In his, \u201cRon Paul, Hookers, and Heroin,\u201d nationally syndicated talk show host Michael Medved has once more indulged his obsession with Ron Paul.<\/p>\n
Paul is a \u201ccrackpot,\u201d Medved says, because of his insistence \u201cthat government has no more right to interfere with prostitution or heroin than it does to limit the right of the people to \u2018practice their religion and say their prayers\u2019\u2026.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is correct that during the first Republican presidential primary debate in South Carolina, Paul did indeed analogize the federal government\u2019s relation to drug use and prostitution to its relationship to the practice of religion.\u00a0 Just as Americans have long recognized that their <\/em>liberty to practice or refrain from practicing any religion of their<\/em> choice requires that all other Americans be equally at liberty to make this same kind of choice, so too should they realize that the liberty to engage in the \u201cpersonal habits\u201d of one\u2019s choosing depends upon others being able to do the same.\u00a0 \u201cYou know, it\u2019s amazing,\u201d Paul remarks, \u201cthat we want freedom to pick our future in a spiritual way but not when it comes to our personal habits.\u201d<\/p>\n And what this in turn implies is that just as our Constitution prohibits the federal government from interfering in the exercise of religion, so too should it be read as proscribing the federal government\u2019s interference with such \u201cpersonal habits\u201d as recreational drug use and prostitution.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is \u201c[a] First Amendment type <\/em>issue,\u201d Paul declares, that, in the interest of protecting \u201cliberty across the board,\u201d should be turned over exclusively to the states to manage.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n For these remarks, Medved bombards Paul with a litany of ad hominem attacks.\u00a0 In addition to calling him a \u201ccrackpot,\u201d he refers to him as \u201cthe Mad Doctor\u201d and attempts to besmirch Paul by accusing him of \u201cproudly\u201d associating with such disreputable types as 9\/11 Truthers and \u201cHolocaust denying neo-Nazis.\u201d\u00a0 Paul, Medved continues, used the first Republican primary debate as an opportunity to \u201cstake out exclusive territory on the lunatic libertarian fringe.\u201d\u00a0 He is \u201caddle-brained,\u201d a \u201ccrotchety candidate,\u201d a \u201csad caricature of conservative and libertarian ideology,\u201d and \u201creckless.\u201d\u00a0 Paul\u2019s \u201clogic\u201d is not only \u201crotten,\u201d but \u201cputrefying\u201d at its \u201ccore.\u201d\u00a0 And just to be sure that his profound insights into the intellectual and moral dimensions of Paul\u2019s character haven\u2019t been lost upon the reader, Medved wraps up his brilliant case for Paul\u2019s institutionalization by referring to him as \u201cDr. Demento.\u201d<\/p>\n For the last 12 years, from the time I began <\/em>working on my master\u2019s degree in philosophy, I have taught various course in philosophy, from ethics to political philosophy, philosophy of law to philosophy of art, world religions to logic. Had a student of mine submitted a paper as poorly reasoned, as fallacy ridden, as Medved\u2019s article on Paul, he would not have fared well.<\/p>\n However, once we turn to the shoddiness of the talk show host\u2019s arguments against Paul, it is not difficult to understand why he had to resort to abusive name calling.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Medved makes two arguments against Paul\u2019s point of view.\u00a0<\/p>\n First, he charges the Texas congressman with inconsistency: if the First Amendment proscribes the feds from interfering with transactions involving drugs and sex, then it as well proscribes the states from so doing, for in 1925, the Supreme Court \u201cfederalized Bill of Rights protections.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n As I already pointed out, Paul did not <\/em>say that this was a First Amendment issue.\u00a0 What he said is that it is a \u201cFirst Amendment type<\/em>\u201d issue.\u00a0 The First Amendment proscribes the federal government from interfering with the practice of religion.\u00a0 Because religion is a \u201cpersonal habit,\u201d as Paul says, and personal habits are exercises in liberty, the \u201cpersonal habits\u201d of drug usage and prostitution should also be protected from the federal government.\u00a0 In other words, while neither the letter of the First Amendment nor the Bill of Rights generally mentions drug usage and prostitution, the spirit of \u201cliberty across the board\u201d for the sake of which the Constitution and, specifically, the Bill of Rights exists demands that the federal government relinquish its tentacles from \u201cthe personal habits\u201d of citizens.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is another way to meet Medved\u2019s charge of inconsistency.\u00a0 Paul could always reject as genuinely constitutional the Supreme Court decision to which Medved alludes.\u00a0 After all, the U.S. Supreme Court is a branch of the federal government.\u00a0 <\/em>That the federal government, then, presumes to dictate to the states that they are as equally obliged as itself to observe the Bill of Rights could only be seen by Constitutionalists like Paul as but another instance of the federal government\u2019s extended project of undermining the liberty of the states.\u00a0<\/p>\n To put this more bluntly, Paul could say to Medved that the latter begs the question.\u00a0 It is as if a Christian tried to convince a Jew that Jesus really was the Messiah by alluding to the New Testament\u2014a document that Jews reject as divinely inspired.\u00a0<\/p>\n Medved\u2019s second charge against Paul is much weaker than the first. Paul\u2019s \u201clunatic libertarian\u201d position, Medved asserts, centers on the \u201cprovocative (and preposterous) claim that the First Amendment and \u2018protection of liberty across the board\u2019 forbid limitations on even the most dangerous drugs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Either a lack of charity or a lack of rudimentary logic on Medved\u2019s part could have given rise to such a straw man.\u00a0 When Paul claims that Constitutional liberty precludes the criminalization of drugs and prostitution, contra Medved, he is most certainly not claiming that it precludes \u201climitations on even the most dangerous drugs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n After setting up his wild distortion of Paul\u2019s position, Medved proceeds to point out that the legalization of \u201cperhaps the most commonly practiced \u2018personal habit\u2019 in American culture,\u201d alcohol consumption, \u201chasn\u2019t stopped authorities from limiting the hours of bar service or, in numerous \u2018dry\u2019 counties or states, prohibiting the marketing of liquor altogether\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 Medved has really nailed Paul here!\u00a0 Well, actually, he hasn\u2019t.\u00a0 The truth is that a call for the legalization of currently illegal drugs is no more a call for a literally laissez faire<\/em> approach to their sale, distribution, and use than is a call for the continual legalization of a legal drug like alcohol synonymous with a demand to abolish all regulations on its<\/em> sale, distribution, and use.<\/p>\n Medved either cannot or will not grasp these not too terribly fine distinctions, for he continues this theme of Paul\u2019s \u201clibertarian instinct to condemn as unconstitutional any <\/em>governmental role in the economy\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 As if arguing with himself, Medved then responds to his own straw man with but another fallacy, what logicians since Aristotle have called \u201cthe complex question,\u201d a rhetorical question designed to assert precisely that which needs to be argued: \u201cWould anyone claim that protecting liberty guaranteed a right to advertise some phony, falsely packaged \u2018miracle cure\u2019 for cancer that did significant harm to those who purchased it, or for a public market to offer dead cats labeled as ground sirloin?\u201d<\/p>\n I wish I could say that I am as guilty of misconstruing Medved\u2019s position as he is guilty of misrepresenting Paul\u2019s.\u00a0 But, sadly, this really is as good\u2014or bad\u2014as it gets for Medved\u2019s argument.\u00a0 He apparently really thinks that Paul\u2019s invocations of liberty for a smaller, more constitutional government, is an argument for the practical abolition of government.\u00a0 In reality, though, libertarians like Paul recognize the need for and desirability of a strong government capable of doing many things, among the most important of which is safeguarding citizens against exactly the kind of fraud and deceit to which Medved alludes.<\/p>\n And, as I hoped to show here, this is just the kind of fraud and deceit of which Medved\u2019s attempt to pass off his analysis of Ron Paul as anything other than a piece of fiction convicts him.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jack\u00a0Kerwick, Ph.D.\u00a0<\/p>\n originally published at The New American<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In his, \u201cRon Paul, Hookers, and Heroin,\u201d nationally syndicated talk show host Michael Medved has once more indulged his obsession with Ron Paul. Paul is a \u201ccrackpot,\u201d Medved says, because of his insistence \u201cthat government has no more right to interfere with prostitution or heroin than it does to limit the right of the people…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n