On: Ron Paul – A question of liberties

by: Joshua Howell

Contrary to the conceived wisdom, Republicans aren't searching for the 21st century Ronald Reagan; they're looking for a modern day Barry Goldwater. They don't want a president who, like Mr. Reagan, will bail out banks; who, like Mr. Reagan, will raise taxes; or, who, like Mr. Reagan, will leave office with a stronger national government and more federal bureaucrats.

Practicality (and a healthy portion of context) be damned, Republicans yearn for someone who will reaffirm Barry Goldwater's famous conservative aphorism: "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

Such cravings explain the ongoing flirtation with Ron Paul, who began his executive aspirations not as a Republican, but as a Libertarian in 1988.  Since, Mr. Paul has cemented his place as an influential member of the right. He has written numerous books on libertarianism, effectively founded the Tea Party, and become a strong contender against Mitt Romney, the de facto Republican nominee. Indeed, with his near constant exhortations of "liberty" and "intellectual revolution," Mr. Paul seems a prime candidate to follow in Mr. Goldwater's ideological footsteps.

Yet voters have right to be wary; Mr. Goldwater was demolished in the 1964 election, and things will only be more difficult for his successor.

Unlike Mr. Goldwater, Mr. Paul must contend with the religious right, which only entered the GOP during the Reagan Era, but now represents a sizeable portion of Republicans. Mr. Paul also faces an international threat more nebulous than the communists of the Cold War, which makes a coherent foreign policy more difficult to find.

His most challenging obstacle, though, is this: Support for libertarianism has a ceiling, and for good reason.

If intrigued, watch this 1988 episode of Firing Line, in which William F. Buckley, Jr. — the harbinger of conservatism and a good friend of Mr. Goldwater's — continually bested a younger Mr. Paul in an hour-long discussion on libertarian philosophy.

Ron Paul (right) with William F. Buckley, Jr (left) on a 1988 episode of Firing Line 

Said Mr. Buckley in that iconic voice: "As someone who occasionally calls himself a libertarian, I regret the extent to which the libertarian position is discredited by positions via a kind of reductionism that is simply incompatible with social life."

Quite right. If Mr. Paul can be accused of anything, it's reductionism. In but one sentence Mr. Buckley acknowledges what Mr. Paul (and many of his supporters) fails to: Liberty is complicated.

It's easy, when waxing philosophic, to refer to liberty as an ideal in which all can partake unmolested. But when determining the laws by which a society must abide for its preservation, we find that liberty (in the singular) is in reality a series of liberties (in the plural), and that these liberties, more often than not, rub against one another.

Consider the Hobbesian case, in which one's liberty to murder is superseded by the other's right to life. Such an exchange is not only uncontroversial, but beneficial.

Now up the ante. What happens when protestors display their rights to speech and assembly, but in so doing, and by breaking no laws, significantly disrupt surrounding business practices? Again, we have a conflict of liberties.

And what of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (a particular sticking point of libertarians everywhere, including Messrs. Paul and Goldwater), which rescinded individual property owners' right to serve whom they pleased, and exchanged it with another, better right: that of any and all persons to make use of public accommodations? Once more, we are engaged in a trading of liberties.

This last example undergirds the truth (or complication) that ultimately constructs libertarianism's ceiling of support: the status quo inevitably offends the liberty of some, which, a posteriori, implies that a government doing something can be as good, if not better, than a government doing nothing. Subsequently, it falls upon us, as a democratic republic, to decide which liberties are maxims, and which can be exchanged or infringed upon for the betterment of society.

To parse these questions, we often employ John Stuart Mill's thesis in On Liberty: "The only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of a civilized community, against [one's] will, is to prevent harm to others."

(And like any good democratic republic, there is plenty debate as to what constitutes "harm.")

But until libertarians like Mr. Paul realize how complex the enterprise of liberty really is, he — and his son for that matter — has not the faintest hope for the White House.

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