Recipe for a Good Society
Rod Dreher, in The Dallas Morning News Points section, is having second thoughts about the horse he backed in the Presidential race. He was a Mike Huckabee supporter in the primaries, then was torn in the general election. He couldn't support John McCain because of his hawkish position on the Iraq War, but he couldn't support Barack Obama because of his support of women's rights regarding abortion. He couldn't bring himself not to vote at all, so he wrote in the name of farmer-poet Wendell Berry (don't ask).
Belatedly, Rod Dreher now regrets that America didn't listen to Ron Paul, although he recognizes he was "eccentric" and an "old crank." Dreher says Paul was right in criticizing America's foreign policy for meddling in the Middle East and was right in his libertarian economic views. Dreher didn't vote for him, but now nominates him for Texan of the Year and the hope for reform and restoration of sanity to the Republican Party and ultimately, the US government.
Well. There's a reason why "old cranks" don't get elected. It's because they are usually extremists and extremists don't govern well, whether from the right, from the left, or from Libertarian outer space. NPR's Marketplace recently interviewed economist and health-care expert Victor Fuchs, who explained what Americans look for in a health care system, and, I would argue, in government in general:
"I want efficiency, and I want justice. I want freedom, and I want security. Now as an economist I know that there have to be trade-offs. I can't have all the freedom and all the security that I would like to have. And that's where the judgment and the political balance comes in. We may have to give up a little bit of efficiency in order to get more justice. On the other hand, I would hold up a stop sign to those people who say, "Well, the only thing I'm interested in is security and justice. And I don't give a hang about freedom and efficiency." That's not right, either. What we have to some extent is, I would't say a polarization, but we have a lot of people who take extreme positions one way or the other. And that's not a recipe for a good society."Ron Paul's libertarianism is good at delivering freedom, but not security. With libertarianism, efficiency and justice are fortuitous outcomes when you get them, and the free market's responsibility when you don't. "Not my problem," is the libertarian's attitude. "No, thanks" is the electorate's reaction to the libertarian campaign pitch. Given that a criterion for being named Texan of the Year is having an uncommon impact don't expect Ron Paul to be honored. Old cranks get attention. Old cranks entertain. But old cranks don't have the recipe for a good society. Ron Paul is no exception.
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