Topic: Libertarianism
The Closed Opening McCain is winning, dragging one endorsement after another. The Conservatives don't want this man. Why isn't Ron Paul getting anywhere with this?by Kishi
(Centrist)
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
I was reading in the Washington Post, today, about the goings-on in the Republican Party. And I think it's interesting to see what's happening. Senator McCain is winning elections - he just swept the Potomac Primary, as of this article - and yet something is very peculiar about his victories. He's barely scraping them out.
Overall numbers indicate that he received fifty percent of the vote for the region. That's one out of two, folks. That's plenty of room for the good Dr. Paul to sneak in and win the hearts and minds of the right. There are still seventeen states and 992 delegates out there. He's still in the running, even if he's splitting his energy to run for Texan Representative again. But that's a joke race, really: he's the incumbent. He can do no wrong. People may complain about Congress and give it a bad approval rating, but it's never the fault of whoever represents them. So few people actually vote in those things anyway, and the opponent he'll deal with is too dumb to actually get that the election's already been won.
So most of his energy should still be focused on the presidential election. And what a great time for it! He couldn't be in a more perfect situation. The party's been split: McCain's too liberal for the "true conservatives," Romney's out of the running, and it's still six months to August. He should be jamming it right now, fighting tooth and nail for every vote, smashing his competitors as a true conservative who will preserve their values and their policies.
So, even if McCain gets fifty percent, Ron Paul should have something to measure up with, right?
Except not: Huckabee got away with forty percent of the overall vote, and the MSM made no mention of the remaining ten percent.
This is absolutely ridiculous. And while it's easy to scapegoat the MSM - they're a big piece of it, for sure - I think there's something else at work. It just doesn't make any sense. Former Romney supporters, instead of throwing behind the real conservative, are fiercely submitting to McCain's candidacy. There's a genuine sense of hopelessness about this. Either they hold their noses and bow under to McCain, or they run to Huckabee's camp.
So much for the Libertarian belief in the individual. What is it that's stopping individuals from going out there and voting for Dr. Paul?
Again, the media is easy to blame for this. How could the outlets not be? The news is a business, and its goal is to make money. It's almost strictly mercenary. If they received the money to endorse a candidate, they'd do it.
But that's not the only reason that Paul's being snubbed right now. If it were, the solution would be easy: throw money at them for air time and get the exposure to get the votes. It wouldn't even have to be the mainstream, where everyone is. He could just throw at the local outlets in each state. It'd be less expensive, and people always watch local news. He'd own it if he'd just do it. And with all the talk around here of how much money he made through donations, well, he could do it, couldn't he?
Maybe it's the fault of the conservatives. Given that 'conservative' is a byword for 'war-loving religious' and that Paul isn't selling himself on either of those two points, it makes sense that he would have a hard time with them.
The liberals didn't help him either, because he believes in capitalism and small government.
So, in short, he's had three forces at work against him since the beginning. But surely he has a force working for him, doesn't he? Something other than dogged determination. Oh, that's right: the vaunted 'grassroots movement,' the untainted idealistic youth of America who have seen past both the conservatives and the liberals, and realized that neither has the answer we need.
Honestly. Who came up with this idea? The grassroots movement is a Facebook/MySpace phenomenon only. People joined up just so they could boast and say that they were for Ron Paul. In the months up to this point, I have seen grassroots displays - a banner across a bridge, bumper stickers in random places - only five times.
Ron Paul, in reality, does not have a grassroots movement. He's a fad. He's an accessory in the tiny worlds of tiny people. None of these kids actually have the drive or the self-belief necessary to be the individuals the Libertarians believe so much in.
And I guess, in a roundabout way, that the Libertarians are part of the problem behind Ron Paul's candidacy. Even given as many factors as there are working against Dr. Paul, these would be so solvable if Libertarians got together and did something about it. Paul needs something to push him forward. He can't do this alone.
For crying out loud! Can't they see that the conservatives don't want McCain? All those Libertarian folk have to do is just write some letters and tell their representatives and their senators what they want. Isn't that what they're about? Making the government work for them? The only things I've seen Libertarians do is sit around, smirk about their superiority, and trounce people in debates.
Libertarians have the talent to do some incredible things. They just don't. The tragic part about Ron Paul's failure is not that Libertarians were powerless to stop it. It's that they had the power to do so and they simply didn't.
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2008 Kishi, all rights reserved.
Published: Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Last modified: Wednesday, February 13, 2008
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You're pretty much totally on target. Libertarians are good at outrage and calling for revolution. They are *not* stupid, the so-called "Paultards" , even at their most annoying and illogical, are easily capable of demolishing seasoned debators on the net -- or off.
The problem, very simply, is they aren't in touch with "popular reality".
Libertarians hold a strong belief in individualism and in "everyone doing their own thing, and harming no one else". That hasn't been the spirit of this country for a long, long time. The Depression wounded it, and the Golden 50's and the Hippie 60's murdered it dead.
Libertarians are hoping that people get outraged by the things that they do. And some people are -- but then there's some part of the Libertarian message that outrages them *more*.
The reason people are going totallly McCain or Huckabee is summed up by a conversation I had yesterday with a friend about Ron Paul. He said "He says a lot of good things, and I've read his stuff, but ain't nothing he's saying been proven to work, and for everything he says I like, there's something I don't like".
Only people fully in line with Paul are voting Paul, about 10%. The rest? Fiscal conservatives uncomfortable with Huckabee are voting McCain, the evangelicals are voting Huckabee. The conservatives in the middle don't see enough of what they want to vote Paul, so most of that's split.
It's a shame, really. They have so much energy, all to waste.
Definitely. I want to see their views taken seriously, just like I want to see statists taken seriously. They have some good ideas to bring to the table, but they deal so heavily in abstractions that people just don't get it.
"Isn't that what they're about? Making the government work for them?"
No, Kishi, that is not what Libertarians are about. Why would we want to have the Government working for us? The Government doesn't work! If there is anything a Libertarian knows, it is this; if you want something done right, do it yourself. I agree that we "have the talent to do some incredible things". We're trying, though I will admit, not with all our might. I think in the long run we will do incredible things. 10% is the tipping point.
I understand what you're saying. In a Libertarian world, that would be absolutely true.
This is not your world. For better or worse, you have a government to manage. Get rid of it if you want to, but short of a bloody coup, it's yours to take care of it until it's dismantled. As long as it's there, it's more efficient to use it to get things done.
I mean, really. I'd like to think that Libertarians have some kind of brilliant trick up their collective sleeve, but I'm not convinced. Instead of trying to outright slay the institution, why not work with it?
We don't ever know what tomorrow will bring. I think that there will be surprises ahead and we need to be more tenacious as Dr. Ron Paul is and we need to double our efforts, get the numbers in and read www.dailypaul.com/node/37509 there are lawyers there and there are three pages of comments and it's exciting news. We are donating more and continuing our door-to-door - the response is exhilerating. We are in a tiny place and expected 10 people at our first meet up group and we had over 60. I have found that people are so happy to meet a Ron Paul supporter. Onward!
I think the voting system should be slain. We don't know how many votes were taken from Dr. Ron Paul and given to the Mikes, the Mitts, the Julies, and the Mcs. Do we? Are we confident?
Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2008-02-14 08:17:50
Arguing that libertarians don't do anything like writing to their representatives in Congress or writing letters to the editor is simply false. That's what organizations like Downsize DC are for...to organize massive contact of representatives. Tens of thousands of libertarians send messages to their representatives every week. Letters to the editor of local papers don't make national news, but a simple exploration of Google will tell you that it happens all the time.
The problem isn't that the grassroots don't exist. They do exist, and they do what they can to support liberty. The problem is that the numbers simply aren't big enough yet for the national breakthrough we have craved.
The fact that you don't acknowledge in your article (although you hint at it) is that statism is popular right now, both among the political leaders and among the major media. So long as that's true, that's the basis for the steady diet that Americans are getting in their political soup. This is an almost overwhelming phenomenon to overcome.
Just as the original American Revolution took more than a dozen years to finally come to fruition from the time of the Stamp Act to the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, so also the current revolution may take many years to achieve its goals. Given the path this statist trend is following, a dozen years from now Social Security will be recongized as bankrupt (or at least insolvent), Medicare will be hanging over us like a dark cloud, foreign involvement will be so deeply entrenched and destructive to American morale that it will have become a living nightmare, the dollar will have been so badly destroyed that our economy will be in a nearly ruinous condition...I could go on and on. Given all that, I have high hopes that the revolution, if it can hang together, can finally break through. At some point, the American populace is going to ask themselves and their leaders, "How can we turn this around?" That will be our opportunity.
I'll concede that it was arrogant of me to say that all Libertarians are doing nothing. What I wrote is based on the observations I've made of the Libertarians I've met locally, as well as the social trends and the results thereof. The Libertarians I have observed locally are basically inactive. They talk a lot about their Libertarianism, and I'm sure if they were sending letters to their editors or the statesmen, they'd mention it. But there's nothing.
The college grassroots movement, as traced on Facebook, comprised about 75,000 members at its height. That's a small number, but not that small. It's enough that it should have been able to make people aware of the issues at stake in a simple, concrete way that would be easy to understand. This hasn't happened.
You may talk about it, and there are Libertarians acting. Nonetheless, there is little to show for your labors. It seems to me that there is a disconnect here between what you're saying and the results. It's not a question of you having few members. It's a question of you having few active members. I still posit that the majority of you folks are in it for the social bling.
And you're right, statism is the incumbent, and it's going to take some big problems before you guys actually have a chance. I agree with you on that. It's a sad state of affairs, that we don't all get equal share in this.
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2008 Kishi, all rights reserved.