Recent revelations about the Holder Justice Department have pointed out some disturbing facts that are neither political nor philosophical.
They are managerial. They deal with responsibility and accountability.
The long and short of it is, Holder had to either be witheringly incompetent or criminally neglectful not to know what his minions were doing with Operation Fast and Furious.
The same goes for Ron Paul.
A professed Libertarian with a big “L,” I’m beginning to have my doubts. For no true libertarian with a big L would knowingly recruit, much less command an army of know-nothings in the name of constitutional integrity.
We all, when we have a chance for a convert, put conservatism’s best foot forward. An inner city missionary, when he picks a man up out of the gutter, helps him get a bath, hot food and a cot, but then he ends by telling him about God, then gives him a Bible. “Here, read this. We’ll talk again.”
I don’t know his process of missionizing, but what I know of Dr Paul’s books, and what he says on the stump is not what is being poured into the heads of tens of thousands of many of his professed followers. It is far darker.
Now understand, every political party, including the GOP, and movement, including conservatism, has its fringe elements. But we don’t recruit them. Any enemy of their enemy…
And kooks measure infinitesimally small among us, so no one feels compelled to have to explain them away.
But how can one be unaware of the know-nothings when they measure up to more than a quarter of your support?
Let me explain the disconnect.
The Libertarian’s Main House
On the Big L side, the author of many books on the Constitution and principles with which most conservatives agree, Dr Paul stands as a personal stalwart against the intrusions of the state. But in twenty years, he has still yet to create a caucus of other like-minded constitutionalists in Congress. There are many there, but all seem to look elsewhere for leadership and guidance, including other Libertarians, such as Judge Anthony Napolitano and John Stossel, who have gathered staunch followers (even among conservatives) on both intellectual and common sense grounds.
Big Ls tend to think of Libertarianism as a set of personal guiding principles from which they evaluate all life, not just the political landscape. They do not see it as a guiding set of principles for governance. And most, knowing the pure evil of the Left, will not vote the Libertarian ticket in 2012 for, if a true conservative should get the GOP nomination, they know an L-vote will be a Yes vote for Obama.
I’d always believed Ron Paul was a Big L.
From the Main House to the Garage Band
But out back, on the Little L side, much like the legions of lefties occupying whatever portion of Wall Street they haven’t pooped on, Dr Paul is also godfather to throngs of me-me-me social libertarians who could care less about the Constitution except for the rights they think were written specifically for them. Little L’s do not carry baggage one ordinarily associates with Big L Libertarianism, such as intellectual curiosity, self-reliance and independence. Much like the 60’s hippies who were Lefties until the day they came into their trusts, but still want the “legal freedom” to smoke their dope, so they dislike any system of government that enables the common herd, the majority, the masses, the C students, to be able to deny them anything they want to do. That whole 10th Amendment thing.
So, they also generally dislike the universal franchise, but can find no constitutional way for an elect elite to be able to live by its own personal set of rules, making them genuine contrarians. Besides, the Left has already adopted personal privilege for the elite as its theme song. If only they’d drop all that socialist bookkeeping…
Little Ls are not uneducated, usually had better grades, but do not study, as a Big L might study the Constitution or Burke. And do not think too deeply about anything. They don’t feel the need to inquire. Intellectually they are superficial, almost all their philosophies based on their appetites and feelings. They are me-centered and generally uncaring about the other guy. Riven with insecurities, sociologically they are almost identical to their peers on the Left.
From the Garage to the Steerage Compartment
Lastly, it is from the same social origins of the Little Ls, only far less educated, that we find a growing army-within-an army in Ron Paul’s legions. They aren’t into reading The Federalist, or Adam Smith, or even the Cliff Note’s versions, and certainly not the collected works of Ron Paul. In fact, most have never read a book. Not one. Not even an Illustrated Classic.
How Ron Paul reaches them, I am not sure. But it is not with literature.
What is troubling is why Ron Paul is reaching out to them at all. He seeks them out, he doesn’t stumble across them. They are the result of a deliberate recruiting plan.
But it’s not to stick a Bible in their hands, for whatever grievance they have, a few minutes with the Paul camp and they walk away reinforced, not redirected.
I know several, have talked with dozens more, but have yet to find one who can articulate any of Ron Paul’s beliefs about government or the Constitution. I’m quite sure none of them have ever read it, or know what the 5th, or 14th is. I have yet to talk to a Steerage-dwelling Paul supporter who even knows what the Fed is, or who Woodrow Wilson was. Most have never balanced their own personal budget so are a little fuzzy on budgets, income tax and “s**t like that”. ( A true quote.)
And all these kids have a beef…with the system.
None were never A-students. But many thought they should have been, only they never got a break. Only the black kids got breaks. Even if they weren’t bullied, they were intimidated, and there is a lot of resentment against blacks in Ron Paul’s steerage compartment.
Likewise, the fact that they can’t make ends meet…most are males, and unmarried…has nothing to do with the fact that they spend $75 a week on fast food. Ron has given them a bogey man. It is the fault of the banks, Wall Street, and yes, the Jews that they sit so low on the totem pole.
Every bogey man can be turned into a straw man, and it has been this way for nearly eighty years now. This is how Hitler recruited in the 30’s, and Obama as we speak.
A high number of them also believe Bush and Cheney were behind 9/11. That’s their conspiracy de jour. And they generally believe in a New World Order, but not sure how it works. I’ve yet to hear of them talk about the Elders of Zion, but, hey, you’d have to read to know about that. Not much street talk about the Elders.
How did Ron Paul insinuate himself into the dens of 9/11 deniers? Don’t know, but he has, and he’s not running them off. He’s embracing them.
Time to account for the Ron Paul’s Steerage Class
Inasmuch as they fill as much as a quarter of the so-called voting strength of Ron Paul’s armies, unlike the less than .001% kooks who voted for George W Bush, I think Ron Paul needs to stand accountable politically just as Eric Holder should.
If he is trying a kind of Libertarian outreach to the lost, I’ve yet to find evidence of it. If he’s trying to lead his flock away from preconceived notions about race, bigotry, economics, and paranoid conspiracy, I’ve yet to see evidence of it. Instead, although I don”t know how, he feeds them on this garbage, for with every encounter, they are renewed, revitalized.
Unlike Big Ls, when Ron Paul bolts to the L-Party nomination, they will bolt with him. And when he falls 138 million votes short, they will have yet a new conspiracy theory to explain how he was cheated.
Every day Barack Obama pitches his jobs plan with a pack of lies to a crowd he knows don’t know the truth and are too stupid to find it. Those are the children you see on Wall Street today.
Ron Paul, to the best of my knowledge, does not stand on a podium and lie to the cameras or the crowds, yet he has recruiters who do, relying on the same thing Barack Obama does, a legion of followers who are too uneducated to question what he says.
