Anyone who knows my politics knows the esteem I have for Boaz, the Cato Institute, and most other classically liberal names or institutions you can chuck up. So, it is with an especially heavy heart that I weave this critical narrative. The title alludes that David Boaz did nothing for the last installment of the liberty movement ala “Ron Paul Revolution”, but that isn’t exactly true. Instead, I think Boaz smacked liberty back a notch with this strange post on the CATO Institutes’s blog. But first, a primer:
Congressman Ronald Paul came to the 2008 Presidential elections with no money, no campaign infrastructure, and no name recognition. He arrived with only an idea, but his idea compelled hundreds of thousands of Americans to donate over $32 million and create the largest grassroots movement in history. College students gave up their entire Christmas breaks to sleep in cold New Hampshire cabins and canvas for 16-hour days. Quick-witted Texas judges held signs at conventions and out-smarted the likes of Hugh Hewitt. People like me spent hours trying to explain the more esoteric aspects of a Paul presidency for the masses.
Paul’s largest support base was not students, potheads, or southern militia members, though. It was the Unites States military. In fact, Paul received more donations from the Army alone than from any other single group. The military, as a whole, donated more to the Paul campaign than to all the other presidential campaigns combined, for two fiscal quarters in a row. Since military members are not afforded the right to free speech while in uniform, we can pretty much count on their checkbooks to do the talking. The experts on Iraqi progress had spoken. Along with so many other Paul supporters, many of them had spoken for the first time.
The more intellectual media took notice. Andrew Sullivan outright endorsed Paul. Glen Greenwald came close, but I suspect his more hysterical readers scared him off (see the final updates). Judge Andrew Napolitano did everything that his Fox News employer would let him get away with. Buchanan shilled for him all over the pundit circuit. John McLaughlin became a Paul supporter’s hero. Then, came the rest of the media: Tuck Carlson, Lou Dobbs, George Will, even Chris Mathews and Bill Maher gave Paul his propers. Then came some respectable endorsements: the highest ranking governmental libertarian, Governor Gary Johnson took up the charge and Barry Goldwater Jr. hit the campaign trail with Paul.
Professional scathers refused to scathe him. John Stewart was cordial and Colbert rose to his defense in satire, “that kind of crazy…sticks a little”.
Despite what could seem like momentum in retrospect, however, these positive mentions were notably isolated. In reality, there was a serious dearth of Ron Paul coverage. In fact, most coverage was rather negative with Fox News leading the charge. Almost every article posted on the web proceeded with “Paul can’t win, but…”. Some simply called him nuts off the bat. Fox was undeniably evil to Paul. They excluded him from some debates and mocked him in the rest. (Below is the clip that was just so putrid, even Fox couldn’t stomach rebroadcasting it). In the CNN/Youtube debate, CNN’s Anderson Cooper didn’t even bother to pick substantive questions for Paul (What are you going to do when you lose? Why are your supporters into conspiracies?) . Finally, MSNBC’s David Shuster (who was recently suspended for being an idiot) took cracks at Paul for saying the same stuff Judge Napolitano says all the time.
It wasn’t just ugly and gut-wrenching, it was stupid- stupider than I thought the press could ever get. While it was obvious that Paul’s political opponents (Giuliani) could earn some clout by attacking him for saying the same things an unguarded Cheney, Wolfowitz, and the 9/11 commission report already said, it was a complete surprise that the media would pick up on this attack-the-last-sane-guy-for-being-crazy attitude. They focused on his suggestion to maybe-possibly-sort-of remove the capital gains taxes on gold and other esoterica that Paul already promised would never work. But let us be clear about something: there was never a debate on the merits. No one could ever claim Paul was wrong. They just claimed he was crazy.
Supporters reacted in different ways. Some hounded journalists. Some took to canvassing. I wrote articles. Our candidate’s acceptability hung in the balance like Reagan in 1976. If only there were a major libertarian organization to concretize Paul’s candidacy…
The Cato Institute was supposed to set everything and everyone straight. They could out-argue everyone on economics. They could fill in the nuances between Paul’s 30-second soundbites. They could bring the old guard of limited government Republicans back into the fold. They would legitimize a helluva lot. David Boaz to Ron Paul could be like Bill Kristol to George W. Bush, except accurate in his predictions and not so deserving of a proper beating by the entire United States Military. And it was sure to come…I mean…if Bill Maher could say something nice about Paul, God knows the biggest libertarian think tank would bring it home. But nothing was happening. They just acted like he didn’t exist.
I had already read about the Ron Paul newsletters and had gotten over them, so I didn’t expect the hysteria surrounding them. When I read them, I had a moment of panic. “Jesus”, I thought “what if I’ve been supporting a closet white supremacist all this time?” Then I looked at his record on torture, habeas corpus, battlefield commissions, extraordinary renditions…extraordinary renditions for God’s sake! It would take a strange sort of xenophobe to grant habeas corpus to enemy combatants, but what kind of klansman cares about giving Afghanis due process? I was back on track with Paul. I was even proud of him again.
But then we had the fortune/misfortune of beating the snot out of Giuliani in Iowa, where (for the record) Giuliani made more visits than Ron Paul. Determined not to let that happen again in New Hampshire, someone made the call to skunk the election with these newsletters, again…except this time, with hype!
The fallout was to be marveled at. Andrew Sullivan still has not recovered. His endorsee for president rarely gets mentioned on his blog. The Reason Magazine guys tried to compensate by investigating every detail and then avoiding Ron Paul altogether. David Frum was as giddy as a schoolgirl. I suspect he won’t reach the same dopamine levels until McCain declares war on the entire Middle East. And then finally…David Boaz of the Cato Institute broke his peace, but just to slap us in the face:
And so it’s understandable that over the past few months a lot of people have been asking why writers at the Cato Institute seemed to display a lack of interest in or enthusiasm for the Paul campaign. Well, now you know. We had never seen the newsletters that have recently come to light, and I for one was surprised at just how vile they turned out to be. But we knew the company Ron Paul had been keeping, and we feared that they would have tied him to some reprehensible ideas far from the principles we hold.
Really? I mean…really? Boaz left the entire liberty movement twisting in the wind, not because of the newsletters, but because he knew Paul had friends who were capable of less-vile newsletters?
In hindsight, I wasn’t nearly as bothered by Boaz’s heretofore neglect of the rEVOLution, as I was offended that had the audacity to hurt it. It’s one thing to remain silent, but it’s another to construct a defensive posture by attacking Paul. He exaggerated Paul’s connection to the newsletters, and even criticized Paul directly: “That’s an odd claim on which to run for president: I didn’t know what my closest associates were doing over my signature, so give me responsibility for the federal government.” Apparently for Boaz, Paul’s platform consists solely of denying his connection to the newsletters. I suppose then, that Al Gore ran on a platform of having smoked weed as a teenager.
Really, the absurdity of this reasoning is incredible. Obama’s days of snorting smack are over. George Bush’s too. McCain thinks that we should have stuck out VietNam beyond the point where the public demanded withdrawal. But Ron Paul should be punished for something some provocateur wrote during the inception of the politically correct era. The guy who refuses the congressional pension program because he won’t enrich himself on taxpayer money, the guy who treated his patients for free because he refused Medicare, the guy who refused to spend the Social Security Trust…he’s not good enough because he didn’t guard his publication closely enough, 20 years ago. Way to demonstrate the courage of your convictions.
But I suspect the stink was motivated by something even stupider. Boaz admits what anyone who pays attention already knows, that Dr. Sweetheart just isn’t capable of writing that garbage. He didn’t edit it or even live in proximity to the newsletters’ place of publication. That is why this is especially unfair to the liberty movement- it alludes to something wholly unrelated to Ron Paul: a beef between Boaz and Lew Rockwell. Like two feudal lords who are more content to allow their people to be conquered than to reconcile old qualms, Boaz obstinately refuses to show up on the battlefield because he doesn’t want to help Rockwell win.
I should be charitable to Cato and Boaz, though. Even though, amazingly, Boaz mentions the newsletters as his foremost reason for keeping quiet and then attacking Paul, I suspect the auxiliary factor was a prevailing attitude at Cato that Paul doesn’t have a chance. So why bother? Cato’s Michael Tanner wrote an article that handicaps Paul several times. Perhaps if they saw Paul as more viable, they would have gotten onboard and looked past the hysteria. It’s just…well one would expect the libertarian support structure to make the effort before the GOP voters.
More importantly, we were never fighting this thing for the odds. We fought it for the stakes. With the specter of universal health care looming, there is no doubt that the U.S. is headed toward a socialist, populist trend that may very well be irreversible. Just try taking heath care away from little old ladies once it’s in place- no matter how ineffective it is. Worse, what does Boaz propose for the the Americans who will die in Iraq over the next four years? “Sorry kid, but your candidate just wasn’t wartless enough”? And how can Cato allow an entire generation of newly minted libertarians to slip back into an apathy-induced coma, when we could be building an infrastructure for the next libertarian candidate? I recently had a conversation with one of them. It went like this:
College Kid: “Ron Paul is the man! I totally agree with him about reducing the size of government, elimninating the income tax, and practicing social tolerance” (paraphrased)
Me: “Well, stay tuned because we need to be ready for the next libertarian candidate”
Kid: “yeah. I don’t know much about that party”.
Get it? He didn’t know libertarian from Libertarian. He agrees with the policy proposals, but he couldn’t explain the core tenets from which they issue. I am sure Obama will find him a replacement ideology, though. I know, because he told me Obama was his second choice.
The tragedy of all this is that so many libertarians who are content to mentally masturbate in perpetua ignore the very real social aspect in play. People will be robbed of their possessions by the federal government over the next four years. Innovation will be stymied. And not just a few military families will be wearing all black. Sure, Ron Paul might have lost anyway. But I would rather he lost without having a huge “what if?” hanging over our heads.
A few final points about how Boaz is dead wrong:
First, I disagree about whether it’s worthy to criticize Kirchick:
Mutterings about the past mistakes of the New Republic or the ideological agenda of author James Kirchick are beside the point. Maybe Bob Woodward didn’t like Quakers; the corruption he uncovered in the Nixon administration was still a fact, and that’s all that mattered. Ron Paul’s most visible defenders have denounced Kirchick as a “pimply-faced youth”.
Nonsense. Paul’s newsletters should be judged on their own merits, yes, but Cato and everyone else let Kirchick frame this issue for them. The day before he published his article, Kirchick was on national television claiming that Ron Paul speaks to white supremacists in a secret code that only they can decipher. He titled the article “Angry White Man” knowing damned well that Paul probably didn’t write them, but also knowing that he would plant the seed that Paul did. Meanwhile, the newsletters themselves…sorry, they weren’t all horrible. One or two were especially bad. The rest were just provocative. I listened to Johnny Carson say worse back then. The fact is that that this could have been spun either way. If Boaz bought into the gravity of this thing, he simply bought the Kirchick version. And he allowed Kirchick to gloss over the comparative immorality of Paul’s opponents.
Second, I think it’s foolish to fracture libertarians like this. Boaz somehow thinks Paul, an adherent of Rand, Friedman, Jefferson, Locke…etc isn’t a real libertarian. He puts “libertarian” in quotes when he’s describing Paul and he even refers to Paul as a conservative. It’s getting a little tiring watching libertarians line in a circular firing squad. Especially since their differences are so boringly nuanced. Maybe we should wait until we actually obtain a public office before we stab each other over intellectual property, or abortion…or whatever Boaz’s line of distinction is.
Finally, if Cato couldn’t overcome their beef with Paul or Rockwell, or us crazed supporters, they should have kept quiet. Now that the newsletter-thing has blown over, it is clear that there was never a risk of damage to the liberty movement at all. If anything, Boaz did more damage to it. He could have been content to acquiesce in the destruction of liberties, but he went even farther.
You see, I was never one of the Paul supporters who needed to believe Paul *would* win in order to keep going. I knew that we needed Cato or Greenspan or someone to say, “yeah, the Fed is a problem”, “yeah, gold makes good tender”. Greenspan ignored us. I know, because I wrote him a letter asking him not to. But Cato left us wishing they has ignored us. I know this took the wind out a lot of sails because I was on the front lines. So when I say to Cato, “thanks for nothing”, I’m being charitable.
In conclusion, I will still respect Cato and Boaz and I’m sure I will go to them for advice if I am ever in public office. I know that, like Ron Paul, Boaz adheres to the tenet of self-governance that inspired the Declaration of Independence. It’s just that, out of Paul and Boaz, I will stick with the guy who would have enough gumption to actually sign it.
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