Ron Paul is (color)Blind!

What Really Divides Us?

                This article by Ron Paul counters the criticisms that he and his policies are racist.  He tries to show that he acts on values of individual liberty, not racial importance.  By acknowledging race and categorizing people, the federal government is perpetuating racial differences.  This form classification for the good of diversity is the same as racism because government policies choose to benefit different races instead of individuals, irrespective of race.  Following this, he believes states’ rights have been perverted to take on negative connotations of favoring racist and backwards thinking.  Paul seems to attach only a slight positive meaning to states rights, implying they are best at governing themselves because they more effectively represent their state.  He understands states will develop different laws, some good and some bad, but prefers this to federal involvement.  Paul believes that is everyone is treated as an individual, racism would fade away because no one would be identified by race by the government.  A free market system would correct social racism as those who had racist practices would feel the economic effects and fail.

                Paul’s colorblind approach is common in libertarian and conservative circles.  It seems to make sense that if we don’t acknowledge race, it will disappear as a social fact.  However, this view does disregard inherent racism in our government’s laws and institutions.  Government policies of the past have clearly favored the majority white race and actively sought to disadvantage blacks, Asian-Americans, Latinos, and women.  Thus to correct these actions, some say we should take an anti-subjugation approach to race policy where laws attempt to fix these inherent divisions in our citizenry created by past government action. 

                It is a difficult situation to approach.  Anti-subjugation takes a governmental approach to combating racism while a colorblind policy takes a social approach to combating it, saying that the government should not classify people; that is was wrong in the past and wrong now because individuals are equal in the eyes of the law.  What one must look at here is if people of different races are really equal in a legal and social sense and in which sphere of life the government has the right to intervene.

A Balancing Act

Balancing Political and Religious Beliefs

This Washington Post article tries to reconcile Paul’s religious beliefs with his libertarian political affiliation.  As we talked about the other week, it is difficult to discern whether his religious beliefs are more important than his political believes or vice versa.  He is a deeply religious man and holds great esteem for the power of the church and what it can provide for the community and, almost conversely, is troubled by the power of the government and its ability to overly assert itself into people’s lives. 

                Paul is anti-abortion and has stated mixed messages on same-sex marriage, stating that he is in defense of traditional marriage; that it’s a state issue; and that marriage should be administered by the church, not the government.  Though most libertarians are pro-choice, Paul believes life begins prior to the physical birth so a fetus is entitled to the full rights that any individual is.  He bases this off of his personal experience and feeling when seeing a fetus aborted.  Because he sees life starting before birth, he is actually in line with libertarian principles on individual rights.  Paul’s views on marriage entangle his religious and political views much more than his stance on the abortion issue.  While he supports states rights to administer marriage (but ultimately wants the government to be out of regulating marriage), he appears to be personally against gay marriage.  It is an interesting paradox however- while the government is in a place to regulate marriage licenses, Paul pushes for each state’s right to ban same-sex marriage but in his ultimate goal of having churches regulate marriage, same-sex marriage would be allowed under some religions. 

So where does this place his religious and political views? Is it a hierarchy or a balancing act?  It’s hard to tell.  His anti-abortion stance is based on a moral obligation to protect individuals, not religious doctrine, and his views on marriage are a mixture of individual rights, states’ rights, and religious teaching.  Based on this, and that he switched churches to one that fell into his moral and political beliefs better, I think Paul is trying to balance his religious and political beliefs.  It is because he is a religious man and that religion can take over for much of what the government does that he does tend to have more conservative religious views.

Civil Rights

Ron Paul on Hardball

In this clip from Hardball earlier this year Ron Paul discusses his view on the legalization of drugs and the 1964 Civil Rights Act (The pertinent discussion of the Civil Rights act begins at 4:10).  As a libertarian, Ron Paul believes that the personal liberty and property rights of an individual trumps government infringement.  Thus he would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act, saying it would have forced individual citizens to give up their freedom.  He tries to separate his reasons for being against the act from simple racism, as Chris Matthews tries to insinuate.  Paul believes a societal change would have occurred that caused racism to diminish and that the free market would have made discriminatory businesses go under with the change in societal beliefs.  He made his decision without using race as a factor.

 However, one must wonder if this societal change would have occurred everywhere in the country.  Surely some places and small communities would still harbor racist beliefs and use segregation to this day.  Is there a need to compel a community like this to desegregate if all such practices were private, and there was no government regulated segregation? Furthermore, is it contradictory to have a country that beliefs in equality but allow individuals in that country use discriminatory practices?  If liberty is what one values, then yes because you have to take the good with the bad and believe in the goodness of people.

                This is a good tie in to the topic of race in the Presidency and Martin Luther King Jr.  Ron Paul, though against the Civil Rights Act, is a great admirer of Martin Luther King Jr.  The way in which MLK used the church, religion, and culture to demand equality was right in line with Paul’s beliefs on the great societal benefit churches play.  There are letters supposedly written by Paul in the early 1990s criticizing MLK as communist and containing racist comments.  However, Paul has denied writing these letters and no major news outlets have investigated their legitimacy.  Such social activists, using community support to mobilize people and change accepted cultural practices, are a key element to how a nation regulates itself without a large government.

Experiences, Theocracies, & Liberty

Ron Paul Interview on the Influence of Religion

This interview of Ron Paul by the religious site, Beliefnet, helps puts his views of the role that Chritianitiy (and other religions) should play in the US government.  He talks a lot about how his non-religious experiences religious upbringing in Lutheran and Baptist churches has affected his current beliefs.  His Christian upbringing has taught him to value life and given him strong morals.  However, his personal experiences have affected him far greater.  It was is seeing friends be drafted and die that made him anti-war, his career in medicine that made him pro-life, his value of freedom and the constitution that pushed him to make abortion a states issue and religious concerns of local importance.
He also further explains how America is not a Christian nation, and should never be a theocracy.  The Constitution was written by Christian men with Christian morals so but Christianity itself was never written into the Constitution. In fact, other than the free practice thereof, religion is not a large part of the constitution.  Therefore, it is not the federal government's job to create or enforce a secular nation.  It is up to local communities to decide how large a role they want religion to play in there lives, not the government duty to impose forced rule.
Paul's discussion of how a politician's religion should play into his candidacy  touches on issues we talked about in class.  He believes that a candidate should not run on a religious ticket, he does not want any religion to come to power and create a theocracy.  Instead candidates should keep to their religious traditions but run as an individual, a religious man who can lead, not a religious leader, to paraphrase.  Along this line he says voters hould not look at a man's religion as a deciding factor but rather his or her stance on the First Amendment.  This holds true to his libertarian ideals.  What he means by this is that it is more important to have a man that values freedom and has similar religious views.  For if a man values freedom and promotes the First Amendment over his religious ties, the government will never become endanger of becoming a theocracy and each community will feel free in choosing their own religious leanings.