In politics, there are two kinds of people.
There are monogamists: Whether out of ignorance, laziness or safety, you will always stand by your party. Sure, in some cases, you’ll get a divorce (or an annulment, to keep matters square) and find love in the arms of that party you used to deride.
The rest, spend untold years oscillating between various classifications and parties, before finally giving up. You realize, even if one party is easier on the eyes, she’s still low-down, unchaste and brainless.
We even try dispensing with these party affiliations, and think ourselves more honorable for being a “Conservative,” “Liberal,” “Classical Liberal,” “Libertarian,” “Socialist,” or “Tea Partier.”
It never works.
I find it easy to just say I’m a “Conservative,” yet given the developments of the last thirty or forty years, I can’t say it always feels comfortable. Especially when some “Conservative” voices dispense with the last two centuries of American Conservatism (in the tradition of John Adams, John Marshall, Calvin Coolidge, Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater and Russell Kirk) and condemn some of the most conservative voices in modern day politics for holding none-other than traditional conservative views.
Whenever I hear someone speak on behalf of all Conservatives, as if they were just ordained Pope of Conservatism, I know I am about to get an earful of Neoconservative, Nativist, unhistorical, Jingoistic tripe.
In the last two debates, Ron Paul has been condemned for his positions on federal drug laws, and State licensing of marriages. A chorus of “Conservative” purists has excommunicated him as a lousy “Libertarian” for holding these “extreme” views.
Are these “Conservatives” delusional, or just unprincipled? One cannot condemn unconstitutional Socialism, while coveting the byproducts of unconstitutional Socialism (e.g., government drug and marriage regulations).
On drugs, Paul’s view is 100% in line with the late Milton Friedman’s view: A champion of most of these “Conservatives.” Friedman understood that criminalizing drugs not only exasperated the problem, but that it created unintended new problems (high incarceration, inflation in the drug economy, and supporting international drug monopolies known as cartels).
More importantly, it assumes the State is entitled to regulate personal choices, even where those choices are only harming the individual making the choice. This is not liberty. This is the criminalization of sin, inasmuch as the Prohibition of alcohol unsuccessfully attempted to criminalize sin. It is a slippery slope, for where does one draw the line? Why not criminalize Fast Food, gambling, smoking, pornography and premarital sex as well? The social ills of these lifestyle choices are infinite. But rest assured that no one’s going to throw you in prison for eating too many Big Macs, or for drinking too many cocktails (at least not after 1933).
This is not an argument about whether ‘drugs are good,’ it is argument about whether Federal drug laws are, firstly, constitutional, and, secondly, wise.
Given the data, we can conclusively determine that these laws are not wise. Saying drug laws are good because they prevent drug use, is like the saying the federal department of education is good because it educates people.
What is more insufferable about the whole debate, is that while this 75 year old man who has clearly never used a recreational drug in his life is being ridiculed as “pro-heroin,” it is widely known than the last three U.S. presidents all used marijuana and cocaine in their youths. While it is heartwarming to see these men send their wives out to talk to youngsters about staying off drugs, one has to wonder how the lives of George W. Bush or Barack Obama would have turned out had they been caught and imprisoned under these wonderful drug laws. Isn’t it lucky for them they were able to defy these wonderful laws so successfully?
On marriage, Paul, who has been married fifty years to the same person, prefaced his opinion in the debate two nights ago, stating that we all know what the definition of marriage is. Like with drug laws, this is not about whether same-sex marriage is a good thing.
So is it a Federal issue? Of course it is not. At most, it is a State issue. Ron Paul is not running for governor, he is running for president. Just as I don’t care what he thinks about legalized gambling in Nevada, I don’t know why his ringing endorsement of traditional marriage is important (and shouldn’t his personal life speak for itself, here?).
What he did not say is that States ought to be forbidden from passing laws on marriage. Instead, he suggested State-involvement at any level is, like with drug laws, unwise. For this “Conservatives” label him extreme and dangerous.
The standard line of politicians for the past twenty years has been “the States should decide the definition of marriage.” Had Ron Paul said this like Clinton, Obama, Bush and McCain, all these Neoconservatives would be praising him as a solid Federalist. Instead, his instinct was that government should not be involved in this area of private family life, and that churches should decide.
For more than a century of American history, the States were not heavily involved in marriage. The same can be said for most of human history. It is only because the States now regulate nearly all of our private activities (adoption, health care, social security, divorce, and death) that it has become “necessary” to have a State-approved definition of marriage.
In other words, it is another byproduct of central-economic planning, and why I think so many “Conservatives” are either delusional or unprincipled when they say, “Yes to the Constitution! No Socialism! … well, but you know, come to think of it, some unconstitutional socialism is kind of good sometimes, when it supports traditional values!” (So, the ends justify the… well.)
This is the cycle in which central-economic planning thrusts a society. Because we pay taxes to the State, which in turns provides and regulates all of our needs, we tend to have objections when the State is endorsing things we disapprove of. Suddenly, we are all in one big “collective.” If I am against same-sex marriage, I don’t want my government endorsing it, or legitimizing it with State privileges. That’s entirely reasonable.
Rarely does it occur to us that the State should not be providing most of these privileges and services in the first place. If they did not, marriage licensing would be moot. The debate about marriage would be purely social, rather than legal.
But we never get this far into the debate. Like in 2008, some “Conservatives” are happy to ignore all the substance of what someone like Ron Paul is saying, and replace it with hyperbolic distortions. “Abolish the drug laws? You sir, are a puppy rapist!”
It doesn’t have to be Ron Paul. Anyone who deviates from the Party-platform of the day will be treated like a circus freak, as the loudest voices in the Party tell us who we are supposed to treat as “electable” and who is “extreme.”
George Washington once warned against the “baneful effects of the spirit of party.” Today, he would be labeled an unelectable extremist. Most importantly, he would never overcome the appeal of Mitt Romney’s hair or Herman Cain’s banality.