverick in his own party. He
believes in an adequate force to defend America but not 1 cent for
wars of aggression.

Tactically it makes sense for anti-war activists to vote in the
Republican caucuses/primaries for Paul. If he wins or does well in
Iowa and New Hampshire, then the questions of war and peace will
appear on the national scene. If Paul goes on to win his party’s
nomination, these questions will finally make their appearance in
the general election.

And if Paul wins the presidency, hundreds of wasteful overseas
military bases will be dismantled. Our costly, counterproductive
military empire could hopefully be reigned in before the blowback
worsens.

Reason on Ron Paul here.