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.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Brace for Godwin's violation.

Plenty of German Nazis were neither crazy nor malicious, simply naive and unprincipled with no concept of what the Hell they were talking about. That's not to say that being an “antebellum libertarian” (http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/antebellum-libertarianism.html) like Ron Paul is as evil as being a Nazi. I think it's evil, but I don't think it's that evil. But my point is that one can be an adherent to an unmistakably evil philosophy on a “naive and unprincipled” basis.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

On the contrary, they knew damned good and well what Hitler wanted. It was all in his book and the party platform and the Waffen-SS, the Nazi Party militia, did everything Hitler ordered it to do. You'dve had a less improbable case mentioning the Wehrmacht (and even then modern scholarship has shown the WWII generals were just as keen to ensure they did not lose the war but were stabbed in the back as the WWI ones were, and Hitler and the Nazis were evil enough nobody was willing to see how true those statements were).

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

I take that as a demonstration of people's ability to naively ignore the obvious implications of the political philosophies, not as a demonstration that no Nazis were naive.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The Nazis ran for office and won a plurality of the vote and never hid what they were on about any of that time, in a context where rival political militias were battling it out in the streets. There was no excuse for claiming they did not know. Evil ideas never hide what they're actually about.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Better in certain ways, slavery not being one of them. And that's only one of the many reasons the Confederacy fought, so again, your analysis is incorrect.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It was the reason they fought. If they didn't give a damn about it, they would have simply abolished it in 1862 and undercut the Union's big moral advantage from the get-go and removed their biggest obstacle to foreign recognition. Instead the CSA approved a Commissar Order aimed at USCT and sentenced thousands of POWs on both sides to death so they wouldn't have to treat black soldiers as equals and quashed Cleburne's memorial that they should abolish slavery to find a large amount of new, willing manpower. Then refusing to consider changes in slavery until the day before the Union Army took Richmond. To claim slavery was one of many reasons is a great big lie, it was the reason of all reasons. Of course because the CSA fought for slavery did not mean the USA was fighting for freedom and abolition....

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

I didn't say they didn't give a damn about it. I said it wasn't the only reason for the fighting.

To claim slavery was one of many reasons is a great big lie

Because you say so. History and historians say otherwise.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

On the contrary, all historians since the 1960s agree with me. All historians of the 19th Century in the age when white supremacy and racial lawlessness are king agree with you. Your concepts of the Civil War have been obsolete for quite some time now. I'd encourage you to read such histories but it would be a fruitless exercise, so long as the history describes anything in detail beyond the level of a single sentence and say-so it's probably too long and boring to soldier through. Nichevo, Tovarisch.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

http://www.historynet.com/true-causes-of-the-civil-war.htm

The proximate cause of the war, however, was Lincoln's determination not to allow the South to go peacefully out of the Union, which would have severely weakened, if not destroyed, the United States.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Not true. (http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html)

Mississippi Declaration of Causes of Secession:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery

South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession:

an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.
....
all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

Texas Declaration of the Causes of Secession:

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

I didn't say it wasn't a reason at all. But if you read that honestly you'll see that the problem was with the federal government trying to exert a power over the states that it didn't have a right to, on the topic of slavery. Besides, that is just the reason for seceding. The reasons for fighting was to preserve their right to be independent from tyranny (as they saw it).

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Nonsense. People don't fight wars over disputes over what a government is legally empowered to do; they fight wars over what a government is doing or might do. And Abraham Lincoln tells us (http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/cooper.htm) it was that last which led to the war.

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

http://www.historynet.com/true-causes-of-the-civil-war.htm

The proximate cause of the war, however, was Lincoln's determination not to allow the South to go peacefully out of the Union, which would have severely weakened, if not destroyed, the United States.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That power being to limit abuses of slaveholders who were conspicuous advocates of disregarding Northern liberty laws with the full coercive power of the government. Of course it's fruitless to argue actual details or facts with someone whose idea of facts is to claim someone else is illiterate or wrong on nothing but his say-so, that's the kind of argument seen in schoolyards among elementary school students who have nothing better to do like playing kickball or picking their noses and playing Pokemon card games.

[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?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No. There's a man so pathetic he's not worth the trouble of explaining precisely why.

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

But he was the Last King of Scotland!

[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.