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

[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.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Evil ideas never hide what they're actually about

That's an odd assertion.

Since Ron Paul is playing down his pseudo-neo-Confederate romantic reactionary ideas, does that mean that therefore they are not really evil, since if they were he would be making them apparent?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It is, however, a blunt truth. Evil is not a subtle thing in terms of what it says. In what it does it can tend to be because the evil tend to recognize that there is a gap between ideal and reality. My statement about Ron Paul applies because there's quite a few "sane" leaders who also thought that. Case in point: Woodrow Wilson.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

I don't see what you mean by this last comment.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Simple: if Ron Paul is insane for being a Neo-Confederate libertarian, what about Woodrow Wilson, a university president as Ron Paul is a doctor and a Lost Cause creator as Ron Paul is a perpetuator? If the idea is evil, what of the people that enshrined it?

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

I have no problem calling Woodrow Wilson evil for that reason.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

You, however, called Dr. Paul insane. Was Dr. Wilson also insane or are evil and insanity two separate and unequal things?

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

I called him a “crackpot”, not insane. Crackpottery and evil are independent variables, but they can coïncide and are a potent combination when they do.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

President Wilson had honourable intentions in Paris. Not only was peace a goal, but justice as well. The two goals were not exactly compatible. Especially when revenge is mistaken for justice.

At what point do you consider Wilson evil?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

At the point when he was claiming the KKK were a bunch of heroes and he considered the Treaty of Sevres were good ideas. Somehow a partition of not just the Ottoman Empire but Anatolia in general in the sense he espoused does not work well. The legacy of his European and Middle Eastern politics was the great and grand clusterfuck of the 20th Century while he was a tyrannical asshat at home. Yeah, he was pretty fucking evil and his main heroism comes from historians.