{"id":236,"date":"2011-09-25T19:01:50","date_gmt":"2011-09-25T23:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=236"},"modified":"2011-09-25T19:01:50","modified_gmt":"2011-09-25T23:01:50","slug":"the-american-spectator-and-ron-paul-setting-the-record-straight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/09\/the-american-spectator-and-ron-paul-setting-the-record-straight.html","title":{"rendered":"The American Spectator and Ron Paul: Setting the Record Straight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not too long ago now, The American Spectator <\/em>contributor Jeffrey Lord authored a couple of articles within which he takes to task third place Republican presidential contender Ron Paul.\u00a0 Because some of Paul\u2019s most earnest defenders have already dealt in good measure with the first, it is on the second of these critiques of theTexas congressman that I will set my sights.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lord\u2019s objective, to put it bluntly, is to expose Ron Paul as a faux conservative, a less than fully honest libertarian who aspires to \u201cremake\u201d the conservative movement in the image of his own \u201cmetaphysically\u201d and morally corrupt ideology.\u00a0 In Lord\u2019s reimagining of the history of American conservatism, Ronald Reagan is the hero while Ron Paul is his nemesis, the \u201canti-Reagan.\u201d<\/p>\n

With all due respect to Lord, I find his argument more than a bit peculiar.\u00a0 In order to convict Paul of the charge of ideological fraudulence and \u201cmetaphysical madness\u201d\u2014Russell Kirk\u2019s description of choice for libertarians\u2014he leads his readers through a series of mazes of names and quotations.\u00a0 In and of itself, this attempt of Lord\u2019s to supply us with something on the order of an abridged intellectual history of conservatism is to be commended, and the actual account that he articulates is not without value.\u00a0 Still, while it is valuable as far as it goes, it doesn\u2019t go nearly as far as it must if his case against Paul is to succeed.\u00a0 Unfortunately, for Mr. Lord, as it stands currently, his argument fails mightily, and what is most ironic, it owes its defeat to nothing other than itself.<\/p>\n

Outside of that of William F. Buckley, the two main voices that Lord calls forth in his effort to condemn Paul as an enemy of conservatism belong to Russell Kirk and George Nash.\u00a0 The former is among \u201cthe fathers\u201d of the postwar conservative movement that arose in the mid 1940\u2019s, and the latter is an esteemed student of this movement, the author of the widely respected, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Now, neither Kirk nor Nash ever refers to Paul himself.\u00a0 But they do <\/em>reference Murray<\/em> Rothbard.\u00a0 <\/em>This, presumably, is germane to Lord\u2019s analysis because Rothbard, apparently, is among those whose thought left an indelible impress upon Paul.<\/p>\n

Being the historian that he is, Nash neither criticizes nor praises Rothbard but, rather, locates him\u2014along with such luminaries of the classical liberal tradition as F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises\u2014within the libertarian branch of the early conservative movement. With Kirk, however, matters are otherwise.<\/p>\n

Because Kirk\u2019s reputation as a progenitor of \u201cmodern\u201d American conservatism is questioned by none, and because he had no small measure of scorn for libertarianism generally and Rothbard in particular, Lord evidently thinks that by citing Kirk, he will render self-evidently irrefutable his indictment against Paul, for the latter, you see, drew intellectual sustenance from Rothbard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This argument, like all arguments of this species, is a double edged sword.\u00a0 Indeed, how can it not be?\u00a0 Once we embark upon the enterprise of implicating so-and-so in the doings of such-and-such on the basis of a relationship of a sort between them that some third party judges to be bad, it is all too easy for the accused to employ the same exact kind of reasoning against his accuser. \u00a0Lord, we will see, is especially vulnerable to being snared by the trap that he lays for Paul.<\/p>\n

The first point of which we must take note is that for one intellect to be inspired by another, they need not fuse into one.\u00a0 To any remotely educated person, I would imagine, this is a proposition the truth of which is obvious.\u00a0 The \u201cguilt-by-association\u201d tactics that he employs against Paul notwithstanding, even Lord, with just some gentle prodding, will have to concede their illegitimacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas are not only perhaps the two greatest Christian thinkers to whom Christendom can lay claim; they are among the greatest thinkers who have ever lived.\u00a0 Yet Augustine was as ardent a disciple of Plato\u2019s as Aquinas was a student of Aristotle.\u00a0 In fact, it has been said that Augustine \u201cbaptized\u201d Plato into the Christian faith while Aquinas did the same to Aristotle. Both Plato and Aristotle, living as they did centuries before Christ in the ancient Greek world, were pagans or heathens.\u00a0 Would Lord or any one with a modicum of sophistication dare suggest that Augustine and Aquinas are \u201cfrauds\u201d because they were inspired by Plato and Aristotle, respectively?<\/p>\n

The examples of Augustine and Aquinas are but two among a virtual infinity of such examples that we could enlist to illustrate the folly of thinking that any two people must be intellectual or ideological clones just because the one is in some measure indebted to the other.\u00a0 It may very well be an understatement to say that Lord is a champion of Ronald Reagan.\u00a0 Would he, though, appreciate being identified with every <\/em>policy and every <\/em>action taken, every <\/em>belief held and every <\/em>word uttered by the Gipper?\u00a0 We should hardly think so.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Or perhaps we should approach the question of the character of Lord\u2019s thought in a manner comparable to that in which he approaches the topic of Ron Paul\u2019s conservative bona fides.\u00a0 Lord all but claims that no genuine conservative would dare so much as insinuate that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity\u2014two figures upon whom he heaps endless praise\u2014are anything but rock-ribbed, full throated conservatives.\u00a0 But from 2001 to the end of 2008, Limbaugh and Hannity provided practically unqualified support to both President George W. Bush as well as his Republican dominated congress.\u00a0 Yet this was an administration and a congress that were responsible for an historically unprecedented growth of the federal government.\u00a0 There is scarcely anything that Bush and his Republicans did while they wielded the lion\u2019s share of power that any observer with so much as a superficial acquaintance with it could sincerely and credibly confuse with conservatism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since Lord is a fan of Limbaugh and Hannity and they were fans of Bush, presumably, Lord is a fan of Bush.\u00a0 If so, that is his prerogative.\u00a0 Still, before the next election, it would only be right for him, through his article at a mainstream right-leaning publication like The American Spectator, <\/em>to inform readers that, in his judgment, in spite of their gestures to the contrary, neither Bush nor the members of his Republican congress have anything whatsoever for which to apologize.\u00a0 They are conservatives and they governed as such.\u00a0 In any event, if Ron Paul must buy everything that Rothbard sold lock, stock, and barrel because the former admired the latter, then, on the terms of his own reasoning, because Lord admires Bush and Republicans like Limbaugh and Hannity, we are left with no option but to conclude that he endorses every idea that they have ever pronounced upon.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The point, here, should now be clear: just because Murray Rothbard had an impact upon Ron Paul does not mean that the latter necessarily subscribes to all <\/em>of the former\u2019s beliefs.\u00a0 Rothbard is a self-professed anarchist.\u00a0 Paul, in sharp contrast, is a \u201cconstitutionalist\u201d\u2014i.e. he is a proponent<\/em> of government, albeit, constitutional <\/em>government.<\/p>\n

Secondly, when Russell Kirk delivers his verdict of \u201cmetaphysical madness\u201d upon libertarians of the Rothbardian variety, he has in mind, not primarily <\/em>their policy prescriptions as much as, well, the metaphysical presuppositions <\/em>underwriting those prescriptions.\u00a0 With their doctrines of \u201catomized individualism\u201d and \u201cthe Rights of Man,\u201d libertarians were, in his estimation, the heirs of such reckless \u201crationalists\u201d and \u201clogic choppers\u201d as the philosophes <\/em>of the French Revolution\u2014exactly those against whom his hero and the \u201cfounder\u201d of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke, set himself.\u00a0 In fact, it was in response to the robust metaphysical delusions of the rationalism that was rapidly overtaking his generation that Burke gave rise to what has subsequently came to be known as conservatism.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Neither Kirk nor Burke denies that there is a natural law, and neither denies that there is some sense in which human beings can be said to have \u201crights.\u201d\u00a0 However, these rights, far from being the \u201cself-evident,\u201d timeless and universal abstractions of the rationalist\u2019s imagination, are in reality the products of a culturally and historically-specific tradition.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Interestingly, Kirk\u2019s The Conservative Mind, <\/em>the very book from which Lord gathers his quotations of Kirk to convict Paul, via Rothbard, of \u201cmetaphysical madness,\u201d is ridden with shots at Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence.\u00a0 Kirk is quick to remind readers that Jefferson, having availed himself while drafting the Declaration of Independence of the very same idiom of \u201cself-evident\u201d and \u201cunalienable\u201d rights upon which the radicals in France would eventually rely, was unsurprisingly an apologist for their bloody revolution.\u00a0 At this juncture, Lord needs to be reminded that it is this rationalistic conception of rights, as it is expressed in the Declaration, that he and his ideological ilk invoke in justifying their <\/em>bloody revolution\u2014a Middle Eastern revolution that our last president euphemistically characterized as a \u201cFreedom Agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simply put, the very same grounds upon which Kirk judges libertarians of \u201cmetaphysical madness\u201d he can just as easily draw upon to convict Lord and his neoconservative Republican brethren of the same, for underlying the libertarianism of which Paul and Rothbard are representatives and the neoconservatism to which Lord, Limbaugh, Hannity, George W. Bush, Rick Santorum, etc. have pledged allegiance is one and the same metaphysically erroneous (\u201cmad\u201d) conception of rights.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another consideration that militates against Lord\u2019s insinuation that it is the standard libertarian foreign policy that Kirk disdains is the stone cold fact that the latter\u2019s views on this subject are much closer to those of Paul than those of Lord.\u00a0 Kirk, were he alive today, would be resoundingly lambasted by the Lords of our world for his \u201cisolationism.\u201d\u00a0 Kirk, the man who opposed the first Bush\u2019s invasion of Iraqand who spared no occasion to awaken his fellow countrymen (and women) to the mutually antagonistic relationship between war and liberty, would be regarded as persona non grata by today\u2019s \u201cconservatives.\u201d \u00a0Indeed, perhaps it is because of this that, in spite of the incalculable contributions he made to the very creation <\/em>of the modern American conservative movement, he is scarcely mentioned today.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Third, Lord draws upon George Nash\u2019s analysis of the conservative movement to imply that Paul and his defenders are being intellectually dishonest when they claim that his \u201cnoninterventionist\u201d foreign policy is in keeping with the conservative tradition.\u00a0 Yet if Nash can be said to contradict Paul on this score, he can also be said to contradict Lord, for according to Nash\u2019s interpretation, Rothbard and the libertarians as much belong to the postwar American \u201cconservative movement\u201d as did Kirk and his \u201ctraditional conservatives\u201d and James Burnham and his \u201canti-communists.\u201d\u00a0 On Nash\u2019s reading, there would be no American conservative movement without these three groups.<\/p>\n

Of course, Lord is free to quarrel with Nash\u2019s narrative.\u00a0 But he is not entitled to accept and not accept it at one and the same time.\u00a0 From Nash\u2019s perspective, Paul and <\/em>Lord are both <\/em>correct and <\/em>incorrect when it comes to the relationship between \u201cthe conservative movement\u201d and \u201cinterventionism\u201d: some of its adherents have embraced a more aggressive American foreign policy while others have resisted it.<\/p>\n

Finally, in the 2006 edition of his magisterial work, Nash adds to \u201clibertarianism,\u201d \u201ctraditionalism,\u201d and \u201canti-communism,\u201d two other components of the American conservative movement: \u201cneoconservatism\u201d and \u201cthe New Right\u201d or \u201cthe Religious Right.\u201d\u00a0 This is relevant to the present discussion because Lord misleadingly suggests that \u201cthe conservatism\u201d with which he contrasts Paul\u2019s libertarianism is the original or historical article that Paul has only recently arrived on the scene to \u201chijack.\u201d\u00a0 In truth, it is Lord and his ideological brethren who are the real newcomers to the movement, for the only conservatism that they are interested in advancing is neoconservatism. <\/em>\u00a0As Nash observes, neoconservatives are typically former \u201cNew Deal Democrats\u201d and \u201csocialists\u201d who only recently, as far as the life of the conservative movement is concerned, have begun to awaken from the darkness that has blinded them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In spite of the shoddiness of Lord\u2019s analysis and the lack of charity with which he treats Ron Paul, it is to his eternal credit that he takes the time to remind our contemporaries that the tradition with which they identify does indeed have a storied and complex history.\u00a0 In this, he supplies us with an invaluable service.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n

originally published at The New American\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not too long ago now, The American Spectator contributor Jeffrey Lord authored a couple of articles within which he takes to task third place Republican presidential contender Ron Paul.\u00a0 Because some of Paul\u2019s most earnest defenders have already dealt in good measure with the first, it is on the second of these critiques of theTexas…<\/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-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe American Spectator and Ron Paul: Setting the Record Straight<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The American Spectator and Ron Paul: Setting the Record Straight\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Not too long ago now, The American Spectator contributor Jeffrey Lord authored a couple of articles within which he takes to task third place Republican presidential contender Ron Paul.\u00a0 Because some of Paul\u2019s most earnest defenders have already dealt in good measure with the first, it is on the second of these critiques of theTexas…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/09\/the-american-spectator-and-ron-paul-setting-the-record-straight.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-09-25T23:01:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jack Kerwick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The American Spectator and Ron Paul: Setting the Record Straight","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"nofollow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The American Spectator and Ron Paul: Setting the Record Straight","og_description":"Not too long ago now, The American Spectator contributor Jeffrey Lord authored a couple of articles within which he takes to task third place Republican presidential contender Ron Paul.\u00a0 Because some of Paul\u2019s most earnest defenders have already dealt in good measure with the first, it is on the second of these critiques of theTexas…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/09\/the-american-spectator-and-ron-paul-setting-the-record-straight.html","og_site_name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","article_published_time":"2011-09-25T23:01:50+00:00","author":"Jack Kerwick","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/09\/the-american-spectator-and-ron-paul-setting-the-record-straight.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/09\/the-american-spectator-and-ron-paul-setting-the-record-straight.html","name":"The American Spectator and Ron Paul: Setting the Record Straight","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-09-25T23:01:50+00:00","dateModified":"2011-09-25T23:01:50+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/6832222998cc14717ded1849531201c5"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/09\/the-american-spectator-and-ron-paul-setting-the-record-straight.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/09\/the-american-spectator-and-ron-paul-setting-the-record-straight.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/09\/the-american-spectator-and-ron-paul-setting-the-record-straight.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The American Spectator and Ron Paul: Setting the Record Straight"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/","name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","description":"Beliefnet Voices - 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