Picking sides...

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I actually started writing a post on the Ron Paul's recent racist newsletter scandal and the conservative reaction to the same but jonathankorman beat me to the punch. As such I'm shifting the topic slightly to something that came up in the comments.

Now I like Ron Paul, As jonathankorman said;

He vigorously opposes American military adventurism and the military-industrial complex. He has pointed out how the financial industry has perversely benefitted from the financial crisis they created. He speaks in defense of civil liberties and has fought against attacks on them like the PATRIOT Act. He calls the War On Some Drugs the madness that it is. And often he says this stuff well.

But his response to the scandal namely, "I didn't know what was in the letters but I put my name on them anyway" has dramatically lowered my respect for him. You see, if he's telling the truth, such a decision demonstrates a high level political incompetance. What kind of fool would out-source his reputation in such a way? and what kind of fool would run for president without taking care of the skeletons in his closet first? If he did write those letters (even if he were simply playing to the crowd) he's simply dishonest and unwilling or unable to take the heat.

Niether of these qualities speak well of him, and to be frank I expect higher quality bullshit from my elected officials.

That said, I flinch internally anytime I hear someone frame an argument about politicians or policy in terms of good and evil. In my opinion you can either pick a team, or pursue the truth. When you frame an argument in such a way you've basically declared your preference for the former.

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I disagree. Some political viewpoints and some ideas are inherently evil, though identifying the ones that are morally and absolutely good is far more problematic. As I see it good is difficult to identify in any lasting sense, not least because politics in democracies works best with compromises and other actions that compromise morality but evil is quite clearly identifiable as extremes of various ideas and concepts. For example Zhang Xianzhong who reduced a city of 400,000 people to 20 and had a manifesto that might as well have been written by the Joker was pretty damn evil.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

For the record, I don't think that Ron Paul is in Zhang Xianzhong's weight class.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

You did, however, claim he was evil. His ideas are not and he himself is not. He's just a crazy extremist and that in itself does not make one evil. After all, there are crazy extremists who have done at least lesser-evil things (say, John Brown).

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

He's a crazy extremist who fundamentally is arguing that the US was better before the Civil War. He's taking the side of the Confederacy, who fought to preserve slavery. I think that puts evil on the table.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately that describes a lot of people, who are not crazy, simply naive and unprincipled and with no concept of what the Hell they're talking about. To defend the Confederacy on libertarian principles when the real thing used indiscriminate massacre and military dictatorships as a tool of state policy and invented first a lot of the great libertarian bugaboos implies either willful ignorance or simply demagoguery exploiting ignorance. Either are deplorable but they're also some of the oldest political tricks in the book from when people developed politics more sophisticated than clubbing someone else over the head.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I would take issue with the "inherently" part.

If I had my druthers Marx, Lenin, and Stalin would rank just below Hitler on the list of historical personages that should have been shot at birth but there are things that people do find good and admirable about them so who am I to pass judgement?

Insert metaphore about blind squirrels and nuts as you see fit.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Why Marx? He was a cranky writer from Western Germany. If Marx should be shot for Stalin, the excesses of Medieval Christianity over-qualify Jesus, the Twelve Apostles, and St. Paul for the firing squad, too. Marx's ideas were in relation to his own time, and the historical pattern of Communism as a form of state-building in huge agrarian empires was the direct inverse of what was supposed to happen. Marx's ideas were not evil insofar as they were disproven by the success they attained in real life and never recovered from that paradox. A self-contradictory idea is not evil, it's just nonsense.

Now Lenin and Stalin, sure, I'd agree with that. I might suggest instead of being shot that they be hung, drawn, and quartered along with Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Can we get a little love for Idi Amin, too?

[rowsdowerisms.livejournal.com]

Marx was very much a product of the enlightenment so let's knock off Adam Smith and get rid of capitalism, socialism, communism and all the rest.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

I must vigorously protest. I did not make a judgment about Paul and then go looking for evidence; I gathered a bunch of evidence and then came to a judgement.

Paul wants to radically reform American government to his romantic vision of its “true” Constitutional nature. He thinks that Social Security, Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, foreign aid, and the doctrine of separation of church and state are all wrong and need to be abolished. I respect that some folks think that doesn't qualify as an evil doctrine, but it should be evident how I could think it is.

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

No True Libertarianism (http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/no-true-libertarianism-fallacy.html)

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Glad you said it so I didn't have to.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Funny, I was actually planning to bring that up in the orginal post.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

A truly evil doctrine would be a bit more specific and blunt than that. The truly evil ideas don't hide what they're all about, if they're forthright about it people believe it less until they vote for it and it turns out that whoopsie, evil doesn't mean lying about what evil wants....

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I would argue that framing a politrical issue as good vs. evil is a sign of mental inflexability and laziness on the part of the framer. Reality is rarely if ever that clear cut.

This is not to say that good and evil do not exist, only that they do not exist in isolation.

It is possible to get bad results from good intentions just as it is possible to get good results from bad.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I think it's clear if something is based on the concept of killing other people and taking their land for a manifest destiny that the idea there is evil. The results of it may not always be, but a Manifest Destiny/Lebensraum idea is an evil one at its most refined, and only worse the cruder and more blatant it is. By contrast there are evil people who befoul the noblest and greatest societies or cultures in all cultures, even when they are complete and horrifying exceptions to a general rule. Thus both ideas and people can be evil, and evil people empowered by evil ideas are worse than either on their own.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

This raises the old conundrum,

Is it better to have evil intentions with a good result, or good intentions with an evil result?

Obviously the ideal situation would be good intentions with good result but reality rarely works out that way.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

I think I was very clear that I was not saying that Ron Paul and all his works are pure in malice; I started with the places where I agreed with him. You're arguing with a straw version of my rhetoric — I did not paint with a broad brush, I did not oversimplify. I documented and explicitly analyzed his positions and used “evil” as a term to summarize my conclusions, not to drive them.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Except his positions even then are less evil than some ultra-right wingers who are far deeper into the realm of evil.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

Not having a horse in this race, my opinion matters little. But as a general rule, trust should never be an issue in politics. Ideally we should be able to trust all the candidates and the issues of an election should be about policy. When issues of trust come up then they should automatically be dismissed from the running.

I mean if this Ron Paul guys promises all the right things policy-wise but you can't trust him, why the hell would anyone even consider voting for him? But it's your democracy. You guys can debate this all you want.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I actually agree which is why in light of recent events I don't want him anywhere near the oval office.

That said Trust has traditionally been an issue in American Politics, as the old joke goes...

Q: How do you know you're being lied to?
A: Their lips move.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Talkgasm!!!!1

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

It's so easy for men to fall for evil when they clearly can't recognize it when they see it or see it in everything that suits their ends.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Case in point the US alliance with Saudi Arabia. I assume you had things like that in mind, no?