Mitt Romney\u2019s decision to honor Ron Paul with a video tribute at this year\u2019s Republican National Convention didn\u2019t sit well with some on the right.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In an article appearing in National Review Online<\/em>, \u201cThe Problem with Paul,\u201d Jamie M. Fly and Evan Moore give expression to this angst when they refer to Romney\u2019s and the conventional planners\u2019 decision as \u201cridiculous,\u201d \u201cregrettable,\u201d and \u201ca mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n The authors begrudgingly acknowledge that, given Congressman Paul\u2019s number of delegates and the vocal nature of his supporters, the \u201cconcessions\u201d that \u201chave already been made to them on extraneous issues during the drafting of the platform\u201d and the allocation of a speaking slot to Kentucky Senator Rand Paul are understandable.\u00a0 Still, they contend, \u201cpaying tribute to Representative Paul is a step too far.\u201d<\/p>\n Moreover, as if to disabuse Paul and his supporters of any doubts regarding their fellow partisans\u2019 feelings toward them, Fly andMoore add that \u201cinstead of honoring Paul on the way out, the delegates in Tampa should be cheering his departure.\u201d\u00a0 They explain that Paul \u201chas left a legacy of extremism and falsehoods that need to be driven from the party, not embraced by it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important to remember how far outside the mainstream Paul and many of his supporters are,\u201d the authors continue. The views of Paul on which the authors set their sights, as Paul\u2019s supporters and their opponents have by now come to expect, pertain to foreign, not domestic, policy.<\/p>\n Fly and Moore are incensed specifically about Paul\u2019s position on the issue of Iran.\u00a0<\/p>\n Paul views the current preoccupation with a potentially nuclear Iran with the same cool skepticism\u2014and even ridicule\u2014with which he greeted the talk leading up to the war inIraq.\u00a0 Just as hysteria was the order of the day back in 2003, so hysteria is fueling our discussion over Iran.\u00a0 We are once more \u201cbeating the war drums,\u201d Paul has said.<\/p>\n Fly and Moore criticize Paul for allegedly painting \u201ca picture of a peaceful and benevolent Islamic Republic that has never actually existed.\u201d\u00a0 They also refer to his argument as an \u201capologia for the ayatollahs\u201d and judge it to be \u201cas absurd as it is dangerous.\u201d\u00a0 Furthermore, they contend, \u201cit is wholly irresponsible for anyone who aspires to national leadership\u201d to take the position that Paul takes.<\/p>\n Paul\u2019s objectors also allude to his \u201ctrail of similar factual errors and conspiracy-mongering on issues ranging from the defense budget to America\u2019s position overseas, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even the origins of the attacks of September 11, 2001 [.]\u201d<\/p>\n For several reasons, Fly\u2019s and Moore\u2019s argument is woefully inadequate to the task of supporting their main thesis.\u00a0 The primary reason, though, is that it isn\u2019t much of an argument at all.<\/p>\n But there are other considerations that expose it for the cluster of aspersions and emotional appeals that it is.<\/p>\n First of all, neither now nor ever has Paul taken an interest in depicting Iran or any other country either as \u201ca peaceful and benevolent Islamic Republic\u201d or along any other lines.\u00a0 He is concerned with insuring that the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and other international contracts are observed by all parties\u2014including the United States.\u00a0 His understanding of those terms may be erroneous or arguable\u2014but this is hardly uncommon when it comes to matters of law, whether domestic or otherwise.\u00a0 And his case for his position may conjure up an inaccurate image of a party in question, but this scarcely justifies the verdict that he is an \u201cextremist.\u201d<\/p>\n My second point relates to this last.\u00a0 For all of the frequency with which they are used in our public discourse, t-shirt, bumper sticker terms like \u201cextremist\u201d are not befitting of any remotely genuine intellectual exchange.\u00a0 To put it bluntly, it is a conversation-stopper.\u00a0 \u201cExtremism\u201d is a politically or emotionally-charged word that is meaningful only insofar as it reveals how its user feels <\/em>about those against whom he is leveling it.<\/p>\n Thirdly, Fly, Moore and all Republicans who supported and who continue to support something like George W. Bush\u2019s \u201cfreedom agenda\u201d in the Middle East should take care against accusing others of extremism.\u00a0 In droves, war-wearied Americans flocked to the polling booths in 2006 and 2008 to relieve Republicans of power.\u00a0 From this time to the present, poll after poll continues to show that Americans don\u2019t attach nearly as much importance to foreign policy as do Fly, Moore, and their ideological ilk.\u00a0 Furthermore, most Americans believe that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were mistakes, and they positively eschew the robust interventionism favored by Paul\u2019s Republican critics.<\/p>\n That even Republicans know this is born out by the fact that this Republican National Convention was the first such convention in 60 years that omitted all explicit references to war.\u00a0 Instead, we had euphemistic talk from the likes of John McCain of America\u2019s leadership in the world, etc.<\/p>\n In short, it is not the foreign policy views of Paul, but those of Fly and Moore, that are \u201cfar outside the mainstream.\u201d\u00a0 It is their views that are \u201cextreme.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, the criticisms of Fly and Moore are not unlike those raised by almost all of Paul\u2019s detractors in the GOP inasmuch as they center exclusively on his foreign policy vision.\u00a0 But to focus on the latter in isolation from the larger understanding of liberty that informs it is like ridiculing the Catholic sacrament of communion independently of the theological vision that makes it a sacrament. It is like commenting on a piece of a puzzle while ignoring the puzzle.<\/p>\n It is true that Paul regards the conventional foreign policy promoted by the likes of Fly and Moore as both disastrous and dangerous.\u00a0 Yet even if he perceived it quite differently; even if he thought that it promised the most wonderful of consequences for our nation and the world, he would still oppose it with all of the passion that he opposes it now and with which he would continue to oppose the welfare-state, regardless of whether he could be convinced that the redistributive schemes of the social engineers haven\u2019t always come to naught. \u00a0<\/p>\n There is one very simple reason for this: it undermines liberty.\u00a0<\/p>\n Liberty\u2014not some universal abstraction, but the concrete, particular way of life to which Americans have grown accustomed over the span of centuries\u2014consists in a wide dispersion of power.\u00a0 It consists in decentralization.\u00a0 In the popular parlance, liberty is comprised of a \u201climited\u201d\u2014an exceptionally limited\u2014<\/em>government, a government essentially divided against itself.<\/p>\n In stark contrast, the enterprise upon which Fly and Moore want to continue to embark our country and to which Paul has always been vehemently opposed, demands a gargantuan government.\u00a0 There is no two ways about this.<\/p>\n Talk radio host Dennis Prager is no fan of Ron Paul.\u00a0 But Prager has coined an expression with which Paul wholeheartedly agrees: the larger the government, the smaller the citizen, and the larger the citizen, the smaller the government.\u00a0<\/p>\n Paul rejects the foreign policy of Fly and Moore (and Prager) because he realizes, even if they don\u2019t, that it can\u2019t but have the effect of diminishing the citizen.<\/p>\n If this is the sort of person who Republicans want to banish from their party, then it should be honest and abandon, once and for all, all of their rhetoric of \u201climited government.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mitt Romney\u2019s decision to honor Ron Paul with a video tribute at this year\u2019s Republican National Convention didn\u2019t sit well with some on the right.\u00a0 In an article appearing in National Review Online, \u201cThe Problem with Paul,\u201d Jamie M. Fly and Evan Moore give expression to this angst when they refer to Romney\u2019s and the…<\/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-575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n