{"id":269,"date":"2011-11-03T21:21:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-04T01:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=269"},"modified":"2011-11-03T21:21:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-04T01:21:00","slug":"the-real-reason-republicans-dislike-ron-paul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/11\/the-real-reason-republicans-dislike-ron-paul.html","title":{"rendered":"The Real Reason Republicans Dislike Ron Paul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although his commitment to \u201climited government\u201d is unsurpassed, establishment Republicans in both politics and the so-called \u201cconservative media\u201d labor incessantly to discredit Texan Congressman and GOP presidential contender, Ron Paul.\u00a0 On its face, who couldn\u2019t judge this phenomenon, the phenomenon of the most vocal champions of liberty ridiculing and trivializing the <\/em>most vocal champion of liberty, as anything other than bizarre?\u00a0 Any remotely curious observer couldn\u2019t resist the impulse to inquire into the roots of this enigma.<\/p>\n

We needn\u2019t dig too deeply to discover that the establishment Republican\u2019s apparently irrational conduct toward Paul stems from his angst regarding Paul\u2019s foreign policy vision.\u00a0 Paul, you see, rejects in no uncertain terms the notion that Big Government is not only permissible, but desirable, <\/em>as long as it is non<\/em>-American citizens abroad upon whom our <\/em>government\u2019s designs would be brought to bear.\u00a0 Loudly and unapologetically, he rejects the idea that \u201csocial engineering\u201d is a good thing as long as it is other <\/em>societies that our government seeks to \u201cengineer.\u201d\u00a0 Paul makes no secret of his utter contempt, <\/em>a contempt born of his passion for liberty and individuality, for the belief that policies rooted in utopian fantasy are worthy of pursuit as long as it is not America, but the world, <\/em>that our government seeks to perfect.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Ron Paul is persona non grata as far as \u201cthe leadership\u201d as well as <\/em>much of the rank and file of the Republican Party is concerned.\u00a0 How could he not be?\u00a0 After all, this shameless defender of the United States Constitution is relentless in his quest to expose the assumptions underlying their foreign policy prescriptions as members of the same species of folly as those informing the left\u2019s vision of domestic<\/em> policy.<\/p>\n

To put it more specifically, Paul strives to remind Americans of the legacy bequeathed to them by their ancestors, an invaluable inheritance of individual <\/em>liberty that those of past generations, through incalculable quantities of their blood, sweat, and tears, forged for their posterity.\u00a0 Our Fathers and Mothers, like our fathers and mothers, Paul beckons us to remember, worked long and hard so that we, their children, would eventually be able to stand on our own two feet.\u00a0 They longed for us to not just appreciate their gift of liberty, but to enthusiastically embrace it.\u00a0 Paul urges us to be forever mindful that it is this enthusiasm, and only<\/em> this enthusiasm, that stands between our liberty and the totalitarianism that always <\/em>threatens to consume it.<\/p>\n

Big Government, whether it is invoked for purposes of imposing designs upon foreign countries or our own, is intrinsically <\/em>antithetical to the liberty for which our Fathers lived and died.\u00a0 This any disciple of liberty knows.\u00a0 This Ron Paul knows.\u00a0 And it is the forgotten knowledge of this truth of which he tirelessly seeks to arouse within his countrymen and women.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I still believe that it is Paul\u2019s position on American foreign policy that elicits most <\/em>of the disdain with which his fellow Republicans greet him.\u00a0 But I am starting to believe that there is more to the matter than just this. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t just Paul\u2019s approach to foreign <\/em>policy with which Republicans take issue; they are displeased as well with his disposition toward domestic <\/em>policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Note, it isn\u2019t just Paul\u2019s position on this <\/em>or that <\/em>domestic issue to which they object.\u00a0 It is his entire understanding <\/em>of which these positions are a function that they find unpalatable. More precisely, Republicans, for all of their talk of liberty, find repugnant Paul\u2019s view on the proper relationship between the government and the citizen, politics and culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ron Paul is an apostle of traditional American liberty.\u00a0 The vast majority of us are our Founding Fathers\u2019 prodigal sons (and daughters) who, at 76 years old, Paul continues to call home.\u00a0 From early on in Christian history, some of its brightest minds have sought to address \u201cthe problem of evil,\u201d the problem of reconciling belief in an omnipotent and all loving God with the presence of evil in the world.\u00a0 Usually, a resolution has been found in some variation or other of \u201cthe free will defense.\u201d\u00a0 According to this line of reasoning, God could have created human beings so that they never did evil, but He preferred a creation in which humans were free<\/em>, for only with free agents could He have a genuine relationship.\u00a0 However, the freedom to accept <\/em>God\u2019s offer of friendship inescapably entails the freedom to reject <\/em>that offer.\u00a0 To put it another way, the freedom to do good is also the freedom to do evil.\u00a0<\/p>\n

God<\/em> recognizes that there can be no virtue without freedom.\u00a0 Ron Paul does too.<\/p>\n

It is precisely because of his recognition of this fact that Paul opposes all attempts to diminish individuals\u2019 liberty for the sake of some amorphous \u201ccommon good,\u201d some supposedly moral state that the government is entrusted with bringing to fruition.\u00a0 More simply put, he staunchly opposes attempts to impute to the federal government the role of a parent, <\/em>for if the government is a parent, then the citizen is its child.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

While it isn\u2019t obvious to many, the plain fact of the matter is that most of Paul\u2019s fellow Republicans are no less committed to what we may, for purposes of convenience, refer to as \u201cthe Welfare State.\u201d\u00a0 The \u201ccompassionate conservatism\u201d championed by President George W. Bush and legions of other self-described \u201cconservative\u201d politicians and media personalities in the previous decade was just another term for \u201cwelfarism.\u201d\u00a0 And though \u201ccompassionate conservatism\u201d has fallen on hard times\u2014no current Republican presidential aspirant would dare to characterize him or herself in these terms\u2014there is no denying that Republicans have and continue to abet the growth of government vis-\u00e0-vis their approach to domestic policy.<\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t a single redistributive scheme that Republicans have sought to revoke, and plenty that they have actually initiated.\u00a0 But beyond the matter of \u201ceconomic redistribution,\u201d Republicans want to use the government as an agent of \u201ccharacter formation.\u201d\u00a0 Rick Santorum is as pure an illustration of this propensity as any.\u00a0 From this perspective, the government must inculcate virtue in its citizens.\u00a0\u00a0 The notion, common to Democrats and Republicans alike, that politicians generally and the president in particular are \u201cleaders\u201d is a function of this belief.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The pieces of this puzzle of Republicans\u2019 reaction to Ron Paul\u2019s advocacy of liberty and individuality are finally in place.\u00a0 They support a philosophy of Big Government and he does not.\u00a0 It is his stances on foreign and <\/em>domestic policy that renders Ron Paul the object of their scorn.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

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

originally published at The\u00a0New American<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although his commitment to \u201climited government\u201d is unsurpassed, establishment Republicans in both politics and the so-called \u201cconservative media\u201d labor incessantly to discredit Texan Congressman and GOP presidential contender, Ron Paul.\u00a0 On its face, who couldn\u2019t judge this phenomenon, the phenomenon of the most vocal champions of liberty ridiculing and trivializing the most vocal champion of…<\/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-269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Real Reason Republicans Dislike Ron Paul<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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