The Tragedy of Ron Paul

Interestingly, the warm feeling I am getting does not have much to do with the fact that Paul is worse than a kook (you should click and read Jamie's piece). Rather, it is always satisfying to see a libertarian candidate crash and burn--something which forces libertarians to face the reality that their philosophy has almost no appeal. Now, it's certainly true that Paul was far from the ideal libertarian presidential aspirant, but he did raise an obscene amount of money and garner an insane amount of publicity. Moreover, he was running in the Live Free or Die state in an open Republican primary (against a weak GOP field). And he still couldn't get 10 percent of the vote!

But back to the Schadenfreude. Again, what happened to the appeal of libertarianism? Where were the great and good American people irate over the Federal Reserve and smoking bans? Do we not care about liberty anymore? Whither freedom? -- Isaac Chotiner, The Plank

I wish to insist that Ron Paul would have received as many votes as Chris Dodd if he had been running a libertarian campaign. From the beginning, Paul's campaign has been not libertarian but constitutionalist, which is to say, libertarian only insofar as it's constitutionalist. What this means, and as I have also been saying from the beginning, is that Ron Paul is not, to the frustration of virtually all his libertarian supporters, a cultural libertarian. The crushing impact of Jamie Kirchick's newsletter piece is really confined to hammering this point home for libertarian Paul fans who were most anxious about his cultural conservatism to begin with.

It is absolutely farcical to pretend that Paul fell short of expectations because he was a libertarian, and even more preposterous to conclude that this is evidence of the triviality and unpopularity of the libertarian creed. In fact, as I never tire of alleging, cultural libertarianism is engaged in a protracted rout of fuddy-duddy moral authority -- both here and in Europe, but most noticeably here, where it has, ever since some time after "Be My Baby" and before "Hey Joe", triggered an often massive yet always marginalized effort among beleaguered and increasingly desperate religious conservatives to prevent the collapse of the culture they love by recourse to a politics that hates them.

What really is happening is that constitutionalism, not libertarianism, is running out of steam, which is to say, people nowadays are increasingly libertarian only insofar as they are not constitutionalists. Libertarians win when politics is not part of the conversation. When it is they lose, and they lose because the libertarian political argument can't help but be at least partially constitutional without flying on high in Nozickian blue tomorrows. The constitutionalist candidates, Paul and Thompson, are not getting it done, and I regret to point out that this is because most people don't really give a damn about adhering to the Constitution, the Constitution is an impediment to maximizing the odds of partisan victory, the Constitution is deemed morally quaint on both sides, and constitutionalism a brittle and impractical doctrine. Perhaps this will change if Romney or Clinton implodes, but probably not regardless, and the conventional wisdom will continue to pride itself on its breezy capacity to act as if people who care about liberty are libertarians first and not constitutionalists. This is quite repugnant, and the great moral repugnance for their man now felt by Paul's cultural libertarian supporters is tragic because it seals the deal on an issue that only he successfully dragged out from the dungeon in which everyone would rather it be kept: the progressive irrelevance of the Constitution to the governing principles and administrative practice of American politics.

Comments

[Robert C. Cheeks]

Constitutionalsim dead? Yes, but I'll go to my grave an anti-Federalist!
You should examine this premise at length, I'd enjoy reading your conclusions. Are we then, the Athenians? And, who is the tyrant?

[Butler T. Reynolds]

Decades of public schooling does seem to have that effect on peoples' view of the Constitution.

[Roach]

Paul's an unserious candidate; if he were, he'd at least control his message.

As I said in a debate on the Reason blog, at least the paleolibertarians thought logically and realized if you opposed federal overreach, you had to probably dislike FDR, Lincoln, etc. They also seem to forget people then and in the 80s and 90s were libertarian/constitutionalist for bread-and-butter reasons: distaste for government wealth redistribution to lazy parasites, hatred of meddlesome affirmative action, and general antipathy to alliance of big government and countercultural. Hence, the rheotric of welfare queens in the 80s.

[Alex Cacioppo]

You know, it's good to see, every so often but these days few and far between in this cloud of chatter and shrill intellectual debauchery, intelligent and perceptive commentary like yours. Yes, the Constitution has become irrelevant; I came to that conclusion myself two years ago, just before the mid-terms. It ought to make us all ashamed, but it's no less true.

[KipEsquire]

While I concur fully with your analytical framework, I dissent from your nomenclature.

To call Paul a "constitutionalist" (as opposed to the far more accurate "neoconfederalist") is to give him credit he does not deserve.

I see much evidence that Paul is utterly contemptuous of the Fourteenth Amendment. I see no evidence that he is respectful of the Ninth Amendment. He rejects all the "constitutionalist" foundations for a presumption of liberty from non-federal (and not just federal) government action.

Unenumated rights, substantive due process, heightened scrutiny (indeed, judicial review itself), incorporation of the Bill of Rights -- all irrelevant to Paul's political philosophy.

There is more to being a "constitutionalist" than an obsession with Article I, Section 8.

[me]

Boy, you guys are easy to fool with misinformation.

[Ayn-al Rand]

Libertarian can never fail!

It can only BE failed!!

All my glibertarian friends and me, like, TOTALLY thought Ron Paul wasn't a real Libertarian... I just forgot to mention it until a day after his campaign humiliatingly crashed and burned in New Hampshire!

[Rensdog]

I think you should take the time to find out properly what paul and his campaigns' about. Seriously. You might learn something.

[Ron Paul Supporter]

The most important freedom is the freedom to own niggers!

How DARE that nanny-state RINO, Abraham Lincoln, violate our precious freedoms that way!

Doesn’t he know that big gubmint meddling in the economy is always destructive??

[Roach]

I love ignorant comments like Rensdog, as if you haven't indicated in your posting that your IQ is many orders of magnitude above his, most Paul supporters, and a lot of other people.

[Sirius Patriot Producer]

FYI: This post was read on Air on the Mike Church Show today on Sirius's Patriot Channel. There will be a link to the audio (mp3) later today.