WoodenPickle

• For all the words used before, I left one of the most important parts of this discussion foggy. I was reminded of this by watching the following Fox News clip.

It is the Right, as much as the Left, that wants this controversy to be a debate about “racism.” Because the political right in America is largely consolidated- they don’t really have to pitch to a very diverse audience. Even liberal whites I know in the American midwest and south show more White Resentment than White Guilt. They fully believe that “racism” is mostly a “card” played by people in political discussions. Even those who delight in racist jokes and stereotypes AUTHENTICALLY BELIEVE they are not ‘really’ racists- because they avoid some of the most extreme stances. I think the key intellectual difference is largely viewing the “degeneracy” of the racial/ethnic group as a cultural, rather than biological, problem. This allows them to feel confident that they can give every individual black/hispanic/jew/whatevs a ‘fair chance’…. while being viscerally reactionary about them as a group.

Any bad political move that can be tied to race as an issue has a built-in defense- “the race card.” Framing the issue as a matter of an individual’s supposed bigotry allows the audience to enact is self-defense on behalf of the candidate. “Their they go again… making everything about Race— trying to make us look like bigots- even though we only judge people on an individual basis.” This resentment is vastly underestimated by most political analysts I read. The Fox News personalities know this very well, and tap into the reverse-race-baiting move instinctively and with pitt-bull-on-jugular focus.

Note what gets left out of this conversation:

• What is the difference between “Big Government” and Government? This guy’s simplistic defense of Paul is that government action is ok- just not the big stuff. That’s the heart of the controversy: where do you draw the line? Paul’s line is famously a very very restrictive one. In 2002 he explicitly argued that the federal government over-reached by banning private housing discrimination (a 1968 law) in an editorial he wrote to his local paper. He went through 2 tv interviews and a bunch of flack before he REVERSED his argument, and supported the ’64 CRA.
• So NOW he’s on record defending the government’s right to regulate PRIVATE business policies. This means that he has abandoned the philosophical foundation of his opposition to a WHOLE LOT of other government regulations. If civil rights are involved, the Big Government can FORCE private citizens to uphold common values.
• He had already made this move on abortion (he thinks the Feds can have an active role in it) as well as drugs (same thing). Now we’re into a complicated and subtle debate about public policy where “freedom from government tyranny over private choice” is a matter of degrees. This does NOT fit the narrative of the Tea Party types very well- because the outrage and hyperbole that make for good tv (a la Glenn Beck) and radio (a la Rush Limbaugh) and rallies (a la Sarah Palin) does much better with broad brush strokes.

I guess my take-away from this is that the neutering of this libertarian IS partly a mainstream media blitz to pin the Tea Party phenomena down. But remember, he COULD have stood firm on his principles. He CHOSE not to because of the shame we collectively feel about the fact that if consistently applied, his principles would have left folks trying to desegregate lunch counters at the mercy of the property-owners. There’s very tangible evidence that the free market in this instance was TOTALLY INADEQUATE.

He flipped because he had to: anti-establishment rhetoric is constrained by the evidence of history. Giving him a pass because he’s not bigoted is clearly beside the point.

So, Rand Paul (the GOP nominee for the Senate from KY) leans pretty strongly Libertarian. Since LOTS of folks have started describing themselves this way, I thought I’d jot down some thoughts about his shaky first couple of days in the national spotlight.

In case you don’t follow politics much, the short version of the story is this:

• Paul, like his father Ron Paul, leans pretty far toward the Small Government camp
• also like Dad, he tries to be intelligent and consistent with these views
• once he won his primary in KY and declared himself evidence of the Tea Party revolution- the national media started to pick on these anti-government views by running through some examples of government actions that Paul would likely not be able to support BUT are also VERY VERY popular
• They started with the 1964 Civil Rights Act
• He wants/needs to be consistent with his small government views— but in front of a national audience he knows that it’s really stupid politics to say that he would have voted against the Civil Rights Act

I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more. As a student of Rhetoric, I always expect there to be strengths AND vulnerabilities to any particular political position. When we’re being Fancy we refer it all the way back to Protagoras’ (5th century BC) notion that all thinking is structured by opposition (dissoi logoi). We need a contrast between the foreground and background to notice forms- and likewise it is a clash of ideas that allows sharp thinking.

So, when someone is trying to be consistent and intellectually honest when applying their positions, we can expect there to be some rough spots. Small government types tend to skate pretty easily on the popularity of conservative themes– but if consistently applied, one is likely to be Very far from the mainstream on a bunch of issues. This is politically treacherous ground for Libertarians, even if they tend to avoid this kind of argument in the communities that they represent. Paul, who is a strong favorite to be among 100 US Senators next year, will be a sharp example of these tensions.

A couple of take-aways from this admittedly boring and pointless post:

• the personal attitudes of Dr. Paul when it comes to Race are not the central issue here. He can Love or Hate whoever he wants without changing the dynamics of this controversy- this is about what the world would look like if we consistently applied his principles
• inflexible anti-government stances are mostly popular in the abstract. Our history if FULL of examples that are both Big Government AND super-duper popular… and for those theming themselves as Libertarians, there’s trouble in these waters
• the most specific Dr. Paul has been about the underlying thinking here is to say that Public acts of discrimination should be banned, but private acts of discrimination can’t be regulated because Freedom is an overriding concern— THIS WILL NOT WORK FOR LONG. It’s a machete where we need a scalpel. Prostitution is a private consensual economic arrangement. Likewise with drug procurement, abortion, oil drilling, etc. And we regulate THE SHIT out of those things. FOR GOOD REASONS that aren’t likely to change any time soon.
• The Left (and Center) will ALSO have to stop playing Gotcha with this one long enough to deal with Paul’s reversal of the argument. When he says that the 2nd amendment is also made to be flexible by our deference to private property- this is, at first glance at least, a plausible flip-side to the controversy. If fundamental rights are absolute- they must be absolute. He’s not changing the subject here exactly, he’s trying to hold his opponents to a similar standard of consistency.
• My prediction: he caves fast on this one, admits some flexibility to his application of the Limited Government principle, loses some hard-core supporters, and becomes a mainstream politician. Like most national conservative figures, he’ll learn to treat the anti-government rhetoric as an abstract concern- and rely on more intuitively satisfying reasons for specific policy decisions.

Jesus, this post sucked. Political blogging is hard.

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